The monks had ceased their singing for a brief space, but as they neared us a fresh outburst of mournful harmony rose from them. It spread through the vale around, and, rolling onward, echoed and re-echoed from many a distant cliff, and, as if refused a lodgment there, mounted upward to the midnight sky:
"DIES IRÆ, DIES ILLA, SOLVET SÆCULUM IN FAVILLA."
The deep cowl that veiled the head of each grey brother gave a singular appearance to the throng, and the peculiarly wild effect of their harmony was heightened by the solemn hour and the moonlight.
"What ghostly looking figures!" I muttered to my uncle.
"Ay! Charon multiplied by forty. How I hate these doleful Gregorians! Let us stop these sandalled friars, and ask--if indeed they will be so condescending as to tell us--who it is that has received his _Nunc Dimittis_."
As the train came abreast of us, my uncle stepped forward and lifted his hat to the monks, who at once stopped both their march and their requiem.
"Pardon the curiosity of a stranger," he said, addressing the leading brother: "may we ask the reason of this midnight procession?"
The monk regarded the questioner with a look that seemed to ask what business it was of his; but, verbally courteous, he replied:
"_Pax vobiscum, mi fili._ We mourn one who but a few hours ago was alive. Now--_sic est voluntas divina_--he is no more."
"By falling from the cliff on which our monastery is built. The holy Virgin--_gloria tibi, O sancta Maria_--foreshadowed the event this morning by the fall of her image in the chapel."
"Ah, the days of Urim and Thummim are not past, then," remarked my uncle, with a tinge of irony in his tone unnoticed by him to whom he spoke. "Is the dead man a brother of your order?"
"An old inhabitant of Rivoli, but a neophyte of two days only. It was but yesterday that the good Father Ignatius brought him to us, bidding us receive him as a novice. This evening at vespers he quitted the convent unknown to us. He did not return. At nocturns Brother Francis startled us by rushing in and saying that he had heard groans coming from the foot of the cliff. We descended to the spot. This is what we found."
With these words the speaker drew back the covering from the bier. And there, calm and still in death, with glazed eyes staring up at the sky, as if in reproach of the cold, silent moon that had seen him die, was the face of the silver-haired old man, the penitent of Father Ignatius. My sudden exclamation of surprise drew all eyes upon me.