They parted. Although an hour before Emmerence had scolded Betsy so lustily, she now took her seat in church on the left of the altar, and was rejoiced at Ivo's nod of recognition.
For an hour she waited in the Neckar Bottom;
but no one came. She started on the road home, often stopping to look back: at last she resolved to do so no longer. "It is better so," she said. "I'm always afraid I haven't told him the matter just in the right way; but it's better so." Though she did not stop to look back any more, she soon sat down to eat her bread upon a hill which commanded a view of the whole length of the road to the city. Brushing the crumbs from her dress, she then rose up hastily and pursued her journey.
We cannot accompany her farther than to say that she arrived in good health and spirits. Our business is with Ivo, who was oppressed with heavy thoughts. He had in a manner domiciliated himself in the calling from which it seemed impossible to escape. The message from his mother had again unsettled the firm foundation of his will, and once more made him doubtful of himself. The sight of the girl of his heart had aroused a fresh straggle within him. He might easily have gone to the Neckar Bottom after church; but fear of himself and of others kept him away.
The pure, fresh action of the will which Ivo had vindicated before his parents was broken by his voluntary return, and it was not easy to reunite the fragments: It is very difficult to return to a project once firmly entertained but afterward abandoned. There is no vital thread to bind the future and the past: it is like the second crop of grass, which may be more tender than the first, but gives no nourishment.
15.
RELEASE.
A frightful casualty was required to restore Ivo to his early resolutions.
On St. Bartholomew's day, Bart had escaped from his keepers in the hospital. Racked by qualms of conscience, he sprang from a window and dashed out his brains. To prevent the effect of this deed upon the reputation of the convent, and in charitable consideration of Bart's partial derangement, it was resolved to give him a burial in the usual form. The conventuaries, wearing crape, followed the corpse to the sound of funeral music. Ivo blew the horn: its tones fluttered in the air like the shreds of ribbons rudely torn. At the grave Ivo stepped forward and made a heart-rending speech in memory of his lost comrade. At first he stumbled a little: all his pulses were trembling. For the first time in his life Death had really rolled a corpse at his feet, crying, "Learn, by death, to study life!" As he had fancied Clement lying dead at his feet, so now in reality the corpse of a companion of his youth, with whom he had spent so many years, lay before him. First he spoke in praise of life,--of the free, glad air of heaven,--and desired to banish death far from the haunts of men; but soon his speech warmed, and his words flowed as from a living spring; and, with griefless fervor, he praised the lot of the orphan now happy with his Father in heaven. Consecration overtook him before the hand of a priest had touched his head. He soared upward to the throne of the universal Parent, knelt, and implored grace for his friend. In short and broken sentences he then prayed for grace to himself, and for his own happy end and that of all men.