CHAPTER XX.

"You are sincere, Medardus," said the Prior; "your silence on this point is to me better than the most fervid eloquence. I felt the most perfect conviction that it was you only who had in the _residenz_ played the part of a Polish nobleman, and wished to marry the Baroness Aurelia. Moreover, I had traced out pretty accurately your route. A strange man, by name Schoenfeld, or Belcampo, who called himself a professor and an artist, called here, and gave me the wished-for intelligence. At one period I was indeed quite convinced that you had been the murderer of Hermogen and Euphemia, on which account I entertained, if possible, the more horror at your plan of seizing and involving Aurelia in your own destruction.

"I might indeed have arrested you, and perhaps it was my duty to have done so; but, far from considering myself as a minister of vengeance, I resigned you and your earthly conduct to the eternal decrees and guidance of Providence. That you were, in a manner, little less than miraculously preserved and carried through so many dangers, proved to me, that your destruction, so far as this life is concerned, was not yet resolved.

"But now, it is most important for you to hear the circumstances by which I was afterwards led, and indeed forced to believe, that Count Victorin had actually appeared as the Capuchin, in the Thuringian mountains, at the castle of Baron von F----.

"Some time ago, Brother Sebastian, our porter, was awoke from his sleep by an extraordinary noise of sobbing and groaning at the gate, which sounded like the voice of a man in the last agony.

"The day had just dawned, and he immediately rose. On opening the outward gate, he found a man lying on the steps, half petrified with cold, and miserably exhausted. With great effort the stranger brought out the words, that he was Medardus, a monk who had fled from our monastery.

"Sebastian was much alarmed, and immediately came to me with accounts of what had happened below. I summoned the brethren around me, and went to inquire into the matter. The stranger seemed to have fainted, whereupon we lifted him up, and brought him into the refectorium. In spite of the horribly disfigured countenance of the man, we still thought that we could recognize your features. Indeed, several were of opinion that it was the change of dress, more than any other circumstance, which made a difference. The stranger had a long beard, like a monk, and wore a lay-habit, now much torn and destroyed, but which had at first been very handsome. He had silk stockings, a gold buckle still on one of his shoes, a white satin waistcoat----"

"A chesnut-coloured coat," interrupted I, "of the finest cloth; richly embroidered linen, and a plain gold ring upon his finger."

"Precisely so," said Leonardus; "but, in God's name, how could you know these particulars?"

Alas! it was the identical dress which I had worn on that fatal day of my marriage in the _residenz_. My horrible double again stood vividly before mine eyes. It was no longer the mere phantom of my own disturbed brain that had seemed to follow me through the woods, but the real and substantial madman, or demon, by whom my strength had been overpowered, and who had at last robbed me of my clothes, in order to represent me in this manner at the convent. I begged of Leonardus, that, before asking any other questions, he would proceed with his narrative, from which, perhaps, a perfect explanation of the mysteries in which I had been involved would at last dawn upon me.

"After a trial of several days," said Leonardus, "we began to perceive that the man was utterly and incurably mad; and, notwithstanding that his features resembled yours very closely, and he incessantly cried out, 'I am Medardus, and have come home to do penance among you,' we all concluded that this was but an obstinately fixed delusion of the maniac.

"To this change of opinion we were led by divers proofs. For example, we brought him into the church; where, as he endeavoured to imitate us in the usual devotional exercises, we perceived plainly that he had never before been in a convent. The question then always gained more and more influence over my mind--'What if this madman, who has, according to his own account, fled from the _residenz_ of Rosenthurm, and escaped the punishment of the scaffold, were actually the Count Victorin?'

"The story which the maniac had before told to the forester was already known to me, but I was almost of opinion with the judge at Rosenthurm, that the discovery and drinking out of the Devil's Elixir, his residence in a convent, where he was condemned to prison, and all the rest, might be mere visions, the off-spring of his own malady, aided perhaps by some extraordinary magnetic influence of your mind over his--I was the more inclined to this notion, because the stranger had, in his paroxysms, often exclaimed that he was a Count, and a ruling sovereign. On the whole, I resolved, as he could have no claim on our care, to give him up to the hospital of St Getreu, where it was not impossible that the skill and tenderness with which he would be treated, might at last effect his recovery, after which his rational confessions might clear away that load of uncertainty under which we laboured.

"This resolution I had not time to put in practice. During the following night I was awoke by the great bell, which you know is rung whenever any one is taken dangerously ill and requires my assistance. On inquiry, I was informed that the stranger had asked for me so calmly and earnestly, that it was probable his madness had left him, and that he wished to confess. But, however this might be, his bodily weakness had so much increased, that it was scarcely possible for him to survive through the night.

"'Forgive me, venerable father,' said the stranger, after I had addressed to him a few words of pious admonition--'forgive me, that I have hitherto attempted to deceive you--I am not Medardus, the monk who fled from your convent, but the Count Victorin. _Prince_, indeed, I should be called, since I derive my birth from princes. This I advise you to notice, with due respect, otherwise my anger may yet overtake you!'

"'Even if you are a ruling prince,' said I, 'that circumstance, within our walls, and in your present condition, is not of any importance whatever; and it would, in my opinion, be much more suitable, and more for your own advantage, if you would now turn your thoughts altogether from such vain and terrestrial considerations.'

"At these words he stared on me, and his senses seemed wandering; but some strengthening drops having been administered, he revived, and began again to speak, though, to my great disappointment, in a style so wild and delirious, that his discourse scarce admits of repetition.

