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He had not thought of the chant for years, nor had there been anything apparently to recall it now; but all that day it possessed him, and at intervals he caught himself involuntarily singing it aloud: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, parce nobis Domine, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mimdi, exaudi nos Domine, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis."
During all the first part of the service he neither saw nor heard, but did his work mechanically like one in a dream; and in every pause of it the old chant recurred to him, filling his heart with a separate undercurrent of solemn supplication, now in French: "Agneau de Dieu, qui effacez les peches du monde, ayez pitie de nous," and now in Latin: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis."
Upon their breasts hung a piece of lead with this inscription: 'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem. The confraternity spread into Aquitaine, and the routiers were defeated in pitched battles with great slaughter; but the chaperons in course of time became lawless fanatics, and were almost as great a nuisance to society as those whom they had undertaken to exterminate.
With which he turned to retrace his steps, taking up the Litany of the Blessed Virgin once more as he went, the supplication: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis," being audible long after he was out of sight.
The sins that are discovered are the symptoms of the one radical sin that lies beneath them all. The cry is no longer "Mea peccata, mea peccata," as though these recognized sins were the exception to a life otherwise without a flaw, but rather, overwhelmed with confusion, the penitent finds in himself nothing but sin, except for what he has by God's grace alone.
A moment longer he meditated and then he said with much solemnity: "My son, have you no declaration to make?" "Yes, sir," said M. Abbe Coignard, with a firm voice, "I forgive my murderer." Then the priest gave him the holy wafer: "Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi." My good master replied with a sigh: "May I speak to my Lord, I who am naught but dust and ashes?
Et coeperunt cogitare Scribae et Pharisaei, dicentes, Quis est hic qui loquitur blasphemias? quis potest dimittere peccata nisi solus deus? Ut cognovit autem Jesus cogitationes eorum, respondens dixit ad illos. ... Quid est facilius dicere, Dimittuntur tibi peccata, an dicere, Surge et ambula?
Reading these elucubrations of Alfonso's, one feels that the saint has pondered long and lovingly upon themes like an et quando peccata sint oscula or de tactu et adspectu corporis; he writes with all the authority of an expert whose richly-varied experiences in the confessional have been amplified and irradiated by divine inspiration.
Then, for all that Harry is a king and a man grown, he wept like Owen, only not loud, and he went down on his knees, and he cried, "Mea peccata, mea peccata, mea infirmitas," just as he taught me to do at confession. And then he said he would do whatever the Lord Cardinal thought fit, and go and do penance at St. Albans, if he pleased, and not see the lady that sings any more.
He opened the book to study his solo for the afternoon service, but before he was halfway through his mind was busily rendering, not the music before him, but "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, parce nobis Domine."