A wonderfully effective expression, effective through
its pathetic simplicity, of the peaceful spirit of a Christian,
who has triumphed over persecution and death, and passed to his reward.




Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.



The speaker in this monologue is a Spanish monk, whose jealousy toward
a simple and unoffending brother has, in the seclusion of the cloister,
developed into a festering malignity. If hate, he says,
could kill a man, his hate would certainly kill Brother Laurence.
He is watching this brother, from a window of the cloister,
at work in the garden. He looks with contempt upon his honest toil;
repeats mockingly to himself, his simple talk when at meals,
about the weather and the crops; sneers at his neatness,
and orderliness, and cleanliness; imputes to him his own libidinousness.
He takes credit to himself in laying crosswise, in Jesu's praise,
his knife and fork, after refection, and in illustrating the Trinity,
and frustrating the Arian, by drinking his watered orange-pulp
in three sips, while Laurence drains his at one gulp. Now he notices
Laurence's tender care of the melons, of which it appears the good man
has promised all the brethren a feast; "so nice!" He calls to him,
from the window, "How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?" Laurence, it must be understood,