mind was perpetually recurring to the events
at the spring, from which they wandered to his father's lonely and
anxious chamber: now he remembered the earnest appeal of Father Omehr,
and now pondered the injuries he had received from the house of Stramen.
Through a narrow opening in the wall he could see the noble church
sleeping in the moonlight. Its walls of variegated marble had been
built principally at the expense of the Barons of Stramen, for in those
days it was not unfrequent for private families to erect magnificent
churches from their own resources; and as his eye rested upon the misty
window, perhaps he felt that though utterly opposed in all else, there
was one thing in common between his own haughty race and the founders of
that church--religion.

The night wore on, and was far advanced; but Gilbert still kept piling
thought upon thought, unable and even scarcely desiring to exchange them
for the deep repose or more confused images of slumber. It must have
been after midnight when, as he lay awake, he could distinctly hear the
sound of blows. Gilbert was not a moment in conjecturing the cause; he
knew at once that the venerable priest was subjecting himself to
corporal chastisement. He did not live in an age when voluntary
mortification was ridiculed, when a sacred ambition to imitate a
crucified God insured contempt from man. Then, those self-denying
religious were not taunted with "the hope of gaining heaven by making
earth a hell." And perhaps Gilbert knew that the spiritual peace and
delight derived from such chastisements, were infinitely sweeter, even
here below, than the impure pleasures of worldlings. Feeling thus, he
could not but contrast the mortified life of that holy man with his own
indulged and pampered existence. He had never known the sting of
adversity, and rarely been thwarted in a single desire; yet how much
greater his sins than those of Father Omehr! Amid such reflections he
felt--and it is a salutary feeling--the truth of a hereafter.

But we will no longer pursue the reflections of the youth. Some time
after the sounds had ceased he fell asleep, and was only roused by the
sun streaming into his apartment, and the solemn tones of the church
bell.

The morning was beautiful. The sun was everywhere; kindling the hoary
tops of the Suabian Alps, sparkling on the broad Danube as it rolled
majestically on from the southwest to the northeast, lighting up hamlet,
hill, vale, rivulet, fores