"G.o.d be praised," said Bachmann, "this time they set hard to work." At the same moment the five professors appeared at the door; the Rector Magnificus first with an air of importance suitable to his office, the Jurists with a somewhat mocking look of malicious joy, the Theologians with long faces and unusually green complexions. "The theological faculty always precedes," said the Rector with sarcastic politeness.

The two men of G.o.d pa.s.sed down the stairs before him without any acknowledgement. "Is the discussion at an end?" asked Bachmann modestly of the Rector. "At an end like my departed cousin," replied the jovial gentleman.

"And Herr Erastus," inquired the servant.

"Is once more, privy Counsellor, court physician, Church Counsellor."

"The great G.o.d in Heaven be praised," cried Bachmann. "These Italians were becoming unbearable. And the church discipline?" he added inquisitively.

"Aha, you are thinking of your cards and beer at the Hirsch. Well, the best of that bad joke is, that Herr Olevia.n.u.s was obliged to mix much water with his wine. But still I would not advise you to rattle the dice in the Prince's antechamber."

Whilst the gentlemen were thus joking with the servant, the Prince stood within with both his hands laid on Erastus' shoulders, saying to him in a kindly voice: "Can you forgive me, Erastus, for having treated you so badly?"

"Your Gracious Highness only fulfilled his duties as father of his dominions," replied Erastus modestly. "I have nothing to forgive."

"Be a.s.sured that only within the last few days have I thoroughly learned what a treasure I possessed in you. These religious men are all false. However cast down they might seem to appear at your disgrace, nevertheless a silent triumph shone through their ill-painted mask of sorrow. It is not to them, but only to the poor Italian crippled by the rack that we owe the solution of the game."

"To him," said Erastus astonished, "I always considered him to be the traitor."

"He may have been so at first; but immediately on his first trial, he told Pigavetta to his face, that he had compelled him as his Jesuit superior to write that letter to Neuser which was laid among your papers, and offered to immediately write such another which would resemble your handwriting just as well. The proof was not thoroughly convincing because the poor man's arm was swollen through his sufferings and his hand trembled. Then it came to pa.s.s that they tortured him to the fourth degree, to extract a confession from him, that you had tried to talk him over to Arianism. He was also called upon to acknowledge that he attended with your daughter the witches'

sabbath on the Holtermann, and executed his miracles and cures at Schonau by means of the black art. G.o.d knows, who instructed the old witch, but she said exactly what your enemies desired. She had seen at the last witches' sabbath on the Staffelstein near Bamberg a large black he-goat with fiery eyes, which came flying through the air from Heidelberg. A long broom stuck out of the animal's body behind, on which all the opponents of the Church discipline were seated, Probus and his wife, you and your fair child, Xylander and his maid and Pithopous with his five lean daughters. Moreover she pretended to have seen you on the Holtermann, near the Three Oaks, the hollow Chestnut, the Linsenteich, and wherever the fiends besport themselves, where you drank in the sensuous love of the Devil, and where you last Saint John's day were baptized with blood, sulphur and salt, and after the baptism the devil a.s.sumed the shape of a goat, on whom you all had to jump in turn with out-stretched legs."

"And those gentlemen could believe all that nonsense!" replied Erastus with a sad bend of his head.

"They believed it so firmly that nothing but the martyr-courage of the young Jesuit could save you. A veritable hero! The protocol of which I will however spare you the perusal seems to be describing the sufferings of some martyr. I am an old man, but I wept like a child, when I read here, what the poor man endured. Though they poured aquavitae on his back, which they then lit, and wrenched his limbs out of their sockets, he maintained his account that the old witch had recanted to him all that she had stated before her death. She had only accused you all to please the members of the Commission. He moreover stated that the executioner entered the room in the middle of the night and twisted the head of the old woman quite round, so as to be able to say that the Devil killed her. He however had recognized Master Ulrich and distinctly heard the wrenching of the bones. The Theologians were so check-mated that they wished to torture him still more, but finally the order of trial occurred to the Jurists and they declared that he should not be tortured any further till new evidence should be brought against him, I then heard for the first time how the matter stood. I naturally at once deprived Hartmann of his office and ordered Pigavetta's arrest. The officers caught the Italian in his room as he was packing up. He must have remarked that there was an end to his latin. But they foolishly permitted him to change his clothes in a neighboring room. He very naturally did not return, and in his room they discovered a shaft with a pulley, which let him down in a moment to the lowest flight nearest to the front door. He is said to have played all sorts of pranks by means of this pulley, moreover the officers found other secret apparatus and magic books. If he be caught let him look out for the stake. He will not have tortured Laurenzano to pieces in vain if I can only lay my hand on him."

