[Some pages are here left out by the Editor.]
CHAPTER XX.
"You are sincere, Medardus," said the Prior; "your silence on this point is to me better than the most fervid eloquence. I felt the most perfect conviction that it was you only who had in the residenz played the part of a Polish nobleman, and wished to marry the Baroness Aurelia. Moreover, I had traced out pretty accurately your route. A strange man, by name Schönfeld, or Belcampo, who called himself a professor and an artist, called here, and gave me the wished-for intelligence. At one period I was indeed quite convinced that you had been the murderer of Hermogen and Euphemia, on which account I entertained, if possible, the more horror at your plan of seizing and involving Aurelia in your own destruction.
"I might indeed have arrested you, and perhaps it was my duty to have done so; but, far from considering myself as a minister of vengeance, I resigned you and your earthly conduct to the eternal decrees and guidance of Providence. That you were, in a manner, little less than miraculously preserved and carried through so many dangers, proved to me, that your destruction, so far as this life is concerned, was not yet resolved.
"But now, it is most important for you to hear the circumstances by which I was afterwards led, and indeed forced to believe, that Count Victorin had actually appeared as the Capuchin, in the Thuringian mountains, at the castle of Baron von F——.
"Some time ago, Brother Sebastian, our porter, was awoke from his sleep by an extraordinary noise of sobbing and groaning at the gate, which sounded like the voice of a man in the last agony.
"The day had just dawned, and he immediately rose. On opening the outward gate, he found a man lying on the steps, half petrified with cold, and miserably exhausted. With great effort the stranger brought out the words, that he was Medardus, a monk who had fled from our monastery.
"Sebastian was much alarmed, and immediately came to me with accounts of what had happened below. I summoned the brethren around me, and went to inquire into the matter. The stranger seemed to have fainted, whereupon we lifted him up, and brought him into the refectorium. In spite of the horribly disfigured countenance of the man, we still thought that we could recognize your features. Indeed, several were of opinion that it was the change of dress, more than any other circumstance, which made a difference. The stranger had a long beard, like a monk, and wore a lay-habit, now much torn and destroyed, but which had at first been very handsome. He had silk stockings, a gold buckle still on one of his shoes, a white satin waistcoat——"