“I will testify more strongly to thy merit, Maso, in face of this or any tribunal;” he said, grasping the hand of the Italian.  “One who showed so much bravery and so strong love for his fellows, would be little likely to take life clandestinely and like a coward.  Thou mayest count on my testimony in this strait—­if thou art guilty of this crime, who can hope to be innocent?”

Maso returned the friendly grasp till their fingers seemed to grow into each other.  His eye, too, showed he was not without wholesome native sympathies, though education and his habits might have warped them from their true direction.  A tear, in spite of his effort to suppress the weakness started from its fountain, rolling down his sunburnt cheek like a solitary rivulet trickling through a barren and rugged waste.

“This is frank, and as becomes a soldier, Signore,” he said, “and I receive it as it is given, in kindness and love.  But we will not lay more stress upon the affair of the lake than it deserves.  This keen-sighted chatelain need not be told that I could not be of use in saving your lives, without saving my own; and, unless I much mistake the meaning of his eye, he is about to say that we are fashioned like this wild country in which chance has brought us together, with our spots of generous fertility mingled with much unfruitful rock, and that he who does a good act to-day may forget himself by doing an evil turn to-morrow.”

“Thou givest reason to all who hear thee to mourn that thy career has not been more profitable to thyself and the public,” answered the judge; “one who can reason so-well, and who hath this clear insight into his own disposition, must err less from ignorance than wantonness!”

“There you do me injustice, Signor Castellano, and the laws more credit than they deserve.  I shall not deny that justice—­or what is called justice—­and I have some acquaintance.  I have been the tenant of many prisons before this which has been furnished by the holy canons, and I have seen every stage of the rogue’s progress, from him who is still startled by his first crime, dreaming heavy dreams, and fancying each stone of his cell has an eye to reproach him, to him who no sooner does a wrong than it is forgotten in the wish to find the means of committing another; and I call Heaven as a witness, that more is done to help along the scholar in his study of vice, by those who are styled the ministers of justice, than by his own natural frailties, the wants of his habits, or the strength of his passions.  Let the judge feel a father’s mildness, the laws possess that pure justice which is of things that are not perverted, and society become what it claims to be, a community of mutual support, and, my life on it, chatelain, thy functions will be lessened of most of their weight and of all their oppression.”

“This language is bold, and without an object.  Explain the manner of thy quitting Vevey, Maso, the road thou hast travelled, the hours of thy passages by the different villages, and the reason why thou wert discovered near the Refuge, alone, and why thou quittedst the companions with whom thou hadst passed the night so early and so clandestinely?”