It had a singularly weird and depressing effect--the soft crackling of the lights, the subdued mumbling from those toothless lips, the sniffing and wheezing of the kneeling old women, and the peculiar smell of the wax-tapers, incense and snuff, which last article seemed to be in constant use to prevent the devotional spirit from falling into a doze. But all these impressions, which at first almost took away the breath of the two friends, seemed, from long familiarity, to have lost all power over the sisters. After sprinkling themselves with holy-water out of a basin near one of the red columns, they stepped softly up to the candelabrum, and each fastened her little taper to one of the sharp points, carefully lighting it before doing so, and then returned to the columns and knelt down in two of the back pews, one on one side and one on the other of the middle aisle. Both appeared to be immediately absorbed in devotional exercises, the forehead pressed upon the open prayer-book, the little hands busied with the beads of their rosaries. But they could hardly have had time to repeat a paternoster before the places at their side were occupied by two voluntary participants in their worship. On the footstool to the right, next the startled Fanny, knelt Elfinger, while Rosenbusch had sunk gently down on the stool on the other side, close to his more worldly sweetheart, who appeared not to take the slightest notice of him. The muttering, wheezing, snuff-taking old hags, who sat about here and there, evidently took no offense at this symmetrical group, which quietly busied itself with its own affairs; and only a round, red-faced little priest, who was kneeling before his own taper and reading out of a book, with his spectacles shoved high up on his forehead, seemed to be suddenly disturbed in his perusal. The spectacles quickly slipped down upon his nose, and his little eyes strove earnestly to pierce the dim light that played about the two red columns. "Are you really in earnest?" whispered Elfinger, bending down close to the ear of his neighbor. "You really want to turn your back upon this beautiful world and bury yourself in a convent? You, so young, so charming, so well fitted to be happy and to make others happy." A deep sigh was the only response he received. At the same time she almost imperceptibly hitched her stool about half an inch farther away from the speaker, and buried her delicate little nose still deeper in her prayer-book. "Fräulein Fanny," he whispered, after a pause, "what horrible thing have you seen or experienced in the world that has made you already weary of it? Or does the air here in this house of prayer seem to you easier to breathe than the lovely air of heaven outside? And do you think you will find a convent better ventilated than this place, and filled with a better company?" "_Ave Maria, ora pro nobis, nunc et in hora_--" murmured the girl, making the sign of the cross.