Cornelia covered her face. "Alas, I believed all men as pure as myself!"
"You are right. If you had been less innocent, you would have paid more attention to appearances. Yet you now see yourself where it leads when a woman breaks down the barriers that protect her. If you had belonged to our church, and had a confessor whom you trusted, he would have called your attention betimes to the dangers that threatened you, and spared you many a bitter pang."
"Alas, many faithful friends warned me, but I would not listen: I had no thought for anything except this man. I was bound by a magic spell, which permitted me only to breathe with his breath, live in his life. I had forgotten G.o.d and the world for him; and therefore I am now punished."
"You recognize the hand of G.o.d, my child. Ah, yes! I know it rests heavily upon those he loves. You had suffered yourself to become absorbed too thoughtlessly in the pa.s.sions of earth, and therefore he tore you away to the purer sphere of self-sacrifice and sorrow. Many an earthly happiness can still bloom for you, but you will be purified and enjoy it with grateful consciousness. This is the blessing of your sorrow."
"Oh, how n.o.bly you speak! Go on," pleaded Cornelia, clasping her hands and kneeling like a little child beside the arm-chair which Severinus was seated.
"You have conquered, my daughter, and your heart bleeds from honorable wounds; yet do not imagine that the contest is ended with this one victory: it will not save you. In the languor into which the soul falls after great moral efforts, it is all the more defenseless against a fresh a.s.sault. You must leave here, must withdraw into solitude, where, as your days form the links of a continuous chain of self-sacrifice, you will obtain a quiet, una.s.suming victory over your pa.s.sions. In the stillness of a magnificent, lonely region, you will once more hear the gentle voices in which G.o.d speaks to mankind. Beneath shady trees, and beside cool brooks, the tumult of the blood will be allayed, the life and labors of millions of innocent creatures will employ your fancy, lead you back to simplicity and childlike faith, and with devout reverence you will receive the duty that takes up its abode in every purified soul."
"Yes, reverend sir, you are right: I need repentance and rest; and balm for all sorrows can be found only in beautiful nature. I must leave here; but where shall I go? I have traveled very little; know not whither to turn; and since my engagement to Ottmar have become so much estranged from all my friends that I could not now ask any one to accompany me; besides, I know of no one whom I would suffer to look into my heart. You are the only person whom a strange accident has made my confidant, you understand, and in these few moments have become so necessary to me that it would be very difficult for me to part with you. Help, counsel me."
"You still have a faithful maid?"
"Certainly."
"Well, then, promote her to be a "companion," and take me for your fatherly guide, if you believe I know how to judge and treat you in the present state of your soul."
"What! would you devote your precious time to me?"
"If you need me, yes."
"If I need you? Oh, reverend sir, how can I thank you, how can I reward you for a sympathy of which I am so unworthy?"
"To save your immortal soul, to reconcile you with G.o.d, is the only reward and grat.i.tude I ask. I am only doing my duty if I aid your erring spirit to find its home again."
"Oh, my friend, you arouse an emotion never felt before! I never knew my parents. Let me find in you that of which I have so long been deprived: a father on whose heart I can weep out my sorrows. Alas, I have never enjoyed this blessing I know not what it is when a child, overwhelmed with remorse, falls at its father"s feet, and the latter, kindly absolving it from its guilt, says, "Come, you are forgiven!" I have sinned deeply; yet if I had had my parents, everything would have been different. Father Severinus, can you enter into an orphan"s feelings? Ah, one who, clasped in the arms of his family, has never lacked love, cannot know what it is to grow up alone, without that warm affection, that blissful interchange of parental and filial love, and, with an overflowing heart, which in its ardor could contain a world, find only sober friendship and partial understanding! My dear Veronica was an angel! I owe her all the good qualities I possess: she reared me lovingly, and treated me like a mother; but she had not a mother"s affection, that rich, gushing tenderness which a warm, childish heart demands. I did not need an angel, but a n.o.ble, mature human being, and strict discipline. My powers soon carried me beyond her narrow intellectual sphere; she became more and more beneath me mentally, and indulged me wonderfully. I remained an obedient child, and loved her devotedly; but she could not give me what I required. An unfortunate youthful fancy pa.s.sed over me like a dream. My aspiring mind knew no bounds; my thirst for love vainly sought satisfaction, in society, in toiling for the poor and miserable. Then I met Heinrich, with his ardor, his winning charm; and all the affection a child has for its father and mother, all the pa.s.sion a woman can feel, I had for him. Now came the result of my education. Always habituated to do as I pleased, I despised the commands of custom, the warnings of friends. After being so long deprived of love, it burst over me like a flood: I gave myself up to it blindly. Perhaps I thereby forfeited my lover"s respect, and apparently justified him in inflicting upon me the humiliation from which I fled to your protection, sir." She sighed heavily. "Ah, thank G.o.d that I could pour out my heart to you! For the first time in my life I feel the happiness of confessing a fault with remorseful sorrow, divesting my soul of its pride, and placing myself in the hands of a merciful judge! Impose the punishment, and I will bear it; tell me the penance, and I will perform it; but then, then bend down to me and tell me as my father would have done, "Come; you are forgiven"!"
