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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD 83
Instead of the knight came the chief of rural police,
came the revenue officials, came Jews to buy father’s
vodka, and oxen, but there was no knight.
At the very moment when she began, unconsciously,
to set her teeth on edge with romances of chivalry,
the wonderfully exalted romance " Harold " fell into
her hands.
After the battle of Hastings, Edith "Swan’s Neck"
found among the slain the body of her beloved King
Harold. Just before the battle he had broken his
oath, a mortal sin, and had died unrepentant. His
soul was condemned to eternal torment.
After that day Edith vanished from her native land,
and none of her kinsmen heard anything more about
her. Many years elapsed, and people were beginning
to forget Edith.
But on the opposite coast of England, amid wild cliffs
and forests, stands a convent, renowned for its severe
rules, where has dwelt for many years a nun who has
taken upon herself the vow of eternal silence, and who
enraptures the whole community with the feats of her
piety. She knows no rest, either day or night; in
the early morning hours and at dead midnight her
kneeling figure is to be seen before the crucifix of
Christ in the convent chapel. Wherever there is any
duty to be performed, and aid to be rendered, the
sufferings of others to be alleviated, she is the first to
make her appearance. Not a single person dies in
the neighborhood without seeing the tall form of the
pale nun bending over his deathbed, without feeling
his brow, covered with the death sweat, touched by
her bloodless lips, sealed by the terrible vow of eternal
silence.
But no one knows who she is, or whence she came.
Twenty years before, a woman enveloped in a black
cloak had presented herself at the convent gates, and,
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