In the little parlour of the Convent, Hercule Poirot told his story and restored the chalice to the Mother Superior.
She murmured: “Tell him we thank him and we will pray for him.”
Hercule Poirot said gently: “He needs your prayers.”
“Is he then an unhappy man?”
Poirot said: “So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.”
The nun said softly: “Ah, a rich man . . . ”
Hercule Poirot said nothing—for he knew there was nothing to say.
Agatha Christie, “The Apples of the Hesperides” via First Thoughts
Tags:
agatha christie,
chalice,
Christ,
convent,
first thoughts,
happiness,
happy man,
hercule poirot,
hesperides,
Prayer,
rich man
He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.
~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi
Tags:
agony,
certainty,
corpse,
death,
death agony,
G.K. Chesterton,
gaunt,
gold,
hair shirt,
happy man,
humanity,
passion,
pleasure,
Poverty,
pursuit of pleasure,
saint francis,
saint francis of assisi,
unnatural,
work,
world
Subscribe to Franciscan Quote of the Day via RSS feed
Subscribe to Franciscan Quote of the Day by Email
