"Be welcome, you who do not disdain to visit the forsaken!" replied Messenius with unusual courtesy.
"Do you recognise me, Johannes Messenius?" said the stranger, as he let the light fall on his pale face.
"It seems to me that I have seen your face before," replied the prisoner hesitatingly; "but it must have been a long time ago."
"Do you remember a boy in Braunsberg, some years younger than yourself, who was educated with you in the school of the holy fathers, and afterwards in your company visited Rome and Ingolstadt?"
"Yes, I remember ... a boy who gave great promise of one day becoming a pillar of the church ... Hieronymus Mathiæ."
"I am Hieronymus Mathiæ."
Messenius felt a shudder run through his frame. Time, the experiences of life, and the soul destroying doctrines of the Jesuits, had completely changed the features of the once blooming boy. Pater Hieronymus observed this impression, and hastened to add:
"Yes, my revered friend, thirty-five years' struggle for the welfare of the only saving Church has caused the roses in these cheeks to fade for ever. I have laboured and suffered in these evil times. Like you, great man, but with much lesser genius, I have dug in the vineyard, without any reward for my toil but the prospect of the holy martyr's crown in Paradise. You were very kind to me in my youth; now I will repay it so far as it lies in my power. I will restore you to freedom and life."
"Ah, reverend father," replied the old man, with a deep sigh, "I am not worthy of this; you, the son of the holy Church, extending your hand to me, a poor apostate? You do not know, then, that I have renounced our faith; that I, with my own hand and mouth, have embraced the accursed Lutheran religion, which I abhor in my heart; nay, even in my time persecuted your holy order with several godless libels."
"Why should I not know all this, my honoured friend; have not the great Messenius' work and deeds flown on the wings of fame throughout Germany? But what you have done, has been done as a blind, so as to work in secret for the highest good of our holy Roman Church. Do not the Scriptures teach us to meet craft with craft in these godless times? 'Ye shall be as wily as serpents.' The Holy Virgin will give you her absolution as soon as you have worked for her sake. Yes, esteemed man, even had you seven times abjured your faith, and seven times seventy sinned against all the saints and the dogmas of the Church, it shall all be accounted to you for reward, and not for condemnation, provided you have done it with a mental reservation, and with the design of thereby serving the good cause. Even if your tongue has lied, and your hand killed, it shall be deemed a pious and holy work, when it was for the purpose of bringing back the stray sheep. Courage, great man, I absolve you in the name of the Church."