She reflected an instant, and then said: "Very well, if you lay stress upon it, I will try once more. At the worst, I can think of something else. Farewell!"
She left me, and walked with her swift, even steps to the castle.
I can not describe the state of mind in which I spent the days until the following Sunday.
When a house, in which a man has lived safely and happily for years, suddenly falls under the shock of an earthquake, and he escapes, at great peril, with bruised head and half-broken limbs into the open air, his feelings may be somewhat akin to mine.
At first, it is true, the old Adam stirred and tried to reconstruct the ruined edifice and persuade me that it might be made habitable again. But I soon felt that the dust floating around it oppressed my breathing more and more, and the old walls shook at the slightest motion. Only one little room had escaped the universal destruction--the one I was to enter and shut the door behind me to be alone with my Creator and my love for him.
But I am not writing the confessions of my own soul and my incarnation, but the account of a far better and more interesting human being. So I will be brief.
My anxiety lest the old pastor should be able to fill his pulpit again the following Sunday, for which I did not reproach myself at all, though it showed little love for my neighbor, had been superfluous. His disease again confined him to the arm-chair by the window. But he talked long and cordially with me, and, when on my departure he embraced me, I thought I perceived that he was better satisfied with my conversation this time than during our first interview. With his wife, however, I had found no special favor as yet.
When the Sunday had come and I heard the bells ring and the hymn was sung, I was obliged to drink a glass of the wine kept in the vestry for the communion service, in order to control the wholly unprecedented weakness that assailed me. My knees trembled as if I were about to plead my own cause before a jury, in a case where my life was at stake. Yet there were only two judges in the church whose verdict I valued--my own consciousness, and the grave face beside Mother Lieschen in the last pew.
To be brief, the culprit was absolved.