The city roofs, great and little for the time had become the shadows, and the upper light shone terribly through.
There was little talking on the way home through the streets, none of that eager bubbling up of pent-up thoughts which marks the dispersing of a great listening throng. The mighty common expectation which united all, sent each back into his own life with great searchings of heart.
For the day at hand was to be a Judgment Day. The day of the great gathering was also to be the day of the great dividing.
II.
Two fellow-students, Hermann and Gottfried, went back to the Abbey School together.
And when they reached their cells, Hermann flung his books into a corner and cried, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity; vain instruments of vain learning, farewell! Of what use is it to climb a few steps higher than our fellow-men, if all are to be levelled again at the bar of God so soon?"
But Gottfried knelt at the little window of his cell, and looked up at the stars and said, "O Thou Holy and Beautiful, it has been a joy to brush off a few grains of the dust which hid Thy works. What will it be to see Thee as Thou art?"
Old Gammer Trüdchen, whose stall was close to the Minster door, crept silently into her chamber that night; for her stall of beads and cakes was a wasp's nest of malicious gossip where all dark surmises and evil reports naturally gathered, sure of something to feed on and something to sting. And she felt somewhat pricked in conscience; for the preacher had spoken of "the measure wherewith we mete being measured to us again," and of evil-speaking in itself, whether false or true, being sure to be severely judged in that day. She did not quite see the justice of it: if people were to be punished for their evil deeds, why was she to be punished for foreseeing and antedating the verdict? Nevertheless, if that was, as the monk said, the rule of the Supreme Court, it might be as well to take care. And, moreover, one might sometimes make mistakes. She must admit to herself that possibly she had been a little too hasty and hard about that poor orphan-girl whose character had afterwards been cleared, but not soon enough to satisfy her lover, who had believed the evil report, and gone and died in the wars, and left her to die of a broken heart at home. She had only repeated what others hinted, but no one was infallible, not even the whole town, which might, perhaps, be one reason why the giving sentence beforehand was objected to. And it certainly might be as well to be careful, if one's words, even one's whispers, were to be brought up against one in public on that day, and before another year.