r's daughter
uplifted to be our head, and this compelled them to bend their pride
before her.

All this and much more I would say to the good Sister; nay, and I made
so bold as to ask her whether Christ's behest that we should love our
enemy were not too high for attainment by the spirit of man. This made
her grave and thoughtful; yet she found no lack of comforting words,
and said that the Lord had only showed the way and the end. That men had
turned sadly from both; but that many a stream wandered through divers
windings from the path to its goal, the sea, before it reached it; and
that mankind was wondrous like the stream, for, albeit they even now
rend each other in bloody fights, the day will come when foe shall offer
to foe the palm of peace, and when there shall be but one fold on earth
and one Shepherd.

But my anxious questioning, albeit I was but a child, had without doubt
troubled her pure and truthful spirit. It was in Passion week, of the
fifth year of my school-life--and ever through those years she had
become more bent and her voice had sunk lower, so that many a time we
found it hard to hear her--that it fell that she could no longer quit
her cell; and she sent me a bidding to go to her bedside, and with me
only two of us all: to wit my Ann, and Elsa Ebner, a right good child
and a diligent bee in her work.

And it befell that as Sister Margaret on her deathbed bid us farewell
for ever, with many a God speed and much good council for the rest
likewise, her heart waxed soft and she went on to speak of the love each
Christian soul oweth to his neighbor and eke to his enemy. She fixed her
eye in especial on me, and confessed with her pale lips that she herself
had ofttimes found it hard to love evil-minded adversaries and those
whose ways had been contrary to hers, as the law of the Saviour bid her.
To those young ones among us who had made their minds up to take the
veil she had, ere this, more especially shown what was needful; for
their way lay plain before them, to walk as followers of Christ how
bitter soever it might be to their human nature; but we were bound to
live in the world, and she could but counsel us to flee from hate as the
soul's worst foe and the most cunning of all the devils. But an if it
should befall that our heart could not be subdued after a brave struggle
to love such or such an one, then ought we to strive at least to respect
all that was good and praiseworthy in him, inasmuch