Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/172

188 purchased a couple of these on speculation. They promised forgiveness of sin for two hundred days, to those who made a pilgrimage to the Madonna of Einsiedeln, and who prayed, with their whole heart, the prayer there prescribed to the Holy Virgin.

Provided with these indulgences, I set out in the afternoon for my audience with the Prince of Einsiedeln. Brother, “Master of the Kitchen,” a tall Benedictine monk, conducted me through the long and numerous passages of the convent, with distinguished politeness and complaisance of manner. With him, however, and two others of the convent's notabilities, Father Brandis and Father Gallmorell, I had already become acquainted, having been shown round the monastery by them. The former was a little, animated, and merry man, who understood my “sketches,” and talked about them as kindly and as cheerfully as a layman. Father Gallmorell, a tall man, of Italian descent, and with a perfectly Italian physiognomy, was known as the genius of Einsiedeln, and as a poet of no inconsiderable merit. He seemed to me profound, but at the same time cunning and satirical.

I was conducted into a handsome room, more suitable for a castle than a convent, adorned with good portraits of the former abbots of Einsiedeln. Here I was received by its present abbot, Henry IV. He was a man of fifty, of singular personal beauty and dignity. In his mild countenance, and refined, complacent manner, a certain degree of embarrassment betrayed itself; he blushed continually. It occurred to me whether high birth, and an amiable