Severinus entered Cornelia's room one evening when they were to spend the night in a peasant's house in the B---- forest. She was standing at the window, gazing out into the sultry night. The sky arched over the earth like a leaden-hued canopy; not a breath of air was stirring, not a leaf moved on the trees; here and there a star gleamed forth where the dense masses of clouds parted for a moment, and now and then a distant flash of lightning glittered in the horizon, revealing the dim outlines of the forest-crowned heights. "Severinus," she said, drawing a long breath, as she turned toward him, "let us go out into the open air before the storm breaks: the air is so oppressive here; perhaps it is cooler outside."

"I have come to speak to you about very serious subjects: it will be better for us to stay here," said Severinus. And now for the first time Cornelia noticed his gloomy expression, and looked with anxious expectation into his face.

"Cornelia, the time when your fate must be decided has arrived. The day of election is approaching. I must not allow Ottmar to move forward unrestrained upon the road in which he can only bring ruin upon our church. If he is elected to the parliament, a powerful enemy will arise against us. I have already told you what papers the order has in its hands: they must be used now, if they are not to become useless. Let Ottmar be a deputy; let him speak, and--as is to be foreseen--win the masses, and everything we undertake against him will be in vain. The last point of time is reached, when I must decide what is to be done."

"And that is a publication of his relations with Jesuitism, the destruction of the toilsomely obtained confidence of his party, in order to prevent his election. Am I not right?"

"Certainly."

"And do you not know that you will not convert a man like Ottmar by such means, but simply render him miserable?"

"We wish to make him harmless,--nothing more."

"But you do far worse," cried Cornelia, indignantly. "You bar the path upon which he might become a better man; hurt him back to the cheerless void of a life without a purpose: perhaps even entangle him in fresh snares of falsehood and hypocrisy; and thus destroy a nature which, in its own way, might accomplish great things for the world. Who gives you the right thus violently to interfere with an independent existence?"

"The same right which the government has to punish secular crimes, we, as the representatives of the kingdom of God, possess against him who sins against God and his servants."

"Severinus, when the government chastises, it represents the insulted law, and uses honest means; but you avenge only your own boundless pride, and your weapons are hypocrisy and deceit! Are you better than he whom you punish?"

"Cornelia!" cried Severinus, with flashing eyes, "do you dare say that to me?"

"I have never spoken anything but the truth all my life. You could not expect me to call wrong right; and if God should descend to the earth once more he would judge the zeal of those who commit sin for his honor, and misuse his name for selfish purposes, far more harshly than the errors of the men who have deserted him in form, but not in reality."

"It is only natural that the child of the world should speak in her lover's favor; and I will be patient now, as I have often been before. I cannot ask you to perceive the sublimity of a subordination to the will of a chief, as our order practices it. Our General alone bears the responsibility; God will call him only to an account; and he can lay it aside: for God is higher than the law, and whoever represents him on earth cannot have his acts measured by the standard of earthly justice!"

Cornelia gazed at Severinus long and silently. "You told me a short time ago that you pitied me. Now I must answer you in the same words: Severinus, I pity you! I am not angry; but you will perceive that from this hour our paths must lie apart. If you deal a blow which will destroy Ottmar's honest efforts, it is my duty to be at his side."

"Cornelia, it is in your power to avert this dangerous blow."

"How?"

"The order has determined to give up the papers to you at the price of your conversion to Catholicism. The order feels itself justified in resigning the pursuit of this faithless man; if it can thereby win for the good cause another soul, which will be pleasing to God."

"Indeed!" cried Cornelia, fixing a piercing glance upon Severinus. "Is it thus you advance your work of conversion?"

"We leave you the choice between the only church which can save souls and your lover's prosperity, or his destruction and our hostility. Can you hesitate?"

Cornelia stood before him with noble dignity. "And do you believe you can win me over to a religion which sanctions such means? Do you think to bribe me by any advantage--even the welfare of the man I love--to deny that which is highest and most sacred to me: the knowledge of the truth? No, Severinus; I feel I possess the power to make the man of my heart happy without being compelled to save him from your persecution by abjuring my own faith!"