She laid her clasped hands upon the arm of the chair, and looked at Severinus imploringly. The latter sat absorbed in thought, gazing into her face.
"My dear child, you give me the right to punish and pardon; I can only make use of the latter privilege. Your intellectual development, as you have described it to me, excuses your relations with Ottmar, and your pathetic submission to this unprincipled man. I, too, was orphaned; I, too, have wandered through the world with a loving heart, and never found what I sought. To me also men have seemed cold and empty; they did not respond either to my ideas or feelings. But what drew you down raised me; the overmastering impulse led me to a purer sphere. In our church, Cornelia, reigns the man-born G.o.d. I could seize upon him, throw myself into his arms, and there find the love, the condescension, I needed. Our church alone is the bridge which unites the Deity with the earth. The symbols, Cornelia, are the steps by which the clumsy human mind, so long as it is fettered by temporal ideas, climbs upward to the supernatural. Even the most sinful man can reach G.o.d, if he makes the symbols his own. While your church requires a purified spiritual stand-point in order to give consolation and edification, ours bends down to the man imprisoned in sensuality and leads him upward, step by step, gradually removing him from his sinful condition." He paused and looked at Cornelia, then continued: "These blessings fell to my lot. My heart also bled when it tore itself away from all the human ties entwined about it; I, too, Cornelia, have struggled until I resisted the false allurements, and so spiritualized myself that the world became dead, and the kingdom of G.o.d a living thing to me."
"Oh," exclaimed Cornelia, "I shall never bring myself to that! The world dead! No longer love this beautiful earth, the master-piece of G.o.d! No, I cannot; it would be ungrateful to him who created it."
"I do not ask that, my child; I am not one of those bigoted priests who believe that men were made only to pray, that the pious and chaste alone are the elect, and the others the mere wretched laborers of creation, destined to propagate the race. Such a thought is far from me. Whomsoever. G.o.d destines to be his servant he calls; and let those whom he does not rejoice in the world for which they were born, and serve G.o.d by doing good in their own sphere. I will only warn you not to forget the Giver in the gifts; to remember the Dispenser while you enjoy his alms, is a duty you children of the world so easily neglect.
This I will teach you to fulfill, and show you that it does not detract from happiness, but hallows and strengthens it. If you had thought more of G.o.d when he gave you Ottmar"s love, you would have been more discreet, and perhaps matters would never have gone so far."
"Ah, that is terribly true!" sobbed Cornelia.
"Calm yourself, my child; I do not wish to burden your poor heart still more heavily. You were innocent, and Ottmar"s influence was injurious to you. No mortal has a right to decide whether you would have been able to avoid this; I least of all, for I know Ottmar"s personal power.
I, too, trusted him, and was betrayed, for he is no man"s friend, not even his own!"
"Unhappy man! Created in the image of G.o.d, so handsome, so n.o.ble, so capable of giving happiness, and yet a living lie, a deceitful phantom, which irresistibly allures us, and, as soon as we wish to hold it; melts into thin air. Do you understand, Severinus, that one may love him with all the strength of one"s life, and when parted from him be but a broken bough which can do nothing but wither?"
"I understand it, for no other was ever so dear to me. I hoped to make him an instrument for the advancement of the good cause, thought G.o.d had given me in him a being to whom the heart might still be permitted to pay the tribute of human feelings, aided with admiration in the development of his great talents, and nursed him with tender anxiety. I listened to his breathing while he slept, watched him like a brother, and saw with delight that his health gradually improved. When he came up to me with beaming eyes, and said, "My dear Severinus, how shall I thank you?" my heart swelled with proud delight, and I clasped him in my arms." He paused, covered his eyes with his hand, and continued, in a trembling voice: "And when I was compelled to lose him, such sorrow seized upon me that I struggled as if the foul fiend had possession of him and I must wrest Heinrich"s soul from his grasp. It was the punishment that befell me because my love did not still belong exclusively to Heaven, as it ought. I endeavored to disarm his malice against the order as much as possible; I had nurtured the serpent, so it was my duty to deprive it of its venom, and thus I was forced to pursue as an enemy one who had been the dearest person on earth to me.
