Summer, 1819.

And now we have a priest—­as strange and mysterious as the altar crucifix which I had taken to the church from the rock valley.  On the last day of the hay-month, when I entered the church to ring the bells, I found “the Solitary” reading mass on the highest step of the altar.  I asked for an explanation, and he answered with a rusty voice that he would tell me all next Saturday at a desolate place he appointed in the forest.

The Solitary has told me the whole sad story of his life.  He was born in a palace, and had been rocked in a golden cradle.  He had drained the cup of pleasure to the very dregs, and then, prompted by his tutor, had joined a religious order, taken the binding vow, and renounced his fortune to the order.  A girl, whom he had known before, implored him not to leave her and her child in distress.  It was too late—­he was now penniless and irrevocably bound.  She drowned herself and haunted his dreams, even after he had become a priest under the name of Paulus.  Blind obedience was exacted from him by his order, and when he refused to betray a king’s confession he was sent as missionary to India.  After his return he became a zealot, exacting severe penance from sinners, and through his severity driving a man to suicide.  In his remorse he, too, had sought refuge in this wilderness, where no one knew him, and where one day he found Lazarus, took him to his cave, and taught him to tame his quick temper.  I had always thought the first pastor at Winkelsteg should be a repentant sinner, and not a just man.  We have now our priest.

Winter, 1830.

For more than ten years I have neglected my diary, partly because I was no longer alone, but had a friend and companion in “the Solitary,” partly because I was busy with the building of the schoolhouse.  I have my own ideas on education.  The child is a book in which we read, and into which we ought to write.  They ought to hear of nought but the beautiful, the good, the great.  They ought to learn patriotism—­not the patriotism which makes them die, but that which makes them live for their country.

Berthold has become a poacher.  I have already had to intercede for him with the gamekeeper.  Then, one winter’s night, Forest Lily, his daughter, was sent out to beg some milk for the babies.  Snow fell heavily, and she did not return.  For three days they searched, and finally found her huddled up with a whole herd of deer in a snow-covered thicket of dry branches—­kept alive by the animals’ warmth and the pot of milk she was taking home.  When Berthold heard that the forest animals had saved his child, he smashed his gun against a rock, and shouted, “Never again! never again!”

Carnival Time, 1832.