"'It seems to me,' said he, 'as if I must soon die, and that before leaving this world I must lighten my heart by confession. I know, moreover, that you have power over me; for, however you attempt to disguise yourself, I perceive very well that you are St Anthony, and you best know what misfortunes your infernal Elixirs have produced in this world. I had indeed grand designs in view when I first resolved to become a monk with a long beard, a shaven head, and a brown tunic tied with hair ropes. But, after long deliberation, it seemed to me as if my most secret thoughts played false with him to whom they owed their birth--as if they departed from me, and dressed themselves up in a cursed masquerade, representing MYSELF. I recognized the likeness--the identity--it was my _double_, and I was horrified.

"'This _double_, too, had superhuman strength, and hurled me down from the black rocks, through the trees and bushes, into the abyss, where a snow-white radiant princess rose out of the foaming water to receive me. She took me in her arms and bathed my wounds, so that I no longer felt any pain. I had now indeed become a monk, but that infernal second-self proved stronger than I was, and drove me on in the paths of wickedness, till I was forced to murder the princess that had rescued me, along with her only brother. I was then thrown into prison; but you yourself, St Anthony, know better than I, in what manner, after I had drunk up your cursed Elixir, you brought me out, and carried me away through the air.

"'The green forest king received me badly enough, although he knew very well that I was a prince, and therefore of equal rank; but my second-self interfered betwixt us, telling the king all sorts of calumnies against me, and insisted, that because we had committed these damnable crimes together, we must continue inseparable, and enjoy all things in partnership.

"'This happened accordingly, but when the king wanted to cut off our heads, we ran away, and on the road at last quarrelled and separated. I saw that this parasitical _double_ had resolved on being perpetually nourished by my powerful spirit, though I had then not food enough for myself; and I therefore knocked him down, beat him soundly, and took from him his coat.'

"So far the ravings of the man had some resemblance, however distant and shadowy, to the truth; but afterwards he lost himself in the sheer absurdities of his malady, out of which not a word could be understood. About an hour afterwards, as the first bell was rung for early prayers, he started up with a hideous cry, then fell back on his couch, and, as we all believed, instantly expired.

"Accordingly, I made the body be removed into the dead-room, and gave orders, that, after the usual interval, he should be buried, not in the convent vaults, but in a spot of consecrated ground in our garden. But you may well imagine our utter astonishment, when, on returning to the dead-room, we found that the supposed lifeless body was no longer to be seen! All inquiries after him were in vain, and I was obliged to despair of gaining any farther information as to the strange involvements that subsisted betwixt you and this man.

"No doubt, however, remained on my mind that he was Count Victorin. According to the story of the chasseur, he had murdered a Capuchin monk in the forest, and put on his tunic in order to carry on some intrigue in the castle. The crimes which he had thus begun, ended perhaps in a way that he did not expect--with the murder of the Baroness and of the young Baron Hermogen. Perhaps he was then mad, as Reinhold maintained, or became so upon his flight, being tormented by a reproving conscience. The dress which he wore, and the murder of the Capuchin, gave rise in his mind to the fixed delusion that he was a monk, and that his individuality was split into two hostile and contending powers.

"Only the period betwixt his flight from the Baron's castle and that of his arrival at the forester's house remains obscure. We know not how he could have lived all that time; nor is it conceivable how the story of his living in a convent, and being rescued from prison, had originated. Again, the time of his appearing to the forester will by no means answer with the date which Reinhold fixes for Victorin's departure from the Thuringian mountains."

"Stop, stop, father," said I; "every hope of obtaining, notwithstanding the fearful load of my crimes, forgiveness through the mercy and long-suffering of Heaven, must perish in my soul, if I do not, with the deepest repentance and self-condemnation, relate to you all the circumstances of my life, as I have before narrated them in holy confession!"

When I now went through this detail, the Prior's astonishment increased beyond all bounds. At last he said, "I must believe all that you have told, Medardus, if it were for no other reason than that, while you spoke, I perceived in your tone and looks the most unequivocal proofs of sincere and heartfelt repentance. Who can explain, but, at the same time, who can deny or disprove, the extraordinary mental sympathy and connection that has thus subsisted between two brothers, sons of a wretched sinner, and themselves both acted on and misled by the powers of darkness?[6]

[Footnote 6: According to the devil's assertion, if two individuals should drink out of the same flask, they would henceforth possess a wonderful reciprocity of thoughts and feelings, though mutually and unconsciously acting for the destruction of each other. See Vol. I. pp. 46, 68.--EDIT.]

"It is now certain that Victorin had rescued himself from the rocky abyss into which you had thrown him, (his fall probably having been broken by the water,) that he was the delirious monk whom the forester protected, who persecuted you as your _double_, and who died, or seemed to die, in our convent. He was an agent of our Arch-Enemy, placed in your way for the express purpose of misleading you from the path of virtue, or veiling from your sight that light of truth which otherwise might have dawned upon you. Or shall we look upon him not as Victorin, but as an incarnate demon, who, for his own hellish purposes, had availed himself of your unhappy brother's bodily frame?

"Alas! it is too true that the devil yet wanders restless and watchful through the earth, offering, as of yore, to unwary mortals, his deceitful Elixirs! Who is there that has not, at one period or another, found some of these deadly drinks agreeable and seductive to his taste? But such is the will of Heaven. Man must be subjected to temptations; and then, by the reproaches of his own conscience, being made aware of the dangers into which a moment of levity and relaxation has betrayed him, summon up strength and resolution to avoid such errors for the future. Thus, as the natural life of man is sometimes prolonged by poison, so the soul indirectly owes its final weal to the dark and destructive principle of evil.--Go now, Medardus, and join the brethren."

I was about to retire, but the Prior called me back.--"You have no doubt observed," said he, "the preparations for a great festival. The Baroness Aurelia is to-morrow to take the veil, and receives the conventual name of Rosalia!"