this hand is my executioner.--My Lord, I supplicate you no longer!"

Albornoz continued deeply moved. Nina but rightly judged him, when she
distinguished the aspiring Spaniard from the barbarous and unrelenting
voluptuaries of Italy. Despite the profligacy that stained his sacred
robe--despite all the acquired and increasing callousness of a hard,
scheming, and sceptical man, cast amidst the worst natures of the worst
of times--there lingered yet in his soul much of the knightly honour
of his race and country. High thoughts and daring spirits touched a
congenial string in his heart, and not the less, in that he had but
rarely met them in his experience of camps and courts. For the first
time in his life, he felt that he had seen the woman who could have
contented him even with wedlock, and taught him the proud and faithful
love of which the minstrels of Spain had sung. He sighed, and still
gazing on Nina, approached her, almost reverentially; he knelt and
kissed the hem of her robe. "Lady," he said, "I would I could believe
that you have altogether read my nature aright, but I were indeed lost
to all honour, and unworthy of gentle birth, if I still harboured a
single thought against the peace and virtue of one like thee. Sweet
heroine,"--he continued--"so lovely, yet so pure--so haughty, and yet
so soft--thou hast opened to me the brightest page these eyes have
ever scanned in the blotted volume of mankind. Mayest thou have such
happiness as life can give; but souls such as thine make their nest like
the eagle, upon rocks and amidst the storms. Fear me no more--think
of me no more--unless hereafter, when thou hearest men speak of
Giles d'Albornoz, thou mayest say in thine own heart,"--and here the
Cardinal's lip curled with scorn--"he did not renounce every feeling
worthy of a man, when Ambition and Fate endued him with the surplice of
the priest."

The Spaniard was gone before Nina could reply.

BOOK VIII. THE GRAND COMPANY.

"Montreal nourrissoit de plus vastes projets...il donnoit a
sa campagnie un gouvernement regulier...Par cette discipline
il faisoit regner l'abondance dans son camp; les gens de
guerre ne parloient, en Italie, que des richesses qu'on
acqueroit a son service."--Sismondi, "Histoire des
Republiques Italiennes", tom. vi. c. 42.

"Montreal cherished more vast designs...he subjected his
company to a regular system of government...By means of this