mpelled the town to cut a high-road through my
grandfather's garden. Of all these benefits I shall be deprived, when
old and disabled, if my children disdain to follow my vocation; and if
Madelon were to marry within the pale of that society which regards her
father with abhorrence, my house and vineyard would be destroyed by the
bigoted and furious populace, and too probably my innocent child along
with them. Have you the heart, Florian, to hazard her destruction and
your own, in preference to an office essential to the existence of civil
society, and from which that obedience to the laws, which is the first
duty of a good citizen, removes all self-reproach? With a due sense of
the importance of your official duties, you will find yourself sustained
in the performance of them; and a practised hand will soon give you
firmness enough to follow a vocation attended with no personal risk; but
if you determine to leave me, where will you find resolution to face the
perils which surround you? and if you escape them, how are you to
compete in the race of life with the daring and the fleet?"

The appalling alternatives held out to Florian by the politic headsman,
and the consciousness of his own inability either to escape the police,
or to steer his way successfully through the shoals and quicksands of
life, rendered him incapable of argument or reply. He had for some
months been cut off from all that freedom has to bestow--he had neither
relations nor friends on whose interposition he could firmly rely--he
recollected with agony that every heart beyond the limits of his present
home was steeled against him--that every hand was ready to seize and
betray him. Should he quit this safe asylum, and even establish his
innocence of the imputed murder, his ignorance of the world, and his
invincible timidity and self-distrust, would make him the prey of any
plausible knavery. Bewildered and stupified by contending emotions, his
mind became palsied by despair, and his powers of resistance began to
fail him. The headsman saw his advantage; but, satisfied with the
impression he had made upon his hapless victim, he ceased to press any
immediate decision, told him to consider of the proposal, and went to
his vineyard; while Florian, hastening to his Madelon, was assailed by
all the witchery of sighs and tears; by looks, which alternately pleaded
and upbraided; and by inspiriting and cogent arguments, which shamed him
into temporary resolutio