"But on my side, there are many questions to be asked, of which the solution yet appears to me an inscrutable mystery. When you lived at the Capuchin Convent, near to Rome, of which the Prior is my near relation, I believed that your penitence was genuine, and from the heart. Yet, in the city, you must have been actuated by very different motives. Above all, why did you seek to gain the Pope's attention by an incredible and marvellous story? Why accuse yourself of crimes which you had never committed? Were you, then, ever at the castle of the Baron von F----?" "Alas, venerable father!" said I, "that was indeed the scene of my most horrible crimes. Is it possible that, in your eyes also, I have appeared a liar and hypocrite?" "Truly," said the Prior, "now that I speak with, and see you, I am forced to believe that your repentance and self-inflicted sufferings have been sincere. Still there are difficulties, which I am wholly unable to clear up. "Soon after your flight from the _residenz_ of the Prince von Rosenthurm, and after the monk, with whom Cyrillus had confounded you, had, as if by miracle, escaped, it was proved by the discovery of letters, and other concomitant testimony, that the Count Victorin, disguised as a monk, had been at the Baron's castle, and must have been the perpetrator of the crimes charged against you. Reinhold, his old steward, indeed, vehemently disputed this notion. But suddenly Victorin's _chasseur_ made his appearance, and explained that his master had lived long concealed in the Thuringian forest; that he had allowed his beard to grow, and had said that he would take the first opportunity of providing himself with a Capuchin tunic, which he intended to wear for at least twelve months, in order to carry on certain adventures. Finally, he declared, that, after having been for some days absent from his master, on business, he had, on his return, found him completely disguised in a monk's dress, at which he was not surprised, as he, the day before, observed, at some distance, the figure of a Capuchin pilgrim in the forest, from whom he doubted not that his master had supplied himself with the masquerade attire. He insisted that he knew the Count far too well to have been deceived, and, besides, had spoken with him frequently betwixt the period of that occurrence and his disappearance from the castle. This deposition of the _chasseur_ completely invalidated the opinion of Reinhold; but the utter vanishing of the Count, of whom not a single trace could be found, remained quite incomprehensible.