He was standing on the threshold of the other world, and it was easy for her to think of him kindly, deeply as he had often wounded her.  Nay, her heart swelled with grateful joy because she had been so patient and suffered nothing to divert her from the arduous duty which she had undertaken in nursing the old man, who regarded her with such disfavour.

A light had been brought into Biberli’s room too.  When Eva entered with glowing cheeks she found the Swabians still sitting beside his couch.  The door leading into the chamber of the dying man had been closed long before, yet the notes of pious litanies came from the adjoining room.  Lady Schorlin noticed her deep emotion with sympathy, and asked her to sit down by her side.  Maria offered her own low stool, but Eva declined its use, because she would soon be obliged to ride back to the city.  She pressed her hand upon her burning brow, sighing, “Now, now—­after such an hour, at court!”

Lady Wendula urged her with such kindly maternal solicitude to take a little rest that the young girl yielded.

The matron’s remark that she, too, was invited to the reception at the imperial residence that evening brought an earnest entreaty from Eva to accept the invitation for her sake, and the Swabian promised to gratify her if nothing occurred to prevent.  At any rate, they would ride to the city together.

Biberli’s astonished enquiry concerning the cause of Eva’s visit to the fortress was answered evasively, and she was glad when the singing in the next room led the Swabian to ask whether it was true that the master of her suffering friend on the couch, who intended to devote himself to a monastic life, meant to enter the order of the Minorite whom she had just left and become a mendicant friar.  When Eva assented, the lady remarked that members of this brotherhood had rarely come to her castle; but Biberli said that they were quiet, devout men who, content with the alms they begged, preached, and performed other religious duties.  They were recruited more from the people than from the aristocratic classes.  Many, however, joined them in order to live an idle life, supported by the gifts of others.

Eva eagerly opposed this view, maintaining that true piety could be most surely found in the order of St. Francis.  Then, with warm enthusiasm, she praised its founder, asserting that, on the contrary, the Saint of Assisi had enjoined labour upon his followers.  For instance, one of his favourite disciples was willing to shake the nuts from the rotten branches of a nut tree which no one dared to climb if he might have half the harvest.  This was granted, but he made a sack of his wide brown cowl, filled it with the nuts, and distributed them amongst his poor.

This pleased the mother and daughter; yet when the former remarked that work of this kind seemed to her too easy for a young, noble, and powerful knight, Eva agreed, but added that the saint also required an activity in which the hands, it is true, remained idle, but which heavily taxed even the strongest soul.  St. Francis himself had set the example of performing this toil cheerfully and gladly.