Thus far the old painter had written of himself in the third person, which, in his later memoranda, he exchanges for the first. I consider it needless to transcribe his historical account of the various fortunes and intricate relationships of that illegitimate race which he had founded, and of which I am a descendant. No reader would take the trouble of following out a detail which could scarcely be understood, unless thrown into the form of a genealogical tree. Besides, the mind revolts from the contemplation of enormous and complicated guilt! Suffice it to say, that the child which had been left in the cave was accidentally found and preserved; that a small ivory cup, which, along with the bottle of the devil's elixir, was discovered at the same time, bore, for an inscription, the painter's name, Francesco, by which the boy was afterwards baptized.
Many years passed away, and, according to the curse which had been pronounced against him, the painter's life was miraculously prolonged, in order that, by unheard-of penitence, he might expiate his own crimes. Meanwhile, he beheld the powers of darkness unceasingly employed against him. The boy who had been found in the cave, and who was protected and educated, first in the palace of Count Philippo di Saverno, in Italy, afterwards in the Court of Prince Zenobio, had several children, among whom were two, a son and daughter, who especially inherited their father's wicked propensities, and yielded to the temptations of the devil.
The family afterwards branched out so widely, that the painter's book alone would supply materials for many volumes. To this family belonged the Princess von Rosenthurm, the Abbess of the Cistertian Convent, both the first and second Baroness von F——, and the Count Victorin, who, notwithstanding the mystery under which he had been reared and educated in Italy, I now ascertained to be my brother. After the horrible crimes which my father had perpetrated at the court of Rosenthurm, he was arrested in his flight by an attack of severe illness, which detained him long at the house of a benevolent countryman, whose daughter (my mother) he afterwards married. For some time after this event, by his knowledge of literature and the arts, he contrived to obtain employment in the world, having assumed a fictitious name, and established himself under a principality where his person and features were wholly unknown. But sooner or later, sin is, even in this world, visited by punishment, and the just anger of the Almighty. My father was again attacked by sickness, so that the remnant of the once considerable legacy left him by his father, was wholly spent. He fell into the bitterest poverty, and was at the same time assailed by such horrors of conscience, that his life became a continued miserable penance.
At last Heaven, by means of an extraordinary vision, sent to him a gleam of consolation. He was warned that he should make a pilgrimage to the Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree in Prussia, and that the birth of a son should there announce to him the grace and forgiveness of Heaven.
The last words in the manuscript are as follows. More, indeed, seems to have been written, but in a scrawl half obliterated, and so faint that it could not be deciphered.
"In the forest by which the Convent of the Lime-Tree is surrounded, I appeared to the melancholy mother as she wept over her lately born, and fatherless infant, and revived her almost annihilated spirit with words of consolation. Miraculously sometimes has the favour of Heaven seemed to be won for children who are born within the limits of a blest sanctuary. They have even been visited by supernatural and celestial visions, kindling up in their infant minds the fires of divine love, and the holiest aspirations. The mother has, in holy baptism, given to this child his father's name, Francesco, or, according to conventual language, Franciscus.