"Peace! Peace! my son!" continued Magdalena, "and curse no more. Nor can I tell thee that it was so. I have sworn that oath never to divulge my daughter's birth; and cruel, heartless, as was the feeling that forced it on me, I must observe it ever. And thus I continued to live on--absorbed in the one thought of my child and her happiness--heedless of the present--forgetful of my duty; when suddenly, but two days ago, he who has been the kind guardian of my spiritual weal, appeared before me in the chamber where, alone and unobserved, I wept over the picture of my child. He came, I presume, by a passage seldom opened, from the monastery, whither his duties had called him. He chid me for my flight--recalled me to my task of expiation--and, bidding me return to the convent, left me, with an injunction not to say that I had seen him. Nor could I reveal the fact of my mysterious interview with him, or tell his name, without giving a clue to the truth of my own existence, and the discovery of all I had sworn so binding an oath ever to conceal. Thou sawest him also--but, alas! with other thoughts." "Madman that I have been!" exclaimed the witchfinder. "Or is it now that I am mad? Am I not raving? Is not all this insane delusion? No--thou are there before me--closed from my embraces by these cruel bars that I have placed between us. Thou! my mother--my long-lost--my beloved--most wretched mother, in that dreadful garb!--condemned to die by thy own infatuated son! Would that I _were_ mad, and that I could close my brain to so much horror! But thou shalt not die, my mother--thou shalt not die! Thou are innocent! I will proclaim thy innocence to all! They will believe my word--will they not? For it was I who testified against thee. I, the matricide! I will tell them that I lied. Thou shalt not die, my mother! Already! already!--horror!--the day is come!"