AVAUNT, EVIL SPIRIT.
About a week had passed since the private conversation to which we last
listened. The Jesuit during this time had not left the prisoner to
himself. He was seen to enter Messenius' room every day, under the
pretext of medical attendance, and spent some hours with him. He was
too acute to rely upon the prisoner's promise. No one in the castle
knew what they did together, and the Governor was unsuspicious. The
remote situation of Kajajneborg, far from the rest of the world, had
lulled Wernstedt into security; he rather found pleasure in the society
of the learned and experienced foreign doctor.
There was one, however, who with a constant and vigilant eye followed
every motion of the stranger, and this was Lucia Grothusen, Messenius'
wife. A Catholic by education and conviction, she had always
strengthened her husband in his faith; the Jesuit well knew this, and
therefore felt sure of her co-operation, although he carefully avoided
confiding his plans to the mercy of female gossip. But the most artful
plans are often frustrated by those hidden springs and motives in the
human heart, especially in a woman's heart, which work in quite a
different direction from that of cold reason. The Jesuit, in spite of
his astuteness, was mistaken in our Lucia. He did not know that when
the fanaticism in her mind shouted, push on! love cried still louder in
her heart, hold back! and love in women always gets the upper hand.
Lucia was a very penetrating person; she had looked through the Jesuit
before he knew it. She saw the ruinous inward strife which raged in
Messenius; a struggle for life and death between fanaticism on the one
hand, which bade him sacrifice fame and posterity for the victory of
the Church, and ambition on the other, which continually pleaded to him
not to sacrifice with his own hand his whole life's work? "Will you,"
it said, "blindly desecrate the sanctuary of history? Will you expose
to contempt the brilliant name, which in the night of captivity still
constitutes your wealth and pride?"
Lucia saw all this with the discernment of love; she saw that the man
for whom she lived an entire life of self-denial and restraint, would
sink under this terrible internal battle, and she resolved to save him
with a bold and decisive stroke.
Late one evening the lamp still burned on Messenius' writing-table,
where he and the Jesuit had been working together ever since the
morning. Lucia had received permission to retire to her bed, which
stood at the other end of the room near the door, and pretended to be
asleep. The two men had finished their work, and were conversing
together with low voices, in Latin, which Lucia well understood.
"I am satisfied with you, my friend," said the Jesuit approvingly.
"These documents, which bear the stamp of truth, will be sufficient to
prove the conversion of King Gustaf Vasa and King Carl, and this
preface, signed by you, will further confirm their veracity. I will
now return to Germany through Sweden, and have these prayers printed,
through our adherents in Stockholm, or if that is impossible, in Lübeck
or Leyden."
Messenius involuntarily stretched out his hand, as if to snatch back a
precious treasure from a robber's hands.
"Holy father," he exclaimed with visible consternation, "is there no
reprieve? My name ... my reputation ... have mercy upon me, holy
father, and give me back my name!"
The Jesuit smiled.
"Do I not give you a name," he said, "far greater and more abiding than
the one you lose--a name in the chronicles of our holy order; a name
among the martyrs and benefactors of the Church; a name which may one
day be counted amongst the saints?"
"But, in spite of all this, a name without honour, a liar's, a forger's
name!" burst out Messenius, with the despair of a condemned man, who is
shown the glory of Heaven obscured by the scaffold.
"Weak, vain man, you do not know that great aims are never won by the
fear or praise of humanity!" said the Jesuit in a contemptuous tone.
"You might have taken back your word and forfeited your claims to the
gratitude of all Christendom. But happily it is now impossible. These
documents"--and he extended his hand triumphantly with the papers--"are
now in a hand which will know how to keep them, and, against your will,
use them for the glory of the Church, the victory of the faith, and
your soul's eternal welfare."
