at the truth without doing some evil things at times? But I am here to tell you that you are going to be judged, thus prepare your answers."
"But," said Bathilda, "what have we done to be judged? What are our crimes? We must know in order to be able to answer."
"But you were told when you were taken by Schinders. Goodbye," said the cruel jailer, "you will see all that when you go there. I have fulfilled my mission and I cannot say more."
The two prisoners remained plunged in the bitterness of the blackest reflections.
Is there ever a situation more frightful than that of oppressed innocence? Justice is so necessary to man, so inherent in his character that when one violates it, he is plunged into despair. There is not a sigh which he gives which is not devoted to regretting existence; there is not a beat of his heart which does not reject his pride at being a man and of which he was so proud when there was justice. He who likes order in all things despises it when it oppresses him. In this moment he forgets his duties, to the point of preferring evil which is rewarded to the good which is punished. Thus judges, inept, criminal or ignorant, you have by such a conduct propagated crime instead of honoring virtue.
Let's leave the Princess of Saxony in her terrible predicament and return to Hamburg where Frederick was preparing with the count to try new adventures in order to find his wife whom so many hands were keeping far away from him.
"My friend," said Frederick to Mersburg, as soon as they were armed again, and they had been joined by Pitreman, their squire, "I confess to you that what we have seen at the necromancer's caused me much uneasiness. 'She is here.' the inscription said and it was a tower. Who then would take upon himself the right to shut up my wife, and what did she do to be shut up?"
"But, remember," said Mersburg, "that this same man, to whom you accord so much confidence, has shown you also that the princess had escaped."
"Well then, we have no fixed point from which to work, and so we will have to seek blindly."
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