“Do you think they could?” Agathe tempted him. Ulrich hesitated for a moment. His answer came out like a confession.

“I don’t know. Maybe it could happen to me!” When he heard his words, he smiled in order to limit their meaning.

Agathe also smiled; she now seemed to have the answer she had been craving, and her face reflected the little moment of baffled disappointment that follows the sudden cessation of a state of suspense. And perhaps she now raised an objection only to spur her brother on. “You know,” she declared, “I was educated in a very pious school. Because of that, as soon as someone starts talking about religious ideals, I feel a simply scandalous urge to lampoon these things. Our teachers wore a habit whose two colors formed a cross, and to be sure, that was a reminder of one of the most sublime ideas, which we were supposed to be mindful of all day long; but we didn’t give that a moment’s thought and only called our Sisters the cross-spiders, because of the way they looked and because of their silky smooth way of talking. That’s why, while you were reading aloud, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Do you know what that proves?” Ulrich exclaimed. “Nothing more or less than this: That the power for good, which really does seem to exist within us, immediately eats its way through the walls if it gets shut up into a solid form and escapes straightaway through the hole into its opposite! It reminds me of the time when I was in the army, upholding throne and altar together with my fellow officers: at no other time in all my life have I heard people speak so loosely about those two as we did in our circle! Feelings don’t like being put on a leash, but some feelings in particular can’t put up with it at all. I’m sure your worthy Sisters believed what they were preaching: but faith must never be more than an hour old! That’s it!”

Even though Ulrich had expressed himself too hurriedly for his own satisfaction, it was clear to Agathe that the faith of those nuns who had robbed her of the joy of believing was a “canned” faith, preserved in its own juices, so to speak, not lacking any of the qualities of faith but no longer fresh; indeed, in some indeterminable way it had entered a condition that was different from what it had been at its source. And perhaps, at this moment, the nature of that original faith was dawning on the truant and rebellious pupil of holiness.