Felix looked around the lofty Chapel in an absent and disgusted manner. Was this the celebrated Church of the Heidelberg castle, the wealthiest at that time of all the Rhenish provinces? The high gothic arches had been whitewashed, the paintings ruthlessly daubed over disclosed themselves, however, here and there to the practised eye of the artist. A large spot at the entrance marked the place, where the font had once stood, another in the chancel the broken down altar. Without any regard to the architecture of the building the benches had been grouped in a square, in the middle of which stood, a most ludicrous object to Felix, "the honorable table." A part of the congregation turned their backs to the chancel which remained unused without Altar or Crucifix. The colored windows had been replaced by plain glass, and angrily did Felix gaze through those at the blue sky, as he asked himself what could have become of the famed glass paintings, to restore which known Masters had spent great portions of their lives? Even the old Heidelberg school of singing, which had once possessed a building of its own at the foot of the Schlossberg had disappeared. The people shouted in chorus, as appeared best to each individually. When the singing was over, the Preacher read out his text in a soft, melodious voice and laid the book aside with a graceful motion. Then he passed his white hand over his pale lips and began his sermon. His silvery melodious tones rang through the Church, at times like the monotonous melancholy murmur of a fountain, at other times rising to the majestic roll of thunder, but in the midst of the loudest blast of this rhetorical hurricane, the voice suddenly once more assumed a low loving tone which doubly touched the heart. These homiletic sounds moved Felix in no sense. He looked at the disposition of the benches, he thought to himself, how otherwise they would have looked if dimly lighted by the colored windows of the chancel filled with the smoke of incense, buried in the shadows of dark side chapels and the semi-light of deep niches. Gradually he mastered his indignation sufficiently to turn his attention to the words of the Preacher, who moved about the pulpit with the confidence of a trained orator and the innate grace of an Italian. He had bent over the edge of the pulpit, the white ruff stood up, and he resembled with his outstretched arms a bird about to take its flight. In speaking colors he described the dangers of life, the dependency of the defenceless heart. A world of despondency lay in his mournful tones. "Nowhere a consolation or support, not in ourselves for the heart is a hardened, deceitful, unreliable thing; not in others, for they are like unto ourselves; not in the world in general, for it belongs not to the good, but to the wicked. Where then is a refuge, salvation, a sure foundation on which we may depend?" A pause aroused the expectations and gave the oppressed hearts time to become conscious of their own anguish. Then the Preacher continued with a movement of the hand, which showed how near the blessing was at hand. "Behold the Church, thy mother, thy guide, thy protector and consoler under all difficulties."