is changed.  The smiling cottage, that hung over the gulf like a swan over a transparent lake, is sad and desolate; the little enclosure, with its hedges of lilac and hawthorn, where joyous groups used to come and sit at the close of day, is silent and deserted.  No human sound dares to trouble the mourning of this saddened solitude.  Only towards evening the waves of the sea, compassionating such great misfortunes, come to murmur plaintive notes upon the beach.

Gabriel has been condemned.  The news of the high-born Prince of Brancaleone’s death, so young, so handsome, and so universally adored, not only fluttered the aristocracy of Naples, but excited profound indignation in all classes of people.  He was mourned by everybody, and a unanimous cry for vengeance was raised against the murderer.

The authorities opened the inquiry with alarming promptness.  The magistrates whom their office called to judge this deplorable affair displayed, however, the most irreproachable integrity.  No consideration outside their duty, no deference due to so noble and powerful a family, could shake the convictions of their conscience.  History has kept a record of this memorable trial; and has, no reproach to make to men which does not apply equally to the imperfection of human laws.  The appearance of things, that fatal contradiction which the genius of evil so often here on earth gives to truth, overwhelmed the poor fisherman with the most evident proofs.

Trespolo, in whom fear had destroyed all scruples, being first examined, as having been the young prince’s confidant, declared with cool impudence that, his master having shown a wish to escape for a few days from the importunities of a young married lady whose passion was beginning to tire him, had followed him to the island with three or four of his most faithful servants, and that he himself had adopted the disguise of a pilgrim, not wishing to betray his excellency’s incognito to the fisher-people, who would certainly have tormented so powerful a person by all sorts of petitions.  Two local watch men, who had happened to be on the hillside at the moment of the crime, gave evidence that confirmed the valet’s lengthy statement; hidden by some under wood, they had seen Gabriel rush upon the prince, and had distinctly heard the last words of the dying man; calling “Murder!” All the witnesses, even those summoned at the request of the prisoner, made his case worse by their statements, which they tried to make favourable.  Thus the court, with its usual perspicacity and its infallible certainty, succeeded in establishing the fact that Prince Eligi of Brancaleone, having taken a temporary dislike to town life, had retired to the little island of Nisida, there to give himself up peaceably to the pleasure of fishing, for which he had at all times had a particular predilection (a proof appeared among the documents of the case that the prince had regularly been present every other year at the tunny-fishing