With all Clement’s self‐control, he would have been utterly unable to conceal the state of his mind from his cousin had he remained at Frankfort. But, after the days of overpowering anguish we have already referred to, after yielding without restraint to a despair bordering on madness, Clement at length succeeded in regaining his clearness of judgment. One morning he rose before day, and left the city on foot. His walk was prolonged to such an extent that it might be called a pilgrimage, and the more correctly as its goal was a church, but so unpretending a church that it only differed from the neighboring houses by a stone cross to be seen when passing the door which it surmounted. The door was opened by the very person Clement came to see—a pious and simple young priest who was formerly his schoolmate. He was inferior to Clement intellectually, but his guide and master in those regions the soul alone attains. What Clement now sought was—not merely to pour out his heart by way of confidence—not even the consolation of discreet and Christian sympathy—but to recover his firmness by a courageous avowal of all his weakness, and afterwards make an unchangeable resolution in the presence of God and his representative at the holy tribunal. He had made a similar one while yet a youth, but now in his manhood he wished to renew it in a more solemn manner. It would of course require greater effort after the gleam of hope he had just lost, and the devotedness he pledged himself to would be more difficult after the revelation that she whom he loved, and must ever love, had given her affections to another. His voice faltered as he declared that no word, look, or act of his should ever trouble her, or reveal the sentiments she had inspired in the heart of one who would live near her, without her, and yet for her! It was, in fact, his old _devise_: “Garder l’amour et briser l’espoir!” which he now solemnly assumed with the grave and pious feeling that accompanies all self‐sacrifice. Such piety may be regarded by some as rather _exaltée_. They are right, but it is the kind of exaltation which accords with the real signification of the word, which elevates the soul it inflames, and which, though powerless in itself, can effect much when the divine assistance is invoked to co‐operate in aiding, increasing, in a word, exalting human strength! That evening Clement quietly resumed his old seat at the Müllers’ fireside. In reply to Wilhelm’s questions, he said that during his long visit at Rosenheim he had neglected affairs that required his attention. “And then I confess,” continued he, “that I have been in a bad humor, and thought it wiser to relieve you from my society.” But to Bertha, who also questioned him, in a less vague way, however, he acknowledged more frankly, but no less briefly, that he had met with a great affliction, but requested her never to mention the subject to him. Then he took his violin and began to play a strain from Bach.