And she?  Did not the holy expression of her eyes and the aspiration of her own soul show that she would understand him, approve his sacrifice, imitate it, and exchange earthly for heavenly love?  Neither could renounce it without inflicting deep wounds on the heart, but every drop of blood which gushed from them, the Minorite said, would add new and heavy weight to their claim to eternal salvation.

Ay, Heinz would try to resign Eva!  But when he yielded to the impulse to read Wolff’s letter again he felt like a dethroned prince whom some stranger, ignorant of his misfortune, praises for his mighty power.

The visions of the future which the greyhaired monk conjured up, all that he told hint of his own regeneration, transformation, and the happiness which he would find as a disciple of St. Francis in poverty, liberty, and the silent struggle for eternal bliss, everything which he described with fervid eloquence, increased the tumult in the young knight’s deeply agitated soul.

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     Deem every hour that he was permitted to breathe as a gift

IN THE FIRE OF THE FORGE

A ROMANCE OF OLD NUREMBERG

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

IN THE FIRE OF THE FORGE—­PART II.

CHAPTER I.

The vesper bells had already died away, yet Heinz was still listening eagerly to the aged Minorite, who was now relating the story of St. Francis, his breach with everything that he loved, and the sorrowful commencement of his life.  The monk could have desired no more attentive auditor.  Only the young knight often looked out of the window in search of Biberli, who had not yet returned.

The latter had gone to the Ortlieb mansion with Katterle.

The runaway maid, whose disappearance, at old Martsche’s earnest request, had already been “cried” in the city, had no cause to complain of her reception; for the housekeeper and the other servants, who knew nothing of her guilt, greeted her as a favourite companion whom they had greatly missed, and Biberli had taken care that she was provided with answers to the questions of the inquisitive.  The story which he had invented began with the false report that a fire had broken out in the fortress.  This had startled Katterle, and attracted her to the citadel to aid her countrywoman and her little daughter.  Then came the statement that she spent the night there, and lastly the tale that in the morning she was detained in the Swiss warder’s quarters by a gentleman of rank—­perhaps the Burgrave himself—­who, after he had learned who she was, wished to give her some important papers for Herr Ernst Ortlieb.  She had waited hours for them and finally, on the way home, chanced to meet Biberli.

At first the maid found it difficult to repeat this patchwork of truth and fiction in proper order, but the ex-schoolmaster impressed it so firmly on his sweetheart’s mind that at last it flowed from her lips as fluently as his pupils in Stanstadt had recited the alphabet.