" occasioned an intensity of interest and eager movement
of the numerous heads towards the base of the hall, banishing every
calmer thought. The treble line of soldiers, forming the base of the
crescent, divided in the centre, and wheeling backwards, formed two
files of dense thickness, leaving a lane between them through which
the prisoner and his guards were discerned advancing to the place
assigned. He was still heavily fettered, and his dress, which he had
not been permitted to change, covered with dark, lurid stains, hung so
loosely upon him, that his attenuated form bore witness, even as the
white cheek and haggard eye, to the intense mental torture of the last
fortnight. His fair hair lay damp and matted on his pale forehead; but
still there was that in his whole bearing which, while it breathed of
suffering, contradicted every thought of guilt. He looked round him
steadily and calmly, lowered his head a moment in respectful deference
to the King, and instantly resumed the lofty carriage which suffering
itself seemed inadequate to bend. King Ferdinand fixed his eyes upon
him with an expression before which the hardiest guilt must for the
moment have quailed; but not a muscle of the prisoner's countenance
moved, and Ferdinand proceeded to address him gravely, yet feelingly.

"Arthur Stanley," he said, "we have heard from Don Felix d'Estaban
that you have refused our proffered privilege of seeking and
employing some friends, subtle in judgment, and learned in all the
technicalities of such proceedings, as to-day will witness, to
undertake your cause. Why is this? Is your honor of such small amount,
that you refuse even to accept the privilege of defence? Are you so
well prepared yourself to refute the evidence which has been collected
against you, that you need no more? Or have we indeed heard aright,
that you have resolved to let the course of justice proceed, without
one effort on your part to avert an inevitable doom? This would seem a
tacit avowal of guilt; else, wherefore call your doom inevitable? If
conscious of innocence, have you no hope, no belief in the Divine
Justice, which can as easily make manifest innocence as punish
crime? Ere we depute to others the solemn task of examination, and
pronouncing sentence, we bid you speak, and answer as to the wherefore
of this rash and contradictory determination--persisting in words that
you are guiltless, yet refusing the privilege of defence. Is life so
valueless