“Admitting that I am not Bartolo, eccellenza, does the Signer Sigismondo claim to be he?  Have you not assured yourself that a certain Bartolo Contini, a man whose life is passed in open hostility to the laws, is your child?  Did you not employ your confidant and secretary to learn the facts?  Did he not hear from the dying lips of a holy priest, who knew all the circumstances, that ‘Bartolo Contini is the son of Gaetano Grimaldi’?  Did not the confederate of your implacable enemy, Cristofero Serrani, swear the same to you?  Have you not seen papers that were taken with your child to confirm it all, and did you not send this signet as a gage that Bartolo should not want your aid, in any strait that might occur in his wild manner of living, when you learned that he resolutely preferred remaining what he was, to becoming an image of sickly repentance and newly-assumed nobility, in your gorgeous palace on the Strada Balbi?”

The Doge again bowed his head in dismay, for all this he knew to be true beyond a shadow of hope.

“Here is some sad mistake,” he said with bitter regret.  “Thou hast received the child of some other bereaved parent, Balthazar; but, though I cannot hope to prove myself the natural father of Sigismund, he shall at least find me one in affection and good offices.  If his life be not due to me, I owe him mine; the debt shall form a tie between us little short of that to which nature herself could give birth.”

“Herr Doge,” returned the earnest headsman, “let us not be too hasty.  If there are strong facts in favor of the claims of Maso, there are many circumstances, also, in favor of those of Sigismund.  To me, the history of the last is probably more clear than it can be to any other.  The time; the country, the age of the child, the name, and the fearful revelations of the criminal, are all strong proofs in Sigismund’s behalf, Here are the effects that were given me with the child; it is possible that they, too, may throw weight into his scale.”

Balthazar had taken means to procure the package in question from among the luggage of Sigismund, and he now proceeded to expose its contents, while a breathless silence betrayed the interest with which the result was expected.  He first laid upon the pavement of the chapel a collection of child’s clothing.  The articles were rich, and according to the fashions of the times; but they contained no positive proofs that could go to substantiate the origin of the wearer, except as they raised the probability of his having come of an elevated rank in life.  As the different objects were placed upon the stones, Adelheid and Christine kneeled beside them, each too intently absorbed with the progress of the inquiry to bethink themselves of those forms which, in common, throw a restraint upon the manners of their sex.  The latter appeared to forget her own sorrows, for a moment, in a new-born interest in her brother’s fortunes while the ears of the former drank in each syllable that fell from the lips of the different speakers, with an avidity that her strong sympathy with the youth could alone give.