ority she had
returned from amongst these depraved beings to the outdoor air.

Yet how this feeling, which had stirred within her heart, gradually
changed!

During her closer acquaintance with the poor and the despised, the nature
and work of Christ first became perfectly intelligible to her; for how
many traits of simple, self-sacrificing readiness to help, what touching
contentment and grateful joy in the veriest trifle, what childlike piety
and humble resignation even amidst intolerable suffering, these
unfortunates had shown! Nay, when she had become familiar with the lives
of many of her protegees and learned how they had fallen into the hands
of the executioner and reached Schweinau, she had asked herself whether,
under similar circumstances, the majority of those who belonged to her
own sphere in life would not have found the way there far more speedily,
and whether they would have endured the punishment inflicted half so
patiently or with so much freedom from bitterness and rebellion against
the decrees of the Most High. She had discovered salutary sap in many a
human plant that had at first seemed absolutely poisonous; where she had
shrunk from touching such impurity, violets and lilies had bloomed amidst
the mire. Instead of holding her head haughtily erect, she had often left
the hospital with a sense of shame, and it was long since she had ceased
to use the proud privilege of her rank to despise people of lower degree.
If sometimes tempted to exercise it, the impulse was roused far more
frequently by those of her own station, who were base in mind and heart,
than by the sufferers in the hospital.

She had become very modest in regard to herself, why should she wake to
new life the arrogance now hushed in Eva's breast?

Much secret distress of mind and anguish of soul had been endured by the
poor child, who yesterday had opened her whole heart to her, when she
went to rest in her chamber. How lowly she felt, how humble was the
little saint who recently had elevated herself above others only too
quickly and willingly! It would do her good to descend to the lowest
ranks and measure her own better fate by their misery. She who felt
bereaved could always be the giver in the hospital, and she felt with
subtle sympathy what attracted Eva to her sufferers.

The magistrate's wife was a religious matron, devoted to her Church, but
in her youth she had been by no means fanatical. The Abbess Kunigunde,
her younger