The Psyche

At last one morning the twinkling star saw him rise from his bed, pale, and, trembling with fever, go to his marble statue, lift the veiling curtain, gaze on his work with one last, sad, yearning look, and then, staggering under its weight, drag the statue down into the garden. Here was a ruined, dried-up well or hole, and he lowered his Psyche into it, threw dirt over it, then scattered a lot of dry sticks and nettles over the spot, so that no one could tell the earth had been disturbed. "Away! Out of my sight!" The was his brief burial service.

The morning star looked down through the rose-colored sky, and her beams quivered on two big tears on the young man's pale cheeks. Fever-striken, deathly ill, he lay on his bed.

From a near-by convent, Brother Ignatius came to see him daily as physician, nurse, and friend. He brought to the sick man the consolation of religion, spoke about the peace and happiness of the church, spoke of man's sin and the peace and blessings of God. And his words were like warm sunbeams falling on the wet, fermented ground. They lifted the mist and showed him life in all its reality, with its missteps and disappointments. The Goddess of Art is a witch who carries us toward vanity, toward earthly pleasures. We are untrue to ourselves, to our friends, and to God. "Taste and ye shall be as gods," the serpent always says within us.

Everything was clear to him now; he had found the road to truth and peace. In church, God's light and wisdom were ever present, and in the monastery he would find the peace where the tree of humanity could grow through all eternity.

His mind was made up, and Brother Ignatius supported him in his decision. The young artist became a servant of God. How kindly, how cordially, he was received by the brethren; how festive it was when he took his vows! And when he stood in his little cell at sunset that evening, and looked through his open window over old Rome with its ruined temples and its wonderful but dead Coliseum, and saw the spring blossoms of the acacias, the fresh shoots of the evergreen, the multitude of roses, the shiny citron and orange trees, and the fanlike palms, he was thrilled with a calm happiness he had never felt before.