Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family

  XXVII.

  Eva's Story.

  WITTEMBERG, _January_, 1525.

  How little idea I had how the thought of Fritz was interwoven with allmy life! He says he knew only too well how the thoughts of me was boundup with every hope and affection of his!

  But he contended against it long. He said that conflict was far moreagonizing than all he suffered in the prison since. For many years hethought it sin to think of me. I never thought it sin to think of him. Iwas sure it was not, whatever my confessor might say. Because I hadalways thanked God more than for anything else in the world, for all hehad been to me, and had taught me, and I felt so sure what I could thankGod for could not be wrong.

  But now it is _duty_ to love him best. Of that I am quite sure. Andcertainly it is not difficult. My only fear is that he will bedisappointed in me when he learns just what I am, day by day, with allthe halo of distance gone. And yet I am not really afraid. Love weavesbetter glories than the mists of distance. And we do not expect miraclesfrom each other, or that life is to be a Paradise. Only the unutterablecomfort of being side by side in every conflict, trial, joy, andsupporting each other! If I can say "only" of that! For I do believe ourhelp will be mutual. Far weaker and less wise as I am than he is, with arange of thought and experience so much narrower, and a force of purposeso much feebler, I feel I have a kind of strength which may in some way,at some times even help Fritz. And it is this which makes me see thegood of these separated years, in which otherwise I might have lost somuch. With him the whole world seems so much larger and higher to me,and yet during these years, I do feel God has taught me something, andit is a happiness to have a little more to bring him than I could havehad in my early girlhood.

  It was for my sake, then, he made that vow of leaving us for ever!

  And Aunt Cotta is so happy. On that evening when he returned, and wethree were left alone, she said, after a few minutes' silence--

  "Children, let us all kneel down, and thank God that he has given me thedesire of my heart."

  And afterwards she told us what she had always wished and planned forFritz and me, and how she had thought his abandoning of the world ajudgment for her sins; but how she was persuaded now that the curseborne for us was something infinitely more than anything she could haveendured, and that it had been all borne, and nailed to the bitter cross,and rent and blotted out for ever. And now, she said, she felt as if thelast shred of evil were gone, and her life were beginning again inus--to be blessed and a blessing beyond her utmost dreams.

  Fritz does not like to speak much of what he suffered in the prison ofthat Dominican convent, and least of all to me; because, although Irepeat to myself, "It is over--over for ever!"--whenever I think of hishaving been on the dreadful rack, it all seems present again.

  He was on the point of escaping the very night they came and led him infor examination in the torture-chamber. And after that, they carried himback to prison, and seemed to have left him to die there. For two daysthey sent him no food; but then the young monk who had first spoken tohim, and induced him to come to the convent, managed to steal to himalmost every day with food and water, and loving words of sympathy,until his strength revived a little, and they escaped together throughthe opening he had dug in the wall before the examination. But theirescape was soon discovered, and they had to hide in the caves andrecesses of the forest for many weeks before they could strike acrossthe country and find their way to Wittemberg at last.

  But it is over now. And yet not over. He who suffered will never forgetthe suffering faithfully borne for him. And the prison at the Dominicanconvent will be a fountain of strength for his preaching among thepeasants in the Thuringian Forest. He will be able to say, "God cansustain in all trials. He will not suffer you to be tempted above thatyou are able to bear. _I know it, for I have proved it._" And I thinkthat will help him better to translate the Bible to the hearts of thepoor, than even the Greek and Hebrew he learned at Rome and Tuebingen.