"Yes," was the terrible answer, and Correntian drew the desk with the heavy Latin Bible towards him, and hastily turned to a page where it was written, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee."
The youth turned pale. He stared at his sinister judge as though a ghost had sprung from the earth before him, a figure so incomprehensible and inconceivable that his gaze could not take it in. The monk sat before the big book, his eyes cast down; the uncertain light of the dingy lamp cast two round shadows in his pale face, like the empty eye-holes of a skull. The youth felt as if he were looking at his own face--corpse-like--eyeless! And yet so calm, so sublime!--and the moon-light that streamed in floated round the bald crown with its narrow fringe of black hair, like a nimbus, in strange, livid contrast to the red light of the lamp. The hour-glass ran calmly on, in its even flow neither hurrying nor tarrying though hearts might throb or break. Minute after minute passed--the deadly horror that filled the culprit's breast had paralysed his tongue. The judge leant back quietly in his chair, and gave him time to grasp the idea--even on the rack an interval of rest is allowed. At last the young man said with quivering lips,
"No man ever yet did such a thing!"
"It is because no man ever did it that it is worth doing."
"Correntian," continued the youth, but so timidly, so softly, as if the air even might not hear, or as if he feared that the sound of his words might rouse a sleeping tiger, "Correntian, why did you never do it?"
But the dreadful creature was not roused. Without moving a feature, without raising an eye-lash, Correntian replied,
"Because I was strong enough to triumph though I could see; the harder the fight the greater the prize."
Again they both were silent. The radiant disk of the moon rose higher and higher over the convent-roofs and towers, and looked in with a tender smile. Longingly, eagerly, as if it were for the last time, and as if he must harvest all the light ere it was yet night, the boy's large brown eyes drank in the soft radiance. No, no, things have not gone so far--not yet. He may yet fight and conquer. He covered his face with his hands as if for protection, as if he saw already the dagger's point that was turned against it. No, he will fight with all the strength of his soul; fight not for his eternal salvation only, but for his eyes too.
Well, he will look neither to the right hand nor to the left, he knows well that now every forbidden glance must bring him nearer to the murderous iron that threatens him. "Do not look that way; you are looking at your death," this is what he must say when temptation beckons him, and will not that terror enable him to conquer?
He fell on his knees before Correntian,