Life cannot, at the utmost, last very long, although at seventeen we may
be tempted to think the way between us and heaven interminable.
For the convent is certainly not heaven; I never expected it would be.
It is not nearly so much like heaven, I think, as Aunt Cotta's home;
because love seems to me to be the essential joy of heaven, and there is
more love in that home than here.
I am not at all disappointed. I did not expect a haven of rest, but only
a sphere where I might serve God better, and, at all events, not be a
burden on dear Aunt Cotta. For I feel sure Uncle Cotta will become
blind; and they have so much difficulty to struggle on, as it is.
And the world is full of dangers for a young orphan girl like me; and I
am afraid they might want me to marry some one, which I never could.
I have no doubt God will give me some work to do for him here, and that
is all the happiness I look for. Not that I think there are not other
kinds of happiness in the world which are not wrong; but they are not
for me.
I shall never think it was wrong to love them all at Eisenach as much as
I did, and do, whatever the confessor may say. I shall be better all my
life, and all the life beyond, I believe, for the love God gave them for
me, and me for them, and for having known Cousin Fritz. I wish very much
he would write to me; and sometimes I think I will write to him. I feel
sure it would do us both good. He always said it did him good to talk
and read the dear old Latin hymns with me; and I know they never seemed
more real and true than when I sang them to him. But the father
confessor says it would be exceedingly perilous for our souls to hold
such a correspondence; and he asked me if I did not think more of my
cousin than of the hymns when I sang them to him, which, he says, would
have been a great sin. I am sure I cannot tell exactly how the thoughts
were balanced, or from what source each drop or pleasure flowed. It was
all blended together. It was joy to sing the hymns, and it was joy for
Fritz to like to hear them; and where one joy overflowed into the other
I cannot tell. I believe God gave me both; and I do not see that I need
care to divide one from the other. Who cares, when the Elbe is flowing
past its willows and oaks at Wittemberg, which part of its waters was
dissolved by the sun from the pure snows on the mountains, and which
came trickling from some little humble spring on the sandy plains? Both
springs and snows came originally from the clouds above; and both, as
they flow blended on together, make the grass spring and the leaf-buds
swell, and all the world rejoice.
The heart with which we love each other and with which we love God, is
it not the same? Only God is all good, and we are all His, therefore we
should love Him best. I think I do, or I should be more desolate here
than I am, away from all but him.
That is what I understand by my "Theologia Germanica," which Else does
not like. I begin with my father's legacy--"God so loved the world, that
he gave his Son;" and then I think of the crucifix, and of the love of
Him who died for us; and, in the light of these, I love to read in my
book of Him who is the Supreme Goodness, whose will is our rest, and who
is himself the joy of all our joys, and our joy when we have no other
joy. The things I do not comprehend in the book, I leave, like so many
other things. I am but a poor girl of seventeen, and how can I expect to
understand everything? Only I never let the things I do not understand
perplex me about those I do.
Therefore, when my confessor told me to examine my heart, and see if
there were not wrong and idolatrous thoughts mixed up with my love for
them all at Eisenach, I said at once, looking up at him--
"Yes, father, I did not love them half enough, for all their love to
me."
I think he must have been satisfied; for although he looked perplexed,
he did not ask me any more questions.
I feel very sorry for many of the nuns, especially for the old nuns.
They seem to me like children, and yet not child-like. The merest
trifles appear to excite or trouble them. They speak of the convent as
if it were the world, and of the world as if it were hell. It is a
childhood with no hope, no youth and womanhood before it. It reminds me
of the stunted oaks we passed on Dueben Heath, between Wittemberg and
Leipsic, which will never be full-grown, and yet are not saplings.
Then there is one, Sister Beatrice, whom the nuns seem to think very
inferior to themselves, because they say she was forced into the convent
by her relatives, to prevent her marrying some one they did not like,
and could never be induced to take the vows until her lover
died,--which, they say, is hardly worthy of the name of a vocation at
all.
She does not seem to think so either, but moves about in a subdued,
broken-spirited way, as if she felt herself a creature belonging neither
to the Church nor to the world.
The other evening she had been on an errand for the prioress through the
snow, and returned blue with cold. She had made some mistake in the
message, and was ordered at once, with contemptuous words, to her cell,
to finish a penance by reciting certain prayers.
I could not help following her. When I found her, she was sitting on a
pallet shivering, with the prayer-book before her. I crept into the
cell, and, sitting down beside her, began to chafe her poor icy hands.
At first she tried to withdraw them, murmuring that she had a penance to
perform; and then her eyes wandered from the book to mine. She gazed
wonderingly at me for some moments, and then she burst into tears, and
said,--
"Oh, do not do that! It makes me think of the old nursery at home. And
my mother is dead; all are dead, and I cannot die."
She let me put my arms round her, however; and, in faint, broken words,
the whole history came out.
"I am not here from choice," she said. "I should never have been here if
my mother had not died; and I should never have taken the vows if _he_
had not died, whatever they had done to me; for we were betrothed, and
we had vowed before God we would be true to each other till death. And
why is not one vow as good as another? When they told me he was dead, I
took the vows,--or, at least, I let them put the veil on me, and said
the words as I was told, after the priest; for I did not care what I
did. And so I am a nun. I have no wish now to be anything else. But it
will do me no good to be a nun, for I loved Eberhard first, and I loved
him best; and now that he is dead, I love no one, and have no hope in
heaven or earth. I try, indeed, not to think of him, because they say
that is sin; but I cannot think of happiness without him, if I try for
ever."