"Hark, Fra Gervasio! Do you not hear it?"
"Hear it? Hear what?"
"The music--the angelic melodies! And you can say that this place is a
foul imposture; this holy image an impious fraud! And you a priest!
Listen! It is a sign to warn you against stubborn unbelief."
He listened, with frowning brows, a moment; then he smiled.
"Angelic melodies!" he echoed with gentlest scorn. "By what snares does
the Devil delude men, using even suggested holiness for his purpose! That,
boy--that is no more than the dripping of water into little wells of
different depths, producing different notes. It is in there, in some cave
in the mountain where the Bagnanza springs from the earth."
I listened, half disillusioned by his explanation, yet fearing that my
senses were too slavishly obeying his suggestion. "The proof of that? The
proof!" I cried.
"The proof is that you have never heard it after heavy rain, or while the
river was swollen."
That answer shattered my last illusion. I looked back upon the time I had
spent there, upon the despair that had beset me when the music ceased, upon
the joy that had been mine when again I heard it, accepting it always as a
sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my unworthiness, but the rain,
had ever silenced it. In memory I ran over the occasions, and so clearly
did I perceive the truth of this, that I marvelled the coincidence should
not earlier have discovered it to me.
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