"You look to me like a traveler who draws his cloak around him in bad weather," exclaimed Raschke; "therefore what I bring you will at any rate not disturb you in cheerful repose. My business as messenger is to lower a human soul in your eyes; that is hard for us both."
"I have to-day experienced what would shatter the foundations of the strongest structure. There can be but little that would shock me now: I am composed enough to listen."
Raschke seated himself by him and told his story. He fidgeted about on the sofa, slapped his friend on the knee, stroked his arm, and begged for composure.
Again was a veil drawn from the head of the seeker, who had believed himself to be speaking alone with his God. The Scholar was silent, and did not flinch.
"This is fearful, friend?" he said, at last.
With that he broke off, and the whole evening he did not say a word about the Magister.
The following morning the Professors sat together in Werner's room. Werner at last threw the two parchment sheets on the table.
"With these at least the Magister has had nothing to do. I myself fetched them out of the old rubbish: there lies the missal on the chest. It demands great self-control for me to look at that dearly-bought acquisition."
Raschke examined the parchment.
"Highly valuable," he exclaimed, "if it is genuine, as it appears." He hastened to the chest and examined the missal. "Probably the initial letters of the book will afford some evidence as to whether the missal was used in the cloister of Rossau," he said. "I regret that my knowledge of monastic customs does not extend to this test."