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 conflict, pain,
and sacrifice. The Lord Himself had broken his weapons. The Minorite
Egidius, his friend and companion in years, must carry on with Eva,
Father Ignatius, the most eloquent member of the order in Nuremberg,
with Heinz Schorlin, the work which he, Benedictus, had begun. Though
he himself must retire from the battlefield, he was sure that his post
would not remain empty.

The chant had placed him in the right mood to take leave of the
Brothers, whose