“I stifled all the more selfish feelings of a mother’s heart and I consented. I took that oath. I kissed my child for the last time, and tore myself away. I hoped to die; but God reserved me for a long and bitter expiation of my sin. I still found upon earth, however, one kind and pitying friend. He was the brother of my noble lover, and himself among the highest in the land. He was a priest; and, in his compassion, he found me refuge in a convent, where, though I deemed myself unworthy to receive the veil, I assumed the dress of the humblest penitent, and took the name of the repentant one—the name of Magdalen. I desired to cut myself off completely from the world; and I permitted the father of my child to believe a report that I was no more. In the humility of my bitter repentance, I vowed never to pass the gates of the holy house of God—never to put my foot upon the sacred ground—never to profane the sanctuary with my soul of sin—to worship only without, and at the threshold, until such time as it should seem to me that God had heard my repentance, and accepted my expiation. Now, thou knowest why I have never dared to enter the holy building.”
The witchfinder groaned bitterly, clenching, in agony, the folds of his garment, and tearing his breast.
“My spiritual adviser was benevolent and kind; but he was also stern in his calling. He imposed upon me such penitence as, in his wisdom, he thought most fit to wash out my crime; and I obeyed with humble reverence. But there was one penance more cruel than the rest—the mortification of my only earthly affection—the driving out from my heart all thought of the child of my folly and sin—the vow never to seek, to look upon her more. But the love of the world was still too strong upon the wretched mother. At the risk of her soul’s salvation, she fled the convent to see her child once again. It was in the frenzy of a fever-fit, when I thought to die. I forgot all—all but my oath—I never sought to speak to my darling child; but I followed her wherever I could—I watched for her as she passed—I gazed upon her with love—I prayed for blessings on her head.”
“Alas! I see it all now. It is, as it were, a bandage fallen from my eyes. Fool—infatuated fool!—monster that I was!” cried the witchfinder. “Bertha was your daughter—my sister; and I have smitten the mother for the love she bore her child. And he—her father—he was that villain! Curses on him!”
“Peace! Peace! my son!” continued Magdalena, “and curse no more. Nor can I tell thee that it was so. I have sworn that oath never to divulge my daughter’s birth; and cruel, heartless, as was the feeling that forced it on me, I must observe it ever. And thus I continued to live on—absorbed in the one thought of my child and her happiness—heedless of the present—forgetful of my duty; when suddenly, but two days ago, he who has been the kind guardian of my spiritual weal, appeared before me in the chamber where, alone and unobserved, I wept over the picture of my child. He came, I presume, by a passage seldom opened, from the monastery, whither his duties had called him. He chid me for my flight—recalled me to my task of expiation—and, bidding me return to the convent, left me, with an injunction not to say that I had seen him. Nor could I reveal the fact of my mysterious interview with him, or tell his name, without giving a clue to the truth of my own existence, and the discovery of all I had sworn so binding an oath ever to conceal. Thou sawest him also—but, alas! with other thoughts.”
“Madman that I have been!” exclaimed the witchfinder. “Or is it now that I am mad? Am I not raving? Is not all this insane delusion? No—thou are there before me—closed from my embraces by these cruel bars that I have placed between us. Thou! my mother—my long-lost—my beloved—most wretched mother, in that dreadful garb!—condemned to die by thy own infatuated son! Would that I were mad, and that I could close my brain to so much horror! But thou shalt not die, my mother—thou shalt not die! Thou are innocent! I will proclaim thy innocence to all! They will believe my word—will they not? For it was I who testified against thee. I, the matricide! I will tell them that I lied. Thou shalt not die, my mother! Already! already!—horror!—the day is come!”
The day was come. The first faint doubtful streaks of early dawn had gradually spread, in a cold heavy grey light, over the sky. By degrees the darkness had fled, and the market-place, the surrounding gables of the houses, the black pile in the midst, had become clearer and clearer in harsh distinctness. The day was come! Already a few narrow casements had been pushed back in their sliding grooves, and strange faces, with sleepy eyes, had peered out, in night attire, to forestall impatient curiosity. Already indistinct noises, a vague rumbling, an uncertain sound from here or there had broken up the utter silence of the night, and told that the drowsy town was waking from its sleep, and stirring with the faint movement of new life. The day was come! The sentinels paced up and down more quickly, to dissipate that feeling of shivering cold which runs through the night-watcher during the first hour of the morn. During the colloquy between the cripple and the prisoner, they had been more than once disturbed by the loud tones of passionate exclamation that had burst from the former; but Hans had contrived to dispel his comrade’s scruples as to what was going forward at the prison door, by making light of the matter.
“Let them alone. They are only having a tuzzle together—the witchfinder and the witch! And if the man, as the weaker vessel in matters of witchcraft, do come off minus a nose or so, it will never spoil Black Claus’s beauty, that’s certain. Hark! hark! they are at it again! To it, devil! To it, devil-hunter! Let them fight it out between them, man. Let them fight it out. It’s fine sport, and it will never spoil the show.” And Hans stamped with his feet, and hooted at a distance, and hissed between his teeth, with all the zest of a modern cockfighter in the sport, rather to the scandal and shame of his more cautious and scrupulous companion. But when the cripple, in his despair, shook, in his nervous grasp, the bars of the grating in the door, as if he would wrench it from its staples, and flung himself in desperation against the strongly-ironed wooden mass, with a violence that threatened, in spite of its great strength, to burst it open, the matter seemed to become more serious in their eyes.
“Hollo, man! witchfinder! Black Claus! What art thou doing?” cried the sentinels, hurrying to the spot. “Does the devil possess thee? Art thou bewitched? Wait! wait! they’ll let her out quick enough to make her mount the pile. Have patience, man!”
“She is innocent!” cried the cripple, still grappling with the bars in his despair. “She is innocent! Let her go free!”