“It was my intention to conceal nothing, but to lay before thee the history of my life, with all the reasons that may have influenced my conduct,” returned Sigismund:  “at some other time, when both are in a calmer state of mind, I shall dare to entreat a hearing—­”

“Delay is unnecessary—­it might even be improper.  It is my duty to explain every thing to my father, and he may wish to know why thou hast not always appeared what thou art.  Do not fancy, Sigismund, that I distrust thy motive, but the wariness of the old and the confidence of the young have so little in common!—­I would rather that thou told me now.”

He yielded to the mild earnestness of her manner, and to the sweet, but sad, smile with which she seconded the appeal.

“If thou wilt hear the melancholy history, Adelheid,” he said, “there is no sufficient reason why I should wish to postpone the little it will be necessary to say.  You are probably familiar with the laws of the canton, I mean those cruel ordinances by which a particular family is condemned, for a better word can scarcely be found, to discharge the duties of this revolting office.  This duty may have been a privilege in the dark ages but it is now become a tax that none, who have been educated with better hopes, can endure to pay.  My father, trained from infancy to expect the employment, and accustomed to its discharge in contemplation, succeeded to his parent while yet young; and, though formed by nature a meek and even a compassionate man, he has never shrunk from his bloody tasks, whenever required to fulfil them by the command of his superiors.  But, touched by a sentiment of humanity, it was his wish to avert from me what his better reason led him to think the calamity of our race.  I am the eldest born, and, strictly, I was the child most liable to be called to assume the office, but, as I have heard, the tender love of my mother induced her to suggest a plan by which I, at least, might be rescued from the odium that had so long been attached to our name.  I was secretly conveyed from the house while yet an infant; a feigned death concealed the pious fraud, and thus far, Heaven be praised! the authorities are ignorant of my birth!”

“And thy mother, Sigismund; I have great respect for that noble mother, who, doubtless, is endowed with more than her sex’s firmness and constancy, since she must have sworn faith and love to thy father, knowing his duties and the hopelessness of their being evaded?  I feel a reverence for a woman so superior to the weaknesses, and yet so true to the real and best affections, of her sex!”

The young man smiled so painfully as to cause his enthusiastic companion to regret that she had put the question.

“My mother is certainly a woman not only to be loved, but in many particulars deeply to be revered.  My poor and noble mother has a thousand excellencies, being a most tender parent, with a heart so kind that it would grieve her to see injury done even to the meanest living thing.  She was not a woman, surely, intended by God to be the mother of a line of executioners!”