And it said in the heart of the child, that day, "Suffer the little one to come unto Me. Go in peace. Thy sins are forgiven."
A happy, sacred evening they spent that Easter in the hermit's cell, the mother and the two children, the boy singing his best for the little nest, as before for the King of kings.
Still, a little anxiety lingered in the mother's heart about the pomp of the next day.
But she need not have feared.
When the archduchess had asked for the mother of the little chorister with the heavenly voice, the choir-master had told her what touched her much about the widowed Magdalis and her two children; and old Ursula and the master between them contrived that Mother Magdalis should be at the banquet, hidden behind the tapestry.
And when Gottlieb, robed in white, with blue feathery wings, to represent a little angel, came close to the great lady, and sang her the Easter greeting, she bent down and folded him in her arms, and kissed him.
And then once more she asked for his mother, and, to Gottlieb's surprise and her own, the mother was led forward, and knelt before the archduchess.
Then the beautiful lady beamed on the mother and the child, and, taking a chain and jewel from her neck, she clasped it round the boy's neck, and said, in musical German with a foreign accent,—
"Remember, this is not so much a gift, as a token and sign that I will not forget thee and thy mother, and that I look to see thee and hear thee again, and to be thy friend."
And as she smiled on him, the whole banqueting-hall—indeed, the whole world—seemed illuminated to the child.