ashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your
eighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!
The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell
employ! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives
the rest, and the foul heart's master-serpent swallows up the tribe.
Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy
corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatal
mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a
day. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--the stranger takes the
lamp and enters.

CHAPTER 7.XVII. The Seventeenth and Last.

Cosi vince Goffredo!
"Ger. Lib." cant. xx.-xliv.

(Thus conquered Godfrey.)

And Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of the door; she saw
not the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts were
gone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did not
desert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as a
firework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower
in the breath of the icy charnel,--the hope of a child-like soul wraps
the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the
grave with blossoms.

In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if to
imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowed
its smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side.

He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly on
their forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled,
parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raised
on high, where, through the human tears, a light as from above was
mirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and
holy with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility of
woman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the low
voice that the heart speaks,--loud enough for God to hear!

"And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the love
that will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his earthly fate?
Canst Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit, to hover over him,--a
spirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot be
ordained to either, grant--even though a thousand ages may roll betw