"May you not trust to yourself too much? He whom we wish to ruin is not so easily saved by any one, even the bold spirit of Cornelia Erwing!"

"Severinus, you frighten me! I never saw you in this mood before. I feel as if in my sleep I had wandered into a tiger's den, and on awakening found myself shut up alone with the terrible enemy!" She paused and looked at Severinus; then growing calmer, shook her head: "No, no, Severinus; that is a bad comparison; forgive me for it! Those pure eyes give the lie to your threats; the dignity enthroned upon your brow cannot suffer you to become the tool of a base revenge."

"Cornelia, you will never learn to understand the nature of Jesuitism. I am no blind tool who mechanically performs what is imposed upon him, but a living part of the whole, who abhors what injures the order, and labors for its advantage. Our obedience is no mere form which we can outwardly satisfy without real sympathy: it is an allegiance in spirit and in truth, which makes the will it serves its own. Thus I hate Ottmar, since he became faithless to his obligations towards us, as the order hates him, and will destroy him as the order commands, if you do not comply with the condition upon which we will spare him."

He watched Cornelia for a moment, then drew out some papers and spread them upon the table before her. "Here are the documents which are to serve us as weapons against Ottmar; read them, and convince yourself whether they will be destructive enough to him to outweigh the sacrifice you must make to secure his safety."

Cornelia looked over the papers, the very ones with which years before Severinus had succeeded in intimidating Ottmar, and binding upon him the chains he now wished to strip off. When she had finished, she gazed sorrowfully into vacancy.

"This is certainly material enough to devise a snare for him. Oh, Severinus, throw these papers into the fire, and I will revere you as a saint!"

"It will only cost you a few words, Cornelia. Say, 'I will become a Catholic,' and these papers are yours!"

Cornelia drew herself up proudly. "I have already told you that I would drive no bargain with my convictions. This is my final resolution!"

"Noble woman!" thought Severinus, gazing at her in astonishment.

Cornelia gathered up the documents, restored them to the priest, then clasped her hands, and gazed into his face with her irresistible charm. "Severinus, give me these papers."

A long pause ensued. The priest was absorbed in watching the beautiful face, and made no reply.

Cornelia took his hand; he started back.

"Severinus, for once, be more obedient to the law of love and forbearance God has written in our hearts, than the stern commands of your order; destroy these proofs of Heinrich's, and also your, dishonor,--or give them to me that I may do so. You do not answer! Oh, let my entreaties move you, dear, honored friend!"

Severinus covered his eyes with his hand, and exclaimed, almost imploringly: "Cease, Cornelia; you know not what you are doing."

"I am well aware of it,--I am torturing you; for I am bringing you into a conflict with what you believe to be your duty. I see the struggle between your Jesuit's conscience and your heart. True, genuine manhood will conquer; it will burst the fetters in which your whole life is bound."

She rushed to the table, took up a light, and held it towards Severinus, that he might set the papers on fire. A gust of air that blew through the open window made the flame flicker to and fro, and her light dress float around her like a cloud. As she stood thus with the arm that held the candle raised high above her head, bathed in the red gleam of the flickering light, in the earnestness of her enthusiasm,--half pleading, half commanding,--she seemed like an angel; and without knowing what he was doing he threw the papers towards her, bent down, and pressed the hem of her dress to his lips.

"I thank you!" cried Cornelia. But ere she could gather up the scattered papers Severinus recollected himself, and caught her hand.

"Stop! these papers are not yours nor mine; they belong to the order which intrusted them to my care, and only an evil spirit could have so bewildered my mind that I wavered in my duty." He made the sign of the cross, pressed his hands tightly upon his heart, and softly murmured the "Anima Christi, sanctifica me,"^[1] then collected the papers and went to the window. The rain was pouring in torrents; he leaned out and let the cool water drench his head. "Extinguish, oh, extinguish the fire!" he prayed, looking up with a deep sigh at the dark watery masses of clouds.