"The poor young man," sighed Erastus.

"There is something I wished to beg of you. The young Lazarus still lies in the Tower, as the physician of the hospital whom I sent to him, declared, that he must not be moved. You are master of your art. My conscience would be much relieved if you could only manage to cobble him up again. I will look after his future welfare."

Erastus consented. He then begged that his daughter might be allowed to return to her home.

"That is a matter of course," answered the Kurfurst. "She is acquitted and need fear no further prosecution. The Theologians said something indeed about doing penance for going to the Holtermann at night, but the others maintained that if Lydia had thrown herself into the breach to save her father, she deserved praise from the pulpit, if however the young Parson had turned her head for one day, she had been more than sufficiently punished by the fright she had experienced."

"I should feel however much better satisfied," replied Erastus, "if Your Highness would distinctly tell the judges, that Lydia was no longer to be watched as a suspect, which generally happens after such an unfortunate charge."

"That I will," said the Kurfurst. "Your child shall be as free as the roe in the wood."

"I thank Your Grace. Now I may thoroughly rejoice in my freedom."

Soon after this father and daughter came out hand in hand from under the darksome portal of the Great Tower, and crossed the sunny court of the new building. Klytia saw with pride what Felix had done here, and when she found that her room had been aired and adorned with fresh flowers, she asked herself, why her thoughts remained so fixed on the prison of the priest, who after all had brought his fate upon himself, while tokens of Felix's love accompanied her wherever she went, even through the walls of the Great Tower. Had he not even risked his life in an attempt to set her free, as Frau Belier had once whispered to her? Nevertheless the look she gave the flowers was cold and inanimate, whilst she asked: "Where will you take him to?"

"Ah, the Magister meanest thou? I think Belier will not refuse to play the Samaritan's part. The patient can easily endure the short journey, and he will find no better care than there anywhere."

"Well, then I will run round to Frau Belier and prepare everything."

She was already down the stairs, and with a shake of his head the physician made ready to visit the sick man, who according to the Prince's account had been both his traitor and saviour. The poor man had been terribly punished, but Erastus could not yet pardon him for the danger into which he had brought Lydia.

CHAPTER XIV.

Paul Laurenzano was brought to the house on the marketplace in order to recover under the tender care of Erastus and Frau Belier from his severe wounds. "The burns," said the physician to Herr Belier, after that the patient had been put to bed in a room high above all noise from the street, "are bad but not mortal. When two thirds of the skin as in this case are uninjured the patient usually recovers. The joints are wrenched but not torn. He is young and will survive, still he must be a burden on you for some time, if he is not to suffer from the consequences for the rest of his life."

"No Huguenot ever considers one unjustly persecuted as a burden," said the Frenchman. "We know from experience what our duty requires."

Frau Belier cast the first kindly look at Felix since the melancholy death of her parrot and said: "We shall soon have the poor young man up on his legs again."

"I shall have time to aid you, n.o.ble lady," replied the young Maestro, "I have been turned away from my work in the Castle."

"What! How ungrateful," cried Frau Belier and the others in one breath.

"The Kurfurst must have been told to whom the reverend Parson Neuser owed through a lucky _qui pro quo_ his escape. He paid me off and ordered me at the same time to give up the plans of the Castle, I also received a hint that in consequence of suspicious proceedings in connection with Neuser's flight all foreigners had to leave the castle."

"I cannot blame the n.o.ble gentleman," said Erastus. "He is naturally of a mild disposition; spring cannot be milder. He would only have punished Vehe and Suter by banishment, and he would have even forgiven Neuser; it is quite proper that he should not permit any interference in his affairs. It may be presumed that our friend would have had to pay dearer for his gymnastics, were it not that the kind-hearted man is weary of punishing, so that the daring brother escapes through Paul's sufferings."

