Brother Eusebius was not in the least surprised, he had foreseen it; since that night of terror three days ago the little girl had been ill and had defied his utmost skill. Some of the brethren it is true were of opinion that the child was possessed by the devil, because the mother had been snatched from her wicked pleasures, and that it ought to be exorcised; but the wise Eusebius knew better--he knew that the feeble infant had drunk its death at its mother's breast.
He went up to the little room which was lighted up by the brightest sunshine; the poor woman lay stretched over her child's body, her wild sobs betraying the agony which was rending her heart. The other child lay smiling in his cradle and playing with a wreath of blooming cowslips[[1]] that his uncle Conrad of Ramüss had brought up from the valley where he had been tending a sick man. The poor little corpse had its eyes still open and they were fixed on the unconscious boy as if she had something to say to him which her little silent lips could not utter. But the mother understood--at least she thought she understood--and she gave that look a cruel and terrible meaning; for her it had no other interpretation than this: "You have killed me."
Eusebius silently laid one hand on the mother's head and the other on the child's, and with a practised touch he closed the dead, fixed eyes. The sobbing mother was pressing her aching head against the cold little breast as if to break through the icy crust laid over it by death, but he raised her head with a firm hand, and without a word pointed to the open window. At that moment a white dove flew through the clear ether, shining like silver in the sunshine--rising higher, growing smaller, as it soared on rapturous wing through immeasurable space; soon seen no more but as a fluttering speck, higher and still higher--till lost in the blue distance. That was the soul of the dead child--so the mother believed--nay knew for certain. She sank on her knees and with folded hands worshipped the miracle that had been accomplished before her mortal eyes. And so once more the wise old man had been able to triumph over death and misery in that hapless soul by an alliance with Nature which he alone understood--Nature who would utter her divine wisdom to none but him.
But the measure was not yet full.
Out on the moor the lonely outcast husband was rocking in his canoe by the shore of the lake; his nets lay idle at the bottom of the boat and he sat sunk in sullen brooding; it was growing dusk, the lake bubbled and foamed; there was dumb rebellion in its depths--as in the depths of the exile's soul. Cold gusts dashed frothy, splashing waves on to the banks which were as bare--up at this height--as if it still were winter, and which were so sodden with the melting snows that they could absorb no more of the superfluous moisture; the dry scrub that grew about the place sighed and rustled softly as the wind swept over it. The fisherman started from his dreaming, unmoored his bark and pushed away from the shore; but hardly had he got a yard from the bank when he heard a voice calling. He stopped and listened; it was a messenger from the monastery to tell him that that morning his little daughter had died.
The man let go his oar and hid his face in his hands sobbing aloud like a child.
The convent servant called out to him compassionately to "come to shore, to compose himself; that the holy fathers had desired him to promise the afflicted man all kindness, and good wages for the future--" the stricken man rose up in the rage of despair.
"Spare your words," he shouted across the roaring of the waves as they tossed round the frail canoe. "Take yourself off with your hypocritical convent face or I will choke your false throat with your own lying promises. Why should I believe you--how have you kept your word to me? You have stolen my wife and murdered my child. I curse you--I curse the day when you enticed my wife and child within your dismal walls, I curse the day when that boy was born who is the cause of all the mischief. Be advised while still it is time--kill the child before he does any farther harm--an evil star guides him and he will bring ruin on all who go near him. And now get you gone if you value your life."
The convent servant crossed himself in horror and hastened to obey the warning; he was frightened at the infuriated man, standing up in his bark with his fist clenched, with his tangled hair and flaming eyes like a "Salwang," one of those most fearful giants, before whom not mortals only, but even the "phantom maidens" fly.
And as soon as the messenger had disappeared the unhappy man threw himself on his face again and abandoned himself to his sorrow. The canoe drove over the waves--rudderless as the boatman's soul. He did not heed the spring-storm that blew in deeper and deeper gusts across the lake, nor the waves that ran higher and higher as though Nature were dreaming uneasily in her sleep--till suddenly a swift current caught the boat and carried it on with increasing rapidity down the lake. The man started up, and his aroused consciousness made him clutch sharply at the oar, for he perceived with horror through the darkness that he was driving towards the spot where the Etsch[[2]] rushes out of the lake with a considerable fall. But alas! the oar was gone--it had slipped away, escaping him in his anguish without his being aware of it; the loop of straw which had served to fasten it was hanging broken to the hook. For an instant he was stunned, then he gave an involuntary shout for help--then came the knowledge of the danger, the certainty that he was lost. He went through a brief struggle of vigorous healthy life against the idea of destruction--a short pang of terror of death--and then came the calmness of despair, and a still heroism that none could see but God! The lost man sat with his arms folded in the boat, driven down the stream beyond all hope of rescue, with one last prayer on his lips--a loving prayer for the wife he was leaving behind. Far away on the shore he sees the lights of the brethren of St. Valentine--they call to him--signal to him--the boat rushes on, in headlong haste, to its fate. There--there are the falls--a thundering roar--the canoe tips up on end--then it shoots over head foremost, turning over twice in its fall, till it lies crushed and smashed among the stones in the bed of the cataract. It is all over--the swollen spring-flood of the Etsch carries a mangled corpse and dancing fragments down into the valley on its sportive and roaring waters.