"It would oblige me," said I, "if you would inform me of the minuter circumstances which led to my liberation; for as yet I have only heard generally that the Capuchin Medardus, for whom I had been taken, had been found here and arrested."
"Nay, it is to be observed," answered the physician, "that he did not come hither of his own accord, but was brought in, bound with ropes, as a maniac, and delivered over to the police at the very time when you first came to the residenz. By the way, it just now occurs to me that, on a former occasion, when I was occupied in relating to you the wonderful events which had happened at our court, I was interrupted, just as I had got to the story of this abominable Medardus, the acknowledged son of Francesco, and his enormous crimes at the castle of the Baron von F——. I shall now take up the thread of my discourse exactly where it was then broken off.
"The sister of our reigning Princess, who, as you well know, is Abbess of a Cistertian monastery at Kreuzberg, once received very kindly, and took charge of a poor deserted woman, who, with her infant son, was travelling homeward, towards the south, from a pilgrimage to the Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree."
"The woman," said I, "was Francesco's widow, and the boy was Medardus."
"Quite right," answered the physician; "but how do you come to know this?"
"The events of this Medardus's life," said I, "have indeed become known to me in a manner the strangest and most incredible. I am aware of them even up to the period when he fled from the castle of the Baron von F——; and of every circumstance that happened there I have received minute information."
"But how?" said the physician; "and from whom?"
"In a dream," answered I; "in a dream I have had the liveliest perception of all his sufferings and adventures."
"You are in jest," said the physician.
"By no means," replied I. "It actually seems to me, as if I had in a vision become acquainted with the history of an unhappy man, who, like a mere plaything in the hands of dark powers,—a weed cast on the waves of a stormy sea, had been hurled hither and thither, and driven onward from crime to crime. In the Holzheimer forest, which is not far from hence, on my way hither, the postilion, one stormy night, drove out of the right track, and there, in the forst-haus——"