My sisters were dead!
Martha, when traversing one dark night a desolate moor to relieve a person in deep distress, was lost and perished in the snow. When the corpse was discovered and laid out in the little chapel of their convent, and Mary approached it, this new sorrow, added to the multiplied cares and labors of her life, was too much for the over[pg 384]burdened heart. The silver cord was gently broken, and she stretched her own body, like a funeral pall, upon that of her sister.
Conjoined in their lives! united in their death!
Beautiful spirits, clad always in virgin white! Brides of Christ! Twin-stars of heaven! Farewell!—until this old body also shall drop into the dust, and the strong bond of spiritual affinity shall draw us together again, and bind us, to each other for ever!
John, the beloved disciple, was only visiting Rome. He lived at Ephesus. He now entreated me to accompany him home and spend the remnant of my days in the peaceful shade of his humble cottage. I thanked him warmly, but declined his invitation. There was one more person upon earth whom I felt a strong desire to see. That person was Mary Magdalen, the last link which connected me with the past. The hunger of an old man’s heart for home and friends, for sympathy and love, was reduced to this. It was all that was left me.
My feelings toward Mary Magdalen had become clearly defined in the last ten years of my captivity. The sad things of the past were buried and forgotten. I had outlived, outgrown the self-righteous conceit that I was better than she. Yea, I had discovered that she was far better than I. I was thoroughly ashamed of the neglect, almost amounting to scorn, with which I had treated her in my youth. Her grand devotion to the cause of Christ, her fiery zeal, her contrition, her penances, her humility, her self-sacrifice, her solitude, haunted my imagination. The martyrdom of her life was continually before me.
I resolved to make a pilgrimage to her shrine; for I now regarded her as the saint and myself as the repentant sinner. I would not mention love to a heart so sorely stricken with the wounds of conscience and the sorrows of life. I would tell her nothing. I would leave all that to the revealing light of the spiritual world, which was now so near us both.
I would merely see her and weep with her over the old, sweet memories of Jesus and Martha and Mary. I would live near her. I would work for her, without her knowledge. I would make her comfortable without her seeing whence it came. I would visit her in sickness. I would close her eyes in death. All the rest should be buried deep, deep in the recesses of a heart which had not grown old.
I reached Marseilles and surveyed with silent grief the ashes of the convent my sisters had built. I employed a snug little boat and coasted along, west and south-west, until we reached the shores of Spain, where the spurs of the Pyrenees jut out into the Great Sea.
Landing at a little village, I was directed to a considerable mountain near by. I made the ascent before the heat of the day. The path made a sudden turn from a crag which stood a thousand feet above the water; and I found myself at the dark mouth of a cave. Near the entrance, on the right, was a wooden cross planted in a little bed of violets, wildly overgrown. The sky was clear and beautiful. A perfect silence reigned around. My heart throbbed as I approached the last earthly home of the friend of my sisters.