too, who had obtained some claims to the confidence of the guests
of the convent by his services, and by the risks he had run in their
company, came to swell the number of Sigismund's friends. Of humble origin
himself, and attached to the young man not only by his general merits, but
by his conduct on the lake, he neglected no good occasion to work upon
Melchior's mind, after he himself had become acquainted with the nature of
the young man's hopes. As they paced the brown and naked rocks together,
in the vicinity of the convent, the Augustine discoursed on the perishable
nature of human hopes, and on the frailty of human opinions. He dwelt with
pious fervor on the usefulness of recalling the thoughts from the turmoil
of daily and contracted interests, to a wider view of the truths of
existence. Pointing to the wild scene around them, he likened the confused
masses of the mountains, their sterility, and their ruthless tempests, to
the world with its want of happy fruits, its disorders, and its violence.
Then directing the attention of his companion to the azure vault above
them, which, seen at that elevation and in that pure atmosphere,
resembled a benign canopy of the softest tints and colors, he made glowing
appeals to the eternal and holy tranquillity of the state of being to
which they were both fast hastening, and which had its type in the
mysterious and imposing calm of that tranquil and inimitable void. He drew
his moral in favor of a measured enjoyment of our advantages here, as well
as of rendering love and justice to all who merited our esteem, and to the
disadvantage of those iron prejudices which confine the best sentiments in
the fetters of opinions founded in the ordinances and provisions of the
violent and selfish.

It was after one of these interesting dialogues that Melchior de
Willading, his heart softened and his soul touched with the hopes of
heaven, listened with a more indulgent ear to the firm declaration of
Adelheid, that unless she became the wife of Sigismund, her self-respect,
no less than her affections, must compel her to pass her life unmarried.
We shall not say that the maiden herself philosophized on premises as
sublime as those of the good monk, for with her the warm impulses of the
heart lay at the bottom of her resolution; but even she had the
respectable support of reason to sustain her cause. The baron had that
innate desire to perpetuate his own existence in that of his descendants,