“Melchior, is this true?” cried the Doge.

“The girl’s words are but an echo of what my heart feels,” answered the baron, looking about him proudly, as if he would browbeat any who should presume to think that he had consented to corrupt the blood of Willading by the measure.

“I have watched thine eye, Maso, as one nearly interested in the truth,” continued Adelheid, “and I now appeal to thee, as thou lovest thine own soul, to disburthen thyself!  While thou may’st have told some truth, the jealous affection of a woman has revealed to me that thou hast kept back part.  Speak, then, and relieve the soul of this venerable prince from torture,”

“And deliver my own body to the wheel!  This may be well to the warm imagination of a love-sick girl, but we of the contraband have too much practice in men uselessly to throw away an advantage.”

“Thou mayest have confidence in our faith.  I have seen much of thee within the last few days, Maso, and I wish not to think thee capable of the bloody deed that hath been committed on the mountain, though I fear thy life is only too ungoverned; still I will not believe that the hero of the Leman can be the assassin of St. Bernard.”

“When thy young dreams are over, fair one, and thou seest the world under its true colors, thou wilt know that the hearts of men come partly of Heaven and partly of Hell.”

Maso laughed in his most reckless manner as he delivered this opinion.

“’Tis useless to deny that thou hast sympathies,” continued the maiden steadily; “thou hast in secret more pleasure in serving than in injuring thy race.  Thou canst not have been in such straits in company with the Signor Sigismondo, without imbibing some touch of his noble generosity.  You have struggled together for our common good, you come of the same God, have the same manly courage, are equally stout of heart, strong of hand, and willing to do for others.  Such a heart must have enough of noble and human impulses to cause you to love justice.  Speak, then, and I pledge our sacred word, that thou shalt fare better for thy candor than by taking refuge in thy present fraud.  Bethink thee, Maso, that the happiness of this aged man, of Sigismund himself, if thou wilt, for I blush not to say it—­of a weak and affectionate girl, is in thy keeping.  Give us truth holy; sacred truth, and we pardon the past.”

Il Maledetto was moved by the beautiful earnestness of the speaker.  Her ingenuous interest in the result, with the solemnity of her appeal shook his purpose.

“Thou know’st not what thou say’st, lady; thou ask’st my life,” he answered, after pondering in a way to give a new impulse to the dying hopes of the Doge.

“Though there is no quality more sacred than justice,” interposed the chatelain, who alone could speak with authority in the Valais; “it is fairly within the province of her servants to permit her to go unexpiated, in order that greater good may come of the sacrifice.  If thou wilt prove aught that is of grave importance to the interests of the Prince of Genoa, Valais owes it to the love it bears his republic to requite the service.”