Sister Beatrice has been laid in the convent church-yard with solemn mournful dirges and masses, and stately ceremonies, which seemed to me little in harmony with her timid, shrinking nature, or with the peace her spirit rests in now.
The lowly mound in the church-yard, marked by no memorial but a wooden cross, accords better with her memory. The wind will rustle gently there next summer, through the grass; and this winter the robin will warble quietly in the old elm above.
But I shall never see the grass clothe that earthly mound. It is decided that I am to leave the convent this week. Aunt Agnes and two of the young sisters have just left my cell, and all is planned.
The persecutions against those they call the Lutheran Sisters increase continually, whilst severer and more open proceedings are threatened. It is therefore decided that I am to make my escape at the first favourable opportunity, find my way to Wittemberg, and then lay the case of the nine nuns before the Lutheran doctors, and endeavour to provide for their rescue.
February 20, 1522.
At last the peasant's dress in which I am to escape is in my cell, and this very night, when all is quiet, I am to creep out of the window of Katherine von Bora's cell, into the convent garden. Aunt Agnes has been nervously eager about my going, and has been busy secretly storing a little basket with provisions. But to-night, when I went into her cell to wish her good-bye, she quite broke down, and held me tight in her arms, as if she could never let me go, while her lips quivered, and tears rolled slowly over her thin furrowed cheeks. "Eva, child," she said, "who first taught me to love in spite of myself, and then taught me that God is love, and that he could make me, believing in Jesus, a happy, loving child again! how can I part with thee?"
"Thou wilt join me again," I said, "and your sister who loves thee so dearly!"
She shook her head and smiled through her tears, as she said,—
"Poor helpless old woman that I am, what would you all do with me in the busy life outside?"
But her worst fear was for me, in my journey alone to Wittemberg, which seemed to her, who for forty years had never passed the convent walls, so long and perilous. Aunt Agnes always thinks of me as a young girl, and imagines every one must think me beautiful, because love makes me so to her. She is sure they will take me for some princess in disguise.