15. Monastic Disciplines of Cloud

Hitherto I have spoken of all aqueous vapour as if it were either transparent or white—visible by becoming opaque like snow, but not by any accession of colour. But even those of us who are least observant of skies, know that, irrespective of all supervening colours from the sun, there are white clouds, brown clouds, grey clouds, and black clouds. Are these indeed—what they appear to be—entirely distinct monastic disciplines of cloud: Black Friars, and White Friars, and Friars of Orders Grey? Or is it only their various nearness to us, their denseness, and the failing of the light upon them, that makes some clouds look black and others snowy?

I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There are, by differences in their own character, Dominican clouds, and there are Franciscan;—there are the Black Hussars of the Bandiera della Morte, and there are the Scots Greys whose horses can run upon the rock. But if you ask me, as I would have you ask me, why argent and why sable, how baptized in white like a bride or a novice and how hooded with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,—I leave these questions with you, and pass on.