And it said in the heart of the child, that day: "Suffer the little one
to come unto me. Go in peace. Thy sins are forgiven."
A happy, sacred evening they spent that Easter in the hermit's cell,
the mother and the two children, the boy singing his best for the
little nest, as before for the King of kings.
Still, a little anxiety lingered in the mother's heart about the pomp
of the next day.
But she need not have feared.
When the archduchess had asked for the mother of the little chorister
with the heavenly voice, the choir-master had told her what touched her
much about the widowed Magdalis and her two children; and old Ursula
and the master between them contrived that Mother Magdalis should be at
the banquet, hidden behind the tapestry.
And when Gottlieb came close to the great lady, robed in white, with
blue feathery wings, to represent a little angel, and sang her the
Easter greeting, she bent down and folded him in her arms, and kissed
him.
And then once more she asked for his mother, and, to Gottlieb's
surprise and her own, the mother was led forward, and knelt before the
archduchess.
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