"It is the same with him as with me," replied Felix with a smiling side glance at the plump hostess. "Had I not slaked my Neapolitan thirst for blood on the parrot, neither this Hartmanni, nor Master Ulrich, nor Pigavetta would have lived longer."

"Private justice is not necessary in this country, my dear friend,"

said Erastus. "Pigavetta will be prosecuted by law. The Magistrate is _ab officio_ suspended, and punishment will be meted out to the other wretches for their misdeeds."

"Would that Paul could only get the use of his limbs again by this means," said Felix sighing.

"Remain with us, Master Laurenzano," said Belier, "and watch over your brother. You can have a room near the beloved patient, and there work at the plans of my new house. That is a quiet, serious occupation which cannot disturb the sick man, and on the other hand the stillness of the sick-room will be agreeable to your Muse. Design there the facade, and therein strive to emulate that of the building of the deceased Count Palatine, that is naturally, in so far as the house of a private citizen can vie with that of a prince."

"Take now the hand of reconciliation," said Frau Belier. "There shall no longer be any blood between us, I forgive you the death of the poor parrot."

The architect seized the hand with a look of comical contrition. "I cannot order ma.s.ses to be read for the rest of the soul of one nipped in the flower of his youth," he said, "but I will immortalise him on the facade, and erect a monument to him in spite of many Counts."

While they were all thus joking together and forming plans for the future, Klytia slipped quietly away. This merriment after the dreadful visitations of the previous days grieved the kind-hearted child, and she went upstairs to sit with the nurse, so as to be able to listen to Paul's heavy breathing and feverish fantasies, in the room next to his.

His eyes gleamed like those of a prophet, his cheeks were tinged with a feverish glow and an unearthly beauty had come over his idealised features. His lips moved unceasingly, and it seemed as if the fever had caused the long suppressed desire for companionship of this reserved man to burst all sluices. Earliest impressions of youth were by this revolution of his mental and physical life once more called to life. He spoke oftenest with his mother calling her by pet names. "I shall certainly never lie again," he said in the convinced tone of a small child, calling tears to Lydia's eyes. Klytia herself was ever prominent in his fantasies as a sister. "I really did not intend to do Lydia any harm, Mother," he said. "I only wished to kiss her. Is that wrong?" and so saying he tossed about. "If I were only not obliged to return to that horrid school. But I will pretend to be as stupid as Bernardo the hunch-back, then they will certainly expel me and say they do not require me any longer." After a while he would cry out: "But mother says I ought never to pretend." The terrors of the last days curiously enough seemed to have made hardly any impression on his mind. He only once said: "It is very well, that they beat me in this manner, now it is all over and no one can again reproach me for anything." In general all his worst impressions were connected with the school at Venice.

Pigavetta was a wicked teacher, Ulrich the executioner was the "brother corrector," the Church counsellors represented the collegium of professors, the remembrance of the present seemed on the other hand to be entirely wiped away from his memory. But once only, as Felix sat at his bed-side, did it seem to recur to him. With an expression of the most intense moral fear he called out: "Save the parsons." Felix then stooped over him and whispered in his ear: "I have freed Neuser, and the others have been pardoned." "Oh!" sighed the sick man as if relieved of a heavy burden and casting a piteously grateful look at his brother. From that time his restlessness seemed to lessen gradually.

His strained expression disappeared. It was replaced by excessive weakness. So soon as he awoke his nurse brought him some nourishment, his wounds were dressed afresh, after which he immediately sank into his somnolent state.

