Jesu dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordi gaudia:
Sed super mel et omnia
Ejus dulcis praesentia.

"Jesu, spes poenitentibus,
Quam pius es petentibus,
Quam bonus te quaerentibus,
Sed quis invenientibus!"

Soft and sweet and solemn was the illusion, as if some spirit breathed
them with a breath of tenderness over his soul; and he threw himself
with a burst of tears before the crucifix.

"O Jesus, where, then, art Thou? Why must I thus suffer? She is not the
one altogether lovely; it is Thou,--Thou, her Creator and mine! Why,
why cannot I find Thee? Oh, take from my heart all other love but Thine
alone!"

Yet even this very prayer, this very hymn, were blent with the
remembrance of Agnes; for was it not she who first had taught him the
lesson of heavenly love? Was not she the first one who had taught him to
look upward to Jesus other than as an avenging judge? Michel Angelo has
embodied in a fearful painting, which now deforms the Sistine Chapel,
that image of stormy vengeance which a religion debased by force
and fear had substituted for the tender, good shepherd of earlier
Christianity. It was only in the heart of a lowly maiden that Christ had
been made manifest to the eye of the monk, as of old he was revealed to
the world through a virgin. And how could he, then, forget her, or cease