A monk summoned him, but the abbot did not wish to be disturbed, and ordered that he should be left an hour alone.

He now took in his hand a volume he called the mirror of his soul, and in which he noted many things “for the confession,” that he desired to determine to his own satisfaction.  To-day he wrote: 

“It would be a duty to hate a Jew and criminal, zealously to persecute what Holy Church has condemned.  Yet I cannot do so.  Who is the magistrate, and what are Father Anselm and this learned doctor!  The one narrow-minded, only familiar with the little world he knows and in which he lives, the others divinely-gifted, full of knowledge, rulers in the wide domain of thought.  And the former outwits the latter, who show themselves children in comparison with him.  How Anselm stood before him!  The deceived child was great, the clever man small.  What men call cleverness is only small-minded persons’ skill in life; simplicity is peculiar to the truly great man, because petty affairs are too small for him, and his eye does not count the grains of dust, but looks upward, and has a share in the infinitude stretching before us.  Jesus Christ was gentle as a child and loved children, he was the Son of God, yet voluntarily yielded himself into the hands of men.  The greatest of great men did not belong to the ranks of the clever.  Blessed are the meek, He said.  I understand those words.  He is meek, whose soul is open, clear and pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I have met in life and history were also meek.  The brute is clever; wisdom is the cleverness of the noble-minded.  We must all follow the Saviour, and he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will come nearest to the Redeemer.”

CHAPTER IX.

Marx had gone out to reconnoitre in a more cheerful mood, for the doctor had made good the loss sustained in the death of his old nag, and he returned at noon with good news.

A wood-carrier, whom he met on the high-road, had told him where Jorg, the charcoal-burner, lived.

The fugitives could reach his hut before night, and in so doing approach nearer the Rhine valley.  Everything was ready for departure, but old Rahel objected to travelling further.  She was sitting on a stone before the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and it seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses.  Gazing into vacancy with wild eyes and chattering teeth, she tried to make cakes and mould dumplings out of the snow, which she probably took for flour.  She neither heard the doctor’s call nor saw his wife beckon, and when the former grasped her to compel her to rise, uttered a loud shriek.  At last the smith succeeded in persuading her to sit down on the sledge, and the party moved forward.

Adam had harnessed himself to the front of the vehicle.  Marx went to and fro, pushing when necessary.  The dumb woman waded through the snow by her husband’s side.  “Poor wife!” he said once; but she pressed his arm closer, looking up into his eyes as if she wished to say:  “Surely I shall lack nothing, if only you are spared to me!”