'Why should he not be brought to this house?' interrupted Mme. Ottilie; 'there are fifty men in it already——'
'Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further burdened with a hospitality he never asked!'
'Of course it is as you please!' said the Princess, a little irritably.
'Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.'
The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be taken to the island.
'I shall see her again,' he thought, with a little anger at himself. The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had granted his.
On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed by the distant Rhœtian Alps.
The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler's nest is hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, one gorgeous evening of a summer's day—one month after he had lifted his rifle to bring down the kuttengeier in the woods of Wanda von Szalras.
'Almost thou makest me believe,' he murmured, when he lay and looked upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong.
They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades.