It is as hard to describe a beloved picture as a beloved face, but
this one had been seldom copied or reproduced, and it is gone now, so I
will try. In a dark glade of the woods through which flamed red bars of
sunset, two ruffians were attacking the Saint and his companion; Peter
knelt between them in the foreground, looking up to heaven ere the last
blow fell, with a wonderful expression of mingled pain and joy. The
sweep of the drapery, the slight sinking to one side, showed that his
strength was gone already, but through the physical anguish on his face
there shone such radiance that one knew heaven was already opened to
his eyes—it was not trust, it was certainty. The assassins, great bulky
brutes, towered over him, but their figures were shadowed and dark and
formless as evil itself; all the light, all the reality, were centred
on the bending head, the dying eyes, the praying hands, the mystic
cross that barred the priestly garment. I think there were palms and
angels hovering overhead; but in a very old drawing, half life-size,
of this picture—to all appearance contemporary with the painting—that I
found among my dear father’s possessions, they were absent.
In the background lay the body of the martyr’s slain companion,
martyred too, but all the glory and the promise seemed to be for
Peter—none for him. As I have said, I was only sixteen then, and knew
less about Peter the Martyr than I did about Confucius or Genghis
Khan, and for many years I wondered why the other martyr had remained
nameless and unsainted. It shows the incompleteness of my education
when I confess that it was only a year or two ago that I pieced his
story together for myself. Let some one correct me if I am wrong,
but I _think_ the neglected companion was Conrad, the confessor of
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a man of high learning and much piety, but
to whom, on account of his harsh treatment of the “dear Saint,” the
Church refused the honours of canonization. But we know that Conrad was
murdered for the Faith, and may be equally sure that it was owing to
Saint Elizabeth’s prayers that Heaven allowed him to expiate his fault
by a heroic death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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