has the command of his own course.  My mother was fain and good.  She wanted only the power to withstand the arts of one, who, honored in the opinions of all around her, undermined her virtue.  He was great, noble, and powerful; while she hath little beside her beauty and her weakness.  Signori,—­the odds against her were too much.  I was the punishment of her fault.  I came into a world then, in which every man despised me before I had done any act to deserve its scorn,”

“Nay, this is pushing opinions to extremes!” interrupted the Signor Grimaldi, who had scarce breathed, in his eagerness to catch the syllables as they came from the other’s tongue.

“We began, Signori, as we have ended; distrustful, and struggling to see which could do the other the most harm.  A reverend and holy monk, who knew my history, would have filled a soul with heaven that the wrongs of the world had already driven to, the verge of hell.  The experiment failed.  Homily and precept,” Maso smiled bitterly as he continued, “are but indifferent weapons to fight with against hourly wrongs; instead of becoming a cardinal and the counsellor of the head of the church, I am the man ye see.  Signor Grimaldi, the monk who gave me his care was Father Girolamo.  He told the truth to thy secretary, for I am the son of poor Annunziata Altieri, who was once thought worthy to attract thy passing notice.  The deception of calling myself another of thy children was practised for my own security.  The means were offered by an accidental confederacy with one of the instruments of thy formidable enemy and cousin, who furnished the papers that had been taken with the little Gaetano.  The truth of what I say shall be delivered to you at Genoa.  As for the Signor Sigismondo, it is time we ceased to be rivals.  We are brothers, with this difference in our fortunes, that he comes of wedlock, and I of an unexpiated, and almost an unrepented, crime!”

A common cry, in which regret, joy, and surprise were wildly mingled, interrupted the speaker.  Adelheid threw herself into her husband’s arms, and the pale and conscience-stricken Doge stood with extended arms, an image of contrition, delight, and shame.  His friends pressed around him with consolation on their tongues, and the blandishments of affection in their manner, for the regrets of the great rarely pass away unheeded, like the moans of the low.

“Let me have air!” exclaimed the prince; “give me air or I suffocate!  Where is the child of Annunziata?—­I will at least atone to him for the wrong done his mother!”

It was too late.  The victim of another’s fault had cast himself over the edge of the precipice with reckless hardihood, and he was already beyond the reach of the voice, in his swift descent, by a shorter but dangerous path, toward Aoste.  Nettuno was at his heels.  It was evident that he endeavored to outstrip Pippo and Conrad, who were trudging ahead by the more beaten road.  In a few minutes he turned the brow of a beetling rock, and was lost to view.