Night fell and found him lying there weeping and praying; and morning would have found him there too; but he suddenly remembered that, absorbed in his own wrongs and Margaret's, he had committed another sin besides intemperate rage. He had neglected a dying man.
He rose instantly, groaning at his accumulated wickedness, and set out to repair the omission. The weather had changed; it was raining hard, and when he got clear of the town, he heard the wolves baying; they were on the foot, But Clement was himself again, or nearly; he thought little of danger or discomfort, having a shameful omission of religious duty to repair: he went stoutly forward through rain and darkness.
And as he went, he often beat his breast, and cried, “MEA CULPA! MEA CULPA!”
CHAPTER LXXXIX
What that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so sudden and tremendous, is perhaps beyond the power of words to paint.
Fancy yourself the man; and then put yourself in his place! Were I to write a volume on it, we should have to come to that at last.
I shall relate his next two overt acts. They indicate his state of mind after the first fierce tempest of the soul had subsided. After spending the night with the dying hermit in giving and receiving holy consolations, he set out not for Rotterdam, but for Tergou. He went there to confront his fatal enemy the burgomaster, and by means of that parchment, whose history, by-the-by was itself a romance, to make him disgorge; and give Margaret her own.
Heated and dusty, he stopped at the fountain, and there began to eat his black bread and drink of the water. But in the middle of his frugal meal a female servant came running, and begged him to come and shrive her dying master, He returned the bread to his wallet, and followed her without a word.
She took him—to the Stadthouse.