CHAPTER VI.
GABRIEL'S PRAYER
MEANTIME, though they worked quietly, they were both very industrious;and at last one day, late in October, when the first snow was beginningto fall, Brother Stephen finished the last page of the beautiful book.He gave a sigh as he laid down his paintbrush; not because he was tired,but because in his heart he was really sorry to finish his work, for heknew that then it would soon be taken away, and he hated to part withit.
As he and Gabriel laid all the pages together in the order in which theywere to go, brother Stephen's heart swelled with pride, and Gabrielthought he had never seen anything half so lovely!
The text was written in beautiful letters of the lustrous black inkwhich Gabriel had made; and at the beginnings of new chapters, wonderfulinitial letters glittered in gold and colours till they looked likelittle mosaics of precious stones.
Here and there through the text were scattered exquisite miniaturepictures of saints and angels; while as for the borders that enclosedevery page, they wreathed around the written words such lovely garlandsof painted blossoms, that to Gabriel the whole book seemed a marvellousbouquet of all the sweet flowers he had daily gathered from the Normanfields, and that Brother Stephen, by the magic of his art, had madeimmortal.
Indeed the little boy fairly blinked as he looked at the sparklingbeauty of those pages where the blossoms were to live on, through thecenturies, bright and beautiful and unharmed by wind or rain or thedriving snow, that even then was covering up all the bare frost-smittenmeadows without.
And so Gabriel turned over page after page shining with gold and purpleand rose-colour, till he came to the very last of the text; and then hesaw that there was yet one page more, and on turning over this he readthese words:
"I, Brother Stephen, of the Abbey of St. Martin-de-Bouchage, made thisbook; and for every initial letter and picture and border of flowersthat I have herein wrought, I pray the Lord God to have compassion uponsome one of my grievous sins!"
This was written in beautifully, and all around it was painted agraceful border like braided ribbons of blue.
Now in Brother Stephen's time, when any one finished an especiallybeautiful illumination of any part of the Bible, it was quite customaryfor the artist to add, at the end, a little prayer. Indeed, no one canmake a really beautiful thing without loving the work; and thoseold-time artist-monks took such delight in the flowery pages theypainted, that they felt sure the dear Lord himself could not help but bepleased to have his words made so beautiful, and that he would so grantthe little prayer at the end of the book, because of the loving labourthat had gone before.
As Gabriel again read over Brother Stephen's last page, it set him tothinking; and a little later, as he walked home in the frosty dusk, hethought of it again.
It was true, he said to himself, that all the beautiful written andpainted work on King Louis's book had been done by Brother Stephen'shands,--and yet,--and yet,--had not he, too, helped? Had he not gatheredthe thorny hawthorn, and pricked his fingers, and spent days and daysmaking the ink? Had he not, week after week, ground the colours and thegold till his arms ached, and his hands were blistered? Had he not madethe glue, and prepared the parchment, and ruled the lines (and one hadto be _so_ careful not to blot them!), and brought all the flowers forthe borders?
Surely, he thought, though he had not painted any of its lovely pages,yet he had done his little part to help make the book, and so,perhaps--perhaps--might not the Lord God feel kindly toward him, too,and be willing to grant a little prayer to him also?
Now of course Gabriel could have prayed any time and anywhere, andsimply asked for what he wanted. But he had a strong feeling that Godwould be much more apt to notice it, if the prayer were beautifullywritten out, like Brother Stephen's, and placed in the book itself, onthe making of which he had worked so long and so hard.
Gabriel was very pleased with his idea, and by the time he reached home,he had planned out just what he wanted to say. He ate his supper of hardblack bread very happily, and when, soon after, he crept into bed andpulled up his cover of ragged sheepskin, he went to sleep with his headso full of the work of the past few months, that he dreamed that thewhole world was full of painted books and angels with rose-colouredwings; that all the meadows of Normandy were covered with gold, and theflowers fastened on with white of egg and eel-skins; and then, just ashe was getting out his ruler to rule lines over the blue sky, he rubbedhis eyes and woke up; and, finding it was morning, he jumped out of bed,and hastened to make himself ready for his day's work.
When he reached the Abbey, Brother Stephen was busy binding together thefinished leaves of the book; for the monks had to do not only thepainting, but also the putting together of their books themselves.
After Gabriel had waited on Brother Stephen for awhile, the latter toldhim he could have some time to himself, and so he hurried to get out thelittle jars of scarlet and blue and black ink, and the bits of parchmentthat Brother Stephen had given him. He looked over the parchmentcarefully, and at last found one piece from which he could cut a pagethat was almost as large as the pages of the book. It was an old piece,and had some writing on one side, but he knew how to scrape it offclean; and then taking some of the scarlet ink, he ruled some lines inthe centre of the page, and between these, in the nicest black lettershe knew how to make, he wrote his little prayer. And this is the way itread:
"I, Gabriel Viaud, am Brother Stephen's colour-grinder; and I have madethe ink for this book, and the glue, and caught the eels, and ground thegold and colours, and ruled the lines and gathered the flowers for theborders, and so I pray the Lord God will be kind and let my father outof prison in Count Pierre's castle, and tell Count Pierre to give usback our meadow and sheep, for we cannot pay the tax, and mother says wewill starve."
Now in the little prayers that the monks added at the end of a book, itwas the custom to ask only that their sins might be forgiven. ButGabriel, though he knew he had plenty of sins,--for so the parish priestof St. Martin's village told all the peasant folk every Sunday,--yetsomehow could not feel nearly so anxious to have them forgiven, as hewas to have his father freed from prison in the castle, and their littlefarm and flock restored to them; and so he had decided to word hisprayer the way he did.
It took him some time to write it out, for he took great pains to shapeevery letter as perfectly as possible. Nor did he forget that BrotherStephen had taught him always to make the word God more beautiful thanthe others; so he wrote that in scarlet ink, and edged it with scallopsand loops and little dots of blue; and then all around the whole prayerhe made graceful flourishes of the coloured inks. He very much wishedfor a bit of gold with which to enrich his work, but gold was tooprecious for little boys to practise with, and so Brother Stephen hadnot given him any for his own. Nevertheless, when the page was finished,the artistic effect was very pleasing, and it really was a remarkablyclever piece of work for a little boy to have made.
He did not tell Brother Stephen what he was doing, for he was afraidthat perhaps he might not quite approve of his plan. Not that Gabrielwished for a moment to do anything that Brother Stephen would not likehim to do, but only that he thought their affairs at home so desperatethat he could not afford to risk losing this means of help;--and then,too, he felt that the prayer was his own little secret, and he did notwant to tell any one about it anyway.
And so he was greatly relieved that Brother Stephen, who was very muchabsorbed in his own work, did not ask him any questions. The monk wasalways very kind about helping him in every way possible, but neverinsisted on Gabriel's showing him everything, wisely thinking that manytimes it was best to let the boy work out his own ideas. So Gabriel saidnothing about his page, but put it carefully away, until he could findsome opportunity to place it in the book itself.
Meantime Brother Stephen worked industriously, and in a few days more hehad quite finished the book. He had strongly bound all his painted pagestogether, and put on a cover of violet velvet, which the nuns
of anear-by convent had exquisitely embroidered in pearls and gold. And,last of all, the cover was fastened with clasps of wrought gold, setwith amethysts. Altogether it was a royal gift, and one worthy of anyqueen. Even the Abbot, cold and stately though he usually was,exclaimed with pleasure when he saw it, and warmly praised BrotherStephen upon the loveliness of his work.