"They are indeed ringing for a Great Victory," she replied; "the greatest ever won. It is Easter Day, my son. This day our Lord left His grave for ever, and rose victorious over death, and opened the gate of everlasting life to all believers."
And still the bells pealed joyfully on, from the villages on the plains and hill-sides, from the rocky castled heights, from the depths of the forest—
"Io! revixit,
Sicuti dixit,
Pius illæsus,
Funere Jesus!"
Then, looking on the motionless form stretched in the shroud beside her, the echo of her own words came back to her,—
"The Lord is risen indeed, and liveth for evermore. Dearer than His empty grave to Him is every sufferer such as this. His Sepulchre is empty; suffering men and women are His shrine, where we may meet Himself."
And retracing her steps to her castle, beside it she built a hospice for the sick and the forsaken, from which she suffered none, Greek or Latin, Jew or Gentile, to be repelled—the only claim she admitted being need of succour.
And in thus ministering to His poor, she found indeed, in the depths of her own heart, that He was risen, living for evermore, and present every hour.
Through His Sepulchre, the grave of her beloved and her own had become to her but as an encampment for the night beside the Great Captain's, on the Battle-field.
In His life she learned that they also lived; and in living unto Him, once more she found she was living with them.