Felix had arranged his atelier near to Paul's bedroom and worked quietly and diligently at his plans for Belier's new house. Klytia took her place as nurse in the room between them so often as her duties towards her father allowed her, and Frau Belier repeatedly put the searching question to her towards which of the two rooms did her heart most incline. Paul's presence had in fact the same influence on Klytia's tender heart as formerly, without however detracting from her feelings of grat.i.tude and tender friendship towards Felix. In nursing Paul she often met Felix and they neither seemed ever to consider the question as to what should take place after Paul's recovery. Felix however felt more and more distinctly that he loved the maiden in reality only from an artistic point of view. His fiery nature required a counterfoil, which would oppose a greater vivacity and capacity of contradiction than was to be met with in Erastus' tender hearted daughter. The daily scrimmages which he had with Frau Belier, in which like two children with locked hands they endeavored each to bring the other to its knees, developed his own inward strength rather than any quiet thoughtful conversation with the German maiden. He was wont to watch with artistic delight Lydia as sitting at her work she pondered over her past or her future. It was impossible to have gazed on a more lovely picture of a maiden mind buried in the sweet dream of the love of a young life. The brow wrapt in thought, the mouth puckered up as if seeking a kiss, the blooming cheeks, the full development of bust, on which nature had lavished its riches with a bounteous hand, formed a finished picture of beauty irresistible to the artist nature in Felix.

He quietly brought out one day a lump of modelling clay, and whilst Lydia was sitting without any misgivings at her work near the window, and dreamily listening to the breathing of the patient, the young artist kneaded the plastic material and soon completed an exact portrait of the thoughtful maiden. He formed the base as the calix of a flower as he had seen in the antique busts in Rome and Florence. The scented calix out of which Klytia arose was intended as a symbol of the dreamy flower-life of young love, of the tender perfume full of misgivings of a pure woman's mind, whose life is in part the existence of a plant. Lydia became aware at last of what he was doing, as the young Maestro looked intently at her, and then stepping to one side appeared to be busy on some unusual piece of work. She arose and a look of maidenlike severity came over her face on beholding a too faithful representation of her charms. "Fie, how wrong," she blushingly exclaimed. But the artist begged her so touchingly to resume her seat and let him continue that she finally resigned herself. "What can I otherwise grant him," she thought sadly, "when the heart belongs to the other." The artist carefully examined each particular feature. "G.o.d never created anything more beautiful than thou art," he said. When he had finished he clapped his hands together, and repeated "splendid, splendid" half aloud. She now stepped up quietly to him. "What mean those leaves?"

"I have moulded thee as G.o.ddess of flowers," he answered.

"As _Wegewarte_?" She looked up towards him with a sad smile. He however lightly kissed her pure forehead: "As Klytia turning towards her Sun-G.o.d." She held out her hand to him, and looked up gratefully into his eyes. He pressed it as if bidding her farewell. Without that a single word pa.s.sed between them, they understood one another. Klytia was free, he himself had released her from her promise.

She now went oftener than ever to the couch of the sick brother, cooled his brow with damp cloths and bound up his wounds with the delicate, apt hands of a woman.

Thus pa.s.sed away peacefully the last sunny days of autumn, leaving to all the inhabitants of the gable-house the precious impression, that there was even something beautiful in the stillness of a sick-room, in which no sounds were heard but the regular breathings of the patient, the ticking of the large Nuremberg clock in the ante-chamber, and the buzzing of the gnats on the diamond panes reflecting the sun. However little the relations of the various persons seemed to have changed outwardly, Erastus nevertheless felt the magnetic deviation which had taken place in Lydia. Wearied from many visits, he sat down one afternoon with his daughter near the chapel on the other side of the bridge to enjoy the last sunny hours of the fleeting year. The Heidelberg woods lay before them tinged with yellow, and their serrated lines blue and indistinct melted away as some old poetic saw in the autumn mist causing the mountains to appear higher than usual. Near to the bench on which they sat, the blue flower bloomed by the wayside and ever turned its calix to the sun. Lydia plucked one and pondered over the world of experiences she had lived through in the short time since Felix had related to her the fable out of Ovid. Her father looked steadily at her and said: "Hast thou broken thy bonds towards Felix?"

"Felix remains a Papist," she answered evasively. "He cannot fulfil the conditions which thou hast laid upon him."

"I release him from them," said Erastus. "Are we not all Papists since we have Olevia.n.u.s as our Pope, execute heretics, and that Theologians a.s.sume to themselves not only the authority of Princes, but also that of heads of houses, and fathers of families? Hardly any trace is left of the freedom which Luther and Zwingli sought to introduce."