“For several days the ruins were examined without success: yet the assurance of one of the elder Monks, that he remembered having heard (but merely as a tradition) that a private communication had formerly existed between the Convent and Sargans, made me unwilling to give up the pursuit. It was frequently my custom after dismissing my labourers (wearied with their fruitless endeavours to discover that, which they were firmly persuaded had no existence) to wander by myself, and mark the melancholy contrast made by the slowly-rising walls of the new building, with the ruins of the old one which had not yet been removed. The vaults beneath the Convent being generally the scene of our enquiries, as affording us the best chance for finding the so much wished-for passage, I frequently loitered here alone, after my workmen had left me for the evening, A fixed melancholy had taken possession of my soul: in truth, it could not well be otherwise, surrounded as I was on all sides by memorials of mortality, and the marks of celestial judgments! —“Where,” said I often to myself, “where are now the voluptuous pleasures of the Monks of Curwald? where the pride and power of the tyrants of Carlsheim and Sargans? The grave has swallowed them all; nothing remains of them, but the memory of their crimes and the detestation of posterity!—Herman, still preserve in your heart unshaken the love of virtue, and not less the hatred of vice: be at once the terror of the profligate and the friend of the innocent and the helpless. Bring equally before the world’s eye the rights of the opprest and the crimes of the oppressor, and unite in one person the protecting and the avenging angel.”— “These ideas prest themselves upon my mind with more than ordinary force, as I sat one evening in one of the Convent-vaults upon a heap of stones. It was in the vault nearest to those of Sargans; and despairing of finding the old secret communication, I had at length resolved to employ my workmen in digging out a new one. They had already commenced their labours, and were retired after making no inconsiderable progress. The hour was late; darkness had closed round me, but an iron lamp was fixed against the wall and guided my steps, as I slowly traversed to and fro this abode of religious melancholy. The scene was congenial to the state of my feelings; I consecrated it to secret sorrow; and here it was that I offered up my prayers for the future, here it was that I poured forth my tears, while dwelling upon the past. Yes, holy Mother, my _tears_! The stern and haughty Herman of Werdenberg has wept frequently; has wept, when if any eye had witnessed the drops, his cheek would have blushed with shame at the unworthy cause of his sorrow; to _you_ alone, to the ear of indulgent pity, he scruples not to disclose the secret of his weakness.