Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/244

260 pronounce on myself the sentence of a liar; if I should abandon the path of justice and truth? Believe me, my brother, that it is better that we continue on the way into which the grace of God has led us, and maintain our hearts firm in hope. We shall then at last enter into eternal life!”

“I was silent, I was abashed,” writes Rudbertus, “when I heard Wala speak thus. I saw clearly that he, untroubled about his own interests, only thought upon the objects of his earnest love, God, his native land, the church, and the good of the people.

“During our conversation, we heard the waves of Leman breaking against the walls of the prison. Wala directed his gaze upon the unquiet waters, and accustomed to listen for God's voice in nature, as well as his own heart, he heard the foaming waves speak to him of God. Their ebb and flow told him of the same in human affairs; the immovability of the rock against which they broke, was an image to him of the stability of the soul which has its life in God.

“ ‘Thus far may you come, and against these walls shall your proud waves be stayed!’ said Wala, with a calm brow and a bright glance over the excited waters. Like the exiled seer in Patmos, he rent asunder the vail of futurity, and nourished by the divine mysteries, he seemed to have entered already within the portals of the kingdom of Heaven.”

The doors of the dungeon opened some years afterwards to the noble captive, who was summoned to mediate between the sons of King Louis. He crossed the Alps between Switzerland and Italy, more than once upon the same errand. The last time, happy at