American fiction -- 20th century; Manhattan (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Women artists -- Fiction
"Simply Italianate Baudelaire," cried Milt, and in a rage he exclaimed:
"You actually memorize such vile blasphemers. But I'm very sure you
can't repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Confiteor, or recite the Litany of
our Blessed Virgin." Ulick stood in the middle of the room, his hands
clasped, his eyes closed, and recited the prayer, the Confiteor and the
Litany, adding in a low voice, "A pure heart pierceth heaven and hell."
Milt was overjoyed. He shook Ulick's hand, crying: "You know Thomas à
Kempis, too? Come, there is hope for your immortal soul. Oh, Ulick! Why
don't you forswear your evil ways of living! Give over your inveterate
concupiscence." Ulick answered by quoting: "Tandem ergo discubuimus
pueris Alexandrinis...." "Stop, Ulick! How dare you quote that vilest
of pagans, Petronius Arbiter, almost in the same breath with the divine
à Kempis?" For answer Ulick drew from his pocket a tiny book entitled
"The Christian's Pattern, by Thomas à Kempis, edited by John Wesley A.
M." bearing the date 1832 and published in New York, by Charles Wells.
"My mother's copy," he curtly said. Milt saw a feminine signature in
the battered little copy. He was much touched by the image of Ulick's
filial piety prompting him to carry about him his mother's favorite
prayers--for what else are those meditations of the practically unknown
mediaeval monk but sighs of suffering wafted on high by a burning soul!
Ulick added: "I read Petronius every day." Milt sketched a gesture of
despair. He could make no answer to a man who blew hot and cold in
the same breath. À Kempis and Petronius. Ormuzd and Ahriman! Apollo
and Marsyas. Lucifer, when he was Prince of the Morning, and Satan
Mekatrig. Milt switched the conversation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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