"And the parson of Schoenau?"

"Dead."

"And the schoolmaster?"

"Gone."

"Who is it then keeps order?"

"The Heidelberg clergyman."

Erastus became interested in finding out the man, who by his own
exertions had worked the miracle, of mustering together a strange
parish, and so organizing it that nothing was left for his Commission
to do. He entered the large roman church, whose wide spanned aisles had
been transformed into well aired cool wards. A long row of patients lay
near the walls on beds of straw covered with blankets. The hideous
disease showed even here its true character; there were faces who bore
the stamp of death, and others distorted grimly by their sufferings,
delirious patients who raged, laughed insanely and raved, convalescents
who lay stretched out weak and helpless on their beds, many of them
wishing that the end of their sufferings might overtake them. But they
were all thoroughly cared for, they lay protected from the painful
light; in spite of the number of the sufferers the air was pure and
continually renewed, without the patients suffering from the draughts.
Women moved quietly and lightly hither and thither and provided for all
their necessities. The skilled look of the physician took in with
satisfaction the picture thus presented to him. He saw a priest
kneeling in a dark corner of the Church near a dying man. He heard
prayers spoken in low tones, he saw the Catholic sign of the cross made
by the priest over the dying man, and could not help shaking his head.
"Who can that be?" he thought.

The priest rose, a tall thin figure. "Magister Laurenzano!" cried
Erastus in his astonishment. Paul had also recognized Erastus. He
approached him in a constrained manner. Then he said "Heaven has sent
you to us, Sir Counsellor! It was indeed time that the government
should remember us. Please to come with me to the Cloister. Twice did I
wish to send in letters and messages, for what we needed, but neither
letters nor messengers were allowed in through cowardly fear of
infection. Come, come, at last help has reached us."

The look of this young man, who, utterly regardless of his own safety,
waited on the sick without using any antidotes against infection, so
shamed Erastus, that he secretly placed his vinegared spunge in his
pocket, and accompanied Laurenzano to the abandoned monastery which had
likewise been turned into an hospital. The young Priest set before
Erastus in the high vaulted Re