This news had exerted a deep influence upon the young knight’s soul.  If Eva entered the cloister before him, the only strong tie which united him to the world would be severed, and nothing save the thought of his mother would prevent his following his vocation.  Yet vehement indignation seized him when he heard from Biberli that the slanderer’s malice would force Eva to seek refuge with the Sisters.

No, a thousand times no!  The woman whom he loved should need to seek refuge from nothing for which Heinz Schorlin’s desire and resolve alike commanded him to make amends.

He must succeed in proving to the whole world that she and her sister were as pure as they lived in his imagination, either by offering in the lists the boldest defiance to every one who refused to acknowledge that both were the most chaste and decorous ladies in the whole world, and Eva, at the same time, the loveliest and fairest, or by the open interference of the Emperor or the Burggravine in behalf of the persecuted sisters, after he had confessed the whole truth to his exalted patrons.

But when Biberli pointed out the surest way of restoring the endangered reputation of the woman he loved, and begged him to imagine how much more beautiful she would look in the white bridal veil than in her mourning Riese—­[Kerchief of fine linen, arranged like a veil]—­he ordered him to keep silence.

The miracle wrought in his behalf forbade him to yearn for happiness and joy here below.  It was intended rather to open his eyes and urge him to leave the path which led to eternal damnation.  It pointed him to the kingdom of heaven and its bliss, which could be purchased only by severe sacrifice and the endurance of every grief which the Saviour had taken upon Himself.  But he could at least pay one honour to the maiden to whom he was so strongly attracted, and whose happiness for life was menaced by his guilt.  When he had assembled his whole force at Schwabach, he would go into battle with her colour on his helmet and shield.  The Queen of Heaven would not be angry with him if he wore her light blue to atone to the pure and pious Eva, who was hers even more fully than he himself, for the wrong inflicted upon her by spiteful malice.

Heinz Schorlin’s friends thought the change in his mood a natural consequence of the events which had befallen him; young Count Gleichen, his most intimate companion, even looked up to him since his “call” as a consecrated person.

His grey-haired cousin, Sir Arnold Maier, of Silenen, was a devout man whose own son led a happy life as a Benedictine monk at Engelberg.  The sign by which Heaven had signified its will to Heinz had made a deep impression upon him, and though he would have preferred to see him continue in the career so auspiciously begun, he would have considered it impious to dissuade him from obeying the summons vouchsafed by the Most High.  So he offered no opposition, and sent by the next courier a letter to Lady Wendula Schorlin, his young cousin’s mother, in which, with Heinz’s knowledge-nay, at his request—­he related what her son had experienced, and entreated her not to withhold him from the vocation of which God deemed him worthy.