as if transfigured; he was thanking Heaven for so
much mercy, but the other Minorites fell on their knees beside the bed
and prayed with him.

How lovingly the old man looked into each face! He had never favoured her
with such a glance. Yet no other nursing had been so difficult and often
so painful. At first he had shown a positive enmity to her, and even
asked Sister Hildegard for another nurse; but no suitable substitute for
Eva could be found. Then he had earnestly desired to be removed to the
Franciscan monastery in Nuremberg; this, however, could not be done
because it would have hastened his death. So he was forced to remain, and
Eva felt that her presence was not the least thing which rendered the
hospital distasteful.

Yet, as his aged eyes refused their service and he liked to have someone
read aloud from the gospels which he carried with him, or from notes
written by his own hand, which also comprised some of the poems of St.
Francis, and no one else in the house was capable of performing this
office, he at last explicitly desired to keep her for his nurse.

To anoint and bandage, according to the physician's prescription, his
sore feet and the deep scars made on his back by severe scourging, which
had reopened, became more difficult the more plainly he showed his
aversion to her touch, because she--he had told her so himself--was a
woman. She certainly had not found it easy to keep awake and wear a
pleasant expression when, after a toilsome day, he woke her at midnight
and forced her to read aloud until the grey dawn of morning. But hardest
of all for Eva to bear were the bitter words with which he wounded her,
and which sounded specially sharp and hostile when he reproached her for
standing between Heinz Schorlin and the eternal salvation for which the
knight so eagerly longed. He seemed to bear her a grudge like that which
the artist feels towards the culprit who has destroyed one of his
masterpieces.

Often, too, a chance word betrayed that he blamed Heaven for having
denied him victory in the battle for the soul of Heinz. Schorlin which he
had begun to wage in its name. True, such murmuring was always followed
by deep repentance. But in every mood he still strove to persuade Eva to
renounce the world.

When she confessed what withheld her from doing so, he at first tried to
convince her by opposing reasons, but usually strength to continue the
interchange of thought soon failed him. Then he confined