has declared himself to be!"

"You put the matter in strong language Signor Grimaldi;" said Adelheid,
starting.

"A youth of a form so commanding that a king might exult at the prospect
of his crown descending on such a head; of a perfection of strength and
masculine excellence that will almost justify the dangerous exultation of
health and vigor; of a reason that is riper than his years; of a virtue of
proof; of all qualities that we respect, and which come of study and not
of accident, and yet a youth condemned of men to live under the reproach
of their hatred and contempt, or to conceal for ever the name of the
mother that bore him! Compare this Sigismund with others that may be
named; with the high-born and pampered heir of some illustrious house, who
riots in men's respect while he shocks men's morals; who presumes on
privilege to trifle with the sacred and the just; who lives for self, and
that in base enjoyments; who is fitter to be the lunatic's companion than
any other's, though destined to rule in the council; who is the type of
the wicked, though called to preside over the virtuous; who cannot be
esteemed, though entitled to be honored; and let us ask why this is so,
what is the wisdom which hath drawn differences so arbitrary, and which,
while proclaiming the necessity of justice, so openly, so wantonly, and so
ingeniously sets its plainest dictates at defiance?"

"Signore, it should not be thus--God never intended it should be so!"

"While every principle would seem to say that each must stand or fall by
his own good or evil deeds, that men are to be honored as they merit,
every device of human institutions is exerted to achieve the opposite.
This is exalted, because his ancestry is noble; that condemned for no
better reason than that he is born vile. Melchior! Melchior! our reason is
unhinged by subtleties, and our boasted philosophy and right are no more
than unblushing mockeries, at which the very devils laugh!"

"And yet the commandments of God tell us, Gaetano, that the sins of the
father shall be visited on the descendants from generation to generation.
You of Rome pay not this close attention, perhaps, to sacred writ, but I
have heard it said that we have not in Berne a law for which good warranty
cannot be found in the holy volume itself."

"Ay, there are sophists to prove all that they wish. The crimes and
follies of the ancestor leave their physical, or even their moral taint,
on the child, b