Tales from the German Volume II Part 8

CHAPTER IX.

The next morning Katharine was sitting in her closet, with her infant at her breast. Over its rosy cheeks rolled the mother's tears in quick succession. Her other children were pressing around her, like chickens who seek to hide themselves under the mother's sheltering wings, and all were tremblingly and silently listening to the cries of lamentation which occasionally arose from the neighboring dwellings, evincing the activity of the tormentors.

The clattering of spurs was heard at the door, which was immediately thrown open, and the captain entered the room, accompanied by a file of soldiers.

'I am now satisfied!' cried he. 'I have subjected your cook to a sharp examination. You have more food prepared daily than is necessary for the family. Dishes are secretly conveyed away full and returned empty.

I am therefore satisfied that your relatives have not departed; but are yet in the city, perhaps in this very house, and my duty requires me to insist on their immediate appearance, that they may become partic.i.p.ants in the reformation which we bring to this deluded city.'

'I have nothing more to answer upon that subject,' said Katharine with firmness.

'No?' asked the captain, grating his teeth. 'Will you bring me a certificate of confession?'

'Not to all is given such greatness of mind as to enable them to change their faith according to the emergencies of the moment,' said Katharine, with a bitterness which the unworthiness of the tempter forced from her naturally mild heart.

'Still scornful!' growled the captain. 'The cup now runs over. To the cellar with this brood of young heretics!' thundered he to his soldiers, who immediately forced the children from the room. 'My children!' shrieked Katharine, making an effort to rush after them; but the captain dragged the unhappy mother back.

'The sands of mercy have run out,' he exclaimed; 'and the hour of vengeance approaches. It is now no longer question of the runaway girl.

I have torn from my heart my sinful pa.s.sion for the heretic, and have to do only with you and your heterodoxy. I give you an hour to consider whether you will return to the bosom of the mother church. If you then obstinately choose to adhere to your erroneous belief, I will probe your breast yet deeper, and by all the saints I swear to you that I will find your heart.'

He left the room. 'Preserve me from desperation, O G.o.d!' cried Katharine, pressing her infant to her bosom and sinking powerless to the earth.

CHAPTER X.

When she awoke she was sitting in a chair with her slumbering babe in her arms, and before her stood, with weeping eyes, an old Franciscan monk belonging to the city convent, upon whom she stared with wondering and uncertain glances.

'Calm yourself, dear lady,' said the old man in a friendly tone. 'The cowl I wear may be doubly hateful to you in this heavy hour; but it covers a heart that feels kindly and truly for you. I have heard of your sufferings and have come to bring you succor. I have not forgotten the kind attention and care I received in your house when, six years ago, I came here from Breslau as a mendicant lay brother, and fell fainting before your door. There were indeed hard-hearted Lutherans who chid you for your charity and said you ought not to trouble yourself about the beggarly papist priest,--but you answered that it was your christian duty to succor a fellow christian. That was a n.o.ble sentiment, and has ever since remained engraved upon my heart, and I have daily offered up my prayers that G.o.d would bless you for it through time and eternity. It is true that by some of my brethren this prayer for a heretic has been considered sinful; but I have answered them, '_Solum de salute Diaboli desperandum_,' and that it may please the Lord in his mercy to bring this good woman one day, if even upon her death bed, into the embrace of the only saving church.'

'May G.o.d reward your love, my good father,' said Katharine with a feeble utterance. 'A kindly human heart is always deserving of respect and esteem, even though it wander in error.'

'I came not,' answered the monk, 'to hold a controversial discussion with you. My only wish is to warn you of what must necessarily and absolutely be done, if you would save your mortal body, to say nothing of your immortal soul. You must know that it is the irrevocable determination of the emperor that all the protestants in his hereditary dominions shall return to the true faith, and for that sole purpose has he sent his troops to this city. It is true that these soldiers conduct themselves here in a manner which no true catholic can justify, and should one of these so called _converters_ stray into my confessional, he would have a hard time of it. But so it is, and I, a poor feeble monk, have no power to avert the evil. The Jesuits, who hold the emperor's heart in their hands, might and should have prevented it; but they have kindled the fire and poured oil thereon. Wherefore I say, yield to the times, for they are dangerous. Without a certificate of confession your tormentor will not leave you--he dares not, even if he would. I bring you the necessary certificate. The urgency of the moment will not permit a formal confession, and you therefore need only subscribe to these articles. You can send your certificate to count Dohna, and receive in exchange for it one from him, which will relieve you from the presence of these soldiers.'

