CHAPTER XIX.

After a few days more of restless walking, it was with a beating heart, and eyes swimming in tears, that I once more beheld the well-known towers of the Cistertian Monastery, and village of Heidebach. Anxious as I now am to wind up this long and painful narrative, I shall not pause to describe and analyze my feelings at thus visiting once more the scenes of my youth, which, in the yellow light of a still autumnal day, lay in all their wonted calmness and beauty before me.

I passed through the village, went up the hill, and came to the great square shaded by tall trees before the gate of the convent. Here, for some time, I paused, seating myself on a stone bench in a recess, reviving all my oldest and most cherished recollections, that came over my mind like shadows of a dream. Scarcely could I now believe that I was the same Francesco who had there spent so many years with a heart unclouded by care, and to whom guilt and remorse were yet known only by name.

While thus occupied, I heard at some distance a swelling voice of melody--it was an anthem sung by male voices. A large crucifix became visible, and I found that a procession was coming up the hill. The monks walked in pairs, and at the first glance I recognized that they were my own brethren, and that the old Leonardus, supported by a young man whose name I did not know, was at their head. Without noticing me, they continued their anthem, and passed on through the convent gate.

They were followed by the Dominicans and Franciscans, also from the town of Koenigswald, and walking in the same order of procession. Then several coaches drove up, in which were the nuns of St Clare. From all this I perceived that some remarkable festival was now to be solemnized.

The church doors were opened, and I went in. People were adorning the altars, and especially the high altar, with flower garlands, and a sacristan gave directions for a great quantity of fresh roses, as the Abbess had particularly desired that they should predominate. Having resolved that I would immediately request permission to join my brethren, I first strengthened myself by fervent prayer, after which I went into the convent, and inquired for the Prior Leonardus.

The porteress then led me into a hall, where the Prior was seated in an arm-chair, surrounded by his brethren. Agitated to the utmost degree, and indeed quite overpowered, I could not refrain from bursting into tears, and falling at his feet. "Medardus!" he exclaimed, and a murmur sounded immediately through the ranks of all the brethren. "Brother Medardus!" said they--"Brother Medardus, the long-lost, is returned!"

I was immediately lifted up from the prostration into which I had involuntarily sunk, and all the brethren, even those with whom I was before unacquainted, fervently embraced me.--"Thanks and everlasting praise," they exclaimed, "to the mercy and long-suffering of Heaven, that you have thus been rescued from the snares and temptations of that deceitful world. But relate, dearest brother--tell us your adventures--all that you have encountered!"

Thus there arose among them a murmur of confused and anxious inquiries; but, meanwhile, the Prior rose up and made a sign for me to follow him privately into another room, which was regularly appropriated for his use when he visited the convent.

"Medardus," he began, "you have in the most wicked manner broken your monastic vows, and deceived that faith which was reposed in you by all our community. Instead of fulfilling the commissions with which I intrusted you, you became a disgraceful fugitive, no one knows why, nor whither. On this account, I could order you to be imprisoned for life, or to be immured, and left to perish without food or drink, if I chose to act according to the severe laws of our order."

"Judge me, then, venerable father," interrupted I--"judge me according as the conventual law directs. I should resign with pleasure the burden of a miserable life; for indeed I feel but too deeply that the severest penance to which I could subject myself, would to me bring no consolation."

"Recover yourself," said Leonardus; "be composed and tranquil. I have now fulfilled my duty in speaking to you as an abbot; but, as a friend and father, I have yet to address you, and to hear what you have to say in your own justification. In a wonderful manner you have been rescued at Rome, from the death with which you was threatened. To the disorders which prevail there, Cyrillus has been the only sacrifice."

"Is it possible, then," said I, "that you already know----"

"I know it all," answered the Prior; "I am aware, that you rendered spiritual assistance to the poor man in his last moments; and I have been informed of the stratagem of the Dominicans, who thought they had administered deadly poison in the wine which they offered you as a cordial drink. Had you swallowed but a single drop, it must have caused your death in a few minutes; of course you found some opportune method of evading this."

"Only look here," said I, and, rolling up the sleeve of my tunic, shewed the Prior my withered arm, which was like that of a skeleton; describing to him, at the same time, how I had suspected the fate that was intended me, and found means to pour all the liquor into my sleeve.

