"So you have at last succeeded, master Friend, in seducing my child," said the wretched father. "May God reckon with you for it!--and you, obstinate girl, have I not warned, prayed, threatened? Did you not swear to me to shun the man who makes you thus unhappy? How have you deceived me!--a long time deceived me, with your wicked artifices; for, from what I now see, your sin is not of to-day. These are the consequences of the infernal love-songs and romances, which ought to be utterly forbidden to women; their place is at the hearth and the spindle. The mad trash, invented by the dry brains of the poetasters to tickle your nobles, is for them poison. There it is they learn to build up air-castles in the midst of reality--there it is that they find every passion painted in fine colours, and, before they dream of it, their honour is gone, and--God deliver us!--their eternal salvation also."
"I give you my word," at length stammered Francis, "that Agatha's honour shall one day be redeemed before the world."
"You!" cried Onophrius,--"a husband! Heaven have mercy on us! Would you send your wife after the murdered Netz, or, like count Gleichen, get a dispensation at Rome for a double wedlock?"
"Not so rough, old man," exclaimed Francis in a tone of menace; "I don't like to hear such language, nor does it become the servant towards his master's son."
"That is the curse which rests upon the poor and lowly," exclaimed Onophrius, crawling to the nearest chair, and sinking down upon it, exhausted. "It is our curse that we are powerless, and weaponless, and lawless, against the great who wrong us, while, over and above all, we must spill our blood for our tyrants. Maimed in your defence, I return to my hovel, find you in the arms of my seduced child, and when my just anguish pours itself forth in words, you meanly appeal to your father's rank, and close my mouth by despicable threats."
"Maimed!" cried Friend in alarm, and Agatha flew with loud lamentations to her father, who, drawing his left arm from his doublet, showed the stump, bound up in bloody cloths.
"Eternal mercy! your hand!" shrieked Agatha.
"It lies before the house of the widow Fox, in the market," said Onophrius gloomily; "Netz hewed it from the arm just before you killed him."
"It grieves me; but on my honour I will make all good again."
"That is more than you can do: though you were to empty out all your gold-bags into this room, yet would no hand grow again upon this stump; though you were to dress my child in brocade, and adorn her with pearls and diamonds, still she would be your strumpet, over whom I must tear the grey locks from this aged head. Gracious Heavens! how little must you gentlemen think of us poor people, that you fancy all is to be satisfied with gold,--all, life and limb, honour and conscience! Well; God is just, and will one day weigh you in even scales, and find you too light for his heaven."