"In God's name, my dear brother, what mean you? I am Carl—Carl, your twin brother."
"Carl? No! Albert! I see that horrid wound on your brow. It still bleeds!"
The painter grasped his brother's hand.
"I am flesh and blood," said he, "and no spirit. Albert still lives."
"He lives!" exclaimed Bernard, and clasped his brother in his arms.
Explanations followed, and the brothers took the road to Berlin. When the painter had replied to Bernard's questions concerning their family, he in his turn begged his brother to relate his adventures since they parted, and above all to give his reasons for remaining so long severed from his friends and home.
"Although I fully believed Albert killed by the blow he received," replied Bernard, "it was no fear of punishment for my indirect share in his death, that induced me to fly. But when I saw the father senseless on the ground, and the son expiring before my eyes, I felt as if I was accursed, as if the brand of Cain were on my brow, and that it was my fate to roam through the world an isolated and wretched being. When you all ran out of the school to fetch assistance, it seemed to me as though each chair and bench and table in the room received the power of speech, and yelled and bellowed in my ears the fatal number which has been the cause of all my misfortunes—'Thirteen! Thirteen! Thou art the Thirteenth, the Accursed One!'
"I fled, and since that day no rest or peace has been mine. Like my shadow has this unholy number clung to me. Wherever I went, in all the many lands I have wandered through, I carried with me the curse of my birth. At every turn it met me, aggravating my numerous hardships, embittering my rare moments of joy. If I entered a room where a cheerful party was assembled, all rose and shrunk from me as from one plague-tainted. They were twelve—I was the Thirteenth. If I sat down at a dinner-table, my neighbour left his chair, and the others would say, 'He fears to sit by you. You are the Thirteenth.' If I slept at an inn—there were sure to be twelve persons sleeping there; my bed was the Thirteenth, or my room would be number Thirteen, and I was told that the former landlord had shot or hung himself in it.
"At length I left Germany, in the vain hope that the spell would not extend beyond the land of my birth. I took ship at Trieste for Venice. Scarcely were we out of port when a violent storm arose, and we were driven rapidly towards a rocky and dangerous coast. The steersman counted the seamen and passengers, and crossed himself. We were thirteen.
"Lots were drawn who should be sacrificed for the salvation of the others. I drew number thirteen, and they put me ashore on a barren rock, where I passed a day and night half dead with cold and drenched with sea water. At length an Illyrian fisherman espied me, and took me off in his boat.