At the sound of these words, sung by humble pious lips, her artificial life was made simple at last; her heart was touched, and seemed to realize what it desired; and slowly, without a word, she went on her way to the country-house. There she secretly put on men's clothes, signed to the two Hyacinths to come with her, and left the house unobserved by the menials. She went back to the convent, knocked at the door, and presented herself and her companions to the abbot as three young men who desired to be received into the convent that they might bid farewell to the world and live for eternity. Thanks to her good training, she was able to answer the abbot's searching questions so cleverly that he received all three, whom he could not help taking for refined and distinguished persons, into the convent, and permitted them to assume the monastic habit. Eugenia made a beautiful, almost angelic, monk, and was called Brother Eugenius, while the two Hyacinths found themselves transformed for better or worse into monks; for they were never even consulted, and they had long been accustomed only to live according to the will of their female paragon. Still, they did not find the monkish life amiss; they enjoyed incomparably more peaceful days, did not require to study any more, and found no difficulty in surrendering themselves entirely to a passive obedience. Brother Eugenius, on the other hand, did not remain idle, but became a notable monk, his visage white as marble, but with glowing eyes and the presence of an archangel. He converted many heathen, tended the sick and destitute, became profound in the Scriptures, preached in a golden bell-like voice, and on the abbot's death was actually chosen to be his successor. So now the tender Eugenia became abbot over seventy good monks, great and small. During the time that she and her companions were thus mysteriously vanished and were nowhere to be found, her father had made enquiries at an oracle as to what had become of his daughter, and it answered that Eugenia had been taken away by the gods and placed among the stars. For the priests utilized the event to contrive a miracle as a counterblast to the Christians, who all the time had the bird safely caged. They went so far as to point out a star in the firmament with two smaller stars adjacent as the new constellation, and the Alexandrians stood in the streets and on their house-tops to gaze at it, while many, who had formerly seen her going in and out, recalled her beauty, became enamoured of her memory, and looked up with moist eyes to the star, which swam placidly in the purple sky.