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The Gadfly By: E. L. (Ethel Lillian) Voynich (1864-1960) |
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By E. L. Voynich
"What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth?" AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
MY most cordial thanks are due to the many
persons who helped me to collect, in Italy, the
materials for this story. I am especially indebted
to the officials of the Marucelliana Library of
Florence, and of the State Archives and Civic
Museum of Bologna, for their courtesy and
kindness. THE GADFLY
PART I. CHAPTER I. Arthur sat in the library of the theological seminary at Pisa, looking
through a pile of manuscript sermons. It was a hot evening in June, and
the windows stood wide open, with the shutters half closed for coolness.
The Father Director, Canon Montanelli, paused a moment in his writing to
glance lovingly at the black head bent over the papers. "Can't you find it, carino? Never mind; I must rewrite the passage.
Possibly it has got torn up, and I have kept you all this time for
nothing." Montanelli's voice was rather low, but full and resonant, with a silvery
purity of tone that gave to his speech a peculiar charm. It was the
voice of a born orator, rich in possible modulations. When he spoke to
Arthur its note was always that of a caress. "No, Padre, I must find it; I'm sure you put it here. You will never
make it the same by rewriting." Montanelli went on with his work. A sleepy cockchafer hummed drowsily
outside the window, and the long, melancholy call of a fruitseller
echoed down the street: "Fragola! fragola!" "'On the Healing of the Leper'; here it is." Arthur came across the room
with the velvet tread that always exasperated the good folk at home.
He was a slender little creature, more like an Italian in a
sixteenth century portrait than a middle class English lad of the
thirties. From the long eyebrows and sensitive mouth to the small hands
and feet, everything about him was too much chiseled, overdelicate.
Sitting still, he might have been taken for a very pretty girl
masquerading in male attire; but when he moved, his lithe agility
suggested a tame panther without the claws. "Is that really it? What should I do without you, Arthur? I should
always be losing my things. No, I am not going to write any more now.
Come out into the garden, and I will help you with your work. What is
the bit you couldn't understand?" They went out into the still, shadowy cloister garden. The seminary
occupied the buildings of an old Dominican monastery, and two hundred
years ago the square courtyard had been stiff and trim, and the rosemary
and lavender had grown in close cut bushes between the straight box
edgings. Now the white robed monks who had tended them were laid away
and forgotten; but the scented herbs flowered still in the gracious
mid summer evening, though no man gathered their blossoms for simples
any more. Tufts of wild parsley and columbine filled the cracks between
the flagged footways, and the well in the middle of the courtyard was
given up to ferns and matted stone crop. The roses had run wild, and
their straggling suckers trailed across the paths; in the box borders
flared great red poppies; tall foxgloves drooped above the tangled
grasses; and the old vine, untrained and barren of fruit, swayed from
the branches of the neglected medlar tree, shaking a leafy head with
slow and sad persistence. In one corner stood a huge summer flowering magnolia, a tower of dark
foliage, splashed here and there with milk white blossoms. A rough
wooden bench had been placed against the trunk; and on this Montanelli
sat down. Arthur was studying philosophy at the university; and,
coming to a difficulty with a book, had applied to "the Padre" for an
explanation of the point. Montanelli was a universal encyclopaedia to
him, though he had never been a pupil of the seminary. "I had better go now," he said when the passage had been cleared up;
"unless you want me for anything." "I don't want to work any more, but I should like you to stay a bit if
you have time." "Oh, yes!" He leaned back against the tree trunk and looked up through
the dusky branches at the first faint stars glimmering in a quiet
sky... Continue reading book >>
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