Leonardus started as he beheld this frightful spectacle, and muttered to himself--"Thou hast indeed done penance, as it was fitting, for thou hast committed many crimes.--But Cyrillus--the good and pious Cyrillus!"----

He paused, and I took this opportunity of remarking, that the precise cause of my brother's death, and the accusation which had been made against him, remained, up to that day, unknown to me.

"Perhaps you too," said the Prior, "would have shared the same fate, if, like him, you had stepped forward as a plenipotentiary of our convent. You already know, that the claim of our house, if admitted, and carried into effect, would almost annihilate the income of the Cardinal von ----; which income he at present draws without any right to its appropriation. This was the reason why the Cardinal suddenly made up a friendship with the Pope's father confessor, (with whom he had till then been at variance,) and thus acquired, in the Dominican, a powerful ally, whom he could employ against Cyrillus.

"The latter was introduced to the Pope, and received with particular favour; in such manner, that he was admitted into the society of the dignitaries by whom his Holiness is surrounded, and enabled to appear as often as he chose at the Vatican. Cyrillus, of course, soon became painfully aware, how much the Vicegerent of God seeks and finds his kingdom in this world, and its pleasures,--how he is made subservient as the mere tool of a mob of hypocrites, who turn him hither and thither, as if vacillating between heaven and hell. Doubtless this seems inconsistent with the powerful talents and energetic spirit, of which he has, on various occasions, shewn himself possessed; but which they contrive, by the most abominable means, to pervert and to subdue.

"Our pious brother Cyrillus, as might have been foreseen, was much distressed at all this, and found himself called on, by irresistible impulses, to avert, if possible, the misfortunes which might thus fall upon the church. Accordingly, as the spirit moved him, he took divers opportunities to rouse and agitate, by the most fervid eloquence, the heart of the Pope, and forcibly to disengage his soul from all terrestrial pleasures or ambition.

"The Pope, as it usually happens to enfeebled minds, was, in truth, much affected by what Cyrillus had said; and this was precisely the opportunity which his wicked ministers had watched for, in order to carry their plans into execution. With an air of great mystery and importance, they revealed to his Holiness their discovery of nothing less than a regular conspiracy against him, which was to deprive him of the triple crown. For this purpose, Cyrillus had been commissioned to deliver these private lectures, and induce the Pope to submit to some public act of penance, which would serve as a signal for the open out-break of the rebellion that was already organized among the cardinals.

"Accordingly, on the next appearance of our zealous and excellent brother, the Pope imagined that, in his present discourse, he could detect many concealed and treacherous designs. Cyrillus, however, did not hesitate to persist in his attempts, assuring his Holiness, that he who did not wholly renounce the pleasures of this world, and humble his heart, even as the most submissive and self-accusing penitent, was wholly unfit to be the Vicegerent of God, and would bring a load of reproach and shame on the church, from which the latter should make itself free.

"After one of these interviews, the iced-water which the Pope was in the habit of drinking, was found to have been poisoned. That Cyrillus was perfectly guiltless on that score, it is needless for me to make any assertion to you, who knew him. His Holiness, however, was convinced of his guilt; and the order for his imprisonment and execution in the Dominican Convent was the consequence.

"The hatred of the Dominicans towards you, after the attention which you had received from the Pope, and his intentions openly expressed of raising the Capuchin penitent to high dignities, requires no explanation. You had thus become more dangerous, in their estimation, than Cyrillus had ever been; and they would have felt the less remorse at your destruction, as they doubted not that your penitential observances were the result of the basest hypocrisy, and a desire of temporal advancement.

"With regard to my accurate knowledge of all that occurred to you in Rome, there is in this no mystery. I have a friend at the metropolis, who is thoroughly acquainted even with the most secret occurrences which take place in the Vatican, and who faithfully informs me of them by letters, written in a cypher which has hitherto baffled all attempts at discovery.

"But on my side, there are many questions to be asked, of which the solution yet appears to me an inscrutable mystery. When you lived at the Capuchin Convent, near to Rome, of which the Prior is my near relation, I believed that your penitence was genuine, and from the heart. Yet, in the city, you must have been actuated by very different motives. Above all, why did you seek to gain the Pope's attention by an incredible and marvellous story? Why accuse yourself of crimes which you had never committed? Were you, then, ever at the castle of the Baron von F----?"

