I had already been but too much afraid that the state of excitement produced by wine could not possibly continue long, but, on the contrary, might, to my utter grief and discomfiture, draw after it a state of yet more miserable weakness than that which I had already experienced. It was not so, however; with the perfect recovery of my health, I experienced a degree even of long-lost youthful courage. I felt once more that restless and vehement striving after the highest and most extended sphere of action, which the convent could allow to me. Accordingly, I insisted on being allowed to preach again on the next holiday, which after some consideration was granted to me.
Shortly before mounting the pulpit, I allowed myself another draught of the miraculous wine. The effects were even beyond my most sanguine expectations. Never had I spoken more ardently, impressively, or with greater onction, than on this day. My audience, as before, were confounded, and the rumour of my complete recovery was with inconceivable rapidity spread abroad.
Henceforward the church was regularly crowded, as on the first weeks of my former celebrity; but the more that I gained the applause of the people, the more serious and reserved did Leonardus appear, so that I began at last with my whole soul to hate him. My object, in acquiring an ascendancy over the multitude, was now fully attained; but in all other respects, my mind was disappointed, disquieted, and gloomy. In the friendship of my brethren I had lost all confidence. As for Leonardus, I believed that he was wholly actuated by selfish pride, and mean-spirited envy.
The grand festival of St Bernard drew near, and I burned with impatience to let my light shine in its fullest lustre before the Lady Abbess; on which account, I begged the Prior to form his arrangements in such a manner, that I might be appointed on that day to preach in the Cistertian Convent. Leonardus seemed greatly surprised by my request. He confessed to me, without hesitation, that he himself had intended to preach in the Cistertian Monastery; and had already fixed his plans accordingly. "However," added he, "it will no doubt be on this account the more easy for me to comply with your request; as I can excuse myself, on the plea of illness, and appoint you to attend in my place."
I attempted no apology for the indelicacy of such conduct; for my mind was possessed wholly by one object. The Prior changed his arrangements in the manner he had promised. I went to Kreuzberg, and saw my mother and the Princess on the evening preceding the ceremony. My thoughts, however, were so much taken up with the discourse that I was to deliver, of which the eloquence was to reach the very climax of excellence, that the meeting with them again made but a very trifling impression upon me.
I was at the old farm-house, too, in which my early days had passed away like a dream. I walked again through the neglected garden, where the trees were now in their fullest luxuriance. I stood upon the moss-grown terrace, mounted upon the tottering altan,[1] on the top of the old tower, at one end, the better to behold the features of the landscape. Thence I saw the wanderings of the Saale gleaming amid the pine-tree forests; the towers of Kreuzberg and Heidebach on the north, and the Thuringian mountains, with the spires of Königswald, in the distance towards the south. The sunbeams played and shifted over the landscape;—the summer winds breathed fragrance, wafting to my ears the choral anthems from the Monastery, and from the assembled pilgrims. The scenes and their influences were the same, but I saw them with unheeding eyes. I felt them not; the days of innocence were already past, and my heart was agitated with earthly passions.
I felt no reproaching pangs of conscience, however, no sadness, nor regret; I pursued my one and only object, elated with the certainty of success.
The report had been duly spread through the town, that I was to preach, instead of the invalid Leonardus; and, therefore, an audience, perhaps greater than on any former occasion, was drawn together. Without having written a single note, and merely arranging mentally into parts the discourse which I was about to deliver, I mounted the pulpit, trusting only to that inspiration which the solemnity of the occasion, the multitude of devout listeners, and the lofty-vaulted church, would of necessity excite in my peculiarly constituted mind.