The Imperial peace-protocol lay open now before the two spouses, and there merely wanted some one to dictate, when the Minister's lady rose up, and said, "You must learn to respect me more." She had the coach tackled, and drove off to the Court Chaplain, Spener's. She knew Liana's respect for him, and his omnipotence over her pious disposition. Even to herself he was still imposing. Down from that earlier theological age in which the Lutheran Father-confessor still reigned nearer to the Catholic, he had, through the power and magnanimity of his character, brought a shepherd's staff, which was distinguished from a bishop's staff only by being made of better wood. She must needs narrate to him twice over Liana's relations; the ardent, indignant old man could not at all comprehend or believe a love which must have been spun out right under his old eyes without his knowledge. "Your excellence," he at length answered, "has, indeed, committed a mistake in not communicating to me this important circumstance before to-day. How easily, with God's help, would I have conducted all to a blessed issue! However, there is nothing lost. Let your excellence send the maiden this very night to me, but alone, without you; that must be done; then I stand pledged for the rest!" Objections and cautions would merely have inflamed the old man's ambition and anger,--both which still worked on beneath the ice of his hoary hair; she therefore confidently promised him all, with that submissiveness, which she had also transmitted as an inheritance to Liana. Right hopefully did Liana receive the command of a night ride to the good, pious father. She started off with only her devoted maiden. With deeply agitated soul she appeared before her father-confessor. She opened herself to him as to a God; he decided just as if he were one. What a sight for another eye less proud than Spener's would have been this lowly, but composed saint, whose heart, like a sunbeam, always appeared loveliest in its breaking asunder. But here the history moves in veils! The old man commanded her maiden to stay behind, and took her alone over into the silent Blumenbühl. He unlocked for her the church, lighted a torch at the altar, in order that the desolate darkness might not play any prelude to her timid eye, and completed what her parents could not. How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano forever is a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath which she swore to him,--only the far-off man, who lost the fair soul, had from the observatory of the suns gazed at the bright church-windows and discovered behind them disturbing apparitions, without knowing that they were true, and decided his life.