The Genoese looked grave, and it was evident he listened to his friend with something like displeasure.

“We who have so nearly passed through life, good Melchior,” he said, “should know its difficulties and its hazards.  The way is weary, and it has need of all the solace that affection and a community of feeling can yield to lighten its cares.  I have never liked this heartless manner of trafficking in the tenderest ties, to uphold a failing line or a failing fortune; and better it were that Adelheid should pass her days unwooed in thy ancient castle, than give her hand, under any sudden impulse of sentiment, not less than under a cold calculation of interest.  Such a girl, my friend, is not to be bestowed without much care and reflection.”

“By the mass! to use one of thine own favorite oaths, I wonder to hear thee talk thus!—­thou, whom I knew a hot-blooded Italian, jealous as a Turk, and maintaining at thy rapier’s point that women were like the steel of thy sword, so easily tarnished by rust, or evil breath, or neglect, that no father or brother could be easy on the score of honor, until the last of his name was well wedded, and that, too, to such as the wisdom of her advisers should choose!  I remember thee once saying thou couldst not sleep soundly till thy sister was a wife or a nun.”

“This was the language of boyhood and thoughtless youth, and bitterly rebuked have I been for having used it.  I wived a beauteous and noble virgin, de Willading; but I much fear that, while my fair conduct in her behalf won her respect and esteem, I was too late to win her love.  It is a fearful thing to enter on the solemn and grave ties of married life, without enlisting in the cause of happiness the support of the judgment, the fancy, the tastes, with the feelings that are dependent on them, and, more than all, those wayward inclinations, whose workings too often baffle human foresight.  If the hopes of the ardent and generous themselves are deceived in the uncertain lottery of wedlock, the victim will struggle hard to maintain the delusion; but when the calculations of others are parent to the evil, a natural inducement, that comes of the devil I fear, prompts us to aggravate, instead of striving to lessen, the evil.”

“Thou dost not speak of wedlock as one who found the condition happy, poor Gaetano?”

“I have told thee what I fear was but too true,” returned the Genoese, with a heavy sigh.  “My birth, vast means, and I trust a fair name, induced the kinsmen of my wife to urge her to a union, that I have since had reason to fear her feelings not lead her to form.  I had a terrible ally too in the acknowledged unworthiness of him who had captivated her young fancy, and whom, as age brought reflection, her reason condemned.  I was accepted, therefore, as a cure to a bleeding heart and broken peace, and my office, at the best, was not such as a good man could desire, or a proud man tolerate.  The unhappy Angiolina died in giving birth to her first child, the unhappy son of whom I have told thee so much.  She found peace at last in the grave!”