hopes by some evidence better than;
his simple asseveration; for solemnly as the latter had been made, and
profound as he knew to be the reverence for truth which the despised
headsman not only entertained himself but inculcated in all in whom he had
any interest, the revelation he had just made seemed too improbable to
resist the doubts of one who knew his happiness to be the fruit or the
forfeiture of its veracity.

Chapter XXX.

We rest--a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise--one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away.

Shelley.

The tale of Balthazar was simple but eloquent His union with Marguerite,
in spite of the world's obloquy and injustice, had been blest by the wise
and merciful Being who knew how to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.

"We knew we were all to each other," he continued, after briefly alluding
to the early history of their births and love; "and we felt the necessity
of living for ourselves. Ye that are born to honors, who meet with smiles
and respectful looks in all ye meet, can know little of the feeling which
binds together the unhappy. When God gave us our first-born, as he lay a
smiling babe in her lap, looking up into her eye with the innocence that
most likens man to angels, Marguerite shed bitter tears at the thought of
such a creature's being condemned by the laws to shed the blood of men.
The reflection that he was to live for ever an outcast from his kind was
bitter to a mother's heart. We had made many offers to the canton to be
released ourselves, from this charge; we had prayed them--Herr Melchior,
you should know how earnestly we have prayed the council, to be suffered
to live like others, and without this accursed doom--but they would not.
They said the usage was ancient, that change was dangerous, and that what
God willed must come to pass. We could not bear that the burthen we found
so hard to endure ourselves should go down for ever as a curse upon our
descendants, Herr Doge," he continued, raising his meek face in the pride
of honesty; "it is well for those who are the possessors of honors to be
proud of their privileges; but when the inheritance is one of wrongs and
scorn, when the evil eyes of our fellows are upon us, the heart sickens.
Such was our feeling when we looked upon our first-born. The wish to save
him from our own disgrace was uppermost, and we bethough