I was unconversant with the altitudes and energies of sentiment, and was transfixed with inexplicable horror by the symptoms which I now beheld.
After a silence and a conflict which I could not interpret, he lifted his eyes to heaven, and in broken accents exclaimed, "This is too much! Any victim but this, and thy will be done.

Have I not sufficiently attested my faith and my obedience?
She that is gone, they that have perished, were linked with my soul by ties which only thy command would have broken; but here is sanctity and excellence surpassing human.

This workmanship is thine, and it cannot be thy will to heap it into ruins." Here suddenly unclasping his hands, he struck one of them against his forehead, and continued--"Wretch! who made thee quicksighted in the councils of thy Maker?
Deliverance from mortal fetters is awarded to this being, and thou art the minister of this decree." So saying, Wieland advanced towards me.

His words and his motions were without meaning, except on one supposition.

The death of Catharine was already known to him, and that knowledge, as might have been suspected, had destroyed his reason.