So, bathed in perspiration, and often on the point of fainting, he followed Heinz through the dust of the highway.

Often, when his strength failed, and he sat down by the roadside to take breath, his soul-life gained a loftier aspiration.

After Heinz rode by without seeing him he continued his way until his feet grew so heavy that he was forced to sit down beside the road.  Then he imagined that the Saviour Himself came towards him, gazed lovingly into his face, and turned to beckon some one, Benedictus did not know whom, heavenward.  Suddenly the clouds that had covered the sky parted, and the old man fancied he heard the song of the troubadour whose soul had been subdued by love for God, which his friend and master had addressed to his Redeemer.  It must come from the lips of his angels on high, but he longed to join in the strain.  True, his aged lips, rapidly as they moved, uttered no sound, but he fancied he was sharing in this song of the soul, glowing with fervent, consuming flames of love, dedicated to the Saviour, the source of all love: 

       “Love’s flames my kindling heart control,
        Love for my Bridegroom fair,
        When on my hand he placed the ring,
        The Lamb whose fervent love I share
        Did pierce my inmost soul,”

the fiery song began, and an absorbing yearning for death and the beloved Redeemer, whose form had vanished in the sea of flames surging before his dilated eyes, moved the very depths of his soul as he commenced the second verse: 

       “My heart amidst Love’s tortures broke,
        Slain by the might of Love’s keen stroke,
        To earth my senseless body sank,
        Love’s flames my life-blood drank.”

With flushed cheeks, utterly borne away from the world and everything which surrounded him, he raised his arms towards heaven, then they suddenly fell.  Starting up, he passed his hand over his dazzled eyes and shook his head sorrowfully.  Instead of the angels’ song, he heard the beat of horses’ hoofs coming nearer and nearer.  The open heavens had closed again; he lay a poor exhausted mortal, with burning brow, beside the road.

Duchess Agnes, after visiting the new church at Rottenpach, rode past him on her return to Nuremberg.

Neither she nor her train heeded the old monk.  But the Italian who, as she rode by, had been attracted by the noble features of the aged man, whose eyes still sparkled with youthful enthusiasm, gazed at him enquiringly.  Her glance met his, and the Minorite’s wrinkled features wore a look of eager enquiry.  He longed to rise and ask the name of the black-eyed lady at the duchess’s side.  But ere he could stand erect, the party had passed on.

Disturbed in mind, and scarcely able to set one sore foot before the other, he dragged himself forward.

Before he reached Rottenpach he met one of the duchess’s pages who had remained at the village forge and was now riding after his mistress.  Father Benedictus called to him, and the boy, awed by the grey-haired monk, answered his questions, and told him that the lady on the horse with the white star on its face was the duchess’s Italian singing mistress, Caterina de Celano.