Saint Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis Read Free Book Online

those used by wardens to catch rabid dogs. "Get up, son of Bernardone," he cried, approaching the bed. "Let us go!"

    "Where?"

    "Where? Need you ask? You had time but you squandered it in parties, extravagant clothes, serenades. The hour of reckoning has come." He held out the pincers. Francis huddled against his pillows, trembling. "Let me have one year," he whined. "Just one year! Give me time to repent."

    Death laughed, and all his teeth fell out onto the sheets of linen and silk. "Too late. You lived your life, the only one you have. You gambled it and lost. Now come!"

    "Three months only . . . one month . . . three days . . . one day!"

    But this time Death did not answer. Holding out the pincers, he caught Francis around the neck--but then, uttering a heart-rending scream, the dreamer awoke.

    He looked around him. The canary that Lady Pica had brought from her room to keep the patient company was singing from its place by the window, its beak lifted to the sky.

    "Glory be to God!" Francis shouted happily, sweat running down his forehead. He touched the sheets, the iron bedstead, then began to explore his mother's knees.

    "Is it true?" he murmured, turning to me, his eyes shining. "Is it true? Am I alive?"

    "Have no fears, my young lord," I answered. "You are alive and flourishing."

    He clapped his hands. His face was resplendent.

    "In other words, I have time. Praise the Lord!" Laughing, he began to kiss his mother's hands.

    "Did you have a dream, my son?" his mother asked. "I hope it was a good omen."

    "I have time," he murmured again, carried away with emotion. "Praise the Lord! I have time!"

    The whole of that day, until evening, he did not speak again. Closing his eyes, he fell into a deep sleep. His neck and entire face were flooded with light.

    Lady Pica continued to fan him with the peacock feathers. Suddenly she parted her embittered lips. Remembering how she used to lull her son to sleep when he was a baby, she began to sing to him in her native tongue, softly . . . sweetly. . .

    Sleep, who taketh every babe,

    Come down and take my own.

    I give him to you tiny, tiny,

    Return him to me grown.

    She sang softly in this way for a long time, fanning her child; meanwhile, I leaned over Francis and gazed at his face. How it gleamed! Little by little the wrinkles around his mouth and between his eyebrows vanished, his skin became as firm as a tiny infant's. His whole countenance glittered like a stone which is swept over by a cool, calm sea.

    Toward evening he opened his eyes. He was rested and tranquil. Sitting up in bed, he looked around him as though seeing the world for the first time. When his gaze fell upon us he smiled and began to tell us his dream. But while he was relating it, the old fear began to take possession of him again, and his eyes filled with darkness. His mother took his hand, caressed it, and he grew calm.

    "Mother," he said, "just now as I was asleep I had the feeling I was a baby and that you were rocking me and singing me a lullaby. It seems to me, Mother, that you have given birth to me all over again!" He took her hand and kissed it. His voice had become like a child's: hungry for caresses.

    "Mother, Mama dear, tell me a story."

    He had begun to lisp. Suddenly his whole face resembled an infant's. Lady Pica became frightened. One of her brothers, a celebrated troubadour at Avignon and a bon vivant and spendthrift just like Francis, had lost his reason by virtue of excessive drink and song. Overcome by the delusion that he was a lamb, he crawled about awkwardly on all fours, bleated, went to the fields to graze. . . . And now here was her son who appeared to have returned to infancy and was requesting her to tell him a story! Was it possible, she asked herself, begging God's forgiveness for her presumption, was it possible that her blood was tainted, besotted?

    "What story, my child?" she demanded, touching his forehead to cool him.

    "Any one you want. A story from your