Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/404

390 ST. HILDEGUND referred the affair to the decision of the Bishop of Spire. On their arrival at Spire, the bishop was absent, and the canon, thinking the case would be a long one, went to Cologne to attend to his own affairs nntil the time the bishop was expected to return. Joseph mean- while remained at Spire to make in- terest with the counsellors and officials of the bishop. As Agnes was dead, Joseph had now no tie to the world, and thought seriously of spending the rest of his life in re- ligious seclusion. He hesitated to con* fess his disguise after keeping it for so many years, and was therefbre un- decided what course to take. Meantime, while awaiting the return of the canon, he lodged with a recluse named Matilda, who made no scruple of receiying him, either because he had confided his secret to her, or because she considered herself aboye suspicion and scandal. While he lived with Matilda he dili- gently attended the Church of St. Maurice, where lessons were given to those who wished to be instructed in religious subjects. He was soon distinguished among the other students for his hand- some face and devout behaviour, and gentle and docile ways; and then it began to be gossiped that Matilda did not show her usual circumspection when she housed so attractive a stranger. A gentleman of the name of Berthold, who had lately renounced his military career to become a monk, distressed by these rumours, endeavoured to persuade Joseph to join him in embracing a religious life in the Cistercian abbey of Schiinau, near Heidelberg. Joseph was willing enough to undertake a monastic life, but he hesitated to shut himself up for ever among men. He distrusted his power of keeping his secret, notwith- standing the long novitiate ho had already passed through. On the other hand, he thought he should never have courage to reveal the secret he had kept so well, and which his father had been the first to impose upon him ; so that a convent of nuns was for ever inaccessible as a resting-place for him. After much deliberation, he resolved to accompany Berthold, and took the monastic habit at Schonan under the name he had borne during his wanderings. Although the delicacy of his skin and Yoioe ex- cited a little surprise at first, he soon showed that he could work as hard u the strongest of the monks, and endure the greatest austerities of penance. The devil, however, tempted him to flee from the monastery. Sometimes he re- gretted his freer life and his wanderings under the skies of Palestine. Some- times his courage sank at the thought of living and dying surrounded only bj men. His four of discovery led him into the greatest imprudences; he was always asking indiscreet questions, which nothing but the extreme unlikeliness of the circumstances prevented from be- traying him. He sometimes asked what they bought of his voice and of his skin. Sometimes he asked what penalty would be inflicted on a woman who should introduce herself into a monas- tery disguised as a monk. Sometimes he blamed the custom of stripping and washing dead bodies as unfit even for secular persons, and much more so for monks. He even expressed a wish that it should not be done to himself when he died. At last his fears so far pre- vailed that he made the desperate reso- lution of leaving the house ; but a^ it was the will of God to save him from breaking his vow, he was seized with an attack of illness, and fell down at the door. Ho was carried to the infirmary, and never left it alive. He lay there during the whole of Lent, getting weaker and worse, and died the Wed- nesday after Easter, surrounded by all the brethren praying for him. After his death they discovered that he wore stays. When the funeral was over, Godfrey, abbot of Schonan, wrote to all the con- vents of men and of women throughout the country, recommending to their prayers a saintly maid who had lived and died as a monk in his community, and requesting any information they could give about her. The abbess of Nuytz reported that a gentleman of that town had taken his daughter out of her convent, and disguised her as a boy to travel with him to the Holy Land ; that