"You are sincere, Medardus," said the Prior; "your silence on this point
is to me better than the most fervid eloquence. I felt the most perfect
conviction that it was you only who had in the _residenz_ played the
part of a Polish nobleman, and wished to marry the Baroness Aurelia.
Moreover, I had traced out pretty accurately your route. A strange man,
by name Schoenfeld, or Belcampo, who called himself a professor and an
artist, called here, and gave me the wished-for intelligence. At one
period I was indeed quite convinced that you had been the murderer of
Hermogen and Euphemia, on which account I entertained, if possible, the
more horror at your plan of seizing and involving Aurelia in your own
destruction.
"I might indeed have arrested you, and perhaps it was my duty to have
done so; but, far from considering myself as a minister of vengeance, I
resigned you and your earthly conduct to the eternal decrees and
guidance of Providence. That you were, in a manner, little less than
miraculously preserved and carried through so many dangers, proved to
me, that your destruction, so far as this life is concerned, was not yet
resolved.
"But now, it is most important for you to hear the circumstances by
which I was afterwards led, and indeed forced to believe, that Count
Victorin had actually appeared as the Capuchin, in the Thuringian
mountains, at the castle of Baron von F----.
"Some time ago, Brother Sebastian, our porter, was awoke from his sleep
by an extraordinary noise of sobbing and groaning at the gate, which
sounded like the voice of a man in the last agony.
"The day had just dawned, and he immediately rose. On opening the
outward gate, he found a man lying on the steps, half petrified with
cold, and miserably exhausted. With great effort the stranger brought
out the words, that he was Medardus, a monk who had fled from our
monastery.
"Sebastian was much alarmed, and immediately came to me with accounts of
what had happened below. I summoned the brethren around me, and went to
inquire into the matter. The stranger seemed to have fainted, whereupon
we lifted him up, and brought him into the refectorium. In spite of the
horribly disfigured countenance of the man, we still thought that we
could recognize your features. Indeed, several were of opinion that it
was the change of dress, more than any other circumstance, which made a
difference. The stranger had a long beard, like a monk, and wore a
lay-habit, now much torn and destroyed, but which had at first been very
handsome. He had silk stockings, a gold buckle still on one of his
shoes, a white satin waistcoat----"
"A chesnut-coloured coat," interrupted I, "of the finest cloth; richly
embroidered linen, and a plain gold ring upon his finger."
"Precisely so," said Leonardus; "but, in God's name, how could you know
these particulars?"
Alas! it was the identical dress which I had worn on that fatal day of
my marriage in the _residenz_. My horrible double again stood vividly
before mine eyes. It was no longer the mere phantom of my own disturbed
brain that had seemed to follow me through the woods, but the real and
substantial madman, or demon, by whom my strength had been overpowered,
and who had at last robbed me of my clothes, in order to represent me in
this manner at the convent. I begged of Leonardus, that, before asking
any other questions, he would proceed with his narrative, from which,
perhaps, a perfect explanation of the mysteries in which I had been
involved would at last dawn upon me.
"After a trial of several days," said Leonardus, "we began to perceive
that the man was utterly and incurably mad; and, notwithstanding that
his features resembled yours very closely, and he incessantly cried out,
'I am Medardus, and have come home to do penance among you,' we all
concluded that this was but an obstinately fixed delusion of the maniac.
"To this change of opinion we were led by divers proofs. For example, we
brought him into the church; where, as he endeavoured to imitate us in
the usual devotional exercises, we perceived plainly that he had never
before been in a convent. The question then always gained more and more
influence over my mind--'What if this madman, who has, according to his
own account, fled from the _residenz_ of Rosenthurm, and escaped the
punishment of the scaffold, were actually the Count Victorin?'
