wrongs; but, in spite of all I could do, this old man appeared to me in the light of Margaret’s grandfather—­and, had I been left to myself, he would have been saved.  As it was, never was horror equal to mine when I met her flying to his succor.  I had relied upon her absence; and the misery of that moment, when her eye fell upon me in the very act of seizing her grandfather, far transcended all else that I have suffered in these terrific scenes.  She fainted in my arms, and I and another carried her upstairs and procured water.  Meantime her grandfather had been murdered, even while Margaret fainted.  I had, however, under the fear of discovery, though never anticipating a reencounter with herself, forestalled the explanation requisite in such a case to make my conduct intelligible.  I had told her, under feigned names, the story of my mother and my sisters.  She knew their wrongs:  she had heard me contend for the right of vengeance.  Consequently, in our parting interview, one word only was required to place myself in a new position to her thoughts.  I needed only to say I was that son; that unhappy mother, so miserably degraded and outraged, was mine.

“As to the jailer, he was met by a party of us.  Not suspecting that any of us could be connected with the family, he was led to talk of the most hideous details with regard to my poor Berenice.  The child had not, as had been insinuated, aided her own degradation, but had nobly sustained the dignity of her sex and her family.  Such advantages as the monster pretended to have gained over her—­sick, desolate, and latterly delirious—­were, by his own confession, not obtained without violence.  This was too much.  Forty thousand lives, had he possessed them, could not have gratified my thirst for revenge.  Yet, had he but showed courage, he should have died the death of a soldier.  But the wretch showed cowardice the most abject, and—­,but you know his fate.

“Now, then, all is finished, and human nature is avenged.  Yet, if you complain of the bloodshed and the terror, think of the wrongs which created my rights; think of the sacrifice by which I gave a tenfold strength to those rights; think of the necessity for a dreadful concussion and shock to society, in order to carry my lesson into the councils of princes.

“This will now have been effected.  And ye, victims of dishonor, will be glorified in your deaths; ye will not have suffered in vain, nor died without a monument.  Sleep, therefore, sister Berenice—­sleep, gentle Mariamne, in peace.  And thou, noble mother, let the outrages sown in thy dishonor, rise again and blossom in wide harvests of honor for the women of thy afflicted race.  Sleep, daughters of Jerusalem, in the sanctity of your sufferings.  And thou, if it be possible, even more beloved daughter of a Christian fold, whose company was too soon denied to him in life, open thy grave to receive him, who, in the hour of death, wishes to remember no title which he wore on earth but that of thy chosen and adoring lover,