“I do not say that in a darker age, when oppression stalked over the land, and the best were barbarous as the worst to-day, some of those of whom we are born may not have been fierce and cruel enough to take upon themselves this office with good will; but I deny that any short of Him who holds the universe in his hand, and who controls an endless future to compensate for the evils of the present time, has the power to say to the son, that he shall be the heritor of the father’s wrongs!”

“How! dost question the doctrine of descents?  We shall next hear thee dispute the rights of the buergerschaft!”

“I know nothing, Herr Bailiff, of the nice distinctions of your rights in the city, and wish to utter naught for or against.  But an entire life of contumely and bitterness is apt to become a life of thoughtfulness and care; and I see sufficient difference between the preservation of privileges fairly earned, though even these may and do bring with them abuses hard to be borne, and the unmerited oppression of the offspring for the ancestors’ faults.  There is little of that justice which savors of Heaven in this, and the time will come when a fearful return will be made for wrongs so sore!”

“Concern for thy pretty daughter, good Marguerite, causes thee to speak strongly.”

“Is not the daughter of a headsman and a headsman’s wife their offspring, as much as the fair maiden who sits near thee is the child of the noble at her side?  Am I to love her less, that she is despised by a cruel world?  Had I not the same suffering at the birth, the same joy in the infant smile, the same hope in the childish promise, and the same trembling for her fate when I consented to trust her happiness to another, as she that bore that more fortunate but not fairer maiden hath had in her?  Hath God created two natures—­two yearnings for the mother—­two longings for our children’s weal—­those of the rich and honored, and those of the crushed and despised?”

“Go to, good Marguerite; thou puttest the matter altogether in a manner that is unusual.  Are our reverenced usages nothing—­our solemn edicts —­our city’s rule—­and our resolution to govern and that fairly and with effect?”

“I fear that these are stronger than the right, and likely to endure when the tears of the oppressed are exhausted, when they and their fates shall be forgotten!”

“Thy child is fair and modest,” observed the Signor Grimaldi, “and will yet find a youth who will more than atone for this injury.  He that has rejected her was not worthy of her faith.”

Marguerite turned her look, which had been glowing with awakened feeling, on her pale and still motionless daughter.  The expression of her softened, and she folded her child to her bosom, as the dove shelters its young.  All her aroused feelings appeared to dissolve in the sentiment of love.