each year to pass some weeks; but after this I was sent to school, and
as Cousin Maud took it much to heart, because she knew that my father had
set great store by good learning, we paid such visits more rarely; and
indeed, the strict mistress who ruled my teaching would never have
allowed me to break through my learning for pastime's sake.

Sister Margaret, commonly called the Carthusian nun, was the name of the
singular woman who was chosen to be my teacher. She was at once the most
pious and learned soul living; she was Prioress of a Carthusian nunnery
and had written ten large choirbooks, besides others. Though the rule of
her order forbade discourse, she was permitted to teach.

Oh, how I trembled when Cousin Maud first took me to the convent.

As a rule my tongue was never still, unless it were when Herdegen sang to
me, or thought aloud, telling me his dreams of what he would do when he
had risen to be chancellor, or captain-in chief of the Imperial army, and
had found a count's or a prince's daughter to carry home to his grand
castle. Besides, the wild wood was a second home to me, and now I was
shut up in a convent where the silence about me crushed me like a too
tight bodice. The walls of the vast antechamber, where I was left to
wait, were covered with various texts in Latin, and several times
repeated were these words under a skull.

"Bitter as it is to live a Carthusian, it is right sweet to die one."

There was a crucifix in a shrine, and so much bright red blood flowed
from the Crown of Thorns and the Wounds that the Sacred Body was half
covered with it, and I was sore afraid at the sight--oh I can find no
words for it! And all the while one nun after another glided through the