, that you cast it degraded from you? As Sovereign and Judge,
we command you answer, lest by your own rash act the course of justice
be impeded, and the sentence of the guilty awarded to the innocent.
As man to man, I charge thee speak; bring forward some proof of
innocence. Let me not condemn to death as a coward and a murderer,
one whom I have loved and trusted as a friend! Answer--wherefore this
strange callousness to life--this utter disregard of thine honor and
thy name?"

For a moment, while the King addressed him as man to man, the pallid
cheek and brow of the prisoner flushed with painful emotion, and there
was a scarcely audible tremulousness in his voice as he replied:

"And how will defence avail me? How may mere assertion deny proof, and
so preserve life and redeem honor? My liege, I had resolved to attempt
no defence, because I would not unnecessarily prolong the torture of
degradation. Had I one proof, the slightest proof to produce, which
might in the faintest degree avail me, I would not withhold it;
justice to my father's name would be of itself sufficient to command
defence. But I have none! I cannot so perjure myself as to deny one
word of the charges brought against me, save that of murder! Of
thoughts of hate and wrath, ay, and blood, but such blood as honorable
men would shed, I am guilty, I now feel, unredeemably guilty, but not
of murder! I am not silent because conscious of enacted guilt. I will
not go down to the dishonored grave, now yawning for me, permitting,
by silence, your Highness, and these your subjects, to believe me
the monster of ingratitude, the treacherous coward which appearances
pronounce me. No!" he continued, raising his right hand as high as
his fetters would permit, and speaking in a tone which fell with
the eloquence of truth, on every heart--"No: here, as on the
scaffold--now, as with my dying breath, I will proclaim aloud my
innocence; I call on the Almighty Judge himself, as on every Saint
in heaven, to attest it--ay, and I believe it WILL be attested, when
nought but my memory is left to be cleared from shame--I am not the
murderer of Don Ferdinand Morales! Had he been in every deed my
foe--had he given me cause for the indulgence of those ungovernable
passions which I now feel were roused against him so causelessly and
sinfully, I might have sought their gratification by honorable combat,
but not by midnight murder! I speak not, I repeat, to save my life: it
is justl