"Yes, thank God for it!" cried Röschen, joyously. "Oh, Albert! how unhappy these aristocratic people often make themselves with their over-refinement and their lofty requirements! I saw that in my poor dead princess. Heaven knows what sorrow was gnawing at her heart! According to my ideas, she might have been very happy; but it often seemed as if she did not wish to be. At any rate, it was a very aristocratic sorrow. If she had been in our condition in life, and had not had so much time to give way to her thoughts, she would undoubtedly be alive now."
"Well, those two at least are not making themselves wretched," laughed Albert, pointing to Cornelia and Heinrich, who were rapidly approaching.
The married pair modestly withdrew, and Cornelia and Heinrich, absorbed in delightful conversation, reached the house, and entered a pleasant little room on the ground floor.
"See, Heinrich, here is the hiding-place where I waited for three weeks. From behind the curtains of that window I saw you pass, day after day, and watched your face with a throbbing heart. Will you forgive me for becoming a spy upon you? I wished, I was obliged, first to discover whether you were at last a man to whom I might dare to intrust my fate, whether you still loved me, and whether in my affection I should offer you a welcome gift. I was obliged to give you time to collect your thoughts after the blow that had fallen upon you, and to raise yourself by your own might. If you had shown yourself to my secretly watchful gaze otherwise than I hoped, otherwise than I might dare to love you, I should have gone away as I came, unobserved by you; perhaps with a broken heart, but silently and forever."
"Yon would have gone as already many a happiness has fled from the threshold of him who did not deserve it," said Heinrich, clasping her closely in his arms. "Oh, God, my salvation and my ruin were both so near! Your eyes watched me like those of God, and if I had not stood the test you would have left me for the second time, and been irrevocably lost to me."
"Ah, I did not doubt that you would stand the test! A man has rarely made greater sacrifices for a woman than you for me in the course of this last year; for I clearly perceived that you would never have acted as you have done if it had not been for my sake. But for your love for me you would in a few years have conquered your longing for a higher satisfaction, and remained till the end of your days in the cold splendor of your position at the court of N----. Love for me--I may be allowed to say so, since it is no merit of mine--was the impulse that led you to take the first steps in another path. It guided you hither, and I did not fear that it would desert you now, when it was apparently leading you into misery. But a noble woman asks more than love from the man of her choice: she demands character, firmness in misfortune as well as prosperity, the power which is to be her support and protection, the greatness to which she can cheerfully submit, admiringly look up. It is a necessity of our natures to honor what we love; in this humility lies our pride. If we cannot truly consider the man to whom we belong far superior to us, we feel humiliated in acknowledging him as our master. That is why I remained concealed so long; I wished to investigate your whole life and conduct here, to see what influence you exerted, whether you did good and made those around you happy, what pleasures and employments you choose, how you would bear the misfortune that had fallen upon you. And what I saw and heard convinced me that you had entered upon your new calling not only in appearance, but reality; that you had become a man to whom I might confidently give myself. Yet the tears you have just shed told me more than all. With these tears a new and better man was born in you; they have atoned for every wrong, washed away every spot. Ah, if the bigoted priests who believe you a lost soul had witnessed that one moment, they would have understood that there is something holy outside their church!"
"Cornelia," cried Heinrich, "dear, precious girl, say no more to me about the Jesuits! Although I bear no towards the unhappy Severinus, whom you have taught me to know as my brother, although I forgive the intrigues they plotted against me, I will never pardon them for having torn you from me and attempted to make you a proselyte, for having intrusted you for so long a time to that handsome, dangerous Severinus, whose perhaps unintentional conquests over women's hearts are well known to the order. I can only consider it as a miracle that you remained faithful to me."
Cornelia smilingly shook the hair back from her brow. "The miracle is nothing more than that I have a faithful heart and a firm head."
"Those are the highest gifts a woman can possess. And this jewel has fallen to my lot, mine of all others; this loyal, sorely wounded heart clung to me; this proud firm brow, no power has ever humiliated, bent to me. Oh, Cornelia, strong, gentle, forgiving woman, no man ever yet repented more deeply, or was more truly grateful, than I repent my crimes and thank you for your love! A thousand others in your place would either have been dragged down by me, or cast me off forever; but you would not permit yourself to be misled by all my faults and sins, you believed a noble germ within me. Instead of punishing, you reformed me, have been faithful to me; and now give yourself to me as trustfully and freely as in the first moment of our love. Oh, girl, there is no word for this bliss my thoughts are whelmed in a sea of emotions!" He paused and laid his head upon hers, as if he wished to rest from his overmastering emotion.
"Heinrich," said Cornelia, with deep, loving, earnestness, "let the past rest; the Heinrich to whom I always belonged, and shall as long as I live, never wronged me; he suffered with me when that other came between and tore us from each other. That Count Ottmar, whose wife I never wished to become, has atoned for his fault; he is dead. Never conjure up his gloomy shade before me, even to arraign him, I beseech you."