"You see, my dear Sir. I had returned at an inconvenient moment for your countryman, as he had found a quantity of letters among the papers of the fugitive clergyman, which the latter knew nothing of. He therefore offered to pay my expenses and a free pass, if I only would disappear." The Parson jingled a few loose thalers in his pockets. "The cunning man wanted a quantity of documentary evidence from me which would fit in with his indictment, but I did not trust him and told him I should send it to him when free. Can you now tell me, I ought to have acted otherwise? But do not look so dejected. Climb through my window. If you can undo the bolt you will find Erastus in the third room to the left. I saw him yesterday through the key-hole. Then you can bring him out by the same way that I came. Now how must I go?"
"To yonder light, then to the right, where you see other lights," said Felix thoroughly discouraged.
"My best thanks," replied Neuser heartily. "Greet that beloved man of God Olevianus and tell him, that if he lusts after my head, he must write to Constantinople for it. I have had almost too much of Church Councillors and Magistrates, I shall go in for Muphtis and Kadis." Felix next heard him groping along the rafters, and after a time stealing through the secret passage beneath.
"I must follow the Parson's advice," said Felix in a wearied tone. He had to restrain himself otherwise he would have wept through disappointment and grief. "I will endeavor to reach Erastus through Neuser's cell, and break the bolt if necessary." Undaunted the wearied man climbed the walls once again, and pushed himself through the opening made by the sawn bars. "If the prison fare had not made the reverend gentleman much thinner, he never could have come through this way," he involuntarily thought. He felt about in the dark for the door. Finally he found it and examined the locks. But he soon saw that none of his tools were suitable for breaking these strong bolts asunder. A streak of light behind the Königstuhl announced the approach of day. He rolled up his ladder and descended the wall by means of the hooks he had inserted. Wearied to death, he had nevertheless to retrace his steps through the entire secret passage. He stuck the key on the outside of the lock of the door giving on to the street, so as to make it appear as if aid had been given from outside, the lights he took away, he replaced the doors on their hinges, and after having effaced any suspicious traces he returned to his room utterly wearied. He first carefully concealed the objects he had made use of, in a secret place, and then already more than half asleep hastened to his bed. When he awoke, Bachmann the court servant stood over him anxious to inquire about his wound. Felix willingly let him apply a fresh bandage and remained in bed to enjoy another sleep. Whilst occupied the old man related with ill-concealed joy, that Parson Neuser had in the most wonderful manner escaped from prison. The small door of the secret passage had been found open, and the Keeper had been arrested for having lost the key. Neuser had many friends in the town and it was not astonishing that aid had been given him. But the Kurfürst saw in this a proof, that the Arian conspiracy still existed, and it was reported that in his anger he had ordered the Amtmann for this cause to execute the sentence of death on Sylvanus and his colleagues Vehe and Suter. "May their bones bleach on the gallows," said Felix coldly, as he turned his face to the wall, and calmly continued his slumbers.
CHAPTER XI.
The day following the adventure which took place in front of the Baptist's house in the Kreuzgrund, Magister Paul strode through the woods as if in a dream, and lost himself among the trees. It was no longer a gloomy conception but the pure naked truth; a just but coarse hand had torn aside the veil from the well guarded secret of his inmost self, and before the very people who looked on him as a saint, he had stood a convicted criminal, a perverter of the young, a juggler who mis-used the Holiest of Holies to indulge his passions. The fettered witch, for whom the stake now waited, appeared to him worthy of envy in comparison to the rôle which he had played, and the outcast woman had herself felt this, so joyously did her eyes sparkle, as she shrieked out his secret to the world at large. The heretical Baptist had treated him as a miserable sinner and he could give him no reply. Moreover Erastus his benefactor had sunk down before him as if pierced to the heart by the treacherous bullet which he had fired in ambush at the man, who had ever done him kindness. "O my God!" stammered Paul as he stumbled among the bushes and underwood, "that did I not will. Thou art my witness; I wished to injure no one, it was some baneful spell, which hurried her and me to destruction." As if to escape his own thoughts he rushed breathless up the mountain. "A spell," whispered the spirit of self extenuation to him. "Was it a spell?" Might not the witch have kindled in his breast this sinful flame, in which all his good resolutions were ever consumed. As if he had eaten mad-wort had he hastened in blind rage to his own downfall. Or perhaps indeed this beautiful child was herself a creation of Satan, who had staked his honor, to seduce the primus omnium of the college at Venice from the right path? Who but Satan had prompted him to make an appointment with Lydia on the most disreputable of the cross-roads, when hundreds of less suspicious places might have been chosen.
But how, by all the Saints, did Lydia manage to comply with his bidding? Was she in reality as well acquainted with the Holtermann, as the witch asserted? "Whence moreover does she get this supernatural beauty?" Oh, now was it clear to him why his heart burnt with those flames. But suddenly he laughed ironically to himself: "And the fool's daughter at the Hirsch was she also a witch? and how about the young girls in the Chapel?" Buried in such thoughts he reached a solitary footpath, and sank down wearily on the stump of a tree. With his head in his hands in a profound melancholy he gazed about him. "I was bewitched," he sighed aloud.
"Every man is tempted, when excited and allured by his own wicked passions," said a grave voice near him. The timid fugitive jumped up terrified; he feared for his own safety. But near him stood the Baptist. The Priest thoroughly cowed gazed at the weather-beaten face of the dread heretic. The latter continued calmly: "Nevertheless when passion has conceived, it begets sin, and the wages of sin, is death."
The young man covered his pale face with his hands and sank down again on his seat, bowing his head before the strange old man.
"I grieve for you, Magister Laurenzano," continued the Baptist. "I have always looked on you as a brave man, who might do much good in the service of our Lord God with the talents bestowed on him, if he would only throw aside the cowl, which has encircled him, and if he only had the courage to abjure the vows in which he has been ensnared. Bid valet to the papists, take a wife, as you have not the strength to live as monk, and live well or ill from the labor of your hands, or the productions of your brain."