Blessed be these walls!" if we saw them in the sunlight
hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: "Blessed be these
walls!"

How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
when they came.

We go towards the cloister--the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
Bridget's cell--it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
out. Here is no chimney--no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
throne of female saints.

From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?

In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
scene into the splendid cloister church,--the blue church, as it is
called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built--and here,
where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amo