"Gone."
"Who is it then keeps order?"
"The Heidelberg clergyman."
Erastus became interested in finding out the man, who by his own exertions had worked the miracle, of mustering together a strange parish, and so organizing it that nothing was left for his Commission to do. He entered the large roman church, whose wide spanned aisles had been transformed into well aired cool wards. A long row of patients lay near the walls on beds of straw covered with blankets. The hideous disease showed even here its true character; there were faces who bore the stamp of death, and others distorted grimly by their sufferings, delirious patients who raged, laughed insanely and raved, convalescents who lay stretched out weak and helpless on their beds, many of them wishing that the end of their sufferings might overtake them. But they were all thoroughly cared for, they lay protected from the painful light; in spite of the number of the sufferers the air was pure and continually renewed, without the patients suffering from the draughts. Women moved quietly and lightly hither and thither and provided for all their necessities. The skilled look of the physician took in with satisfaction the picture thus presented to him. He saw a priest kneeling in a dark corner of the Church near a dying man. He heard prayers spoken in low tones, he saw the Catholic sign of the cross made by the priest over the dying man, and could not help shaking his head. "Who can that be?" he thought.
The priest rose, a tall thin figure. "Magister Laurenzano!" cried Erastus in his astonishment. Paul had also recognized Erastus. He approached him in a constrained manner. Then he said "Heaven has sent you to us, Sir Counsellor! It was indeed time that the government should remember us. Please to come with me to the Cloister. Twice did I wish to send in letters and messages, for what we needed, but neither letters nor messengers were allowed in through cowardly fear of infection. Come, come, at last help has reached us."
The look of this young man, who, utterly regardless of his own safety, waited on the sick without using any antidotes against infection, so shamed Erastus, that he secretly placed his vinegared spunge in his pocket, and accompanied Laurenzano to the abandoned monastery which had likewise been turned into an hospital. The young Priest set before Erastus in the high vaulted Refectorium a beaker of wine, and pointing to long rows of bottles and glasses said, "Here are my head-quarters." Erastus joined to his expression of admiration for Paolo's self-denying energy, a few strong remarks on the baseness of the officials who had run away, on the heartlessness of members of families who had left, and on the sordidness of the population.
"Do not say that, Sir," answered Paul, and a gentle tone of sympathy lay in his fine, deep voice. "I have in these days of struggle learnt, on the contrary, that more love exists among us, than I formerly used to think. I have seen proofs of self-sacrifice, which made my heart melt, not only from the mother to her children, or the daughter to her father. Go over there and see these delicate pale women, still for the most part suffering from the fever, who nevertheless indefatigably listen for every impatient groan uttered by the sick."
Erastus interrupted him with an account of how he had found matters in Petersthal.
"Thus was it here also," replied Paolo, "but who is to blame for this state of things? The Prince's government, no one else. The people only needed guiding. Out of shere despair they raged against one another. But it was sufficient, in order to restore confidence among them, merely to tell them that they could help each other, and the apparent coarseness and selfishness gave way to the uttermost self-sacrifice and generosity. Since everything has been organized, since each one knows that he will be found a fitting position for his energies and that he is necessary and indispensable, the people have developed a conscientiousness and faithfulness, which have quite astonished me. I have learnt to think better of your people, since I have led them against this most terrible enemy, than before, when I only saw occasionally the youth of Schönau lounging on Sundays along the country roads."
"But how did you manage to bring about this miracle?" asked Erastus.