Padre Ignacio; or, the song of temptation by Owen Wister
page 7 of 35 (20%)
page 7 of 35 (20%)
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with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate
jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit Dominus. He listened to the tender chorus that opens William Tell; and, as the Latin psalm proceeded, pictures of the past rose between him and the altar. One after another came these strains he had taken from operas famous in their day, until at length the Padre was murmuring to some music seldom long out of his heart--not the Latin verse which the choir sang, but the original French words: "Ah, voile man envie, Voila mon seul desir: Rendez moi ma patrie, Ou laissez moi mourir." Which may be rendered: But one wish I implore, One wish is all my cry: Give back my native land once more, Give back, or let me die. Then it happened that his eye fell again upon the stranger near the door, and he skaightway forgot his Dixit Dominus. The face of the young man was no longer hidden by the slouching position he had at first taken. "I only noticed his clothes at first," thought the Padre. Restlessness was plain upon the handsome brow, and violence was in the mouth; but Padre Ignacio liked the eyes. "He is not saying any prayers," he surmised, |
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