There was a man in black robes, and wearing a mask, probably the same who had come for me to the Capuchin Convent. He stood next to me; and along the walls of the room, seated on two benches, I beheld many Dominican monks.
The horrible dream already narrated, which occurred to me in the prison at the residenz of the Prince von Rosenthurm, came back vividly on my remembrance. I held it for certain, that I was now to meet an immediate and cruel death; yet I remained silent, and only prayed inwardly, not for rescue from the danger that awaited me, but for a religious and sanctified end.
After some moments of gloomy silence and expectation, one of the monks came to me, and said, with a hollow voice, "Medardus, we have here doomed to death a brother of your order. His sentence is this night to be carried into execution. From you he expects absolution and admonition in his last moments. Go, then, and fulfil what belongs to your office."
The mask in black robes, who stood near me, now took me by the arm, and led me from the audience-chamber through a narrow passage, into a small vaulted cell.
Here I found lying in a corner, on a straw-bed, a pale and emaciated spectre—properly speaking, a mere skeleton—half-clothed, or rather hung like a scarecrow, with rags. The mask placed the lamp which he had brought with him on a stone-table, in the middle of the vault, and retired.
I then approached nearer the wretched couch of the prisoner. My name had been announced, and with great difficulty he turned himself round towards me. I was confounded when I recognized the features of the venerable Cyrillus. A smile as of celestial beatitude came over his countenance, though I knew not wherefore he was thus rejoiced.
"So then," said he, "the abominable ministers of hell, who dwell in this building, have for once not deceived me. Through them I learned that you, dear Brother Medardus, were in Rome; and as I expressed a great wish to speak with you, they promised me to bring you here at the hour of my death. That hour is now arrived, and they have not forgotten their contract."
Hereupon, I kneeled down beside the venerable and pious old man. I conjured him, in the first place, to tell me, how it was possible that he could have been doomed by any society, calling themselves religious, either to imprisonment or death?
"No, no! dear Brother Medardus," said Cyrillus, "not till after I have confessed my manifold crimes, and, in the first place, those which I have through inadvertence committed against you; not till after you have, according to the holy institutes of our church, reconciled me with Heaven, dare I speak any farther as to my own earthly misery, and worldly cares. You already know, that I myself, as well as all the rest of our community, looked upon you as the most hardened and most unpardonable of sinners. According to our belief, you had, by a continued chain of errors, heaped up the most enormous guilt on your head, so that we expelled you from our society. Yet your chief crime was but in yielding to the impulse of one fatal moment, in which the devil cast his noose round your neck, and dragged you away from the holy sanctuary, into the distractions of this sinful world.
"Then an abominable swindler, assuming your name, your dress, and, as if he were the devil incarnate, also your corporeal figure, committed those crimes, which had almost drawn upon you the shameful death of a murderer. It has indeed been proved against you, that you have on one occasion sinned, inasmuch as you wished to break your monastic vows; but that you are unstained by those enormities which were imputed to you, there can be no doubt. Return then to our convent, Medardus, where the brethren will receive him whom they believed for ever lost, with redoubled kindness and rejoicing."