All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out.  They had made haste to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings were out in the yard—­and the cat too!  He was, so to speak, permeated by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green!  And there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds, just as if it were a great feast.  And that one might indeed say it was, for it was Sunday.  The bells rang, and people in their best clothes went to church, and looked so pleased.  Yes, there was something so pleasant in everything:  it was indeed so fine and warm a day, that one might well say:  “Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good towards us poor mortals!”

But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud and so angrily!  He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they ever get rest and peace!

It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly.  He described hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the world flowed together.  There was no air except the hot, sulphurous flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting silence!  It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the church were quite terrified.  But all the little birds outside the church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so warm:—­it was as if every little flower said:  “God is so wondrous good to us altogether!” Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman preached.

In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit so still and thoughtful.

“What ails you?” said he to her.

“What ails me?” she replied; “what ails me is, that I cannot collect my thoughts rightly—­that I cannot rightly understand what you said; that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn eternally!—­eternally, alas, how long!  I am but a sinful being; but I could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner to burn for ever.  And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and within.  No, I cannot believe it, though you say it.”

* * * * *

It was autumn.  The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer closed her eyes—­it was the clergyman’s own wife.

“If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is thou,” said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm over the dead body.

And she was borne to the grave:  two heavy tears trickled down that stern man’s cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the sunshine within was extinguished:—­she was gone.