“There is naught sure in this fickle state of being;” he continued.  “Neither the throne, nor riches, nor health, nor even the sacred affections are secure against change.  Well may we pause then and weigh every chance of happiness, ere we take the last and final step in any great or novel measure.  Thou knowest the hopes with which I entered life, Melchior, and the chilling disappointments with which my career is likely to close.  No youth was born to fairer hopes, nor did Italy know one more joyous than myself, the morning I received the hand of Angiolina; and yet two short years saw all those hopes withered, this joyousness gone, and a cloud thrown across my prospects which has never disappeared.  A widowed husband, a childless father, may not prove a bad counsellor, my friend, in a moment when there is so much doubt besetting thee and thine.”

“Thy mind naturally returns to thine own unhappy child, poor Gaetano, when there is so much question of the fortunes of mine.”

The Signor Grimaldi turned his look on his friend, but the gleam of anguish, which was wont to pass athwart his countenance when his mind was drawn powerfully towards that painful subject, betrayed that he was not just then able to reply.

“We see in all these events,” continued the Genoese, as if too full of his subject to restrain his words, “the unsearchable designs of Providence.  Here is a youth who is all that a father could desire; worthy in every sense to be the depository of a beloved and only daughter’s weal; manly, brave, virtuous, and noble in all but the chances of blood, and yet so accursed by the world’s opinion that we might scarce venture to name him as the associate of an idle hour, were the fact known that he is the man he has declared himself to be!”

“You put the matter in strong language Signor Grimaldi;” said Adelheid, starting.

“A youth of a form so commanding that a king might exult at the prospect of his crown descending on such a head; of a perfection of strength and masculine excellence that will almost justify the dangerous exultation of health and vigor; of a reason that is riper than his years; of a virtue of proof; of all qualities that we respect, and which come of study and not of accident, and yet a youth condemned of men to live under the reproach of their hatred and contempt, or to conceal for ever the name of the mother that bore him!  Compare this Sigismund with others that may be named; with the high-born and pampered heir of some illustrious house, who riots in men’s respect while he shocks men’s morals; who presumes on privilege to trifle with the sacred and the just; who lives for self, and that in base enjoyments; who is fitter to be the lunatic’s companion than any other’s, though destined to rule in the council; who is the type of the wicked, though called to preside over the virtuous; who cannot be esteemed, though entitled to be honored; and let us ask why this is so, what is the wisdom which hath drawn differences so arbitrary, and which, while proclaiming the necessity of justice, so openly, so wantonly, and so ingeniously sets its plainest dictates at defiance?”