"Alas, venerable father!" said I, "that was indeed the scene of my most horrible crimes. Is it possible that, in your eyes also, I have appeared a liar and hypocrite?"

"Truly," said the Prior, "now that I speak with, and see you, I am forced to believe that your repentance and self-inflicted sufferings have been sincere. Still there are difficulties, which I am wholly unable to clear up.

"Soon after your flight from the _residenz_ of the Prince von Rosenthurm, and after the monk, with whom Cyrillus had confounded you, had, as if by miracle, escaped, it was proved by the discovery of letters, and other concomitant testimony, that the Count Victorin, disguised as a monk, had been at the Baron's castle, and must have been the perpetrator of the crimes charged against you. Reinhold, his old steward, indeed, vehemently disputed this notion. But suddenly Victorin's _chasseur_ made his appearance, and explained that his master had lived long concealed in the Thuringian forest; that he had allowed his beard to grow, and had said that he would take the first opportunity of providing himself with a Capuchin tunic, which he intended to wear for at least twelve months, in order to carry on certain adventures. Finally, he declared, that, after having been for some days absent from his master, on business, he had, on his return, found him completely disguised in a monk's dress, at which he was not surprised, as he, the day before, observed, at some distance, the figure of a Capuchin pilgrim in the forest, from whom he doubted not that his master had supplied himself with the masquerade attire. He insisted that he knew the Count far too well to have been deceived, and, besides, had spoken with him frequently betwixt the period of that occurrence and his disappearance from the castle. This deposition of the _chasseur_ completely invalidated the opinion of Reinhold; but the utter vanishing of the Count, of whom not a single trace could be found, remained quite incomprehensible.

"In the _residenz_, the Princess von Rosenthurm started the hypothesis, that the pretended Herr von Krczinski, from Kwicziczwo, had been really the Count Victorin; and was the more inclined to this belief, on account of the resemblance that she had found between this pretender and Francesco, of whose guilt no one now entertained any doubt. The story of the Prince's forester, describing a maniac, who had wandered about in this forest, and afterwards lived in his house, almost sanctioned the hypothesis. The madman had been recognized as Medardus. Victorin, in order to possess himself of his tunic, had cast him down into the abyss below the Devil's Chair. Here, by some chance or other, he had not been killed in the fall, but only wounded on the head. The pain of his wound, with hunger and thirst, made him delirious; and he ran about, perhaps obtaining a morsel of food now and then from some compassionate countryman, and half clothed with miserable rags, till he was kindly received into the house of the forester.

"Two things, however, remained here inexplicable, namely, how this Medardus could have run away to such a distance out of the mountains without being arrested, and how, even in his lucid intervals, he should confess to the judges and the physician crimes which he had never committed. Hereupon some individuals insisted that these lucid intervals were delusive--that he never had been free from his madness, and that as there are no limits to the varieties of that malady, it was possible that he had, by the force of his own perverted imagination, invented all the circumstances which he related, and that the belief of them was the one, fixed, and obstinate idea, (the characteristic of insanity,) which never left him.

"The judge of the criminal court, on the other hand, (whose wisdom was held in great reverence,) declared that the pretended Herr von Krczinski was not only no Pole, but also no count, and certainly not the Count Victorin. Moreover, that the monk assuredly was, and continued mad on every occasion, on which account the Court had intended that his sentence should be that of constant imprisonment, in order that he might be prevented from committing more crimes; but the Prince, who was much shocked by the calamities brought on the family of the Baron von F----, changed this decision into that of execution on the scaffold.

"Such is the nature of mankind in this transitory life, that every impression, however vivid, loses, after a short time, almost all its influence, and fades away into pale and dusky colours. But now the notion that Aurelia's fugitive bridegroom had been Count Victorin, brought the story of the Italian Countess fresh into the remembrance of every one. Even those who before knew nothing of the matter, were informed by others who thought there was no longer any need for keeping the secret, and all agreed in considering it quite natural that the features of Medardus should resemble those of Victorin, as they had both been sons of one father.

"The Prince at last determined that no farther attempt should be made to break the veil of mystery. He wished rather that all these unhappy involvements, which no one could be found to unravel, should be allowed to rest, and be forgotten. Only Aurelia----"

"Aurelia!" cried I, with vehemence, "for God's sake, reverend sir, tell me what has become of Aurelia?"

* * * * *

[Some pages are here left out by the Editor.]