“Thou may’st have reason; and yet I wish thou wert more in error than ever Christian was!  These are rugged mountains, Melchior, and, fairly passed, it might be so arranged that the boy should forget Switzerland for ever.  He might become a Genoese, in which event, dost thou not see the means of overcoming some of the present difficulty?”

“Is the heiress of my house a vagrant, Signor Grimaldi, to forget her country and birth?”

“I am childless, in effect, if not in fact; and where there are the will and the means, the end should not be wanting.  We will speak of this under the warmer sun of Italy, which they say is apt to render hearts tender.”

“The hearts of the young and amorous, good Gaetano, but, unless much changed of late, it is as apt to harden those of the old, as any sun I know of;” returned the baron, shaking his head, though it much exceeded his power to smile at his own pleasantry when speaking on this painful subject.  “Thou knowest that in this matter I act only for the welfare of Adelheid, without thought of myself; and it would little comport with the honor of a baron of an ancient house, to be the grandfather of children who come of a race of executioners.”

The Signor Grimaldi succeeded better than his friend in raising a smile, for, more accustomed to dive into the depths of human feeling, he was not slow in detecting the mixture of motives that were silently exercising their long-established influence over the heart of his really well-intentioned companion.

“So long as thou speakest of the wisdom of respecting men’s opinions, and the danger of wrecking thy daughter’s happiness by running counter to their current, I agree with thee to the letter; but, to me, it seems possible so to place the affair, that the world shall imagine all is in rule, and, by consequence, all proper.  If we can overcome ourselves, Melchior, I apprehend no great difficulty in blinding others.”

The head of the Bernois dropped upon his breast, and he rode a long distance in that attitude, reflecting on the course it most became him to pursue, and struggling with the conflicting sentiments which troubled his upright but prejudiced mind.  As his friend understood the nature of this inward strife, he ceased to speak, and a long silence succeeded the discourse.

It was different with those who followed.  Though long accustomed to gaze at their native mountains from a distance, this was the first occasion on which Adelheid and her companion had ever actually penetrated into their glens, or journeyed on their broken and changing faces.  The path of St. Bernard, therefore, had all the charm of novelty, and their youthful and ardent minds were soon won from meditating on their own causes of unhappiness, to admiration of the sublime works of nature.  The cultivated taste of Adelheid, in particular, was quick in detecting those beauties of a more subtle kind which the less instructed are