Hansei came to me to-day and said:
"Irmgard, if I've ever wronged you--though I don't know that I have--I beg you to forgive me!"
"What makes you ask me that question?"
"Because to-morrow we go to confession and communion."
The tears that fall upon these pages are my confession, a confession that I cannot frame in words.
Why was I obliged to cross the threshold of evil before entering this circumscribed and yet peaceful existence? Why not pure and free, proud and strong?
I have somewhere read that Francis of Assisi, returning, early in the morning, with the merry fellows who had been his comrades in the drinking bout of the night before, was suddenly seized by the Holy Spirit and, renouncing the world, led a holy life ever afterward.
And must it always be through paths of sin?
But far sadder is the question: Why were you, O queen! obliged to suffer thus?