“Thou hadst not time to give thy manly tenderness and noble qualities an opportunity; else, my life on it, she would have come to love thee, Gaetano, as all love thee who know thee!” returned the baron, warmly.

“Thanks, my kind friend; but beware of making marriage a mere convenience.  There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, and which fortifies against the seductions of a world that is already too strong for honesty.  I remember to have heard from one that understood his fellow-creatures well, that marriages of mere propriety tend to rob woman of her greatest charm, that of superiority to the vulgar feeling of worldly calculations, and that all communities in which they prevail become, of necessity, selfish beyond the natural limits, and eventually corrupt”

“This may be true;—­but Adelheid loves the youth.”

“Ha!  This changes the complexion of the affair.  How dost thou know this?”

“From her own lips.  The secret escaped her, under the warmth and sincerity of feeling that the late events so naturally excited.”

“And Sigismund!—­he has thy approbation?—­for I will not suppose that one like thy daughter yielded her affections unsolicited.”

“He has—­that is—­he has.  There is what the world will be apt to call an obstacle, but it shall count for nothing with me.  The youth is not noble.”

“The objection is serious, my honest friend.  It is not wise to tax human infirmity too much, where there is sufficient to endure from causes that cannot be removed.  Wedlock is a precarious experiment, and all unusual motives for disgust should be cautiously avoided.—­I would he were noble.”

“The difficulty shall be removed by the Emperor’s favor.  Thou hast princes in Italy, too, that might be prevailed on to do us this grace, at need?”

“What is the youth’s origin and history, and by what means has a daughter of thine been placed in a situation to love one that is simply born?”

“Sigismund is a Swiss, and of a family of Bernese burghers, I should think, though, to confess the truth, I know little more than that he has passed several years in foreign service, and that he saved my daughter’s life from one of our mountain accidents, some two years since, as he has now saved thine and mine.  My sister, near whose castle the acquaintance commenced, permitted the intercourse, which it would now be too late to think of prohibiting.  And, to speak honestly, I begin to rejoice the boy is what he is, in order that our readiness to receive him to our arms may be the more apparent.  If the young fellow were the equal of Adelheid in other things, as he is in person and character, he would have too much in his favor.—­No, by the faith of Calvin!—­him whom thou stylest a heretic—­I think I rejoice that the boy is not noble!”