all these sons and daughters of the same
exalted Father call to the minds of men the omnipotent, beneficent rule
of the Lord. They help mortals to appreciate God's majesty, fill their
hearts with gratitude, and summon them to praise His sublimity and
greatness. In death, whom the poet also calls his sister, he sees no
cruel murderer, because she, too, comes from the Most High. "And what
sister," asks the saint, "could more surely rescue the brother from
sorrow and suffering?" Whoever, as a child of God, feels like the loving
Saint of Assisi, will gratefully suffer death to lead him to union with
the Father.

Benedictus had followed the magnificent poem with rapture. At the lines,

"But blessed are they who die doing Thy will;
The second death can strike at them no blow,"

he nodded gently, as if sure that the close of his earthly pilgrimage
meant nothing to him except the beginning of a new and happy life; but
when Eva ended with the command to serve the Lord with great humility, he
lowered his eyes to the floor hesitatingly, as if not sure of himself.

But he soon raised them again and fixed them on the young girl. They
seemed to ask the question whether this noble hymn did not draw his nurse
also to him who had sung it; whether, in spite of it, she still
persisted, with sorrowful blindness, in her refusal to join the Sisters
of St. Clare, whom the saintly singer also numbered amongst his
followers. Yet he felt too feeble to appeal to her conscience now, as he
had often done, and bear the replies with which this highly gifted,
peculiar creature, in every conversation his increasing weakness
permitted him to share with her, had pressed him hard and sometimes even
silenced him.

True, they fought with unequal weapons. Pain and illness paralysed his
keen intellect, and difficulty of breathing often checked the eloquent
tongue, both of which had served him so readily in his intercourse with
Heinz Schorlin. She contended with the most precious goal of youth before
her eyes, fresh and healthy in mind and body, conscious, in the midst of
the struggle, against doubt and suffering, for what she held dearest of
her own vigorous energy, panoplied by the talisman of the last mandate
from the lips of her dying mother.

Benedictus, during a long life devoted to the highest aims, had battled
enough. He already saw Sister Death upon the threshold, and he wished to
depart in peace and reap the reward for so much confli