rrow, and
lead me in the thorny path to thee, thee!"

Ivo stood sadly regarding his friend, whose rashness grieved but did
not surprise him. He offered to raise him up; but Clement refused, and
Ivo soon saw the entire meaning of this fit of ecstasy. With a
sensation of indescribable pain, he thought he saw the corpse of his
friend in the place of his living body; and then again his own
disembodied spirit seemed to stand before his own lifeless frame and
look upon its last convulsive movements. He was giddy. He offered again
to assist Clement in rising; but the latter sprang to his feet, and
demanded, peremptorily,--

"Will you do penance? Will you wash the rust from your soul with tears
of repentance?"

"No."

"To hell with you, then!" cried Clement, again seizing him by the
throat. Ivo, however, defended himself stoutly, and the savage said,
imploringly, "Smite me; tread me under foot: I will undergo all things
willingly: but I must save you, for the Lord wills it."

Ivo turned on his heel without another word, and quitted his friend in
silence.

For days Ivo walked about in thoughtful silence. The string of his
heart which had the fullest tone was cruelly snapped asunder: he had
buried the bright promise of youthful friendship. Besides, the excess
of religious frenzy which he had witnessed had given fresh vitality to
many half-slumbering doubts and scruples. He was "doubly wretched," as
Clement had foretold; but he knew not how to help himself.

The chaplain of Horb had come to Tuebingen as a professor: he had never
lost his preference for Ivo, who now sought his friendship and
acquainted him with his troubles.

Strange to say, it was the Virgin Mary who had provoked his doubts
especially. He first inquired "whether, as a saint, she was also
omnipresent?" as he thought she ought to be, seeing that prayers were
everywhere offered up to her.

The professor looked at him with some astonishment, and said, "The
notion of omnipresence is a purely human one, deduced from bodily
things, and, in strictness, applicable to them alone. In coupling
'_omnis_' (all) with 'present' we merely seek to comprehend the
totality of existence: we do not really add to the number of our ideas,
though we may seem to do so. Nothing which is not earthly can become,
as such, the subject of our conceptions: for the same reason, we cannot
legitimately undertake to subject a spirit to the measure of what is,
in fact, a merely physical s