DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0312
A CONVERT.
295
travelling companion had accidentally remained at
Jaffa, had not heard of his sickness, and did not ar-
rive in Jerusalem until poor B--was in his
grave. It was necessary to be wary in my inqui-
ries ; for the Catholics here are ever on the watch
for souls, and with great ostentation had blazoned
his conversion upon his tomb. The first time I in-
quired about him, a young monk told me that he
remembered him well, as on the day of his arrival,
a fine, handsome young man, full of health and
spirit, and that he immediately commenced talking
about religion, and three days afterward they said
mass, and took the sacrament together in the
chapel of the convent. He told me the story so
glibly, that I was confident of its falsity, even with-
out referring to its improbability. 1 had known
B-. well. 1 knew that, like most young men
with us, though entertaining the deepest respect
and reverence for holy things, in the pride of youth
and health he had lived as if there was no grave;
and I could imagine that, stretched upon his bed
of death in the dreary cell of the convent, with " no
eye to pity and no arm to save," surrounded by
Catholic monks, and probably enfeebled in mind
by disease, he had, perhaps, laid hold of the only
hope of salvation offered him ; and when I stood
over his grave, and thought of the many thorns in
his pillow in that awful hour—the distracting
thoughts of home, of the mother whose name had
been the last on his lips—the shuddering conscious-
ness that, if he died a Protestant, his bones would
295
travelling companion had accidentally remained at
Jaffa, had not heard of his sickness, and did not ar-
rive in Jerusalem until poor B--was in his
grave. It was necessary to be wary in my inqui-
ries ; for the Catholics here are ever on the watch
for souls, and with great ostentation had blazoned
his conversion upon his tomb. The first time I in-
quired about him, a young monk told me that he
remembered him well, as on the day of his arrival,
a fine, handsome young man, full of health and
spirit, and that he immediately commenced talking
about religion, and three days afterward they said
mass, and took the sacrament together in the
chapel of the convent. He told me the story so
glibly, that I was confident of its falsity, even with-
out referring to its improbability. 1 had known
B-. well. 1 knew that, like most young men
with us, though entertaining the deepest respect
and reverence for holy things, in the pride of youth
and health he had lived as if there was no grave;
and I could imagine that, stretched upon his bed
of death in the dreary cell of the convent, with " no
eye to pity and no arm to save," surrounded by
Catholic monks, and probably enfeebled in mind
by disease, he had, perhaps, laid hold of the only
hope of salvation offered him ; and when I stood
over his grave, and thought of the many thorns in
his pillow in that awful hour—the distracting
thoughts of home, of the mother whose name had
been the last on his lips—the shuddering conscious-
ness that, if he died a Protestant, his bones would