Ch. 7 - Vadstene - Page 2

old
dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.

How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
there, and the King cunningly asked: "If the maidens in the cloister
were never tempted by love?" and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
to a bird that just then flew over them: "It may happen! One cannot
prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
prevent it from building its nest there!"

Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
night?

A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
it there rolled infants' bones--the white bones of murdered children
lay shining in the grass.

The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun--for the chronicles have preserved
it for us:--

"Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
hvarandra i Tradgården!"

(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
dance with one another in the garden).

These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in "Robert le Diable," the
daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But "judge not, lest ye be
judged," said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:--

"Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bekänna, att jag formår
ilia ånda mit Ave Maria eller läsa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
ichågen. Ja i sjelfa messen