Cornelia watched him with mingled surprise and grief. "Severinus, you are playing a part with yourself, like all who hold ideas founded on sophisms and principles contrary to nature; you must do so, at a moment when your illusion forms so striking a contrast with the truth. I can only pity you; but may God let those who made you a Jesuit,--who robbed you of the world and the world of you,--reap the fruits of their deed!"

"Do not blame them," replied Severinus, turning calmly away from the window. "They were my parents, and both are dead. I, too, have often cursed them for giving me life; but since I became a Jesuit, I bless them."

"Unhappy man, what secret weighs upon the past which you have hitherto so closely concealed?"

"Disgrace, girl! To you alone I will confess it, that some day you may think of me more kindly when we are parted. I have no name save that the church gave me; no father save God; no home save the Casa al Gesu; no human dignity save that of my holy office. If I had belonged to the world, I should have been an outcast. But my parents turned the curse into a blessing when they dedicated to Heaven the life they denied on earth; and for the sake of that deed may God pardon the sin which gave me birth!" He raised his head, while his face kindled with enthusiastic feeling. "But I, Cornelia, will devote my strength, to my latest breath, to that Jesuitism which accomplished the miracle of making the child of sin the supporter of the highest and holiest cause, which produces everything great and noble that can be done for the honor of God, and desires nothing except by all means, both mild and gentle, to lead men to heaven."

Cornelia gazed thoughtfully into vacancy, then suddenly looked earnestly at the regular features of the handsome man before her.

"Severinus," she said, with strange eagerness, "who was your father?"

"I do not know; I never saw him."

"Did your mother tell you nothing about him? or did you not know her either?"

"She could tell me nothing except how she loved him, and how he had deceived her. His accent betrayed that he was a German, but he concealed his name and residence. When I was scarcely a year old he disappeared, and no longer gave my mother any signs of existence except the remittance, through some unknown hand, of money for my education upon the condition that I should become a priest."

"And your mother; what was her name?"

"Girl, why do you ask me all these questions?"

"You shall learn the reason after you have told me who your mother was."

"I have no right to expose the name of the unhappy woman, and have never mentioned it to any one."

"Not even to Heinrich?"

"I never disclosed the secret of my past to him."

Cornelia approached him; her breath came more quickly. "Was your mother's name Angelina, Severinus?" said she, her voice tremulous with some secret emotion.

Severinus gazed at her in astonishment. "Yes, yes; how did you know?"

"Was she the sister of a Carmelite monk in Compatri?"

"Where did you learn this?" exclaimed Severinus, greatly agitated. "What connection have you with my past? Speak; of what are you thinking? Your eyes sparkle, your cheeks glow; do not torture me."

"Are you your mother's only child?"

"So truly as she expiated all her remaining days in a cloister, the one error of her life."

"Then God has sent me to you to warn you at the right time not to commit a most grievous wrong. Do you know who the man is whom you thus inexorably pursue?"

A suspicion began to arise in Severinus's mind; he recoiled and extended his hands repellently, as if he feared the words that hovered upon Cornelia's lips.

"He is your brother!" she cried, tears gushing from her eyes.

Severinus involuntarily pressed his hand upon his brow, his fingers quivered slightly as they touched the broad scar upon it, and he gazed absently before him as if in a dream.

"Oh, do not crush the feeling that stirs in your heart! Give me your hand, and let me tell you how warmly I greet the brother of my beloved! Oh, God, to see the two men dearest to me on earth united, the souls which always struggled with each other, and yet could never resist the impulse of sympathy, reconciled in brotherly love! And it is I, I who am permitted to bring you together, to give you to each other! Ah, my friend, this is inexpressible joy!"

"And are you so sure you are not deceiving yourself?" asked Severinus, gloomily.

