Now also, whilst Els was listening, she brought no earthly matter to the Power who guided the universe as well as her own little individual life, but merely lost herself in supplication and in her intercourse with the Omnipotent One, who seemed to her a familiar friend; she forgot what grieved and troubled her and how she had been pained.  But meanwhile the prediction she had made to the abbess was verified; she felt as if her lover’s soul rose with hers to the pure height where she dwelt, and that the earthly love which filled her heart and his was but an effluence of the Eternal Love, whose embodiment to her was God and the Saviour.

The union of herself and Heinz seemed imaged by two streams flowing from the same great inexhaustible, pure, and beneficent fountain, which, after having run through separate channels, meet to traverse as a single river the blooming meadows and keep them fresh and green.  God’s love, her own, and his were each separate and yet the same, portions of the great fount which animated, saved, and blessed her, him, and the whole vast universe.  The spring gushing from her love and his was eternal, and therefore neither could be exhausted, no matter how much it gave.

But both were still in the world.  As he would certainly put forth all his might to show himself worthy of the confidence placed in him by his Emperor and master, she too must test her youthful strength in the arduous conflict which she had begun.  Her recent experiences were the flames of the forge fire of life of which her mother had spoken—­and how pitifully she had endured their glow!  This must be changed.  She had often proved that when the body is wearied the soul gains greater power to soar.  Should she not begin to avail herself of this to make her feeble body obey her will?  With compressed lips and clenched hand she resolved to try.

CHAPTER IX.

Whilst Eva, completely absorbed in herself, was forming this resolution, Els, panting for breath, stood at the open window under the ceiling of the Council chamber, gazing down and listening to the sounds from beneath.

Directly opposite to her was the inscription

“Feldt Urtel auf erden, als ir dort woldt geurtheilt werden,” in the German and Latin languages, and below this motto, urging the magistrates to justice, was a large fresco representing the unjust judge Sisamnes being flayed by an executioner in the costume of the Nuremberg Leben—­[Executioner’s assistant.  Really “Lowen."]—­before the eyes of King Cambyses, in order to cover the judgment seat with his skin.  Another picture represented this lofty throne, on which sat the ruler of Persia dispensing justice.  The subject of a third was the Roman army interrupted in its march by the order of the Emperor Trajan, that he might have time to hear a widow’s accusation of the murderer of her son and to punish the criminal.

Els did not bestow a single glance upon these familiar pictures, but gazed down at the thirteen elderly and the same number of much younger men, who in their high-backed chairs were holding council together at her left hand far below her.  These were the burgomasters of the city, of whom an elder and a younger one directed for the space of a month, as “Questioner,” the government of the public affairs of the city and the business of the “Honourable Council.”