"After all," he remarked one night to Clement, who lay beside him, "the best thing in the world is a bed. A bird in a cage is to be pitied, for he doesn't rest well even when he sleeps. He sits on his perch and must hold on with his claws; so that he still has something to do, and is never perfectly at rest. So, too, man does not rest well when he sits; for he must always exert some of his muscles to keep himself upright: it is only when he lies down that all exertion is dissolved and every muscle relieved of its strain. That is the reason birds are so fond of their nests and men of their beds.
"Plato calls man a featherless biped: never mind; he decks himself with borrowed feathers.
"Nat once told me that if you cage a bird of prey in a mill, where he cannot sleep, you can make him as tame as a sucking dove: that is just like the tyrant we used to read about at Ehingen, who had his prisoners waked out of sleep every hour of their lives. How ingenious men are in devising tortures! When it comes to giving pleasure, their wits are far less ready. The greatest miracles, in my eyes, were the saints of the pillars, who never sat down. That is the quintessence of self-denial. Just think of standing all one's life, until one's feet gather fur on them! 'Thank the Lord for a soft nest, a good rest, and a quick zest,' is what they taught us to say at home."
Clement listened to this dissertation in silence, only murmuring "Cornelia" from time to time. Ivo fell soundly asleep.
The world-spirit looks down at night upon convents and weeps with averted face.
At the last stroke of eleven Clement glided into the convent-yard. It was a balmy night in summer: a thunderstorm had rent the clouds, and their shattered masses still lingered in mid-air, now veiling, now releasing, the beams of the full moon. Clement knelt and cried, trembling and wringing his hands, "Devil! Beelzebub! Ruler of Hell! Appear and bestow thy treasures upon me, and my soul is thine! Appear! Appear!"
He listened with bated breath, but all was silent: nothing stirred, and nothing was audible but the distant baying of a watch-dog. Clement long remained cowering on the ground: at length, seeing and hearing nothing, he returned shivering to his bed.
Next day he sat at his desk pale and haggard. The black characters in his open book seemed to crawl around each other like snakes before his jaundiced eye. A letter was brought him. He had hardly read it when he sank fainting from his chair. An engagement-card slipped from his hand, on which was engraved "Cornelia Mueller and Herman Adam, betrothed." He was carried to his bed, where Ivo waited, trembling and in tears, until his friend drew breath again. A fever now ensued, in which Clement's teeth chattered and his frame writhed with convulsive starts. For three days he was delirious. He spoke of the devil, and barked like a dog: once only he said, gently closing his eyes, "Good-night, Cornelia." Ivo read the letter, as the footing upon which he and Clement stood fully justified him in doing; and here, at last, he found a slight clue to the jumble of occurrences which bewildered him. A wealthy uncle of Clement's mother had died, leaving her all his property: the brightest prospects opened to the future of the family. Ivo rarely left his friend's bedside, and, when compelled to do so, Bart usually took his place.
It was a painful duty. Clement generally brooded in a half-doze, with his eyes open, but apparently seeing nothing. He would ask Ivo to lay his hand upon his burning forehead, and then, closing his eyes, he said, "Ah!" as if the touch had expelled torturing spirits from the narrow tenement of his brain. At times he started up and furiously denounced the world and its heartlessness. If Ivo undertook to pacify him, he only turned his wrath against the comforter, struck at him with trembling hands, and cried, "You heartless loon, you can torture me, eh?"
Ivo bore all this calmly, though with tears. Sometimes he even experienced a sort of inward satisfaction at the thought that he was favored to suffer in the cause of friendship.