"I never saw you," replied the Abbot. "For since my sixteenth year I have lived out of the world as a monk. But if you are the man who married my sister and then repudiated her, you are no relation of mine, there can be no friendship between that man and me."
"I am the man," said Reichenberg defiantly. "I ask you--where that boy came from to you?" He pointed with an angry expression to Donatus.
"He was bequeathed to us," said the Abbot calmly.
"By whom?" The Abbot looked at Reichenberg, measuring him from head to foot with a steady gaze.
"That," he said, "is a secret of the confessional."
"I will pay you for it," the Count whispered in his ear. "Your convent shall benefit largely, I will make over to you by deed a manor and an alp above Taufers with glebe and pasturage, and all rights secured to you--only tell me the name of the boy's parents."
"No, my lord--not a word; did you ever hear that a Benedictine sold the secrets of the confessional?"
The Count stamped his foot.
"Then I will find some means of making you speak by force--at a more opportune moment."
The Abbot looked at him quietly and proudly. "You may kill me, but you can never make me speak."