il, and
he who becomes an alien from this world and its duties to seek happiness
in a convent--inasmuch as that beatitude for which monks and nuns strive
is nothing else than a higher form of happiness, extending beyond the
grave to the very end of all things--may indeed intend to pursue the
highest aim, and yet it is but self-seeking, although of the loftiest and
noblest kind. Also, but a few days ere he died, he had admonished Ann, in
whom he had long discerned the true teacher of his younger children, to
warn them above all things against self-seeking, inasmuch as now that the
hand of death was already on him, he found his chiefest comfort in the
assurance of having labored faithfully, trusting in his Redeemer's grace,
to do all that in him lay for his own kith and kin, and for other folks'
orphans, whether rich or poor.

This discourse had sunk deep into Ann's soul, and had been in her mind
when she spoke such brave words to Herdegen, exhorting him to higher
aims. Now, again, coming forth from the good priest's door, she had met
her grand-uncle the organist, and asking him what he would say if a
hapless and forlorn maid should seek the peace she had lost in the
silence of the cloister, the simple man looked her full in the eyes and
murmured sadly to himself: "Alack! And has it come to this!" Then he went
close up to her, raised her drooping head, and cried in a cheering voice:

"In a cloister? You, in a cloister! You, our Ann, who have already learnt
to be so good a mother in the Sisters's school? No child, and again and
again I say No. Pay heed rather to the saying which your old grand-uncle
once heard from the lips of a wise and good man, when in the sorest hour
of his life he was about to knock at the gate of a Cistercian
convent.--His words were: 'Though thou lose all thou deemest thy
happiness, if thou canst but make the happiness of others, thou shalt
find it again in thine own heart.'"

And at a later day old Heyden himself told me that he, who while yet but
a youth had been the prefectus of the town-pipers, had been nigh to
madness when his wife, his Elslein, had been snatched from him after
scarce a year and a half of married life. After he had recovered his
wits, he had conceived that any balance or peace of mind was only to be
found in a convent, near to God; and it was at that time that the wise
and excellent Ulman Stromer had spoken the words which had been
thenceforth the light and guiding line of hi