heathen? They take for their victim a heretic and a stranger, deeming
that that will diminish the abomination in the eyes of the Lord; but it
moves Him to loathing all the same, for no human blood may stain the pure
and sacred altars of our mild faith, which gives life and not death.

"Ask your blind and misguided flock, my brother: Can the Father of Love
feel joy at the sight of one of His children, even an erring one,
suffocated in the waters to the honor of the Most High, while struggling,
and cursing her executioners?

"If, indeed, there were a pure maiden, possessed with the blessed
intoxication of the love of God, who was ready to follow the example of
Him who redeemed man by His death, to fling herself into the waters while
she cried to Heaven with her dying breath: 'Take me and my innocence as
an offering, O Lord! Release my people from their extremity!'--that
would be a victim indeed; and perchance, the Lord might say: 'I will
accept it; but the will alone is enough. No child of mine may cast away
the life that I have lent her as the most sacred and precious of gifts.'"

The letter ended with pious exhortations to the community.

Then a maiden who should voluntarily sacrifice herself in the river to
save the people in their need would be a victim pleasing in the sight of
the Lord--so said the Man of God, through whose mouth the Most High
spoke. And this opinion, this hint, was to Katharina like a distaff from
which she spun a lengthening thread to warp to the loom and weave from it
a tangible tissue.

She would be the maiden whom the patriarch had imagined--the real, true
Bride of the Nile, inspired to cast off her young life to save her people