light steps
were heard creeping away. Dame Sabina immediately called a _conventus_,
so as to close the mouth of those ladies, whose chattering, as she
knew, did not fall far short of their curiosity. When her motherly
friend had left her, Lydia thought to herself: "This therefore is the
use of the Mirror of remembrance, given to him by his spiritual
tyrants, that he may not forget, that he is still a monk." She fancied
to herself, how he would look in the cowl, under which she had seen
to-day her own affrighted face. But the excitement had been too much
for her. Her eyes closed and soon she lay in a deep sound sleep. In the
next room Bertha von Steinach had on the contrary much more horrible
dreams of the pains of hell and the tortures of the damned, and more
than once started from her dream calling, "it is burning" and that she
plainly smelt the brimstone. "Take away the skull," cried she another
time, "see how the worms creep out of the empty sockets." Master
Laurenzano moreover, who had caused all this mischief with his
_exercitia_, sat in his room, his head leant out of the open window.
That night he sought not his couch. At sundawn he took the little work
by St. Ignatius which lay before him, and read out of the last page:
"Take, O Lord, my entire freedom, take my memory, my understanding and
very will." It was in vain. He could not pray. Troubled and in misery
he hastened to the mountains.

CHAPTER VIII.

"In truth I shall have to end up by going to the Hirsch if I wish to
see that brother of mine," thought Master Felix, after he had waited
the whole of another day expecting that his brother would come up to
the Castle. So he set his chisel and apron aside and went down to the
Market-place, and from thence entered through the well-known door of
the hotel into the back-room, in which the clergy of Heidelberg were
wont to meet round a large oaken table. He found the room still empty;
the low, arched parlor was only lighted by a single lamp, and at the
table sat a stout gray-headed man dressed in black, with a vinous
countenance and a bottle nose. "God's word from the country," thought
Felix, taking his seat after a profound bow near to the Parson, whom he
thought he had already seen somewhere.

"Have you managed to finish this measure by yourself, reverend Sir?" he
asked of the complacent toper.

"Man is a weak and timorous creature," answered the Blackgown
sanctimoniously,