"Ha! now I understand you," said the physician, "there you met with the monk."
"So it is," answered I; "but he was mad."
"He does not seem to be so now," observed the physician. "Even at that time, no doubt, he had lucid intervals, and told you his history."
"Not exactly," said I. "In the night, being unapprized of my arrival at the forst-haus, he came into my room. Perhaps it was on account of the extraordinary likeness existing betwixt us, that my appearance frightened him extremely. He probably looked upon me as his double, and believed that such an apparition of necessity announced his own death. Accordingly, he began to stammer out strange confessions, to which I listened for some time, till at last, being tired by a long journey, I fell asleep; but the monk, not aware of this, continued to speak on. I dreamed, but know not where the reality ended and the dream began. So far as I can recollect, it appears to me that the monk maintained that it could not be he who had caused the death of the Baroness von F—— and Hermogen, but that they had both been murdered by the Count Victorin."
"Strange, very strange!" said the physician. "But wherefore did you conceal this mysterious adventure at your trial?"
"How could I imagine," answered I, "that the judge would attach any importance to such a story? At best, it must have appeared to him a mere romance; and will any enlightened court of justice receive evidence which even borders on the visionary and supernatural?"
"At least," replied the physician, "you might have at once supposed that people were confounding you with this insane monk, and should have pointed out him as the real Capuchin Medardus?"
"Ay, forsooth," answered I; "and in the face of the venerable Father Cyrillus, (such, I believe, was his name,) an old dotard, who would absolutely have me, right or wrong, to be his Capuchin brother? Besides, it did not occur to me either that the insane monk was Medardus, or that the crime which he had confessed to me was the object of the present process. But the keeper of the forst-haus told me the monk had never given up his name. How, then, did people here make the discovery?"
"In the simplest manner," said the physician. "The monk, as you know, had been a considerable time with the forester. Now and then, it seemed as if he were completely cured; but at last he broke out again into insanity so frightful, that the forester was obliged to send him hither, where he was shut up in the mad-house. There he sat night and day, with staring eyes, and motionless as a statue. He never uttered a word, and must be fed, as he never moved a hand. Various methods were tried to rouse him from this lethargy, but in vain; and his attendants were afraid to try severe measures, for fear of bringing back his outrageous madness.
"A few days ago, the forester's eldest son came to the residenz, and desired admittance into the mad-house, to see the monk, which, accordingly, was granted him. Quite shocked at the hopeless state in which he found the unhappy man, he was leaving the prison, just as Father Cyrillus, from the Capuchin Convent in Königswald, happened to be going past. He spoke to the latter, and begged of him to visit a poor unhappy brother, who was shut up here, as, perhaps, the conversation of one of his own order might be beneficial to the maniac.