“I SHALL never, never forget it,” said Elizabeth. “I shall think of it all day, and dream of it by night; how could they be so cruel?”
“Nay, my dear young lady,” said the old nurse, stroking the beautiful long silken hair of Elizabeth, as she arranged it for the night. “It is not for little ladies such as you to call that cruel which the law commands. The law did it, child; and the law must not be questioned.”
Elizabeth was a bright-eyed, pretty child; and her cheek flushed, and made her look still more pretty, as her old nurse said these words. You could scarcely imagine a greater contrast than the two figures presented. The nurse, fully seventy, with a wrinkled face; the child, not twelve years old, with golden hair and flashing eyes, and her neat figure gracefully dressed. There was as great a difference between the two as there is between the first buddings of the spring and the withered autumn leaves. And if you could have looked into their hearts, you would have found the contrast quite as great as in their outward forms. The old woman was a Roman Catholic, and as cruel as her creed; the girl, though trained in the way of Romanism, hated all its cruelties with all the hatred of which her young heart was capable. That day several Protestants had been burnt alive in the market. It had been a busy day in that old German city. Everybody talked about the execution, and how the victims had praised God in the fire; and from one and from another Elizabeth had heard all about it, and now poured out her complaint to the old servant who waited on her.
“It must be wrong, Maud, I am sure it must be wrong; the good Jesus, who shed His blood for us, would never want the blood of his creatures shed so wantonly. Why, when I went to church last Good Friday, the priest told us that when Jesus was dying on the cross, he prayed for his enemies, so you see—”
“Little ladies,” interrupted Maud, “must not talk about such things as these; all they have to do is to learn catechism, and say their Ayes, their Paternoster, and their Credos; and when they are old enough, be confirmed, and go to confession, and always do just exactly as their priest tells them.”
“But suppose the priest should make a mistake?” asked Lizzy.
“Priests cannot make a mistake, child; they are always right.”
“How are they always sure to be right?”
“They get their knowledge from the pope.”
“And suppose the pope makes a mistake?”
“The pope made a mistake, child! Little rebel, how dare you say that word? We shall have some great dragon flying away with you one of these nights, and then we shall see who’s made a mistake.”
“But, Maud,” said the child in a softer voice, for her nurse’s wrath alarmed her, “is there not a book called the Bible?”
“The Bible, child, aye, that there is; and a bad book it is.”
“A bad book! is it not God’s book?”
“Never mind that,” said Maud; “it is the book that the heretics read, and no good people ever look into it—but enough of this; light your taper, and sing your evening hymn— ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God.’”
The exercise was gone through rapidly enough; then the child was put to bed, the lamp taken away, and in darkness the little one thought over the dreadful scenes in the market; the flames seemed burning before her, she seemed to hear the yells of the crowd and the prayers of the victims; her pillow was wetted with tears, and trembling and afraid, she fell asleep.
~~~
When Elizabeth grew older, she was sent by her parents to a convent near Sear, in East Friesland—now a province of the kingdom of Hanover—there to learn various arts, and likewise the Latin language. She was not a favorite with the sisters—her manners, they said, were so reserved: some of them hinted that she was proud of her good looks; others, that she thought herself somebody great, because she belonged to a noble family; and others darkly suggested that she might be touched with the prevailing heresy. However this might be, Elizabeth was always kind and gentle, and never neglected any duty that devolved upon her. She went regularly with the sisters to the chapel at service time; in the morning, the evening, and at midnight, you might have seen her beautiful form gliding along with the rest toward the altar; with them she stood, and sat, and kneeled, and crossed herself, and took holy water, and chanted the Romish hymns; her sweet voice might be heard distinctly above all the rest; and many came to that chapel again and again, because of that nightingale voice. When the nuns worked, she worked with them; when they taught, she was a docile pupil; but her great delight was to steal away into the old library, and turn over the pages of many an antique book—books nearly all of them of saintly story, religious questions, or devotional exercises.
