Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 22

"He had no right to keep anything for my sake!" she sobbed. "No one will ever have any right to keep anything for my sake; and if Fritz had been here, he would never have allowed it."

"Little Eva," I said, "what has become of your 'Theologia Teutsch?' Your book says you are to take all things meekly, and be indifferent, I suppose, alike to admiration and reproach."

"Cousin Else," said Eva very gravely, rising and standing erect before me with clasped hands, "I have not learned the 'Theologia' through well yet, but I mean to try. The world seems to me very evil, and very sad.

And there seems no place in it for an orphan girl like me. There is no rest except in being a wife or a nun. A wife I shall never be, and therefore, dear, dear Else," she continued, kneeling down again, and throwing her arms around me, "I have just decided--I will go to the convent where Aunt Agnes is, and be a nun."

I did not attempt to remonstrate; but the next day I told the mother, who said gravely, "She will be happier there, poor child! We must let her go."

But she became pale as death, her lip quivered, and she added,--"Yes, G.o.d must have the choicest of all. It is in vain indeed to fight against Him!" Then, fearing she might have wounded me, she kissed me and said,--"Since Fritz left, she has grown so very dear! But how can I murmur when my loving Else is spared to us?"

"Mother," I said, "do you think Aunt Agnes has been praying again for this?"

"Probably!" she replied, with a startled look. "She did look very earnestly at Eva."

"Then, mother," I replied, "I shall write to Aunt Agnes at once, to tell her that she is not to make any such prayers for you or for me. For, as to me, it is entirely useless. And if you were to imitate St. Elizabeth, and leave us, it would break all our hearts, and the family would go to ruin altogether."

"What are you thinking of, Else?" replied my mother meekly. "It is too late indeed for me to think of being a saint. I can never hope for anything beyond this, that G.o.d in his great mercy may one day pardon me my sins, and receive me as the lowest of his creatures, for the sake of his dear Son who died upon the cross. What could you mean by my imitating St. Elizabeth?"

I felt rea.s.sured, and did not pursue the subject, fearing it might suggest what I dreaded to my mother.

WITTEMBERG, _June_ 14.

And so Eva and Fritz are gone, the two religious ones of the family.

They are gone into their separate convents, to be made saints, and have left us all to struggle in the world without them,--with all that helped us to be less earthly taken from us. It seems to me as if a lovely picture of the Holy Mother had been removed from the dwelling-room since Eva has gone, and instead we had nothing left but family portraits, and paintings of common earthly things; or as if a window opening towards the stars had been covered by a low ceiling. She was always like a little bit of heaven among us.

I miss her in our little room at night. Her prayers seemed to hallow it.

I miss her sweet, holy songs at my embroidery; and now I have nothing to turn my thoughts from the arrangements for to-morrow, and the troubles of yesterday, and the perplexities of to-day. I had no idea how I must have been leaning on her. She always seemed so child-like, and so above my petty cares--and in practical things I certainly understood much more; and yet, in some way, whenever I talked anything over with her, it always seemed to take the burden away,--to change cares into duties, and clear my thoughts wonderfully,--just by lightening my heart. It was not that she suggested what to do; but she made me feel things were working for good, not for harm--that G.o.d in some way ordered them--and then the right thoughts seemed to come to me naturally.

Our mother, I am afraid, grieves as much as she did for Fritz; but she tries to hide it, lest we should feel her ungrateful for the love of her children.

I have a terrible dread sometimes that Aunt Agnes will get her prayers answered about our precious mother also,--if not in one way, in another.

She looks so pale and spiritless.

Christopher has just returned from taking Eva to the convent. He says she shed many tears when he left her; which is a comfort. I could not bear to think that something and nothing were alike to her yet! He told me also one thing, which has made me rather anxious. On the journey, Eva begged him to take care of our father's sight, which, she said, she thought had been failing a little lately. And just before they separated she brought him a little jar of distilled eye-water, which the nuns were skillful in making, and sent it to our father with Sister Ave's love.

Certainly my father has read less lately; and now I think of it, he has asked me once or twice to find things for him, and to help him about his models, in a way he never used to do.

It is strange that Eva, with those deep, earnest, quiet eyes, which seemed to look about so little, always saw before any of us what every one wanted. Darling child! she will remember us, then, and our little cares. And she will have some eye-water to make, which will be much better for her than reading all day in that melancholy "Theologia Teutsch."

But are we to call our Eva, Ave? She gave these lines of the hymn in her own writing to Christopher, to bring to me. She often used to sing it, and has explained the words to me:--

"Ave, maris stella Dei mater alma Atque semper virgo Felix coeli porta.

_Sumens illud Ave_ Gabrielis ore Funda nos in pace _Mutans nomen Evoe_."

It is not an uncommon name, I know, with nuns.

Well, dearly as I loved the old name, I cannot complain of the change.

Sister Ave will be as dear to me as Cousin Eva, only a little bit further off, and nearer heaven.

Her living so near heaven, while she was with us, never seemed to make her further off, but nearer to us all.

Now, however, it cannot, of course, be the same.

Our grandmother remains steadfast to the baptismal name.

"Receiving that Ave from the lips of Gabriel, the blessed Mother transformed the name of our mother Eva! And now our child Eva is on her way to become Saint Ave,--G.o.d's angel Ave in heaven!"

_June_ 30.

The young knight we met in the forest has called at our house to-day.

I could scarcely command my voice at first to tell him where our Eva is, because I cannot help partly blaming him for her leaving us at last.

"At Nimptschen!" he said; "then she was n.o.ble, after all. None but maidens of n.o.ble houses are admitted there."

"Yes," I said, "our mother's family is n.o.ble."

"She was too heavenly for this world!" he murmured. "Her face, and something in her words and tones, have haunted me like a holy vision, or a church hymn, ever since I saw her."

I could not feel as indignant with the young knight as Eva did. And he seemed so interested in our father's models, that we could not refuse him permission to come and see us again.

Yes, our Eva was, I suppose, as he says, too religious and too heavenly for this world.

Only, as so many of us have, after all, to live in the world, unless the world is to come to an end altogether, it would be a great blessing if G.o.d had made a religion for us poor, secular people, as well as one for the monks and nuns.

X.

Fritz's Story.

ROME, AUGUSTINIAN CONVENT.

Holy as this city necessarily must be, consecrated by relics of the church's most holy dead, consecrated by the presence of her living Head, I scarcely think religion is as deep in the hearts of these Italians as of our poor Germans in the cold north.

But I may mistake; feeling of all kinds manifests itself in such different ways with different characters.

Certainly the churches are thronged on all great occasions, and the festas are brilliant. But the people seem rather to regard them as holidays and dramatic entertainments, than as the solemn and sacred festivals we consider them in Saxony. This morning, for instance, I heard two women criticizing a procession in words such as these, as far as the little Italian I have picked up, enabled me to understand them:--

"Ah, Nina mia, the angels are nothing to-day; you should have seen our Lucia last year! Every one said she was heavenly. If the priests do not arrange it better, people will scarcely care to attend. Besides, the music was execrable."

"Ah, the nuns of the Cistercian convent understand how to manage a ceremony. They have ideas! Did you see their Bambino last Christmas?

Such lace! and the cradle of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, fit for an emperor, as it should be! And then their robes for the Madonna on her fetes! Cloth of gold embroidered with pearls and brilliants worth a treasury!"