"My child was seduced--he ruined her--my fatherly heart is ... lacerated ... I am a poor beg--gar ... Only one coffin----"
"I fancy I have heard you harp on this string before," the Landrath interrupted him sharply, "at the time when I examined your daughter about the Cats' Bridge disaster. If you haven't learnt anything a little newer than that in five years, you'd better hold your tongue. It seems," he said, turning with a smile to the pastor, "as if this ruffian were bent on playing the part of Virginius."
The little man in grey laughed shrilly at this facetious sally on the part of his chief, and then was overcome with confusion at his own timerity. But the old pastor was less disposed to appreciate the Landrath's urbane humour.
"I will speak for you, Hackelberg," he said. "My words must be taken seriously. I will speak for you and for all of us in the name of our Heavenly Father, whose commandments were not made to be flouted and set at nought by aristocrats. Freiherr von Schranden, just now you challenged me to speak. Will you listen to what I am going to say?"
He assented impatiently. For the second time he fancied he heard that cry of distress rise above the hubbub outside.
"You have entered into the inheritance of your father?"
"I mean you have only too quickly appropriated that which was his unlawful possession."
"_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."