“We knew we were all to each other,” he continued, after briefly alluding to the early history of their births and love; “and we felt the necessity of living for ourselves.  Ye that are born to honors, who meet with smiles and respectful looks in all ye meet, can know little of the feeling which binds together the unhappy.  When God gave us our first-born, as he lay a smiling babe in her lap, looking up into her eye with the innocence that most likens man to angels, Marguerite shed bitter tears at the thought of such a creature’s being condemned by the laws to shed the blood of men.  The reflection that he was to live for ever an outcast from his kind was bitter to a mother’s heart.  We had made many offers to the canton to be released ourselves, from this charge; we had prayed them—­Herr Melchior, you should know how earnestly we have prayed the council, to be suffered to live like others, and without this accursed doom—­but they would not.  They said the usage was ancient, that change was dangerous, and that what God willed must come to pass.  We could not bear that the burthen we found so hard to endure ourselves should go down for ever as a curse upon our descendants, Herr Doge,” he continued, raising his meek face in the pride of honesty; “it is well for those who are the possessors of honors to be proud of their privileges; but when the inheritance is one of wrongs and scorn, when the evil eyes of our fellows are upon us, the heart sickens.  Such was our feeling when we looked upon our first-born.  The wish to save him from our own disgrace was uppermost, and we bethought us of the means.”

“Ay!” sternly interrupted Marguerite, “I parted with my child, and silenced a mother’s longings, proud nobles, that he might not become the tool of your ruthless policy; I gave up a mother’s joy in nourishing and in cherishing her young, that the little innocent might live among his fellows, as God had created him, their equal and not their victim!”

Balthazar paused, as was usual with him when ever his energetic wife manifested any of her strong and masculine qualities, and then, when deep silence had followed her remark, he proceeded.

“We wanted not for wealth; all we asked was to be like others in the world’s respect.  With our money it was very easy to find those in another canton, who were willing to take the little Sigismund into their keeping.  After which, a feigned death, and a private burial, did the rest.  The deceit was easily practised, for as few cared for the griefs as for the happiness of the headsman’s family The child had drawn near the end of its first year, when I was called upon to execute my office on a stranger.  The criminal had taken life in a drunken brawl in one of the towns of the canton, and he was said to be a man that had trifled with the precious gifts of birth, it being suspected that he was noble.  I went with a heavy heart, for never did I strike a blow without praying God it might be the last; but