Already, however, other rumours were afloat among the crowd; and it began to be confidently stated, that a sudden change of plans had forced the Prince Bishop to renounce his intention.
Listening with anxiety, on the outskirts of a group, to the discussion upon the probabilities or improbabilities of the service taking place in the absence of the Prince, stood Magdalena. She was attired in her usual dark semi-monastic dress; but to this was now added the scrip, wallet, and tall crossheaded staff of the wandering pilgrim. As the prevailing opinion appeared to be that the Ober-Amtmann would attend, at all events, at the celebration of the church rites intended to be performed, Magdalena turned away with a calmer air, murmuring to herself the words—
“I shall see her once more—once, and for the last time: and God surely will forgive the sin, if such it be. One look of last farewell! and then again a long expiation of penitence and prayer.”
So saying, she traversed the small square to the broad stairs of the church, where she sat herself down upon the highest step, among a group of beggar women and ragged children, and, sinking her head to the ground, seemed to dispose herself to wait with patience.
Shortly afterwards, a young man also began to mount the steps leading to the great entrance of the church, as if with the intention of placing himself near the arch, in so favourable a position as to be close by all those who should pass into the interior. He bounded upwards with anxious haste and beating heart—although there was yet a long interval before the commencement of the service—and with a movement so hurried and agitated, that he brushed rudely against one person of a group in his way. He turned, with a gentleness of feeling unusual at the time towards the lower classes, to crave of the female he had pushed a pardon for his awkwardness. At the sound of his voice the old woman raised her head.
“Magdalena!” cried the young man with surprise, as he recognised upon her the evident symbols of travel and wayfaring peculiar to that age, “What means this pilgrim’s garb?”
“Alas! kind, gentle Master Gottlob,” replied Magdalena in a tone of the bitterest sadness, as she rose from her seat, “my hour is arrived, and I must leave you. Ask me not why. I must go as I have come, in silence and mystery. But oh! I beseech you, deem me not ungrateful. I had not quitted you without a last farewell—a last assurance that all your gentle charities are engraven here, upon my heart for ever.”
“Magdalena!” again exclaimed Gottlob, still astonished at this unexpected announcement, “thou leavest me thus abruptly?”
“Again, I pray you, gentle Master,” said the old woman sobbing, “think me not unkind or cold. The will of another is far stronger than my own. The will of God is above all. We shall meet no more on earth, young man; at least I fear so: my destiny leads me from the world. But my prayers shall be offered up, morning and evening, at my noontide meal as at my lying down; at all times, and in all places, whenever it shall please Heaven to hear them, for my generous benefactor.”
“But you must not quit me thus,” said the young man—“thus unassisted, in penury and want. I have but little, it is true, but that little shall be thine. What matter the gauds I thought to purchase? the dainty plume to deck my cap?” Still, in spite of himself, an unconscious sigh broke, as he spoke, from the breast of “Gentle Gottlob,” at the anticipated renunciation of the braveries that were to give him a price in the eye of the fair object of his adoration. “Can my poor savings be better bestowed than upon thee?”