"Your Excellency,--In reply to your highly esteemed favor of the 15th, I have the honor to say that I must positively reject the denunciation it contains against our reverend brother in Christ, Father Severinus: namely, that without my knowledge he had secretly fled with a young and beautiful lady, and kept her concealed for several months against her will. Father Severinus is a pattern to the whole order for humble obedience and the strictest devotion to all. No false appearances can render his blameless and immovable purity suspicions in our eyes. His relation to that lady is one well pleasing to God and the order, and his course has my entire approval. This I must permit myself to say in correction of your Excellency's erroneous suspicion.
"I have no right to inform your Excellency of the residence of Father Severinus and the lady in question until your Excellency has given us the most satisfactory proofs of your right to the possession of the young lady's person.
"With all due respect to your Excellency, etc.,
"Father R----
"General of the Holy Congregation of the Fathers of Jesus.
"Rome, -- 20, 18--."
Heinrich sank upon the sofa with the paper in his hand. "This failed too! All, all in vain!" he murmured, crushing the letter convulsively in his clinched fingers. "What is to be done now? Shall I give notice to the embassies of every country? Shall I add to this consuming anguish the disgrace that I am pursuing an adventuress, who is rambling about with a Jesuit? Cornelia! Cornelia! Have these pious fathers or have you obtained so much mastery over yourself that you can inflict this upon me? It is not possible that they have subdued your free will. You are not one of these natures which allow themselves to be ruled. You have done the most difficult, the most unprecedented thing,--conquered me and yourself in a moment when passion was most aroused. You would not suffer the arts of these men to obtain dominion over you! Noble, wonderful woman! By what cords do you hold me that I will go to utter ruin rather than forget you?"
He rested his head wearily upon his hand. His whole life passed before him. He thought of all the unhappy creatures who had clung to him with the same ardor he now felt for Cornelia, and been repulsed as he was now by her. Again Ottilie's image rose before him. The sorrow gnawing at his heart made him for the first time understand the tortures she so silently, so patiently, bore for him, and for the first time he experienced the true human sympathy he had never felt while grief was unknown to him. "Poor Ottilie! We are now companions in suffering!"
A low knocking roused him from his gloomy thoughts. It was his private secretary, to ask whether Ottmar had prepared the dispatch for the court of R----. "Oh! good heavens, no!" he exclaimed, in great impatience, and sat down to finish it. Thrice he began, erased the words, and then flung the pen aside with a sigh of the bitterest despondency. "I am not in the mood," he said, at last. "My head aches too violently. I cannot give myself up to work now."
"Allow me to remind your Excellency that you will be expected at the council of ministers at twelve o'clock," said the young man, timidly.