The assassins, thinking their work well done, were about to depart, when St.-Prix called to them, saying: “But I am he whom you seek. Do with me what you will.” Whereupon one of the evil men, Radebert by name, gave him a sword-thrust through the breast. And as he cried out the words each one of us should ever have ready on his tongue (Heaven knows they are needed often enough), “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do,” another thrust caused his brains to spurt from his head. Whereupon angels were seen again descending, and the murderers, appalled by a great light that filled the valley, took their flight. Sitting quietly in the pink church of St.-Amarin (its interior is noble of breadth and length, though not high), I thought how sweet is the mystical gift, and that one but stingily endowed in other ways, without houses or lands, or even learning or beauty or grace, if he have but the inner light, draws many unto him. So alluring are such that kings in anguish call for them; even the wasters of life, they know not why, sometimes seek them out; others have been known to forget their money-making, or stop their spending, and render themselves physically uncomfortable, trying to get at the strange and secret gift they offer. For the permanent interest of life is the unseen, and neither visible joys nor visible griefs can compete with it, nor any of the ways of the flesh, however pleasant or however straight. And who would not sometimes dwell on these inner stages of the life-journey? With joy on the first period, which is that of innocence, passing with a sigh to the second, which is that of deviation; with a moistening of the dry heart to the third, that of reconciliation. Finally in humility to the fourth and last, which is that of pilgrimage, where the soul, accepting the two great natural abhorrences, old age and dissolution, hopeth for redemption and renewal.... And then I found the clock was striking twelve and I left the inner world (alas! rarely is my stay in it long, even if no clock strikes) and hurried to the _popote_. XII THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF “_Now thou art come upon a feast of death_”