"Oberthal!" he said, hardly able to speak because of his emotion.
"Ah! thou wilt still treat him tenderly, I doubt not!" Zacharia cried, sneeringly. For a moment John of Leyden could not speak; then he said:
"Leave us!" His tone was awful, yet showed great self-repression.
"So!" he said, after gazing at Oberthal a moment. "Heaven has delivered thee into my hands!"
"It is just. My crime merits my punishment," Oberthal said in a low voice. "But I will tell thee one thing which is thy due and may save my soul from damnation: thy Bertha, to save herself from my hands, threw herself into the sea, and thus escaped me."
"Dead, dead!" John of Leyden said, bowing his head a moment upon his hands.
"No! there is more. Touched with remorse, I saved her."
"She fled to Münster, and I was on my way there to find her and to try to restore her to thee, when I was arrested."
"Oberthal, thy fate shall rest with her. I spare thee till she shall pronounce sentence upon thee." He had no sooner spoken than Mathison rushed in and cried that the troops had rebelled, and that John alone could stop the riot and stay the ruin. "The gates of Münster have been thrown open, its army has marched upon us, and our men are fleeing."
"Run! run!" John of Leyden shouted. "After them, and turn them back. Münster must be ours!" And he rushed off, the Anabaptists following.
When he managed to rally the soldiers, they turned upon him and accused him of being a false Prophet.
"Ye promised us to take Münster; thy dallying has lost it to us. We shall no longer tolerate a rule like thine. Thou art no Prophet." But since learning that Bertha was within the city of Münster, John of Leyden's purpose had become fixed. If he entered that city at all, it must be as a conqueror; because as a seditionist his head was wanted there. Yet if he did not enter he could not find Bertha.
When they had cried death to the Prophet, John of Leyden calmly, with great impressiveness, made them cower before his rage.
"I punish rebellion like this. If you have come to grief--or if the cause shall--it is because you have offended God by your haste, and by your disobedience to me," he cried, while the soldiers shouted:
"He speaks like a holy man! We have done wrong."