With these words I threw open my tunic, and shewed him my name embroidered, as he had described, on the outside of the lapelle. Scarcely had the bauer looked at the name, when he grew deadly pale, and stared at me with every sign of the utmost horror. Then suddenly he started up, and without uttering a word, ran as if he had been pursued by fiends into the wood.
It was obvious that he took me for the ghost of this murdered Medardus, and all endeavours would have failed to convince him of his error. The remoteness of the place, and the deep stillness, broken only by the roaring of the not far distant river, were well suited to awake in my mind the most horrible imagery. I thought once more of my detestable double, and infected almost with the terror of the countryman, I felt myself agitated to my inmost heart, and believed that the frightful spectre of my second self would start out from some dark thicket against me.
Summoning my utmost courage, I again stepped forward on my journey, but so much was I disturbed by the revived notion of my ghostly double, that not till after a considerable time had I leisure to recollect that the countryman's narrative had completely cleared up to me the mystery how the delirious monk had first got possession of the tunic, which, on our flight into Italy, he had left with me, and which I had recognized as unquestionably my own. The forester whom he had applied to for a new dress, had, of course, purchased it from the countryman in the market-town.
I was deeply impressed by the confused and broken manner in which the bauer had told the fatal events of the Devil's Ground, for I thus perceived the intricate web—the concatenation of circumstances, in which the powers of darkness seemed to have done their utmost to produce that fearful exchange of characters betwixt myself and Victorin. The strange sight that had been seen by the bauer, too, of a man rising out of the abyss, which his companions believed only a vision, appeared to me of no little importance. I looked forward with confidence to an explanation of this also, though without knowing where it could be obtained.
CHAPTER XIX.
After a few days more of restless walking, it was with a beating heart, and eyes swimming in tears, that I once more beheld the well-known towers of the Cistertian Monastery, and village of Heidebach. Anxious as I now am to wind up this long and painful narrative, I shall not pause to describe and analyze my feelings at thus visiting once more the scenes of my youth, which, in the yellow light of a still autumnal day, lay in all their wonted calmness and beauty before me.
I passed through the village, went up the hill, and came to the great square shaded by tall trees before the gate of the convent. Here, for some time, I paused, seating myself on a stone bench in a recess, reviving all my oldest and most cherished recollections, that came over my mind like shadows of a dream. Scarcely could I now believe that I was the same Francesco who had there spent so many years with a heart unclouded by care, and to whom guilt and remorse were yet known only by name.
While thus occupied, I heard at some distance a swelling voice of melody—it was an anthem sung by male voices. A large crucifix became visible, and I found that a procession was coming up the hill. The monks walked in pairs, and at the first glance I recognized that they were my own brethren, and that the old Leonardus, supported by a young man whose name I did not know, was at their head. Without noticing me, they continued their anthem, and passed on through the convent gate.
They were followed by the Dominicans and Franciscans, also from the town of Königswald, and walking in the same order of procession. Then several coaches drove up, in which were the nuns of St Clare. From all this I perceived that some remarkable festival was now to be solemnized.