"Who can tell? What we ourselves undertake we ourselves must carry out. Therefore prove your heart, my son, before you swear the great irrevocable vow; you yourself wished to be a priest--you have obtained your wish, in a few days you will be consecrated to God's service. But if in your heart you bear such earthly longings will you be strong enough for such a sacred calling? If not--renounce it rather than some day break a double vow and so be doubly sinful. Better, better that you should fly away into the wide world than that you should be false to your own and to our plighted truth, and so fall lower in the eyes of God than those who never purposed to be more than men among men."
"I fly! I not be a priest!" cried the youth vehemently. "Nay, nay, my brother. You only wish to try me--you cannot be in earnest. If I said anything to make you doubt my truth, forgive me. Never, never has such a thought crossed my mind. And what should I do out in the world? If you drive a bird that was hatched in captivity out of doors it will starve in the midst of plenty--and so it would be with me. Only sometimes I suddenly feel as if the convent were too narrow for me, as if you ought not to keep me here like a prisoner! Look out there--is not that glorious! Must I not long to be out there in the blue distance? Must not the plain below tempt me down there, down to the delicious verdure which affords nourishment and refreshment to all? Must not those solitary heights tempt me up to the everlasting snow, so high, so near to Heaven? Or over there, near the bed of the silver stream, out on the heath where I was born? Is not God everywhere--over there as well as here? And is it not He whom I would seek down in the valley or up among the frozen glaciers? You--all of you--go in and out; you strengthen and refresh your souls in wood and field, why may I only never quit these walls?--why must I, so long as I live, be rooted like a dumb motionless plant within the narrow limits of the little convent garden?"
"My son, I have long expected you to question me thus. I will take upon myself to tell you the reasons why the fathers shelter you so anxiously--against my advice--for so far as I am concerned you should not be a monk nor take the vows of priesthood. I have read many books, old heathen chronicles and histories as well as Christian ones, and I have always found that human wit and human cunning must fail when anything was fore-ordained, and that what must be must. And if it must be, you will be torn from us even if we keep you within seven-fold walls. You must know then that a curse of interdicted love rests upon you; that is why your dying mother dedicated you to the cloister, and the reason of their keeping you so strictly, in order that the last will of the dead may be faithfully carried out. The fathers dread lest every step beyond these walls should entail the accomplishment of the curse; nay, Correntian even proposed that you should be blinded when you came to us as a new-born infant, to secure you for ever from all temptation."
"Dreadful man!" said the lad with a shudder. "But--one thing more--solve, I beg of you, the mystery of my birth. Why was I born out on the heath, who was my mother, and what crime had she committed that my father should cast her out?"
"We all took a solemn oath to our Abbot Conrad--the Abbot at that time--never to breathe the names of your parents either to you or to any one else, so that every tie between you and the world might be broken. Your mother died as a saint, and it was her wish that you too should live and die in an equally saintly manner. You are the child of the church; ask after no other parents. This was the answer we were to give you when you should ask, and so I answer you now, as is my duty."
"Oh! now I understand it all!" said Donatus, his voice trembling with deep agitation. "Woe is me! a curse rested on my innocent head before I saw the light! Aye, it is true; I was the death of the mother that bore me, I made the foster-mother that reared me miserable; she lost her husband and child for my sake. I was born to misfortune, and misfortune will pursue me wherever I go. Yes, you are right, there is no road for me but that to God, not a hope but Heaven! and I will keep three-fold watch over myself now that I know this! I will quell my rebellious heart even if it must break. I will not dream up here any more; no more shall the soft breath of the morning-breeze caress me, no more will I inhale the aromatic fragrance of the limes beneath this window nor let my gaze wander round the smiling distance--all these things rouse my longing! And perish the wishes even which may tempt me away from the step of the Altar to which I am dedicated! I am yours henceforth body and soul, and the world shall never more rob you of a single thought of my mind!"
"God grant it may be so!" said Eusebius, and his eyes rested sadly on the transfigured countenance of his young companion. Did he shake his head? no, he was only shaking off a startled moth. And Donatus rose.
"Let us go down," he said, "and leave this ensnaring spot which too much befools my senses! For I feel I had said things that I ought not to have said, and that it was not God who lent me such words."
So saying he closed the little window with its panes, obscured by dust and its worm-eaten frame. At this moment a cheery blast from a horn rang in the distance. "Oh look!" cried Donatus, "a procession of riders is coming up the mountain!"
Eusebius went to the window.