Only the present
remained, the idle, thoughtful, half-narcotic present, with a mazy
charm no man could explain, since so far as any bodily good was
concerned there was less comfort to be got for money, more fever to be
taken for nothing, and a larger element of danger in everyday life in
Rome than in any city Gilbert had traversed in his wanderings. Yet he
lingered and loved it rather for what it denied him than for what it
gave him, for the thoughts it called up rather than for the sights it
offered, for that in it which was unknown, and therefore dear to dwell
upon, rather than for the sadness and the darkness and the evil that
all men might feel.
But through all he felt, and in all he saw, welding and joining the
whole together, there was the still fervour of that something which he
had at first known in Sheering Abbey--something to which every fibre of
his nature responded, and which, indeed, was the mainspring of the
world in that age. For devotion was then more needful than bread, and
it profited a man more to fight against unbelievers for his soul's sake
than to wear hollows in altar-steps with his knees, or to forget his
own name and put off his own proper character and being, as a nameless
unit in a great religious order.
At first the enormous disappointment of Rome had saddened and hurt him.
He had fancied that where there was no head there could be no house,
that where the leader was gone the army must scatter and be hewn in
pieces. But as he stayed on, from week to week and from month to month,
he learned to understand that the Church had never been more alive,
more growing, and more militant than at that very time when the true
and rightful pontiffs were made outcasts one after the other, while
their places, earthly and spiritual, were given to instruments of feud
and party.
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