"Deceiving? Oh, you incredulous man! Heinrich's father is yours also. Ten years before his marriage in Germany he traveled in Italy. In wild, romantic Compatri he was attracted by the beauty of your mother, Angelina, who was living in the greatest poverty upon the products of her vines and the scanty gifts of the Carmelite convent in that place, then falling to decay. He took her to Rome, and remained there two years,--until his duties compelled him to return to Germany and desert Angelina, with her eleven-months-old boy. What afterwards became of her and her child, Heinrich did not know."

"And how did Heinrich happen to tell you this?"

"He told me a great many things about his father's life."

"And where did he learn this sad history?"

"From Anton, who, as valet, accompanied old Herr von Ottmar on his travels, and whose statements were confirmed by the dead man's papers. Heinrich did not then foresee how important this discovery might some day become. But if all this is not sufficient proof for you, question your own heart; remember what an inexplicable affection still bound you to Heinrich, even after you believed him lost to the church. Does not this impulse of the heart harmonize with all that has been so strangely revealed to you? Oh, you feel it yourself at this moment! I see it by the tears that will steal out from beneath your lashes; you feel, you believe, that he is your brother!"

Severinus covered his face. "He is! he is! Oh, God, and I must ruin my brother!"

"Thank God," cried Cornelia, joyously, "you are moved, touched! The voice of blood is again stirring within you; you will be reconciled to him, will spare him! Oh, say you will!"

Severinus raised his head and leaned against the window-sill; the tears that Cornelia had seen in his eyes were dried. "Do you believe that a pupil of Loyola will listen to the voice of blood? Do you know what the saint, who is our protector and pattern, did? He burned, unread, the letters from his own family, that he might break off all ties with the world; and I, should I spare the enemy of my church because he is related to me? Should I allow my zeal in God's cause to grow cold because my heart warms with a mere animal instinct? No, Cornelia, my brothers are in Christ; he who does not belong to him is no brother of mine."

"Cruel, hard-hearted man!" cried Cornelia, in horror. "I do not know whether it is compassion or terror that seizes upon me, but my soul trembles at the power of an illusion which can thus petrify the noblest heart."

"Petrify!" cried Severinus. "Oh, do not speak so, child that you are! Have you ever cast a glance into this 'petrified heart'? Have you a suspicion of the strength of the love I must tear away from earth and consecrate to God? Have you ever heard the outcry of the tortured man when he is obliged to accomplish his regeneration from earthly to heavenly things? Do you know how mighty nature writhes and struggles and groans under the prickly iron ring of the cilicium?^[2] You are spared these agonies, because God requires only the easiest sacrifices from you; but we, who are appointed to be the imitators of Christ upon earth, are compelled taste them to the dregs. We must fulfill our great task, and no human eye is permitted to see that the sacrifice it admires trickles from the warm heart's blood."

"My poor Severinus!"

"Do not pity me; I want no one's compassion. I only want you to understand me; the more difficult the victory, the greater the fame. I shall one day be proud of my tortures. But I must labor without rest or sleep, and watch over myself at every hour, for the enemy is cunning, and if he chooses can clothe himself in the garb of an angel." His large eyes rested ardently upon Cornelia.

"Severinus," she answered, sadly, "do you take me for this false angel--me, who preach nothing to you except the first and simplest laws of Christianity? Do you think the 'foul fiend' is in me, because I oppose a belief which rejects the purest impulse of nature as a mere animal instinct, if it is not of use to its plans,--denies the tie God himself has hallowed, if it bars its progress; and acknowledges nothing which does not----"

"Redound to the greater honor of God," interrupted Severinus. "Yes, we do all for the honor of God. That is the word which permits no false meaning; the path from which we cannot deviate an inch; the object from which we dare not turn our eyes, even though we trample underfoot the bodies of our dearest friends. He who opposes us must fall, for we cannot allow ourselves to be stopped. For the honor of God we live, and are ready to die."

"And are you sure that in this you act only for the honor of God? Are you sure you do not abuse this great word as a pretext for an act of selfishness?"

Severinus looked at her inquiringly.

