"Do you intend to start at once, Jean-Claude?" asked Wittmann.
"Yes, the days are growing short, and the road through the wood is not easily found after dark. Adieu!"
The innkeeper watched the old mountaineer from the window, as he crossed the street, and muttered as he gazed at the retreating figure:
"How pale he was when he came in! He could scarcely stand. It is strange! An old man such as he—a soldier too! I could see fifty regiments stretched in ambulances, and not shake so."
Translated From The Historisch-politische Blätter.
Maria Von Mörl.
In the beginning of this year a remarkable human life came to a close. That wonderful being whose name and fame travelled from South Tyrol all over Germany, and made her residence become a frequented pilgrimage without her will—but for the great consolation of multitudes during a whole generation—that extraordinary woman is no more. Maria von Mörl died on January 11th, 1868, in the fifty-sixth year of her age, and in the thirty-sixth of her ecstatic life.
It is now over a score of years since the masterly pen of Görres sketched, in his Mystik, so striking a portrait of Maria von Mörl, and still the attention of the believing world is attracted to the life of the ecstatic virgin. Since then thousands have gone to the South Tyrol markets to behold as a reality what would sound legendary to read or hear, and to bear testimony to the truth of what Görres wrote about the stigmata of that holy woman. All the pilgrims found his statements perfectly correct. Although Görres, in describing the phenomena, abstained from a definitive judgment regarding her sanctity, according to the rule that no one must be called a saint before death, we are not restrained any longer from expressing our convictions, now that she is no more. Her happy and holy death is the strongest confirmation of her unimpeachable life.