Are there any keys on earth to lock them again, when once they have been opened?
"You Germans," others of the Italian priests say, "take everything with such desperate seriousness. It is probably owing to your long winters and the heaviness of your northern climate, which must, no doubt, be very depressing to the spirits."
Holy Mary! and these Italians, if life is so light a matter to them, will not they also have one day to take death "with desperate seriousness," and judgment and eternity, although there will be no long winters, I suppose, and no heavy northern climate, to depress the spirits in that other world.
We are going back to Germany at last. Strangely has the world enlarged to me since we came here. We are accredited pilgrims; we have performed every prescribed duty, and availed ourselves of every proffered privilege. And yet it is not because of the regret of quitting the Holy City that our hearts are full of the gravest melancholy as we turn away from Rome.
When I compare the recollections of this Rome with those of a home at Eisenach, I am tempted in my heart to feel as if Germany, and not Rome, were the Holy Place, and our pilgrimage were beginning, instead of ending, as we turn our faces northward!
XI.
Eva's Story.
Cistercian Convent, Nimptschen, 1511.
Life cannot, at the utmost, last very long, although at seventeen we may be tempted to think the way between us and heaven interminable.