"If this be really the case," said I, "give us a proof of it now by a quiet rational narrative, how you discovered me in the wood, and brought me to this house."
"That shall immediately be done," said Belcampo, "though the reverend father on my right hand looks at me with a very suspicious aspect. You must know, then, that on the morning after your escape from Frankenburg, the foreign painter, with his collection of pictures, had also, in an inconceivable manner, vanished; and although the disturbance that you had raised at first excited a good deal of notice, yet, in the stream of other events, and the bustle of the fair, it was ere long forgotten. It was not till after the murder at the castle of the Baron von F—— became generally talked of, and the magistracy of that district published handbills, offering a reward for the arrest of Medardus, a Capuchin monk in Königswald, that people were reminded of the painter having indeed told the whole story, and recognized in you the said brother Medardus.
"The landlord of the hotel wherein you had lodged, confirmed a supposition that had already got afloat, of my having been accessory to your flight. The people, therefore, fixed their attention on me, and would have thrown me into prison. Having long wished to quit for ever the miserable course of life that I had been dragging on, my resolution was, in consequence, very speedily adopted. I determined to go into Italy, where there are Abbatés with powdered wigs, and encouragement is yet afforded to an accomplished friseur. On my way thither I saw you in the residenz of the Prince von Rosenthurm. The people there talked of your marriage with the Baroness Aurelia, and of the condemnation and execution of the monk Medardus.
"I had also an opportunity of seeing this criminal monk, and whatever his history might have been, I was convinced at once that you were the true Medardus. I placed myself in your way, but you did not observe me, and I left the Prince's residenz, in order to follow out my own plans.
"After a long and fatiguing journey, I had taken up my night's rest at a small obscure hamlet. In the morning I rose very early, as was the custom of the inhabitants there, and prepared to continue my laborious progress through a forest, which lay in gloomy darkness before me. Just as the first gleams of the morning had begun to break through the clouds of the east, there was a rustling in the thickets, and a man, with his hair matted, and staring out in various directions, his beard, too, in the same disorder, but wearing an elegant modern suit of clothes, leaped past me!
"His looks were wild and outrageous, and I gazed after him with the greatest astonishment, but in a moment he had disappeared again in the thick of the tangled coppice, and I could see no more of him. I walked onwards, therefore; but what words can express the horror that I felt, when right before me I saw a naked human figure stretched out flat upon the ground! There seemed to me no doubt that a murder had been committed, and that the fugitive whom I had before seen was the murderer.
"I knelt down beside the naked man, recognized at once your features, and perceived that you still breathed. Close beside you lay the Capuchin habit, which at this moment you are wearing. With much labour and stratagem I contrived to dress you in it, and to drag you along with me. At last you awoke out of your deep swoon, but you remained in that frightful state of apathy in which this reverend gentleman has described you.
"It cost me no little exertion to get you dragged along, and consequently it was not till late in the evening that I was able to reach an ale-house, which was situated in the middle of the forest. Here I placed you upon a bench of turf at the door, where you lay as if utterly overcome and drunk with sleep. I then went into the house to procure you food and drink, and, found (as I suspected might be the case) a party of hussars, who, as the hostess informed me, were in pursuit of a monk, who, in an inconceivable manner, had escaped at the moment when, on account of his enormous crimes, preparations were making for his death on the scaffold.
"It was to me an inexplicable mystery how you could have escaped out of the residenz into the forest; but the entire conviction that you were the Medardus whom they now sought after, made me exert myself to the utmost to rescue you from the danger which now hovered over you. Of course, I brought you away directly from the ale-house, in which undertaking I was favoured by the increasing darkness; and thereafter choosing always the by-roads and most unfrequented tracks, I succeeded at last in conducting you over the frontiers.
"Finally, after long and incredible wanderings, I came with you to this house, where the inhabitants received us both, as I declared that I was not willing to separate from you. Here I was convinced that you were perfectly secure, for by no means would the venerable fathers give up a sick person whom they had once received, to any criminal court.