“Two weeks ago I happened to be wandering in the neighbourhood of Nettersheim, and stopped at Borsche’s house. I was well received there, for the family think highly of me as a future priest. They talked about Walpurga. The farmer told me her story, and asked me to have a look at her and give my opinion as to whether she was really ill. I objected, and asked why a physician had not seen her. He said that the doctor from Heftrich had examined her and could find nothing wrong. So I went to her. She lay in a shed, separated from the cows only by a wooden partition. She was wrapped in an old horse-blanket, and a little straw kept the chill of the earth from her body. Her healthy colour and her normal form did not deceive me. I said to the farmer: ‘She’s like a guttering candle.’ He and his wife seemed to believe me. But when I demanded of them that they give the sick woman decent lodging and care, they shrugged their shoulders, and said that it was as warm in the stable as anywhere, and that there was no sense in taking trouble or undergoing discomfort on account of a creature who had fallen so low.
“On the third day I saw her again, and I have seen her on every other day since then. My thoughts could not get rid of her any more. In all my life no human creature has so tugged at my heart. She could no longer get up; the most malevolent had to admit that. I sat with her in the evil smelling shed on a wooden bench near where she lay. Each time I came she was happier to see me. I picked wild flowers on the way, and she took them in her hands and held them against her breast. They told her who I was, and gradually she put many questions to me. She wanted to know whether there really was an eternal life and eternal bliss. She wanted to know whether Christ had died on the cross for her too. She was afraid of the torments of purgatory, and said if they were as bad as the torments men could inflict she was sorry for the immortal part of her. She meant neither to revile men nor to complain of them. She merely wanted to know.
“And what answer could I give her? I assured her that Christ had taken her cross upon Him too. Her other questions left me silent. One is so dumb and desperate when a living heart thirsts after truth, and the frozen Christ within would melt into a new day and a new sun. They are even now in purgatory and ask when it will begin. Hidden in blackness, they do not see the dark; consumed by flames, they are unaware of the fire. Where is Satan’s true kingdom--here or elsewhere? And can that elsewhere be upon any star more accursed than this? The poor man is thrust from the wayside, the oppressed of the land creep into hiding; from the cities come the moans of the dying, and the souls of those who are wounded to death cry out. Yet God does not put an end to the iniquity. And is it not written that the Lord said to Satan: ‘From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.’