“I will bring him to you day after to-morrow.”  The Nurembergers! the Nurembergers! . . .” replied the abbot, shrugging his shoulders.

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t hang any one till they catch him.”  The magistrate regarded these words as a challenge to put forth every effort for the Jew’s capture, so he answered eagerly:  “We shall have him, Your Reverence, we shall surely have him.  They are trapped in the snow.  The sergeants are searching the roads; I shall summon your foresters and mine, and put them under Count Frohlinger’s command.  It is his duty to aid us.  What they cannot find with their attendants, squires, beaters and hounds, is not hidden in the forest.  Your blessing, Holy Father, there is no time to lose.”

The abbot was alone.

He gazed thoughtfully at the coals in the fireplace, recalling everything he had just seen and heard, while his vivid power of imagination showed him the learned, unassuming man, who had spent long years in quiet seclusion, industriously devoting himself to the pursuit of knowledge.  A slight feeling of envy stole into his heart; how rarely he himself was permitted to pursue undisturbed, and without interruption, the scientific subjects, in which alone he found pleasure.

He was vexed with himself, that he could feel so little anger against a criminal, whose guilt was deserving of death, and reproached himself for lukewarmness.  Then he remembered that the Jew had sinned for love, and that to him who has loved much, much should be forgiven.  Finally, it seemed a great boon, that he was soon to be permitted to make the acquaintance of the worthy doctor from Coimbra.  Never had the zealous magistrate appeared so repulsive as to-day, and when he remembered how the crafty man had outwitted poor Father Anselm in his presence, he felt as if he had himself committed an unworthy deed.  And yet, yet—­the Jew could not be saved, and had deserved what threatened him.

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