features bore the Italian outline, with the dark eye,
swarthy skin and glossy hair of the climate. More than this, with the
exception of a finger lost in one of our affairs in Lombardy, I cannot
say."

"This is enough," returned the attentive Balthazar. "Dismiss your grief,
princely Doge, and prepare your heart for a new-found joy. Instead of
being the parent of this reckless freebooter, God at length pities and
returns your real son in Sigismund, a child that might gladden the heart
of any parent, though he were an emperor!"

This extraordinary declaration was made to stunned and confounded
listeners. A cry of alarm bust from the lips of Marguerite, who approached
the group in the centre of the chapel, trembling and anxious as if the
grave were about to rob her of a treasure.

"What is this I hear!" exclaimed the mother, whose sensitiveness was the
first to take alarm. "Are my half-formed suspicions then too true,
Balthazar? Am I, indeed, without a son? I know thou wouldst not trifle
with a mother, or mislead this stricken noble in a thing like this! Speak,
again, that I may know the truth--Sigismund!--"

"Is not our child," answered the headsman, with an impress of truth in his
manner that went far to bring conviction; "our own boy died in the blessed
state of infancy, and, to save thy feelings, this youth was substituted in
his place by me without thy knowledge."

Marguerite moved nearer to the young man. She gazed wistfully at his
flushed, excited features, in which pain at being so unexpectedly torn
from the bosom of a family he had always deemed his own, was fearfully
struggling with a wild and indefinite delight at finding himself suddenly
relieved from a load he had long found so grievous to be borne.
Interpreting the latter expression with jealous affection, she bent her
face to her bosom, and retreated in silence among her companions lo weep.

In the mean time a sudden and tumultuous surprise took possession of the
different listeners, which was modified and exhibited according to their
respective characters, or to the amount of interest that each had in the
truth or falsehood of what had just been announced. The Doge clung to the
hope, improbable as it seemed, with a tenacity proportioned to his recent
anguish, while Sigismund stood like one beside himself. His eye wandered
from the simple and benevolent, but degraded, man, whom he had believed to
be his father, to the venerable and imposing-looking nobl