"I know nothing, except that you had to suffer severely on your entrance into the convent; that two American girls took you for a half-blood, and would not associate with you."
"Yes, yes, that's it! Now I know why they examined my nails, and Anna Sotway stood by, Oh, it's well! it's well! I thank thee, holy God, that thou hast suffered me to experience this. In myself, in my own person, I was to feel the suffering that a slave feels in being examined! Why did they not open my veins? I thank thee, O God! But why dost thou suffer them to worship thee, and then to scorn thee in thy creatures? Then it was not because I tried to be reverent and obedient, no, but because I was of pure blood, that I was tolerated here! Pah!"
It was a different being who spoke these words, and cried aloud in the wood:—
"Ye trees, why does each of you grow after its kind, and blossom and grow green and flourish, warmed by the same sun, and with the birds singing in your branches? Alas! alas! where am I?"
"In the right path," answered the Professorin. Manna gazed at her as if she were a spirit, and she continued:—
"A pure spirit is speaking again through you, my child; you have spoken truth. When Lessing said, 'I would not have all trees covered with the same bark,' he had no presentiment that his spirit would manifest itself anew here in the cloister, in a child just waking to life. His pure and holy spirit is between us now, my child, and I think Lessing would say: Forgive them; they will learn that God alone is constant, while the races of men are only the ever-varying, ever-returning figures of a dream."
Manna appeared hardly to have heard her, for now she grasped her arm asking:—
"Did you not tell me, that you were specially in the confidence of my mother?"
"Yes."
"And has she told you the secret too?"