"Thou hast hit the stumbling-block that causes a thousand well-digested
plans for the improvement of the world to fail, honest Melchior. Could we
toil with others' limbs, sacrifice with others' groans, and pay with
others' means, there would be no end to our industry, our
disinterestedness, or our liberality--and yet it were a thousand pities
that so sweet a girl and so noble a youth should not yoke!"

"'Twould be a yoke indeed, for a daughter of the house of Willading;"
returned the graver father, with emphasis. "I have looked at this matter
in every face that becomes me, Gaetano, and though I would not rudely
repulse one that hath saved my life, by driving him from my company, at a
moment when even strangers consort for mutual aid and protection, at Turin
we must part for ever!"

"I know not how to approve, nor yet how to blame thee, poor Melchior!
'Twas a sad scene, that of the refusal to wed Balthazar's daughter, in the
presence of so many thousands!"

"I take it as a happy and kind warning of the precipice to which a foolish
tenderness was leading us both, my friend."

"Thou may'st have reason; and yet I wish thou wert more in error than ever
Christian was! These are rugged mountains, Melchior, and, fairly passed,
it might be so arranged that the boy should forget Switzerland for ever.
He might become a Genoese, in which event, dost thou not see the means of
overcoming some of the present difficulty?"

"Is the heiress of my house a vagrant, Signor Grimaldi, to forget her
country and birth?"

"I am childless, in effect, if not in fact; and where there are the will
and the means, the end should not be wanting. We will speak of this under
the warmer sun of Italy, which they say is apt to render hearts tender."

"The hearts of the young and amorous, good Gaetano, but, unless much
changed of late, it is as apt to harden those of the old, as any sun I
know of;" returned the baron, shaking his head, though it much exceeded
his power to smile at his own pleasantry when speaking on this painful
subject. "Thou knowest that in this matter I act only for the welfare of
Adelheid, without thought of myself; and it would little comport with the
honor of a baron of an ancient house, to be the grandfather of children
who come of a race of executioners."

The Signor Grimaldi succeeded better than his friend in raising a smile,
for, more accustomed to dive into the depths of human feeling, he was not
slow in detecting the mix