The countenance of the Genoese grew brighter and his voice resumed the polished tones in which he usually spoke.

“Here has been some injustice of a certainty,” he said, “or one of thy appearance would not be found in this cruel position.  Depend on our authority to protect thee, should the danger thou seemest to apprehend really occur.  Still the laws must be respected, though not always of the rigid impartiality that we might wish.  Thou hast owned the imperfection of human nature, and it is not wonderful that its work should have flaws.”

“I complain not now of the usage, which to me has become habit, but I dread the untamed fury of these ignorant and credulous men, who have taken a wild fancy that my presence might bring a curse upon the bark.”

There are accidental situations which contain more healthful morals than can be drawn from a thousand ingenious and plausible homilies, and in which facts, in their naked simplicity, are far more eloquent than any meaning that can be conveyed by words.  Such was the case with this meek and unexpected appeal of Balthazar.  All who heard him saw his situation under very different colors from those in which it would have been regarded had the subject presented itself under ordinary circumstances.  A common and painful sentiment attested strongly against the oppression that had given birth to his wrongs, and the good Melchior de Willading himself wondered how a case of this striking injustice could have arisen under the laws of Berne.

Chapter VI.

  Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
  A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
  Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
  Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
  All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

  Richard III.

The flitting twilight was now on the wane, and the shades of evening were gathering fast over the deep basin of the lake.  The figure of Maso, as he continued to pace his elevated platform, was drawn dark and distinct against the southern sky, in which some of the last rays of the sun still lingered, but objects on both shores were getting to be confounded with the shapeless masses of the mountains.  Here and there a pale star peeped out, though most of the vault that stretched across the confined horizon was shut in by dusky clouds.  A streak of dull, unnatural light was seen in the quarter which lay above the meadows of the Rhone, and nearly in a direction with the peak of Mont Blanc, which, though not visible from this portion of the Leman, was known to lie behind the ramparts of Savoy, like a monarch of the hills entrenched in his citadel of rocks and ice.