"The story which the maniac had before told to the forester was already
known to me, but I was almost of opinion with the judge at Rosenthurm,
that the discovery and drinking out of the Devil's Elixir, his residence
in a convent, where he was condemned to prison, and all the rest, might
be mere visions, the off-spring of his own malady, aided perhaps by some
extraordinary magnetic influence of your mind over his--I was the more
inclined to this notion, because the stranger had, in his paroxysms,
often exclaimed that he was a Count, and a ruling sovereign. On the
whole, I resolved, as he could have no claim on our care, to give him up
to the hospital of St Getreu, where it was not impossible that the skill
and tenderness with which he would be treated, might at last effect his
recovery, after which his rational confessions might clear away that
load of uncertainty under which we laboured.
"This resolution I had not time to put in practice. During the following
night I was awoke by the great bell, which you know is rung whenever
any one is taken dangerously ill and requires my assistance. On inquiry,
I was informed that the stranger had asked for me so calmly and
earnestly, that it was probable his madness had left him, and that he
wished to confess. But, however this might be, his bodily weakness had
so much increased, that it was scarcely possible for him to survive
through the night.
"'Forgive me, venerable father,' said the stranger, after I had
addressed to him a few words of pious admonition--'forgive me, that I
have hitherto attempted to deceive you--I am not Medardus, the monk who
fled from your convent, but the Count Victorin. _Prince_, indeed, I
should be called, since I derive my birth from princes. This I advise
you to notice, with due respect, otherwise my anger may yet overtake
you!'
"'Even if you are a ruling prince,' said I, 'that circumstance, within
our walls, and in your present condition, is not of any importance
whatever; and it would, in my opinion, be much more suitable, and more
for your own advantage, if you would now turn your thoughts altogether
from such vain and terrestrial considerations.'
"At these words he stared on me, and his senses seemed wandering; but
some strengthening drops having been administered, he revived, and began
again to speak, though, to my great disappointment, in a style so wild
and delirious, that his discourse scarce admits of repetition.
"'It seems to me,' said he, 'as if I must soon die, and that before
leaving this world I must lighten my heart by confession. I know,
moreover, that you have power over me; for, however you attempt to
disguise yourself, I perceive very well that you are St Anthony, and you
best know what misfortunes your infernal Elixirs have produced in this
world. I had indeed grand designs in view when I first resolved to
become a monk with a long beard, a shaven head, and a brown tunic tied
with hair ropes. But, after long deliberation, it seemed to me as if my
most secret thoughts played false with him to whom they owed their
birth--as if they departed from me, and dressed themselves up in a
cursed masquerade, representing MYSELF. I recognized the likeness--the
identity--it was my _double_, and I was horrified.
"'This _double_, too, had superhuman strength, and hurled me down from
the black rocks, through the trees and bushes, into the abyss, where a
snow-white radiant princess rose out of the foaming water to receive me.
She took me in her arms and bathed my wounds, so that I no longer felt
any pain. I had now indeed become a monk, but that infernal second-self
proved stronger than I was, and drove me on in the paths of wickedness,
till I was forced to murder the princess that had rescued me, along with
her only brother. I was then thrown into prison; but you yourself, St
Anthony, know better than I, in what manner, after I had drunk up your
cursed Elixir, you brought me out, and carried me away through the air.
"'The green forest king received me badly enough, although he knew very
well that I was a prince, and therefore of equal rank; but my
second-self interfered betwixt us, telling the king all sorts of
calumnies against me, and insisted, that because we had committed these
damnable crimes together, we must continue inseparable, and enjoy all
things in partnership.
"'This happened accordingly, but when the king wanted to cut off our
heads, we ran away, and on the road at last quarrelled and separated. I
saw that this parasitical _double_ had resolved on being perpetually
nourished by my powerful spirit, though I had then not food enough for
myself; and I therefore knocked him down, beat him soundly, and took
from him his coat.'
"So far the ravings of the man had some resemblance, however distant and
shadowy, to the truth; but afterwards he lost himself in the sheer
absurdities of his malady, out of which not a word could be understood.
About an hour afterwards, as the first bell was rung for early prayers,
he started up with a hideous cry, then fell back on his couch, and, as
we all believed, instantly expired.
