"_Herr Pastor_----" But he could not go on. He felt a choking sensation in his throat, and a stony horror creep over him. "Where is your spirit?" he asked himself; "your boasted defiance?" "You found a woman, _Herr Baron_, on your estate who had been your father's mistress. You found her degraded, defiled, dragged through the mire of wickedness and vice. Year-long slavery had robbed her of the respect of every living creature. She was treated as a mere animal by animals. This wretched woman belonged to my parish and to me. I reared her in the way she should go. It was my hand that sprinkled the baptismal water on her brow; my hand that held the chalice to her lips at the Holy Sacrament; and I promised and vowed before God, and in presence of my flock, to watch over this young soul; doubly orphaned, because he who generated her was not responsible for his actions." "Ah, my poor orphaned child!" maundered the carpenter. "Only two, only one other coffin ..." "I am answerable for her to God and the parish. I could not command your father to give her up, for, as I told you, I had handed him over to a heavenly tribunal; but _you_, who have courted this inquiry, I command to give her up, and, what is more, in the present hour of reckoning I exhort you to render account of what you have done for her soul." A red mist floated before Boleslav's eyes, and in this mist the figure of the venerable priest seemed to grow till it became almost god-like. He could only stammer forth-- "What should I ...?" And the old man took up the thread of his speech again-- "To-day you have been honoured before all men by our King; but, Boleslav von Schranden, look to it that God holds you in equal esteem. What should you have done, you ask? This impure, abandoned creature ought to have been more awful, more sacred to you than any other earthly being. What have you done to atone for the guilt your father heaped on her? Have you freed her from the bondage into which she had sunk, loosed her from the chain of her sin? Have you pointed her soul upwards to God, the All-gracious and All-forgiving? Or have you dragged her down deeper and deeper into the hell that your own flesh and blood created for her? Above all, in what fashion have you been living with her? It is said that, amidst the devastation of your island, there is only one room habitable. Have you never lost sight of the fact that by all laws, human and divine, your father's property in this instance was for you forbidden? Have you taught her to repent and pray, or have you filled her poor undisciplined senses with fresh poison? And have you preserved your own blood intact from sinful desires and lust? Or have you let your passions, like greedy beasts waiting whom they may devour, keep watch on her, ready to spring in an hour of weakness, thus adding fresh shame----?" "Cease!" cried Boleslav. "This is too much!"