“This is enough,” returned the attentive Balthazar.  “Dismiss your grief, princely Doge, and prepare your heart for a new-found joy.  Instead of being the parent of this reckless freebooter, God at length pities and returns your real son in Sigismund, a child that might gladden the heart of any parent, though he were an emperor!”

This extraordinary declaration was made to stunned and confounded listeners.  A cry of alarm bust from the lips of Marguerite, who approached the group in the centre of the chapel, trembling and anxious as if the grave were about to rob her of a treasure.

“What is this I hear!” exclaimed the mother, whose sensitiveness was the first to take alarm.  “Are my half-formed suspicions then too true, Balthazar?  Am I, indeed, without a son?  I know thou wouldst not trifle with a mother, or mislead this stricken noble in a thing like this!  Speak, again, that I may know the truth—­Sigismund!—­”

“Is not our child,” answered the headsman, with an impress of truth in his manner that went far to bring conviction; “our own boy died in the blessed state of infancy, and, to save thy feelings, this youth was substituted in his place by me without thy knowledge.”

Marguerite moved nearer to the young man.  She gazed wistfully at his flushed, excited features, in which pain at being so unexpectedly torn from the bosom of a family he had always deemed his own, was fearfully struggling with a wild and indefinite delight at finding himself suddenly relieved from a load he had long found so grievous to be borne.  Interpreting the latter expression with jealous affection, she bent her face to her bosom, and retreated in silence among her companions lo weep.

In the mean time a sudden and tumultuous surprise took possession of the different listeners, which was modified and exhibited according to their respective characters, or to the amount of interest that each had in the truth or falsehood of what had just been announced.  The Doge clung to the hope, improbable as it seemed, with a tenacity proportioned to his recent anguish, while Sigismund stood like one beside himself.  His eye wandered from the simple and benevolent, but degraded, man, whom he had believed to be his father, to the venerable and imposing-looking noble who was now so unexpectedly presented in that sacred character.  The sobs of Marguerite reached his ears, and first recalled him to recollection.  They came blended with the fresh grief of Christine, who felt as if ruthless death had now robbed her of a brother.  There was also the struggling emotion of one whose interest in him had a still more tender and engrossing claim.