e does not count the grains of dust, but looks upward,
and has a share in the infinitude stretching before us. Jesus Christ
was gentle as a child and loved children, he was the Son of God, yet
voluntarily yielded himself into the hands of men. The greatest of great
men did not belong to the ranks of the clever. Blessed are the meek, He
said. I understand those words. He is meek, whose soul is open, clear
and pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I
have met in life and history were also meek. The brute is clever; wisdom
is the cleverness of the noble-minded. We must all follow the Saviour,
and he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will come nearest to the
Redeemer."

CHAPTER IX.

Marx had gone out to reconnoitre in a more cheerful mood, for the doctor
had made good the loss sustained in the death of his old nag, and he
returned at noon with good news.

A wood-carrier, whom he met on the high-road, had told him where Jorg,
the charcoal-burner, lived.

The fugitives could reach his hut before night, and in so doing approach
nearer the Rhine valley. Everything was ready for departure, but old
Rahel objected to travelling further. She was sitting on a stone before
the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and
it seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses. Gazing into vacancy
with wild eyes and chattering teeth, she tried to make cakes and mould
dumplings out of the snow, which she probably took for flour. She
neither heard the doctor's call nor saw his wife beckon, and when the
former grasped her to compel her to rise, uttered a loud shriek. At last
the smith succeeded in persuading her to sit down on the sledge, and the
party moved forward.

Adam had harnessed himself to the front of the vehicle. Marx went to and
fro, pushing when necessary. The dumb woman waded through the snow by
her husband's side. "Poor wife!" he said once; but she pressed his arm
closer, looking up into his eyes as if she wished to say: "Surely I
shall lack nothing, if only you are spared to me!"

She enjoyed his presence as if it were a favor granted by destiny, but
only at chance moments, for she could not banish her fear for him, and
of the pursuers--her dread of uncertainty and wandering.

If snow rattled from a pine-tree, if she noticed Lopez turn his head, or
if old Rahel uttered a moan, she shuddered; and this was not unperceived
by her husband, who told himself that