"My daughter, betrayed by you," he said once more, as his arms relaxed, and his features assumed an expression of doubt and mild grief. "That is impossible."
Lucia regarded him with hate and suspicion.
"I your daughter!" she exclaimed, as she pushed the monk from her with repulsion. "Falsehood is your daughter, and deceit your mother. These are thy relatives."
"Lucia Grothusen," said the Jesuit with much suavity, "when you were a child, and followed your father, Arnold Grothusen, who was expelled with King Sigismund, you came one day as an exile in need, and surrounded by enemies, to a peasant's hut. They refused you a refuge, and threatened to deliver you up. Then your youthful eyes discovered an image of the Virgin in a corner of the hut, a relic from former times, and now profaned as a plaything for children. You took the image and kissed it; you held it up before the harsh inmates of the hut, and said to them, 'See, the Virgin Mary is here, she will succour us!'"
"Well, what then?" said Lucia reluctantly in a softer voice.
"Your childish trust ... no, what do I say? The Holy Virgin moved the stern peasants, they gave you shelter, and placed you all in security. Still more, they gave you the image, which you have carefully preserved as your guardian angel, and there it hangs on your wall. What you formerly said, you still say: 'The Virgin Mary is here, she will protect me!'"
Lucia tried in vain to struggle against her emotions. She bit her lip and made no reply.
"You are right," continued the astute monk. "I am a Catholic like you; persecuted like you; if they penetrated my disguise they would kill me. My life is in your hands; denounce me; I flee not; I die for my faith, and I forgive you my death."
"Fly from here," said Lucia, half vanquished; "I give you till to-morrow, but only on condition that you do not see my husband again."
"Well, then," said the Jesuit sadly, "I fly and leave behind my beautiful dream of a glorious future. Ah, I had imagined that the great Messenius and his noble wife would reinstate the Catholic Church in the North; I saw the time when millions of people would say: we were in darkness and blindness, until the historical light of the great Messenius revealed to us the falseness of the Reformation."