"Accordingly, I made the body be removed into the dead-room, and gave
orders, that, after the usual interval, he should be buried, not in the
convent vaults, but in a spot of consecrated ground in our garden. But
you may well imagine our utter astonishment, when, on returning to the
dead-room, we found that the supposed lifeless body was no longer to be
seen! All inquiries after him were in vain, and I was obliged to despair
of gaining any farther information as to the strange involvements that
subsisted betwixt you and this man.
"No doubt, however, remained on my mind that he was Count Victorin.
According to the story of the chasseur, he had murdered a Capuchin monk
in the forest, and put on his tunic in order to carry on some intrigue
in the castle. The crimes which he had thus begun, ended perhaps in a
way that he did not expect--with the murder of the Baroness and of the
young Baron Hermogen. Perhaps he was then mad, as Reinhold maintained,
or became so upon his flight, being tormented by a reproving conscience.
The dress which he wore, and the murder of the Capuchin, gave rise in
his mind to the fixed delusion that he was a monk, and that his
individuality was split into two hostile and contending powers.
"Only the period betwixt his flight from the Baron's castle and that of
his arrival at the forester's house remains obscure. We know not how he
could have lived all that time; nor is it conceivable how the story of
his living in a convent, and being rescued from prison, had originated.
Again, the time of his appearing to the forester will by no means answer
with the date which Reinhold fixes for Victorin's departure from the
Thuringian mountains."
"Stop, stop, father," said I; "every hope of obtaining, notwithstanding
the fearful load of my crimes, forgiveness through the mercy and
long-suffering of Heaven, must perish in my soul, if I do not, with the
deepest repentance and self-condemnation, relate to you all the
circumstances of my life, as I have before narrated them in holy
confession!"
When I now went through this detail, the Prior's astonishment increased
beyond all bounds. At last he said, "I must believe all that you have
told, Medardus, if it were for no other reason than that, while you
spoke, I perceived in your tone and looks the most unequivocal proofs of
sincere and heartfelt repentance. Who can explain, but, at the same
time, who can deny or disprove, the extraordinary mental sympathy and
connection that has thus subsisted between two brothers, sons of a
wretched sinner, and themselves both acted on and misled by the powers
of darkness?[6]
[Footnote 6: According to the devil's assertion, if two individuals
should drink out of the same flask, they would henceforth possess a
wonderful reciprocity of thoughts and feelings, though mutually and
unconsciously acting for the destruction of each other. See Vol. I. pp.
46, 68.--EDIT.]
"It is now certain that Victorin had rescued himself from the rocky
abyss into which you had thrown him, (his fall probably having been
broken by the water,) that he was the delirious monk whom the forester
protected, who persecuted you as your _double_, and who died, or seemed
to die, in our convent. He was an agent of our Arch-Enemy, placed in
your way for the express purpose of misleading you from the path of
virtue, or veiling from your sight that light of truth which otherwise
might have dawned upon you. Or shall we look upon him not as Victorin,
but as an incarnate demon, who, for his own hellish purposes, had
availed himself of your unhappy brother's bodily frame?
"Alas! it is too true that the devil yet wanders restless and watchful
through the earth, offering, as of yore, to unwary mortals, his
deceitful Elixirs! Who is there that has not, at one period or another,
found some of these deadly drinks agreeable and seductive to his taste?
But such is the will of Heaven. Man must be subjected to temptations;
and then, by the reproaches of his own conscience, being made aware of
the dangers into which a moment of levity and relaxation has betrayed
him, summon up strength and resolution to avoid such errors for the
future. Thus, as the natural life of man is sometimes prolonged by
poison, so the soul indirectly owes its final weal to the dark and
destructive principle of evil.--Go now, Medardus, and join the
brethren."
I was about to retire, but the Prior called me back.--"You have no doubt
observed," said he, "the preparations for a great festival. The Baroness
Aurelia is to-morrow to take the veil, and receives the conventual name
of Rosalia!"