The great ladies of the city entreated for him to come and sing at their feasts; and all their guests stopped in the midst of their eager talk to listen to him, and they gave him sweetmeats and praised him to the skies, and they offered him wine from their silver flagons, and when he refused it, as his mother bade him, they praised him more than ever, and once the host himself, the burgomaster, emptied the silver flagon of the wine he had refused, and told him to take it home to his mother and tell her she had a child whose dutifulness was worth more than all the silver in the city.
But when he told his mother this, instead of looking delighted, as he expected, she looked grave, and almost severe, and said:
"You only did your duty, my boy. It would have been a sin and a shame to do otherwise. And, of course, you would not for the world."
"Certainly I would not, mother," he said.
But he felt a little chilled. Did his mother think it was always so easy for boys to do their duty? and that every one did it?
Other people seemed to think it a very uncommon and noble thing to do one's duty. And what, indeed, could the blessed saints do more?
So the slow poison of praise crept into the boy's heart. And while he thought his life was being filled with light, unknown to him the shadows were deepening,—the one shadow which eclipses the sun, the terrible shadow of self.
For he could not but be conscious how, even in the cathedral, a kind of hush and silence fell around when he began to sing.
And instead of the blessed presence of God filling the holy place, and his singing in it, as of old, like a happy little bird in the sunshine, his own sweet voice seemed to fill the place, rising and falling like a tide up and down the aisles, leaping to the vaulted roof like a fountain of joy, and dropping into the hearts of the multitude like dew from heaven.
And as he went out, in his little white robe, with the choir, he felt the eyes of the people on him, and he heard a murmur of praise, and now and then words such as "That is little Gottlieb, the son of the widow Magdalis. She may well be proud of him. He has the voice and the face of an angel."