of the Lord. They help mortals to appreciate God's majesty, fill their
hearts with gratitude, and summon them to praise His sublimity and
greatness. In death, whom the poet also calls his sister, he sees no
cruel murderer, because she, too, comes from the Most High. "And what
sister," asks the saint, "could more surely rescue the brother from
sorrow and suffering?" Whoever, as a child of God, feels like the loving
Saint of Assisi, will gratefully suffer death to lead him to union with
the Father.

Benedictus had followed the magnificent poem with rapture. At the lines,

"But blessed are they who die doing Thy will;
The second death can strike at them no blow,"

he nodded gently, as if sure that the close of his earthly pilgrimage
meant nothing to him except the beginning of a new and happy life; but
when Eva ended with the command to serve the Lord with great humility, he
lowered his eyes to the floor hesitatingly, as if not sure of himself.

But he soon raised them again and fixed them on the young girl.
They seemed to ask the question whether this noble hymn did not draw his
nurse also to him who had sung it; whether, in spite of it, she still
persisted, with sorrowful blindness, in her refusal to join the Sisters
of St. Clare, whom the saintly singer also numbered amongst his
followers. Yet he felt too feeble to appeal to her conscience now,
as he had often done, and bear the replies with which this highly gifted,
peculiar creature, in every conversation his increasing weakness
permitted him to share with her, had pressed him hard and sometimes even
silenced him.