Believe me, my daughter, your tears are not the only ones which have been shed for him."
Cornelia seized Severinus"s hand with deep emotion; he rose. "I will now leave you alone: you need rest. Compose yourself, and pray. I hope to find you ready to travel early to-morrow morning, and will consider tonight whither I will guide you."
As Severinus went out into the street he met a brother-priest, who was just coming from the Jesuit church.
"Father Severinus!" he said, in astonishment. "How did you come here?
what are you doing in Fraulein Erwing"s house?"
"I am gaining a soul for the church!" he answered, proudly, and pa.s.sed on.
XX.
THITHER.
The minister of foreign affairs sat in his office alone. Stray, feeble rays from the winter sun fell through the window and gleamed upon a heap of doc.u.ments and papers with huge seals; but the minister"s eyes did not rest upon them, they were fixed absently on vacancy. From time to time he dipped his pen in the ink, only to let it fall again unused, upon a diplomatic dispatch which had just been commenced. At last he started up and went to the door. His figure was not so elegant, nor his bearing so haughty, as in former days: his hair and beard were neglected, his eyes and cheeks sunken. Was it work or sorrow that had thus shaken this n.o.ble frame? He seemed aged, even ill. Anton brought in some letters, which he hastily seized, then threw them all but one upon the table.
"G.o.d grant it may be some good news!" said Anton, casting a troubled glance at his master"s haggard features as he left the room.
"G.o.d grant it!" repeated _Heinrich_; and his breath came quickly and anxiously as he read:
"Your Excellency,--In reply to your highly esteemed favor of the 15th, I have the honor to say that I must positively reject the denunciation it contains against our reverend brother in Christ, Father Severinus: namely, that without my knowledge he had secretly fled with a young and beautiful lady, and kept her concealed for several months against her will. Father Severinus is a pattern to the whole order for humble obedience and the strictest devotion to all. No false appearances can render his blameless and immovable purity suspicions in our eyes. His relation to that lady is one well pleasing to G.o.d and the order, and his course has my entire approval. This I must permit myself to say in correction of your Excellency"s erroneous suspicion.
"I have no right to inform your Excellency of the residence of Father Severinus and the lady in question until your Excellency has given us the most satisfactory proofs of your right to the possession of the young lady"s person.
"With all due respect to your Excellency, etc.,
"Father R----
"_General of the Holy Congregation of the Fathers of Jesus_.
"Rome, -- 20, 18--."
_Heinrich_ sank upon the sofa with the paper in his hand. "This failed too! All, all in vain!" he murmured, crushing the letter convulsively in his clinched fingers. "What is to be done now? Shall I give notice to the emba.s.sies of every country? Shall I add to this consuming anguish the disgrace that I am pursuing an adventuress, who is rambling about with a Jesuit? Cornelia! Cornelia! Have these pious fathers or have you obtained so much mastery over yourself that you can inflict this upon me? It is not possible that they have subdued your free will. You are not one of these natures which allow themselves to be ruled. You have done the most difficult, the most unprecedented thing,--conquered me and yourself in a moment when pa.s.sion was most aroused. You would not suffer the arts of these men to obtain dominion over you! n.o.ble, wonderful woman! By what cords do you hold me that I will go to utter ruin rather than forget you?"
He rested his head wearily upon his hand. His whole life pa.s.sed before him. He thought of all the unhappy creatures who had clung to him with the same ardor he now felt for Cornelia, and been repulsed as he was now by her. Again Ottilie"s image rose before him. The sorrow gnawing at his heart made him for the first time understand the tortures she so silently, so patiently, bore for him, and for the first time he experienced the true human sympathy he had never felt while grief was unknown to him. "Poor Ottilie! We are now companions in suffering!"
A low knocking roused him from his gloomy thoughts. It was his private secretary, to ask whether Ottmar had prepared the dispatch for the court of R----. "Oh! good heavens, no!" he exclaimed, in great impatience, and sat down to finish it. Thrice he began, erased the words, and then flung the pen aside with a sigh of the bitterest despondency. "I am not in the mood," he said, at last. "My head aches too violently. I cannot give myself up to work now."
"Allow me to remind your Excellency that you will be expected at the council of ministers at twelve o"clock," said the young man, timidly.
"You are right: thanks! Remind me of it again at eleven."
With the most painful effort of self-control he applied himself to the preparation of the doc.u.ment, and then hurried away to dress.
"Your Excellency ought to get a long leave of absence," said Anton, as he a.s.sisted him to make his toilet. "You cannot live on so."