The pain in my hands and feet continued as if I had been really on the rack, but this proceeded from the heavy chains which I still carried; yet, besides this, I found a strange pressure on my eye-lids, which, for some time, I was unable to lift up. At last, it seemed as if a weight were taken from my forehead, and I was able to raise myself on my couch.
Here my nightly visions once more stepped forth into reality, and I felt an ice-cold shivering through every vein. Motionless like a statue, with his arms folded, the monk—the Dominican whom I had seen in my dream—stood there, and glared on me with his hollow black eyes. In that look, I at once recognized the expression of the horrible painter, and fell, half fainting, back upon my straw-bed.
Yet, perhaps, thought I to myself, all this was but a delusion of my senses, which had its origin from a dream. I mustered courage, therefore—but the monk was there! He stood, as the painter had ever done, calm and motionless, with his relentless dark eyes fixed upon me.
"Horrible man!" cried I, "Avaunt!—Away!—But no! Man thou art not. Thou art the devil himself, who labours to drag me into everlasting destruction!—Away!—I conjure thee, in the name of God, begone!"
"Poor, short-sighted fool!" answered the Dominican, "I am not the fiend who endeavours to bind thee with his iron fetters; who seeks to turn thy heart from those sacred duties to which thou hast, by Divine Providence, been appointed!—Medardus, poor insane wanderer! I have indeed appeared frightful to thee, even at those moments when thou should'st have recognized in me thy best friend—when thou wert tottering within a hair's-breadth of being hurled into the eternal gulf of destruction, I have appeared and warned thee; but my designs have ever been perverted and misunderstood. Rise up, and listen to what I would now say!"
The Dominican uttered this in a tone of deep melancholy and complaint. His looks, which I had before contemplated with such affright, were become relaxed and mild. My heart was roused by new and indescribable emotions. This painter, who had haunted me like a demon, now appeared to me almost like a special messenger of Providence, sent to console me in my extreme misery and despair.
I rose from my bed, and stepped towards him. It was no phantom! I touched his garments. I kneeled down involuntarily, and he laid his hand on my head as if to bless me. Then, in the brightest colouring of imagination, a long train of beautiful and cherished images rose on my mind. I was once more within the consecrated woods of the Holy Lime-Tree. I stood on the self-same spot of that favourite grove, where the strangely-dressed pilgrim brought to me the miraculous boy. From hence I wished to move onwards to the church, which I saw also right before me. There only it appeared to me, that I might now, penitent and repentant, receive at last absolution of my heavy crimes. But I remained motionless; my limbs were powerless, and I could scarcely retain the feeling of self-identity.—Then a hollow voice pronounced the words, "The will suffices for the deed!"
The dream vanished. It was the painter who had spoken these words.
"Incomprehensible being!" said I, "was it then thou, who art here with me as a friend, who appeared leaning on the pillar on that unhappy morning in the Capuchin church at Königswald? At night, in the trading town of Frankenburg? And now——"
"Stop there," said the painter; "it was I indeed who have been at all times near to thee, in order, if possible, to rescue thee from destruction and disgrace; but thy heart was hardened; thy senses were perverted. The work to which thou wert chosen, must, for thine own weal and salvation, be fulfilled."