The exhausted man's whole body trembled, the words choked in his throat as he answered: "I have never written to Neuser.... as far as I can recollect.... He never asked me for credentials, and I never promised him any."
"Not even last summer, when Neuser used his vacation, in endeavoring to obtain an office in Transylvania?" asked the Amtmann.
"I know nothing about this. The letter is a forgery."
"Then these letters must also be forgeries," replied the Amtmann mockingly, handing over another bundle of papers to the physician. Erastus looked at them and turned pale. "These are letters from Bullinger to me, that is if you have not mixed some counterfeits with them."
The Amtmann turned to the Kurfürst. "From this letter of the Zurich Theologian may be gathered, how inimically and hostilely the accused was wont to speak to strangers of the Church Council of the Palatinate of which he was a member."
Erastus replied: "To strangers? I think I daily said to the Prince what I wrote to Bullinger."
The Kurfürst looked angrily at him: "That does not excuse your treachery. You are not allowed to calumniate my Counsellors to the Swiss. What more?" added he turning to the Amtmann.
"I found nothing else among the papers belonging to the Counsellor, but in a gipsire belonging to his daughter Lydia was this note, in which some unknown person makes an assignation with her of an evening on the secluded Holtermann, as he has important communications to make concerning her father." Violently did Erastus pluck the note from his hand. His head was dizzy. This then was the secret appointment which caused Lydia to dislocate her foot. In what terrible hands might his child find herself?
"How did the Maiden explain the note?" asked the Kurfürst coldly.
"She refused any explanation, till she had spoken with her father."