"On that table you will find a roll containing a hundred gold pieces. It is your christening present from my brother and the other sponsors. Does it make you happy?"
"Oh, queen! If the lips on these gold pieces could speak, the hundred together couldn't tell you how happy I am. It's too much! Why, you could buy half our village with it! With that much you could buy--"
"Don't excite yourself! Keep calm! Come here, and I'll give you something else, for myself. May this little ring always remind you of me, and may your hand thus be as if it were mine, doing good to the child."
"Oh my queen! How happy it must make you to be able to speak right out when your heart is full of kind thoughts, and to have it in your power to do so many great and good actions; besides, God must love you very much, to permit so much good to be done by your hand! I thank you with all my heart! And to Him who has given it all to you, a thousand thanks!"
"Walpurga, your words do me more good than all that the archbishop and the rest of them said. I shall not forget them!"
"I don't know what I've said--but it's all your fault! When I'm with you, I--I hardly know how to say it--but I feel as if I were standing before the holy of holies in the church. Oh, what a heavenly creature you are! You're all heart! I'll tell the child of it, and though it doesn't understand what I say, it'll feel it all. From me it shall get only good thoughts of you! I beg your pardon now, if I should ever offend you, even in thought or do anything out of the way--" She could say no more.
The queen motioned Walpurga to be quiet and held out her hand to her; neither spoke another word. Angels were indeed passing through the silent room.
Walpurga went away. It was self-confidence, not boldness, that made her look straight into the faces of the courtiers whom she passed by the way. As far as she was concerned, they did not exist.
When she was with the child again, she said:
"Yes, drink in my whole soul! It's all yours! If you don't become a man in whom God and the world can take delight, you don't deserve a mother like yours!"