at fairly and with
effect?"

"I fear that these are stronger than the right, and likely to endure when
the tears of the oppressed are exhausted, when they and their fates shall
be forgotten!"

"Thy child is fair and modest," observed the Signor Grimaldi, "and will
yet find a youth who will more than atone for this injury. He that has
rejected her was not worthy of her faith."

Marguerite turned her look, which had been glowing with awakened feeling,
on her pale and still motionless daughter. The expression of her softened,
and she folded her child to her bosom, as the dove shelters its young.
All her aroused feelings appeared to dissolve in the sentiment of love.

"My child is fair, Herr Peter;" she continued, without adverting to the
interruption; "but better than fair, she is good! Christine is gentle and
dutiful, and not for a world would she bruise the spirit of another as
hers has been this day bruised. Humbled as we are, and despised of men,
bailiff, we have our thoughts, and our wishes, and our hopes, and memory,
and all the other feelings of those that are more fortunate; and when I
have racked my brain to reason on the justice of a fate which has
condemned all of my race to have little other communion with their kind
but that of blood, and when bitterness has swollen at my heart, ay, near
to bursting, and I have been ready to curse Providence and die, this mild,
affectionate girl hath been near to quench the fire that consumed me, and
to tighten the cords of life, until her love and innocence have left me
willing to live even under a heavier load than this I bear. Thou art of an
honored race, bailiff, and canst little understand most of our suffering;
but thou art a man, and shouldst know what it is to be wounded through
another, and that one who is dearer to thee than thine own flesh."

"Thy words are strong, good Marguerite," again interrupted the bailiff,
who felt an uneasiness, of which he would very gladly be rid. "Himmel! Who
can like any thing better than his own flesh? Besides, thou shouldst
remember that I am a bachelor, and bachelors are apt, naturally, to feel
more for their own flesh than for that of others. Stand aside, and let the
procession pass, that we may go to the banquet, which waits. If Jacques
Colis will none of thy girl, I hove not the power to make him. Double the
dowry, good woman, and thou shalt have a choice of husbands, in spite of
the axe and the sword that are in thy escutcheon