Beware lest
you fall into the sin of the Pharisee, for often have I seen you stand in
danger of it."
She swayed as if her strength were failing her, and again her pale lips
moved.
"Enough, Fra Gervasio! I will go," I cried.
"Nay, it is not yet enough," he answered, and strode down the room until he
stood between her and me. "He is what you have made him," he repeated in
denunciation. "Had you studied his nature and his inclinations, had you
left them free to develop along the way that God intended, you would have
seen whether or not the cloister called him; and then would have been the
time to have taken a resolve. But you thought to change his nature by
repressing it; and you never saw that if he was not such as you would have
him be, then most surely would you doom him to damnation by making an evil
priest of him.
"In your Pharisaic arrogance, Madonna, you sought to superimpose your will
to God's will concerning him--you confounded God's will with your own. And
so his sins recoil upon you as much as upon any. Therefore, Madonna, do I
bid you beware. Take a humbler view if you would be acceptable in the
Divine sight. Learn to forgive, for I say to you to-day that you stand as
greatly in need of forgiveness for the thing that Agostino has done, as
does Agostino himself.
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