She struggled with her Feelings, and then began, gently: "Tell me, my friend, if in the execution of a punishment commanded by the order a Jesuit should also find the gratification of a personal desire for revenge, would he not profane the cause of God by making it his own?"

"Certainly," replied Severinus, in a hollow tone, fixing his eyes upon the floor.

"There are many kinds of passions, of which the man who ardently desires only what is right is scarcely conscious, because he does not even allow them to take the form of a thought; yet they are there, and the so-called foul fiend undermines in them the more securely, because concealed, the toilsomely-erected structure of virtue. Let me quote an example. Suppose a Jesuit hated an enemy of his order, not only because the order hates him, but because he is loved by a girl who is dear to the Jesuit himself?"

Severinus started; a deep flush suffused his face.

Cornelia continued: "Suppose he used against him the weapons the order placed his hands, not for the sake of the church, but to serve the instincts of his own jealousy, and should suddenly perceive what he had not confessed, even to himself, what would be his duty then?"

Severinus was now as pale as he had before been red. He stood like a marble statue, not a breath stirred his breast; but at last his delicate lips opened to utter the words, "Then it would be his duty to resign the work he would profane to another, who could perform it with pure hands, solely for the sake of God and the order."

"Well, then, Severinus, do what you believe to be your duty. I have nothing more to say."

A deep silence followed. Severinus still stood motionless, and Cornelia did not venture to look at him; she did not wish to read the pale face. She was terrified at what, for Heinrich's sake, she had done to this noble man, and involuntarily feared the results.

Severinus slowly approached her, laid his hand upon her head, and said, "Let us bid each other farewell."

Cornelia looked up. The pure features expressed no bitterness, no anger, only the repose of an immovable resolution. "Farewell?" she asked, in surprise.

"For life!"

Remorse suddenly seized upon her. She had overstepped the bounds of womanly delicacy, and pitilessly assailed the heart which, in spite of its errors, she had always seen rise superior to every weakness. She now felt for the first time how much she should lose in him, and, with sincere shame, bent down, and before he could prevent it, pressed her lips to his hands. "Severinus, can you forgive me?"

"I have nothing to forgive," he replied, gently drawing back.

"Where are you going?"

"To Rome."

"And what takes you to Rome so suddenly?"

"I had already resolved to return there some weeks ago; only the hope of still winning you for the church, and the hostile mission against Heinrich, detained me. This hour is the destruction of all my plans. Nothing is left for me to do except to place the papers intrusted to me in the General's hands, and explain to him that I am unworthy of his confidence,--that I am not fit for the business of the world."

"And then,--what will happen then?"

"Then the General will commit the office I held to another, and, if God wills, sanction the penance I shall impose upon myself of voluntary seclusion in the monastery during the remainder of my life."

"Will you retire from the world,--bury yourself within the walls of a cloister?"

"That I may the more surely rise again in God."

"And is such a resolution compatible with your zeal for the order? Suppose your office falls into the hands of a man who will not act with the wisdom and dignity you have shown,--who will perhaps injure the interests and authority of your association,--would you not reproach yourself for having been to blame for this injury by resigning the 'holy cause' into unworthy hands?"

"There are many among our ranks who are perfectly competent to fill my place; the General's keen eye will discover the right man. I can perform my duties to the order. Even in the silence of a convent-cell, I can write the words with which I should cheer souls and strengthen them in the faith, and, in undisturbed intercourse with the Highest One, they will gain more sanctity and power than in the profane society of the world. Nay, my writings may perhaps influence future generations long after spoken words have died away. Is not such an expectation edifying to true faith?--such a resolution the highest victory over our earthly nature?"

"A victory! Oh, Severinus, do not deceive yourself! A spark of the warm life you wish to deny still glows in your breast. Suppose, Severinus, you should perceive too late that you had formed your resolution too early? Suppose you should long despairingly for a breath of freedom, and in the suffocating agony of being walled up alive in the wild struggle of its contending elements, your soul should forget itself and God, and fall into the apparently liberating hand of Satan?"

