the confessions of the old ladies, their thoughts,
the monotonous relations of their troubled dispositions, their inward
sorrows and sore temptations were not quickening to him. Young himself
he felt an attraction towards young people. Owing to this very human
cause the instruction which he had to impart to the young maidens of
the cloister-school, was not so burdensome as that bestowed on the
classes of the Sapientia. Fresh and blooming as beauteous buds just
bursting from their shells sat the girls and children before him, and
listened eagerly to every word he spoke. They understood intuitively
what he wished, and in that breath of love and admiration, which met
him on all sides, it seemed to him as if his parched soul lived again,
and as if feelings awoke once more, which had slumbered since he saw
the pale thin woman, who had watched over him during his youth, borne
away in her coffin. If when in the College he had rejoiced that his
lessons were over, now did he willingly place himself at the head of
his young ones, and accompany them in their walks around the convent
meadows. Above at the spring house, lower down sitting under the
spreading beeches he taught the children to build altars, and wind
wreaths. He showed them how the beloved angels vanished through bushes,
or looked down as clouds from heaven and bore away a greeting from each
child to the Mother of God. At other times he drilled the young ones
into forming processions and pilgrimages, teaching them to sing
guileless texts adapted from catholic books. Thus could the children
play at being catholics without the parents becoming aware of it. It is
true that once the miller's wife complained that her little daughter
had burnt the name of the Holy Mary in her arm, and that Reinhard had
cut the same in an apple-tree. The Domina however calmed her by saying
that through that the little maiden would not get a fever, and that the
apple-tree would bear a double crop.

The Magister had also quiet talks concerning the welfare of the soul
with the older girls, and the maidens acknowledged, that they had never
before conceived how bad, how in reality wicked they were, but their
heavenly good Magister knew how to console them so lovingly, that they
had never been so happy as at the present moment. But how came it to
pass that about this time Lydia Erast took to complaining that recently
in their games the less agreeable positions were always given to her,
and that whe