th time!"

The Signor Grimaldi, for, though the elected of Genoa, such was in truth
the family name of the Doge, turned his vacant gaze for an instant on the
Augustine, but it soon reverted to the forms and faces of Maso and
Sigismund, who still stood before him, filling his thoughts even more than
his sight.

"Yes, there is a power--" he resumed, "a great and beneficent Being to
equalize our fortunes here, and when we pass into another state of being,
loaded with the wrongs of this, we shall have justice! Tell me, Melchior,
thou who knew my youth, who read my heart when it was open as day, what
was there in it to deserve this punishment? Here is Balthazar, come of a
race of executioners--a man condemned of opinion--that prejudice besets
with a hedge of hatred--that men point at with their fingers, and whom the
dogs are ready to bay--this Balthazar is the father of that gallant youth,
whose form is so perfect, whose spirit is so noble, and whose life so
pure; while I, the last of a line that is lost in the obscurity of time,
the wealthiest of my land, and the chosen of my peers, am accursed with an
outcast, a common brigand, a murderer, for the sole prop of my decaying
house--with this Il Maledetto--this man accursed--for a son!"

A movement of astonishment escaped the listeners, even the Baron de
Willading not suspecting the real cause of his friend's distress. Maso
alone was unmoved; for while the aged father betrayed the keenness of his
anguish, the son discovered none of that sympathy of which even a life
like his might be supposed to have left some remains in the heart of a
child. He was cold, collected, observant, and master of his smallest
action.

"I will not believe this," exclaimed the Doge, whose very soul revolted at
this unfeeling apathy, even more than at the disgrace of being the father
of such a child; "thou art not he thou pretendest to be; this foul lie is
uttered that my natural feelings may interpose between thee and the block!
Prove thy truth, or I abandon thee to thy fate."

"Signore, I would have saved this unhappy exhibition, but you would not.
That I am Bartolo this signet, your own gift sent to be my protection in a
strait like this, will show. It is, moreover, easy for me to prove what I
say, by a hundred witnesses who are living in Genoa."

The Signor Grimaldi stretched forth a hand that trembled like an aspen to
receive the ring, a jewel of little price, but a signet that he had, in
tr