Severinus recoiled a step in horror. "Stop, I implore you!"

But Cornelia's unfettered stream of eloquence would not allow itself to be repressed. "You go into the cloister, not because you have conquered, but because you fear to yield; you go there to fly from the battle, not to rest after the victory; but that which would have caused the conflict here will go with you, will disturb the peace of your devout solitude; and you must conquer it with anguish there as well as here, can succumb to it in the narrow convent-cell as well as in God's wide world."

Severinus's broad breast heaved painfully. "Oh, God! my God! let me withstand this last trial!" he prayed, fervently. "Cornelia, I do not retreat to the cloister on account of the danger, but to fly from the evil I abhor; that I may no longer see the world that stands between me and heaven, which I hate----"

"The world to you is mankind; if you detest the former it is for the sake of the latter. But why? What have men done to you? You are a servant of Christ. Does this humanity, which Christ so loved that he suffered and bled for it, deserve your love less than the Master's? Why do you scorn the race whose form a God did not hesitate to assume,--for which a God bore the tortures of life and death? Has it injured you more than him? It has not pressed upon your brow the crown of thorns; it has not nailed you to the cross; and yet he could forgive, while you cannot!"

"A God might do this,--but I am a man!"

"And do you know why you hate mankind? Because you dare not love like a human being. You curse your own earthly nature, because it always opposes your task. You are a man, and would fain be a god; you have human passions, and desire to practice a divine self-sacrifice. This is the fatality of your position, this the foul fiend you fear! Oh, I know my words fall upon you as the surges dash against a rock, but it seems as if a higher power urged me on to struggle again and again against the unhappy errors of your church!"

"Cornelia," cried Severinus, starting up, "my church does not err,--she is infallible!"

"But, I tell you, it is an error that Christ has required of his priests what the church demands from you. If Christ was God, it is presumption for you mortals to imitate his divine person, and attempt to give the world an example of what you do not attain yourselves. You are merely to announce it and show it in all its beauty in yourselves. But how can you do this,--shut off from life behind convent walls? Only when, like our ministers, in real life, before the eyes of a whole parish, oppressed by the same anxieties, pursued by the same enemies, assailed by the same temptations as all, you can practice the virtues you preach, will you become a true representative of the Christian religion, will you have a right to require of others what was not too difficult for yourself, and be what Christ desires, a true, perfect man!"

Severinus hastily approached the door: his whole manner betrayed tokens of violent emotion. "I dare not listen to you longer, terrible, dangerous woman! God sees my anguish that I cannot save your soul, make your noble powers useful to the good cause. In you all the hostile powers of the world assume a bodily form; in you I have convinced myself that I am no match for them, and only the repentance of a whole life can atone for the weakness!"

"Must I, then, lose you forever?"

"Forever! But my prayers will be with you,--implore the protection of the Holy Virgin for you." His voice trembled. "God cannot let such a soul go to destruction!" He turned and, with averted face, opened the door.

Then Cornelia's sincere affection burst forth in all its fervor; she rushed up to him, threw her arms around his neck, and with childlike contrition laid her head upon his breast. "Will you go without a farewell?" she cried, sobbing. "Ah, Severinus, a deep, inexpressible pity for you overwhelms me! Poor, noble man, I loved you so dearly!"

Severinus stood as if a thunderbolt had struck him; he did not move a finger, did not clasp Cornelia to his heart or push her from him. But suddenly a cry of anguish burst from his compressed lips, so full of torture that Cornelia's very soul was filled with terror, and she no longer ventured to detain him when, as if driven by some mortal dread, he hurried away.

Late at night, before she went to rest, she saw him wandering about in the storm and rain, and before dawn he entered the carriage which bore him away from Cornelia forever. He traveled without pausing until he reached Rome, where he delivered the papers to the General; confessed, resigned his office, and entered the Casa al Gesu as a monk, to atone by the strictest seclusion for the crime of being a man.