As she was one day thus employed, as the twilight shadows thickened round her, she perceived in a dusty corner a book that she had never noticed before. She took it, opened it, found it to be in Latin, and read. What a strange, marvelous story I things that she had heard of, never clearly, but as the foundation of the faith, were now opened out before her. Here was the story of the old world, here the life of the “Man of Sorrows,” four times told! here the record of the first missionary effort; here the letters written by saints and martyrs long ago; and here the glorious vision that the beloved one saw on Sabbath eve at Patmos. It was a Latin Bible. She read it very carefully, till the twilight deepened into night, and hastily placed it under her robe as she heard a step approaching.
“Why, still at work, Elizabeth,” said sister Ursula, “you are a very model to us all.”
The vesper-bell rang out its note of summons, and the nuns sang, and the monks prayed, and the host was lifted amid a shower of incense, and so the service ended.
Next day, Elizabeth begged of the lady abbess that she might be allowed to read the book she had found. The permission was given, and she was told that if she pleased, she might have the book, but to read it with great caution, for fear of heresy.
So Elizabeth read the Bible; prayed to the great God for light upon its sacred page; saw in it a clearer way of salvation than that which the church prescribed; saw that Jesus Christ had died for the ungodly, and that without masses, without works, without the intercession of the saints, without the authority of Rome, without fastings and vigils, heaven might be gained; and so she approached her Saviour in the words we sometimes sing
“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, flee to Thee for dress;
Helpless, come to Thee for grace;
Black, to the fountain fly,
Help me, Saviour, or I die!”
But now she felt the full difficulty of her position. She was a mere child— “a tender damsel,” an old chronicler calls her—and she knew not what to do. She could no longer join the service of the chapel, she could no longer enter the confessional, and pour out her heart before any human being—what was she to do? She resolved to escape.
Though the nuns had never at any period been very partial to Elizabeth, she was a favorite with one or two of the servants, and those who came to the convent with provisions. Among these was a milk-girl, in whom she thought that she could trust. She told her all the truth. The girl resolved to help her. They exchanged clothes, and in the gray morning the Lady Elizabeth escaped in the garb of the milk-woman, her preserver afterward accomplishing her own flight from the house.
“Elizabeth confided,” says her historian, “in the fatherly providence of God Almighty.”
A weary, weary way she traveled—homeless, friendless, knowing not which way to turn. She avoided the public roads, for fear of being followed, and turned and doubled like a poor hunted hare. She had been away from the convent some four or five days, and it was a cold, drizzly evening, in the fall of the year. Her strength was completely exhausted, and she sank down by the hedge-side—to die! In this condition she was found by two good-natured people, who carried her to their own home, and tended her as carefully as the good Samaritan in the parable. It was a long time before she recovered from the severe illness which came upon her; but when she did, to her great joy, she discovered that her preservers were Protestants.
If I was writing fiction, instead of truth, I think I should leave off here, and say, like some of the old story-books, “that they lived happy and comfortable ever after;” but it cannot be.
“On the 15th of January,” says the historian, “reckoning the beginning of the year from New Year’s day, Elizabeth was apprehended. When they who were to take her came into the house where she lived. they found a Latin Bible.” So the “tender maiden” was carried to the council-house, and on the next day two Capuchin friars took her to the block-house, and placed her before the council.
The examination need not be detailed here. They questioned her as to her opinions, and she boldly maintained the Protestant faith. They accused her of being possessed with a devil, and she replied in the spirit of her Master. They led her away to the torture tower, and Hans. the sworn tormentor, applied the thumb-screws, so that the blood gushed out from under her nails; but she cried to the Lord, “Help, 0 my God, thy poor handmaiden; for thou art a helper in the time of need.” Then they applied screws to her ankles, and she fainted, and they said, “She is dead” but after a little, she recovered again, and they loosened the iron screws, and spoke to her with entreaties.
It was in vain—God was her helper in the time of need, and gave her strength to bear her testimony to the gospel of his Son.
“After this,” goes on the record, “the sentence was pronounced upon Elizabeth, in the year 1549, on the 27th of March, and she was condemned to death by being drowned in a sack, and thus she offered up her body a sacrifice to God!”