'Excuse me!' cried Katharine. 'In the faith in which I have lived, will I also die. I cannot subscribe.'

'How now, so good and yet so stubborn!' exclaimed the reverend father.

'At least read what you are required to subscribe, before you refuse.

After reading it, you can subscribe or not, according to the dictates of your own judgment. These sacred truths must, I should think, be capable of striking the pure springs of true knowledge from the hardest heart.'

Katharine ran her eyes rapidly over the articles. As she came towards the close, she read aloud. 'I swear, that through the intercession of the saints I have now become converted to the catholic religion.'

'Place your hand upon your heart, reverend father,' cried she, springing up, incensed, 'and then say upon your sacred sacerdotal oath, shall I not be guilty of perjury, if I swear that what I do out of fear of an earthly power, is done through the spiritual effect of the intercession of the saints?'

The monk silently folded up the paper.

'You see there can be no help for me,' said Katharine with humble resignation. 'Leave me, therefore, to my fate, and take with you my heartfelt thanks for your good intentions.'

'You are a very obstinate woman!' said the monk, with evident and deep sympathy. The longer his eyes rested upon her pale, pious and suffering face, the more his sympathy increased, until at length, amid a flood of gushing tears, he cried, 'I know that I commit a deadly sin, but I cannot do otherwise. Take the certificate, which alone can put an end to your sufferings.'

'How! without confession or signature?' asked Katharine with astonishment.

'I have given to my G.o.d the offering of a long life,' cried the old man with vehemence, 'full of heavy privations and hard struggles. He will now, therefore, be a merciful judge to me, and after long and severe penance will pardon me for once lending the aid of my holy office for the purpose of deception. Yet, should I even incur his everlasting anger, I cannot do otherwise. I cannot leave my benefactress to be persecuted to death, even though I may one day be compelled to enter the dark valley of the shadow of death, without absolution. Take the certificate.'

'G.o.d forbid!' said Katharine, tearing it in pieces, 'that I should rob you of your soul's peace and disturb the tranquillity of your dying hour. Nor would my own conscience permit me to accept your offer. Every use which I should make of this paper would be an act of apostacy from my own faith; if a hypocritical use, so much the worse. 'Be not deceived, G.o.d is not mocked.''

'Woman, thou art more righteous than we!' cried the monk, with deep emotion; and, covering his head with his cowl, he departed, weeping audibly.

CHAPTER XI.

The infant was still slumbering upon Katharine's bosom. The door was again thrown open and the captain entered, this time without attendants, bolting the door after him.

'The hour is past,' said he with a demoniac smile. 'Have you a certificate?'

'No,' answered she, and at that moment the child in her arms awoke and cried for its nourishment. 'Poor thing,' said she, bearing it towards an alcove.

'Where are you going?' asked the captain, seizing her arm as though he would crush it in his ferocious grasp.

'To nurse my child,' answered Katharine. 'You cannot wish that I should do it in the presence of a stranger!'

'You shall not nurse your child!' cried the captain, forcing it from her arms. 'It shall not imbibe heresy with its mother's milk.'

'What would you with my child, horrible man?' shrieked Katharine, rushing upon him.

'There it shall lie,' said he, putting it upon the floor.

The poor infant uttered the most lamentable shrieks.

'For G.o.d's sake, let me go to my child!' exclaimed Katharine. 'It is dying.'

'In that case I shall have saved a soul to heaven,' answered the captain.

'You cannot be a man!' cried the miserable mother. 'You must be satan disguised in the human form.' Convulsive spasms seized her. Her eyes closed, her lips became blue, and her senses fled.

Some one knocked loudly at the door. 'Are you here, Frau Katharine?'

asked a voice which the captain recognized with terror.

'Back!' cried the sentinel without. 'The captain is with the lady.'

'The captain! and she answers not, and the child is screaming!'