THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
the chaplain swore by the Gospels that he looked one night out of window and saw the whole keep aglow with fire, and every joining of the stones marked out in a blinding line of light; others professed that they had heard dreadful noises issuing from it, as it were of a storm of thunder; a few had seen a flaming cloud float across the sky and hover over the tower; but the High Constable was glad to hear these reports, since they showed he had got a man who understood his business and had some little interest with the fiends and elemental spirits. But though the adept was assuredly a clever fellow, who had gone deeper into the nature of things than most of us, he could not justly be called a pretty man, nor a well-favoured, nor a handsome; since his face was too yellow, and had too many wrinkles in it to be altogether a nice countenance. Moreover his eyes were uncertain and variable, some said they were coal-black, some that they were blue, and some that they were sea-green; but all agreed they were more like two small fire-balls than anything else, since a look out of them shot through you, disturbed your faculties, and confused your understanding, like a swinging fisticuff, fairly delivered above the nose. And the body of Dom Benedict was mighty lean, and clothed in a black cassock, and appeared to be thoroughly dried up by the hot suns of Africa and Syria and the fetid smoke of his furnaces; in such wise that all the ladies and women of the castle had a very poor conceit of him, as being more of a bellow than a man. But in this they were mis-
[ 110 ]
