—“You believe then,” began Father Jacob, “that the form, whose appearance so greatly surprized you in the Chapel belonged to a deceased person?—Count of Montfort, it was the living Rosanna, Tell whom you beheld; Rosanna who has now exchanged that name for the more lofty one of Ida of Werdenberg—You start?—You believe what I tell you to be impossible?—Nay, Count, with all my heart! Number _me_ (if you like it) among those, who wish to impede you in the gratification of your new amours: it would be ill-breeding in me to force upon you the conviction of a truth, to which you are evidently so unwilling to give credit!”— The crafty Friar rose, as if about to quit the apartment. It is superfluous to say, that Henry (whose head was now assailed by astonishment from a new quarter) did not suffer him to depart.—Father Jacob possest the whole of Ida’s history, except in so far as related to her adventure with Erwin Melthal: he refused to communicate any portion of his knowledge, till this hitherto unsuspected circumstance had been fully explained to him. This demand was complied with, every circumstance was confided to him; and with astonishing quickness he discerned in this narrative the means of attaining an object, which he and his honest ally, the keeper of Count Frederick’s conscience, had very nearly at heart, but which they had found themselves compelled to abandon in despair. Montfort had finished.—And now the Monk exerted all his eloquence to convince his auditor of that, which Henry’s heart was already most anxious to believe; namely, that his first oaths of love ought to be the most binding; that it was no less necessary to keep his faith to Ida of Werdenberg than to Rosanna Tell; and that his giving that hand to Elizabeth, which he had sworn to give to another, would only serve to form an union unjust, sinful, abominable, and accursed.