The young man smiled frightfully, at least so it seemed to his companion:  but he maintained the appearance of composure.  In the mean time Peterchen, having secretly dispatched another messenger to the cooks, turned his serious attention to the difficulty that had just arisen.

“I have long been intrusted by the council with honorable duties,” he said, “but never, before to-day, have I been required to decide upon a domestic misunderstanding, before the parties were actually wedded.  This is a grave interruption of the ceremonies of the abbaye, as well as a slight upon the notary and the spectators, and needs be well looked to.  Dost thou really persist in putting this unusual termination to a marriage-ceremony, Herr Bridegroom?”

Jacques Colis had lost a little of the violent impulse which led him to the precipitate and inconsiderate act of destroying an instrument he had legally executed; but his outbreaking of feeling was followed by a sullen and fixed resolution to persevere in the refusal at every hazard to himself.

“I will not wive the daughter of a man hunted of society, and avoided by all;” he doggedly answered.

“No doubt the respectability of the parent is the next thing to a good dowry, in the choice of a wife,” returned the bailiff, “but one of thy years has not come hither, without having first inquired into the parentage of her thou wert about to wed?”

“It was sworn to me that the secret should be kept.  The girl is well endowed, and a promise was solemnly made that her parentage should never be known.  The family of Colis is esteemed in Vaud, and I would not have it said that the blood of the headsman of the canton hath mixed in a stream as fair as ours.”

“And yet thou wert not unwilling, so long as the circumstance was unknown?  Thy objection is less to the fact, than to its public exposure.”

“Without the aid of parchments and tongues, Monsieur le Bailli, we should all be equal in birth.  Ask the noble Baron de Willading, who is seated there at your side, why he is better than another.  He will tell you that he is come of an ancient and honorable line; but had he been taken from his castle in infancy, and concealed under a feigned name, and kept from men’s knowledge as being that he is, who would think of him for the deeds of his ancestors?  As the Sire de Willading would, in such a case, have lost in the world’s esteem, so did Christine gain; but as opinion would return to the baron, when the truth should be published, so does it desert Balthazar’s daughter, when she is known to be a headsman’s child.  I would have married the maiden as she was, but, your pardon, Monsieur le Bailli, if I say, I will not wive her as she is.”

A murmur of approbation followed this plausible and ready apology, for, when antipathies are active and bitter, men are easily satisfied with a doubtful morality and a weak argument.

“This honest youth hath some reason in him,” observed the puzzled bailiff, shaking his head.  “I would he had been less expert in disputation, or that the secret had been better kept!  It is apparent as the sun in the heavens, friend Melchior, that hadst thou not been known as thy father’s child, thou wouldst not have succeeded to thy castle and lands—­nay, by St Luke! not even to the rights of the buergerschaft.”