“In a cloister?  You, in a cloister!  You, our Ann, who have already learnt to be so good a mother in the Sisters’s school?  No child, and again and again I say No.  Pay heed rather to the saying which your old grand-uncle once heard from the lips of a wise and good man, when in the sorest hour of his life he was about to knock at the gate of a Cistercian convent.—­His words were:  ’Though thou lose all thou deemest thy happiness, if thou canst but make the happiness of others, thou shalt find it again in thine own heart.’”

And at a later day old Heyden himself told me that he, who while yet but a youth had been the prefectus of the town-pipers, had been nigh to madness when his wife, his Elslein, had been snatched from him after scarce a year and a half of married life.  After he had recovered his wits, he had conceived that any balance or peace of mind was only to be found in a convent, near to God; and it was at that time that the wise and excellent Ulman Stromer had spoken the words which had been thenceforth the light and guiding line of his life.  He had remained in the world; but he had renounced the more honorable post of prefect of the town-musicians, and taken on him the humble one of organist, in which it had been granted to him to offer up his great gift of music as it were a sacrifice to Heaven.  This maxim, which had spared the virtuous old man to the world, made its mark on Ann likewise; and whereas I saw how gladly she had received the doctrine that happiness should be found in making others happy, I prayed her to join me in taking it henceforth as the guiding lamp of our lives.  At this she was well pleased; and she went on to point wherein and how we should henceforth strive to forget ourselves for our neighbor’s sake, with that soaring flight of soul in which I could scarce follow her but as a child lags after a butterfly or a bird.

Then, when I presently saw that she was in better heart, I took courage, but in jest, being sure of her refusal, to plead the Magister’s suit.  This, however, was as I was departing; I had already stayed and delayed her over-long, inasmuch as I had yet to array myself for the feast at Uncle Christian’s.  But, as I was about to speak; a serving man came in with a letter written by the kind old man to Ann herself, his “dear watchman” in which, for the third time, he besought her, with pressing warmth, not to refuse to go to him on his name day and pledge him in the loving cup to his health and happiness.

With the help of this tender appeal I made her say she would go; yet she spoke the words in haste and great agitation.

My uncle’s messenger had hindered my suing, so while we hastily looked through Ann’s store of holiday raiment, I brought my pleading for Master Peter to an end; and what I looked for came, in truth, to pass:  without seeming one whit surprised she steadfastly rejected his suit, saying that he was the poor, good, faithful Magister, and worthy to win a wife whose heart was all his own.