But one evening, a few days before her disappearance, Ruth without his asking her and without any preliminary speech, but simply as though she wanted to get closer to him and release him from his oppressed state, had read him a passage from the Gospel of the Christians. It was the passage in which the risen Lord asks Peter: “Lovest than me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? Peter was grieved that he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.” And later on he said: “Follow me.”
He told how he had torn the book from his sister’s hand and had turned its pages and had not desired to be led astray by it. But one sentence had held his attention, and he had dwelt upon it. It was this: “And he needed not to have knowledge of a man, for he knew what was in man.” At that the hatred of Christ had vanished from his soul. Yet he had not been able to believe in him or to turn to him. He didn’t mean in the way of piety and prayer; he meant the idea which gave men assurance and help to their minds. He had grasped that to-day, during the soaring song, and as he watched the thousand eyes that seemed first extinguished and then lit by a solemn flame. “Lovest thou me, Simon?” He had grasped that utterly, and also the saying: “Follow me.” And his consciousness of being a Jew and having been cast out had been transformed from pain and shame into wealth and pride through the assurance of a certain service and a peculiar power. “It was wonderful, wonderful,” he assured her. “I don’t quite understand it yet. I am like a lamp that has been lit.”
Johanna was frightened at the outburst of a passion so strange and incomprehensible to her.
“Feed my sheep,” Michael almost sang the words out into the snow. “Feed my sheep.”
“It is an awakening,” Johanna thought, with faint horror and envy. “He has been awakened.”
The boy’s impassioned attachment to Christian became ever clearer to her. When they waited at the locked door in Stolpische Street and Christian came out with Niels Heinrich and passed the two without noticing them, without glance or greeting, and went off with that shaking, shuffling, distorted creature, Michael limped behind him for a few paces, stared into the dark yard filled with the whirl of snow, and then returned to Johanna and said beseechingly: “He mustn’t go with that man. Do run after him and call him back. He mustn’t, for God’s sake, go with him.”
Johanna, although she was herself perturbed, soothed the overwrought boy. She remained for half an hour, forced herself to a natural cheerfulness, chatted pleasantly as she made tea and laid the cloth for a cold supper. Then she went home. At eight o’clock the next morning Michael rang the bell at her dwelling. She had scarcely finished dressing. She met him in the hall. He was pale, sleepless, struggling for words. “Wahnschaffe hasn’t come home yet,” he murmured. “What shall we do?”
Fighting down her first consternation, Johanna smiled. She took Michael’s hand and said: “Don’t be afraid. Nothing will happen to him.”