"Why should it be a sin to take delight in nature? Is not joy itself a sort of devotion?"
The Professorin making no reply. Manna said with pressing earnestness:—
"Do speak, I entreat you."
"A writer," replied she, "whom you do not probably revere as we do, has said: God loves better to see a heart filled with joy than with sorrow."
"What's the man's name?"
"Gotthold Lessing."
Manna requested to have the passage pointed out. The Professorin brought the book, and from that time there was a free interchange of thought between them. The Professorin continued very cautious in her remarks, and repeated that she should look upon it as a sacrilege to deprive a believing heart of its religious convictions.
Manna declared that she was strong enough to enter into the thoughts of the children of the world, as they are termed, without getting lost herself.
The Professorin repeatedly warned and advised her, but she insisted that she had returned to the world in order to perceive what it had to proffer to her, and then to renounce all freely. She expressed a firm determination not to become Pranken's wife, in fact, not to be married at all. She came very near disclosing to the Professorin, that she wanted to devote herself as an expiatory sacrifice, not from compulsion, but, through heavenly grace, freely renouncing all the delights of the world.
"To you," said Manna, with tearful eyes, "I could tell all."