"Deceiving? Oh, you incredulous man! Heinrich's father is yours also. Ten years before his marriage in Germany he traveled in Italy. In wild, romantic Compatri he was attracted by the beauty of your mother, Angelina, who was living in the greatest poverty upon the products of her vines and the scanty gifts of the Carmelite convent in that place, then falling to decay. He took her to Rome, and remained there two years,--until his duties compelled him to return to Germany and desert Angelina, with her eleven-months-old boy. What afterwards became of her and her child, Heinrich did not know."
"And how did Heinrich happen to tell you this?"
"He told me a great many things about his father's life."
"And where did he learn this sad history?"
"From Anton, who, as valet, accompanied old Herr von Ottmar on his travels, and whose statements were confirmed by the dead man's papers. Heinrich did not then foresee how important this discovery might some day become. But if all this is not sufficient proof for you, question your own heart; remember what an inexplicable affection still bound you to Heinrich, even after you believed him lost to the church. Does not this impulse of the heart harmonize with all that has been so strangely revealed to you? Oh, you feel it yourself at this moment! I see it by the tears that will steal out from beneath your lashes; you feel, you believe, that he is your brother!"
Severinus covered his face. "He is! he is! Oh, God, and I must ruin my brother!"
"Thank God," cried Cornelia, joyously, "you are moved, touched! The voice of blood is again stirring within you; you will be reconciled to him, will spare him! Oh, say you will!"
Severinus raised his head and leaned against the window-sill; the tears that Cornelia had seen in his eyes were dried. "Do you believe that a pupil of Loyola will listen to the voice of blood? Do you know what the saint, who is our protector and pattern, did? He burned, unread, the letters from his own family, that he might break off all ties with the world; and I, should I spare the enemy of my church because he is related to me? Should I allow my zeal in God's cause to grow cold because my heart warms with a mere animal instinct? No, Cornelia, my brothers are in Christ; he who does not belong to him is no brother of mine."
"Cruel, hard-hearted man!" cried Cornelia, in horror. "I do not know whether it is compassion or terror that seizes upon me, but my soul trembles at the power of an illusion which can thus petrify the noblest heart."
"Petrify!" cried Severinus. "Oh, do not speak so, child that you are! Have you ever cast a glance into this 'petrified heart'? Have you a suspicion of the strength of the love I must tear away from earth and consecrate to God? Have you ever heard the outcry of the tortured man when he is obliged to accomplish his regeneration from earthly to heavenly things? Do you know how mighty nature writhes and struggles and groans under the prickly iron ring of the cilicium?[[2]] You are spared these agonies, because God requires only the easiest sacrifices from you; but we, who are appointed to be the imitators of Christ upon earth, are compelled taste them to the dregs. We must fulfill our great task, and no human eye is permitted to see that the sacrifice it admires trickles from the warm heart's blood."