ed, and had deserved what threatened him.
A monk summoned him, but the abbot did not wish to be disturbed, and
ordered that he should be left an hour alone.
He now took in his hand a volume he called the mirror of his soul, and in
which he noted many things "for the confession," that he desired to
determine to his own satisfaction. To-day he wrote:
"It would be a duty to hate a Jew and criminal, zealously to persecute
what Holy Church has condemned. Yet I cannot do so. Who is the
magistrate, and what are Father Anselm and this learned doctor! The one
narrow-minded, only familiar with the little world he knows and in which
he lives, the others divinely-gifted, full of knowledge, rulers in the
wide domain of thought. And the former outwits the latter, who show
themselves children in comparison with him. How Anselm stood before him!
The deceived child was great, the clever man small. What men call
cleverness is only small-minded persons' skill in life; simplicity is
peculiar to the truly great man, because petty affairs are too small for
him, and his eye does not count the grains of dust, but looks upward, and
has a share in the infinitude stretching before us. Jesus Christ was
gentle as a child and loved children, he was the Son of God, yet
voluntarily yielded himself into the hands of men. The greatest of great
men did not belong to the ranks of the clever. Blessed are the meek, He
said. I understand those words. He is meek, whose soul is open, clear and
pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I have
met in life and history were also meek. The brute is clever; wisdom is
the cleverness of the noble-minded. We must all follow the Saviour, and
he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will come nearest to the
Redeemer."
CHAPTER IX.
Marx had gone out to reconnoitre in a more cheerful mood, for the doctor
had made good the loss sustained in the death of his old nag, and he
returned at noon with good news.
A wood-carrier, whom he met on the high-road, had told him where Jorg,
the charcoal-burner, lived.
The fugitives could reach his hut before night, and in so doing approach
nearer the Rhine valley. Everything was ready for departure, but old
Rahel objected to travelling further. She was sitting on a stone before
the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and it
seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses. Gazing into vacancy
with wild eyes and chat
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