Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second CrusadeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
General
Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Crusades -- Second, 1147-1149 -- Fiction
places of the East, to renew unbroken vows of chastity and charity and
faith. There, in his dream, dwelt the venerable Father of Bishops, the
Vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, the Servant of the servants of
God, the spotless head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
There, in his heart, he had made the dwelling of whatsoever things are
upright and just and perfect in heaven, and pure and beautiful on
earth. That was the city of God, of which his soul was the architect,
and in which he was to be a dweller, in peace that should pass
understanding.
He had left behind him in Paris another vision and one that might well
have dazzled him--such favour as falls to few; such hopes as few can
plant in their lives and still fewer can rear to maturity; such love as
few indeed could hope for--the love of supreme and royal beauty.
When he had ridden out of the castle on the island, older by some
months, richer by such gifts as it was no shame for him to take of Duke
Geoffrey and young Henry Plantagenet, he had believed himself wiser,
too, by half a lifetime.
He was confident in his own strength, in his own wisdom, in his own
endurance; he fancied that he had fought against a great temptation,
where he had in truth been chilled and terrified by the haunting vision
of another's evil; he imagined that the little sharp regret, which
stung his heart with longing for the sweetness of a sin that might have
been, was the evil remnant of a passion not wholly quenched, whereas it
was but the craving of a natural vanity that had not been strong enough
to overcome a repugnance which he himself only half understood.
He seemed in his own eyes to have made the sacrifice of his worldly
future for the sake of his knightly ideal; but in truth, to a man
without ambition, the renunciation had been easy and had been made in
acquiescence with his real desires, rather than in opposition to them.
And now he looked upon the city of his hope, and it crumbled to a dusty
ruin under his very hand; he stood on ground made reverent by the march
of history and sanctified by the blood of Christians, and it was but
one great wilderness, of which he himself was the centre. His heart
sank suddenly within him, and his fingers clutched at the breast of his
tunic under his surcoat, as though the pain were bodily and real. Long
he sat in silence, bending a little in the saddle, as if worn out with
fatigue, though he had ridden only three hours since daybreak.
"Sir," said his man Dunstan, interrupting his master's meditations,
"here is an inn, and we may find water for our horses."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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