Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist by Heinrich von Kleist

curious Corpus Christi Day celebration?” Upon the young sister’s reply – “Yes!” she remembered hearing about it, and that, when not in use, it tended to lie open in the room of the honorable abbess – the woman leaptup out of her chair, clearly agitated, and with all sorts of thoughts running through her mind, leaned over the desk. She gazed at the unknown musical notations, wherewith a terrible spirit appeared to secretly trace a circle, and when her eyes fell on the Gloria in excelsis , she suddenly felt as if the earth sank beneath her feet. She felt as though the total shock of the musical art that had destroyed her sons now passed in a swell over her head; she feared that, from the sheer sight of it, she was losing her mind, and after quickly pressing the page to her lips with a boundless stirring of humility and submission before the omnipotence of God, she sat back down in the chair again. Meanwhile, the abbess had finished reading through the letter and said as she folded it up: “God himself shielded the cloister on that wondrous day from the insolence of your sadly misguided sons. Whatever tool he employed may be immaterial to you, as a Protestant. You would also find it hard to believe what I could tell you about it. For you must know that not a living soul can tell just who it was seated at the organ bench at that terrible hour, serenely directing the musical work that you find flung open there, as the riot of destruction threatened to break out in our midst. According to testimony taken on the morning of the following day in the presence of the cloister caretaker and several other men and duly deposited in the archive, it has been established that Sister Antonia, the only person able to direct that work, lay ailing, unconscious, her limbs motionless, in a corner of her cloister cell throughout the time of the entire performance; a sister, who, as a relative, was assigned to attend to her physical care, never left her bed the whole morning on which Corpus Christi Day was celebrated in the cathedral. Indeed, Sister Antonia herself would doubtless have confirmed and verifiedthe fact that it was not she who suddenly appeared at the organ in so strange and astonishing a manner, if her altogether immobile state had permitted her to be questioned, and the poor sick sister were not laid low on the evening of that same day by the nervous fever, a condition not previously deemed life-threatening, but from which she died. And having been informed of this incident, the archbishop of Trier has already made the declaration that alone can explain it, namely that Saint Cecilia herself performed this at the same time terrible and wondrous miracle; and I have just received a brief from the pope in which he confirmed its veracity.” Whereupon, she gave the woman back the letter, which she had merely asked to see to get a more detailed account of what she already knew, with the promise that she would make no further use of it; and after asking the mother if there was any hope of her sons’ recovery, and if perchance she could help with money or some other means of support, a prospect which the woman, kissing the hem of her gown, tearfully declined, the abbess offered her hand in friendship and bid her farewell.
    Here ends this legend. The woman, whose ongoing presence in Aachen was completely pointless, after leaving the court a small sum of money for the care of her poor sons, returned to The Hague, where, the following year, deeply moved by all that had happened, she forthwith returned to the lap of the Catholic church; her sons, for their part, gave up the ghost at a ripe old age, succumbing to a serene and joyous death after having, as was their wont, sung the Gloria in excelsis yet again.

THE BEGGAR WOMAN OF LOCARNO
    Â· · ·
    At the foot of the Alps, near Locarno in northern Italy, at the descent of the St. Gotthard, stood an old castle belonging to a marquis, which nowadays the