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January 7, 2008
st julian hospitator
With his candle Julian set light to a bundle of bracken in the middle of the hut.
The Leper came near to warm himself. Squatting on his heels, he began trembling all over. His strength was flagging, his eyes had stopped shining, his sores were running, and in an almost inaudible voice he murmured: ‘Your bed!’
Julian tenderly helped him to drag himself to it, even spreading the sail of his boat over him to cover him.
The Leper lay there groaning. His teeth showed at the corners of his mouth, his chest heaved as his dying breath came more and more quickly, and at every gasp his belly was sucked in as far as his backbone.
Then he closed his eyes.
‘My bones are like ice. Come here beside me!’
And Julian, lifting the sail, lay down side by side with him on the dead leaves.
The Leper turned his head.
‘Take off your cloths so that I may feel the warmth of your body.’
Julian stripped, and then, naked as on the day he was born, he lay down on the bed again. And against his thigh he felt the Leper’s skin, colder than a snake and as rough as a file.
He spoke encouragingly to him, and the other gasped out in reply:
‘Ah, I am dying! Come closer and warm me! No, not with your hands, with your whole body!’
Julian stretched himself out on top of him, mouth to mouth, breast to breast.
Then the Leper clasped him in his arms. And all at once his eyes took on the brightness of the stars, his hair spread out like the rays of the sun, and the breath of his nostrils had the sweetness of roses. A cloud of incense rose from the hearth and the waves outside began to sing.
Meanwhile an abundance of delight, a superhuman joy swept like a flood into Julian’s soul as he lay there in a swoon. And the one whose arms still held him tight grew and grew, until his head and his feet touched the walls of the hut. The roof flew off, the heavens unfolded – and Julian rose towards the blue, face to face with Our Lord Jesus Christ, who bore him up to Heaven.
And that is the story of St Julian Hospitator, more or less as it is depicted on a stained-glass window in a church in my part of the world.
Gustave Flaubert - The Legend of St Julian Hospitator
Posted by amin at January 7, 2008 6:30 PM