“Leave me, wretched man!” said Magdalena, who now became aware that it was the cripple who addressed her. “Hast thou not sufficiently sated thy thirst for evil, that thou shouldst come to torment me in my last moments? Go! tempt not the bitterness of my spirit in this supreme hour of penitence and prayer. Go! for I have forgiven thee; and I would not curse thee now.”
“I defy thy curses, witch of hell!” cried the cripple with frantic energy. “Already the first pale streaks of dawn begin to flicker in the east. A little time, and thy power to curse will be no more; a little time, and nothing will remain of thee but a heap of noisome ashes; and a name, which will be mingled with that of the arch-enemy of mankind, in the execrations of thy victims—a name to be remembered with horror and disgust—as that of the foul serpent—in the thoughts of the tormented cripple, and of the pure angel of brightness, upon whom thou hast sought to work evil and death.”
“O God! make not this hour of trial too hard for me to bear!” exclaimed the unhappy woman; and then, raising her clasped hands to Claus in bitter expostulation, she cried, “Man! what have I done to harm thee, that thou shouldst heap these coals of fire on my soul?”
“What thou hast done to harm me?” cried the witchfinder. “Hast thou not tormented my poor cripple limbs with thy infernal spells? Hast thou not caused me to suffer the tortures of the damned? But it is not vengeance that I seek. No—no. I have vowed a holy vow—I have sworn to spend my life in the good task of purging from the earth such workers of evil as thou, and those who served the fiend by their foul sorceries, were it even at the risk of exposing my body to pain and suffering, and even death, from the revengeful malice of their witchcrafts. And God knows I have suffered in the holy cause.”
And the cripple clenched again within his right hand, the image attached to the rosary in his bosom, as if to satisfy himself by its contact of the truth and right of those deeds, which he strove to qualify as holy.
“What thou, or such as thou, have done to harm me!” he continued with bitter spite. “I will tell thee, hag! I was once a young and happy boy. I was strong and well-favoured then. I had a father—a passionate but a kind man; and I had a mother, whom I loved beyond all created things. She was the joy of my soul—the pride of my boyish dreams. I was happy then, I tell thee. I called myself by another name. No matter what it was. Black Claus is the avenger’s name, and he will cleave to it. One day there came an aged beggar-woman to our cottage, and begged. My mother heeded her not. I know not why; for she was ever kind. My father drove her from the door; and, as she turned away, she cursed us all. I never can forget that moment, nor the terror of my youthful mind, as I heard that curse. And the curse clave to us; for she—was a witch; and it came upon us soon and bitterly. My mother was in the pride of her beauty still, when a gay noble saw her in her loveliness, and paid her court. Then came a horrible night, when the witch’s curse was fearfully fulfilled. My father was jealous. He attacked the young noble as he came by the darkness of night; and it was he—my father—who was killed. I saw him die, weltering in his blood. My poor mother, too, was spirited away; the fell powers of witchcraft dragged her from that bloody hearth. Yes; witchcraft it was—it must have been; for she was too pure and good to listen to the voice of the seducer—to follow her husband’s murderer. She died, probably, of grief—my poor wretched mother; for I never saw her more. For days and nights I sought her, but in vain; suffering cold and hunger, and sleeping oft-times in the cold woods and dank morasses. Then fell the witches curse on me also; and I began to suffer these pains, which thy foul tribe have never ceased to inflict upon me since. The tortures of the body were added to the tortures of the mind. My limbs grew distorted and withered. I became the outcast of humanity I now am; and then it was I vowed a vow to pursue, even unto death, all those hideous lemans of Satan, who, like her who cursed us, sell their wretched souls but to work evil, and destruction, and death to their fellow-creatures. And I have kept my vow!”
In spite of herself, Magdalena had been obliged to listen to the witchfinder’s tale, which, with his face pressed against the iron bars of the grating, he poured, with harsh voice, into her unwilling ear. As he proceeded, however, she appeared fascinated by the words he uttered, as the poor quivering bird is fascinated by the serpent’s eye. Her eyeballs were distended—her arms still outstretched towards him, as she had first raised them to him in her cry of expostulation; but the hands were desperately clenched together—the arms stiffened with the extreme tension of the nerves.
“Oh no!” she murmured to herself as he yet spoke; “that were too horrible!” and when he paused, it was with a smothered scream of agony, still mixed with doubt, that she cried “Karl!”
“Karl!” repeated the witchfinder, clenching the bars with still firmer grasp, and raising himself with the effort to the full height of his stature, as though his limbs had on a sudden recovered all their strength—“Karl! Ay, that was my name! How dost thou know it, woman?”
“O God!” exclaimed the wretched tenant of the cell, “was my cup of bitterness not yet full? Hast thou reserved me this?” She wrung her hands in agony, and then, looking again at the cripple, cried in a tone of concentrated misery, “Karl! they told me that thou wast dead—that thou, too, hadst died after that night of horrors!”