“Yet,” replied Biberli thoughtfully, “‘Away with those who gave us life!’ was the exhortation of Father Benedictus in the next room.  ’Away with the service of sovereign and woman!’ he cried to our knight.  ’Away with everything that stands in the way of your own salvation!’ And,” Biberli added, “St. Francis was not the first to devise that.  Our Lord and Saviour commanded His disciples to leave father and mother and to follow Him.”

“Who will prevent his walking in the paths of Jesus Christ?” replied the Lady Wendula?  “Yet, though he follows His footsteps, he must and can do so as a scion of a noble race, as a knight and the brave soldier and true servant of his Emperor, which he is, as a good son and, God willing, as a husband and father.  He is sure of my blessing if he wields his sword as a champion of his holy faith.  When my two daughters took the veil I submissively yielded.  They can pray for heavenly bliss for their brother and ourselves.  My only son, the last Schorlin, I neither can nor will permit to renounce the world, in which he has tasks to perform which God Himself assigned him by his birth.”

“And how could Heinz part from this angel,” cried Maria—­to whom, next to her mother, her brother was the dearest person on earth—­“if he is really sure of her love!”

She herself had not yet opened her heart to love.  To wander through forest and field with the aged head of her family, assist her mother in housekeeping, and nurse the sick poor in the village, had hitherto been the joy and duty of her life.  Gaily, often with a song upon her lips, she had carelessly seen one day follow another until Schorlin Castle was besieged and destroyed, and her dear uncle, the Knight Ramsweg, was slain in the defence of the fortress confided to his care.  Then she and her mother were taken to the convent at Constance.  Both remained there in perfect freedom, as welcome guests of the nuns, until the mounted courier brought a letter from the Knight Maier of Silenen, her cousin, who wrote from Nuremberg that Heinz, like his sisters, intended to renounce the world.

Lady Schorlin set out at once, and with an anxious heart rode to Nuremberg with her daughter as fast as possible.

They had arrived a few hours before and gone to their cousin from Silenen.  From him the Lady Wendula learned what her maternal love desired to know.  Biberli’s fate brought her, after a brief rest, to the hospital, and how it comforted the faithful fellow’s heart to see the noble lady who had confided his master to his care, and in whose house the T and St had been embroidered on his long coat and cap!

Lady Wendula had remembered these letters, and when she spoke of them he replied that since he had partially verified what the T and St had announced to people concerning his character, and to which the letters had themselves incited him, he no longer needed them.