Father Hieronymus had hardly uttered these words when a hand behind him
swiftly and suddenly seized the papers, which he had so elatedly waved,
crumpled them together, tore them in a hundred pieces, and strewed the
bits over the floor. This move was so unlooked for, and the Jesuit was
so far from divining anything of the kind, that he lost his usual
presence of mind for a moment, and thus gave the daring hand time to
complete its work of destruction. When the fragments lying around
convinced him of the reality of his loss, he bit his lips with rage,
raised his arms aloft, and with the ferocity of a wild beast, fell upon
the presumptuous being who had dared to extinguish his plans at the
very moment of consummation.
Lucia--for she owned the intruding hand--met the monk's outbreak of
fury with the great courage which distinguishes a woman when she
struggles for the holiest she possesses. In her youth she had been one
of those who could take a man by the collar; and this more than womanly
strength of arm had gained practice during her constant squabbles with
the rude soldiers of the castle. She hastily clasped her sinewy
fingers around the monk's outstretched arms, and held them fast as in a
vice.
"Well," she said in a mocking tone, "three paces from death, sir; what
do you wish?"
"Mad woman!" screamed the Jesuit, foaming with rage, "you do not know
what you have done! Miserable thief, you have stolen a kingdom from
your Church, and Paradise from your husband."
"And from you I have stolen your booty; his secure prey from the wolf;
is it not so?" replied Lucia, whose voice began to glow with the fire
of her hasty temper. "Monk," she added, violently shaking the eminent
Jesuit, who in vain tried to escape, "I know a vile thief, who, in the
sheep's clothing of the Church, comes to steal the fame of a great man;
also the history of a nation; and from a poor, forsaken woman, her sole
pride; her husband's peace, honour, and life. Tell me, holy and pious
monk, what punishment such a thief deserves? Would not Ämmä fall be
shallow enough for his body, and the eternal fires cool enough for his
soul?"
The Jesuit looked out of the window with a hasty movement towards the
mighty torrent which descended with a terrible roar in the winter's
night.
"Ha!" exclaimed Lucia with a bitter smile, "you fear me, you, the
powerful one, who rules kingdoms and consciences. You fear lest I
conceal a man's arm under my grey frock, which could hurl you into the
cataract's abyss. Be reassured. I am only a woman, and fight with a
woman's arms. You see ... I do not throw you out of the window ... I
will be content with chaining up the wild beast. Tremble, monk, I know
you! Lucia Grothusen has followed your steps; you are betrayed, and
she has done this."
"Betrayed!" echoed the Jesuit; he well realised what this statement
meant. At a time so full of hate, when two great religions fought for
worldly and spiritual supremacy, when the plots of the Jesuits
irritated the Swedes to the highest extent, a member of this order,
discovered in disguise, in the kingdom, was lost beyond redemption.
But the dire peril restored the equilibrium of this powerful character.
"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."
"If it could be done without injury to the truth," exclaimed Lucia,
whose ardent spirit was more and more elevated by the future, which the
Jesuit so skilfully placed before her in perspective.
"The truth!" repeated the Jesuit persuasively. "Oh, my friend, truth
is our faith, falseness is the heretic's faith. If you are convinced
that I ask only the truth itself from your husband, will you assist
instead of trying to destroy your Church?"
"Yes, I will!" answered Lucia warmly and earnestly.
"Then listen..." added the Jesuit, but was just then interrupted by
Messenius, who, hitherto stunned and crestfallen, now seemed to awaken
from a horrible dream.
"_Abi, male spiritus!_" he frantically exclaimed, as if he feared that
the Jesuit's serpent tongue would once more triumph. "_Abi, Abi!_ you
are not a human being, you are the prince of lies himself, you are the
tempter in Paradise! Get ye gone, ye foul spirit, to the eternal fire,
your abiding place, to the kingdom of lies, your realm!" he said in
Latin. And with this he pushed the Jesuit towards the door, without
Lucia's making the least attempt to prevent it.
"_Insanit miser!_" ("the miserable raver") muttered the Jesuit as he
disappeared.
"Thanks, my dear!" said Lucia, with a lightened heart, as if freed from
a dangerous spell.
"Thanks, Lucia!" replied Messenius, with a milder manner than he had
for a long time assumed towards his wife.