Читать книгу Gallybird онлайн

27 страница из 87

Gervase: "Lord, I am not high minded: I have no proud looks."

Tom: "I do not exercise myself in great matters: which are too high for me."

Gervase: "But I refrain my soul and keep it low, like as a child that is weaned from his mother: yea, my soul is even as a weaned child."

Tom: "O Israel, trust in the Lord: from this time forth for ever more."

Gervase opened his Bible and turned over the pages for the Lesson. He generally kept a marker in the place, but it must have fallen out, for he could not find it. The stiff pages crackled as he swung them over. He loved turning the pages of his Bible, which was as fine a Bible as any in the kingdom—one of the first to be printed of King James's version. The Lesson was in the First Book of Samuel—a mighty fine book for those who would assert and prove the divine right of kings—but he was in no great hurry to find it; he enjoyed turning the pages, and there was no one to wait for him but Tom. . . . "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness . . . Enoch also, the seventh from Adam prophesied . . ." Strange that he should light upon that passage after what he had said to Exalted Harman. . . . It was many years now since he had thought of the fallen angels and their powers among men. Once he had even known their names. Could he remember them now? . . . Ramuel, Taniel, Araziel. . . . Perhaps when he was at Conster he would be able to revive some of that lost knowledge. No, better not—it savoured of magic, touched the corners of it . . . a Parson should not meddle with such things, and he would still be a priest even when he left Leasan, and maybe some day the Archbishop would give him another benefice in the new free church which the dispossessed hierarchy would doubtless set up . . . he might rise high in that . . .

Правообладателям