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It was cut short, for all rose, and all, save Dane and Giovanni, went out to the terrace. The Abbé Marinier proposed going to Santa Scolastica and the Sacro Speco on the morrow, returning perhaps to Rome by way of Olevano and Palestrina, that road being new to him. Could any one show him the way from the terrace? Don Clemente pointed out the road.
Jeanne turned eagerly towards him. "At the Sacro Speco?" said she; and the gardener asked the beggar if he himself had seen him there. The cripple, more tearful than ever, told how more than an hour ago he had been on the road to the Sacro Speco, beyond the grove of evergreen oaks, only a few steps from the convent.
Probably she was not staying in the Selvas' very small lodging, but was at some hotel in Subiaco. Were those distant lights fires in an enemy's camp? He made the sign of the cross, and entered his narrow cell, for a short rest until two o'clock, the hour of assembly in the choir. Benedetto took the road to the Sacro Speco.
It was indeed morning, and it would be lighter still for it no longer rained-were the sky not one heavy cloud from the hills of Subiaco to the hills of Jenne. A step in the distance; some one coming up towards the arch. It was the herder of Santa Scolastica who, for special reasons, was carrying the milk to the Sacro Speco at that unusually early hour. Benedetto greeted him.
Towards the end of summer we spent a month most agreeably at Subiaco, receiving much civility from the Benedictine monks of the Sacro Speco, and visiting all the neighbouring towns, each one perched on some hill-top, and one more romantically picturesque than the other. It was in this part of the country that Claude Lorraine and Poussin studied and painted.
We walked into them, or rather into a crooked vestibule frescoed by some Umbrian, with no sudden transition from the splendid grove of ilexes, immense branches like beams overhead, from the great hillside of bluish-grey tufo, with only a few bitter herbs on it. The convent of the Sacro Speco is a half-fortified little place into which we could not penetrate.
Jeanne, completely absorbed in what the herder was saying, did not notice him, nor did she hear him when the herder having ceased speaking he begged for alms, for the love of God. She asked the gardener where this Benedetto was to be found. The man scratched his head, doubtful how to answer. Then the beggar groaned out in a mournful voice: "You are seeking Benedetto? He is at the Sacro Speco."
Yes, Jeanne had recognised him the night of their arrival, and now Maria and Giovanni could understand the reason of the faintness she had experienced. Their meeting had taken place the following day at Sacro Speco.
Benedetto asked. On other occasions when the master had granted him this permission, he had climbed the bare heights of Colle Lungo above the monastery, and passed the night in prayer, either there, or on the heights of Taleo, or on the rocky hillside which is crossed in going from the oratory of Santa Crocella to the grove of the Sacro Speco.
Don Leone took leave of Noemi upon learning that this was the friend who as she had told him during the visit to the monastery had remained at the door-keeper's lodge. Of course the ladies would go up to the other convent, and his great size was no longer adapted to the climb to the Sacro Speco.
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