from the moment he became aware of her presence, did not
remain earnestly fixed on the eternal pains of hell of which he was
speaking. This was certainly improper, but whilst causing the bird to
pick away the iron mountain, he thought: "she has forgiven thee;" and
whilst his congregation was adding up the thousands of years, he said
to himself: "she cannot tear herself away from thee." As he stood after
the sermon in the lofty Chapter hall, adjoining the Chapel, and beheld
through the high windows the sweet maiden standing in the court yard in
eager converse with his brother and her father, he felt much inclined
to join them, but the days of deep mortification through which he had
passed were still present before him and he escaped through the hall of
the Castle to the Burgweg.

The _primus omnium_ of the College at Venice had felt himself
thoroughly humbled under the cold look of the Countess at Neuburg, and
the same sensation crept over him which he had formerly experienced
when convicted of a gross grammatical error by the Jesuit fathers
during his school days. Whilst teaching in the children's classes he
often made a hasty motion, stamped with his feet, or bit his lips till
they bled. The passionate excitable Neapolitan nature now rose
uppermost. He was to be seen talking rapidly to himself in the woods,
angrily striking the bushes with his stick, and the children were once
much amused at seeing Magister Laurenzano seated on a bench near the
convent pond, violently boxing his own ears and crying out repeatedly
_pazzo_, _pazzo_! But only because he had acted as a fool, he said
within himself, not because he was a sinner, and when he made in the
Hirsch the great discovery of the damnable heresy of the parsons, his
dogmatic indignation at these blasphemers against God helped to banish
from his memory his own moral discomfiture. For a few days he was
filled with the remembrance of the disgraceful Arian conspiracy. He had
done with Lydia as he imagined. The heedless child now crossed his path
once more of her own accord. Buried in thought he made his way down the
Schlossberg, often pausing as if wishing to be overtaken, often
standing still, as if wishing to climb up once again and seek Lydia in
her own home. As he finally composed himself and was hastening in a
resolute manner to his apartment, he met at the gate of the bridge the
very person whom he now desired to escape. Erast had patients in the
next village and his