xertion is dissolved and every
muscle relieved of its strain. That is the reason birds are so fond of
their nests and men of their beds.

"Plato calls man a featherless biped: never mind; he decks himself with
borrowed feathers.

"Nat once told me that if you cage a bird of prey in a mill, where he
cannot sleep, you can make him as tame as a sucking dove: that is just
like the tyrant we used to read about at Ehingen, who had his prisoners
waked out of sleep every hour of their lives. How ingenious men are in
devising tortures! When it comes to giving pleasure, their wits are far
less ready. The greatest miracles, in my eyes, were the saints of the
pillars, who never sat down. That is the quintessence of self-denial.
Just think of standing all one's life, until one's feet gather fur on
them! 'Thank the Lord for a soft nest, a good rest, and a quick zest,'
is what they taught us to say at home."

Clement listened to this dissertation in silence, only murmuring
"Cornelia" from time to time. Ivo fell soundly asleep.

The world-spirit looks down at night upon convents and weeps with
averted face.

At the last stroke of eleven Clement glided into the convent-yard. It
was a balmy night in summer: a thunderstorm had rent the clouds, and
their shattered masses still lingered in mid-air, now veiling, now
releasing, the beams of the full moon. Clement knelt and cried,
trembling and wringing his hands, "Devil! Beelzebub! Ruler of Hell!
Appear and bestow thy treasures upon me, and my soul is thine! Appear!
Appear!"

He listened with bated breath, but all was silent: nothing stirred, and
nothing was audible but the distant baying of a watch-dog. Clement long
remained cowering on the ground: at length, seeing and hearing nothing,
he returned shivering to his bed.

Next day he sat at his desk pale and haggard. The black characters in
his open book seemed to crawl around each other like snakes before his
jaundiced eye. A letter was brought him. He had hardly read it when he
sank fainting from his chair. An engagement-card slipped from his hand,
on which was engraved "Cornelia Mueller and Herman Adam, betrothed." He
was carried to his bed, where Ivo waited, trembling and in tears, until
his friend drew breath again. A fever now ensued, in which Clement's
teeth chattered and his frame writhed with convulsive starts. For three
days he was delirious. He spoke of the devil, and barked like a dog:
once only he said, gently closing hi