inct, in seeking
preferment for his son!"

Each eye now turned on the headsman, who quailed not under the scrutiny,
but maintained the firm front of one conscious that he had done no wrong.

"I have not said that Sigismund is the child of any," he answered in his
meek manner, but with a steadiness that won him credit with the listeners.
"I have only said that he belongs not to me. No father need wish a
worthier son, and heaven knows that I yield my own claims with a sorrow
that it would be grievous to bear, did I not hope a better fortune for him
than any which can come from a connexion with a race accursed. The
likeness which is seen in Maso, and which Sigismund is thought to want,
proves little, noble gentlemen and reverend monks; for all who have looked
closely into these matters know that resemblances are as often found
between the distant branches of the same family, as between those who are
more nearly united. Sigismund is not of us, and none can see any trace of
either my own or of Marguerite's family in his person or features."

Balthazar paused that there might be an examination of this fact, and, in
truth, the most ingenious fancy could not have detected the least affinity
in looks, between either of those whom he had so long thought his parents
and the young soldier.

"Let the Doge of Genoa question his memory, and look farther than himself.
Can he find no sleeping smile, no color of the hair, nor any other common
point of appearance, between the youth and some of those whom he once knew
and loved?"

The anxious prince turned eagerly towards Sigismund, and a gleam of joy
lighted his face again, as he studied the young man's features.

"By San Francesco! Melchior, the honest Balthazar is right. My grandmother
was a Venetian, and she had the fair hair of the boy--the eye too, is
hers--and--oh!" bending his head aside and veiling his eyes with his hand,
"I see the anxious gaze that was so constant in the sainted and injured
Angiolina, after my greater wealth and power had tempted her kinsmen to
force her to yield an unwilling hand!--Wretch! thou art not Bartolo; thy
tale is a wicked deception, invented to shield thee from the punishment
due to thy crime!"

"Admitting that I am not Bartolo, eccellenza, does the Signer Sigismondo
claim to be he? Have you not assured yourself that a certain Bartolo
Contini, a man whose life is passed in open hostility to the laws, is your
child? Did you not employ your confi