on his property at Palermo); that when once he was thus hidden in the island, Gabriel might have recognised him, having gone with his sister to the procession, a few days before, and had, no doubt, planned to murder him.  On the day before the night of the crime, the absence of Gabriel and the discomposure of his father and sister had been remarked.  Towards evening the prince had dismissed his servant, and gone out alone, as his custom was, to walk by the seashore.  Surprised by the storm and not knowing the byways of the island, he had wandered round the fisherman’s house, seeking a shelter; then Gabriel, encouraged by the darkness and by the noise of the tempest, which seemed likely to cover the cries of his victim, had, after prolonged hesitation, resolved to commit his crime, and having fired two shots at the unfortunate young man without succeeding in wounding him, had put an end to him by blows of the axe; lastly, at the moment when, with Solomon’s assistance, he was about to throw the body into the sea, the prince’s servants having appeared, they had gone up to the girl’s room, and, inventing their absurd tale, had cast themselves on their knees before the Virgin, in order to mislead the authorities.  All the circumstances that poor Solomon cited in his son’s favour turned against him:  the ladder at Nisida’s window belonged to the fisherman; the dagger which young Brancaleone always carried upon him to defend himself had evidently been taken from him after his death, and Gabriel had hastened to break it, so as to destroy, to the best of his power, the traces of his crime.  Bastiano’s evidence did not receive a minute’s consideration:  he, to destroy the idea of premeditation, declared that the young fisherman had left him only at the moment when the storm broke over the island; but, in the first place, the young diver was known to be Gabriel’s most devoted friend and his sister’s warmest admirer, and, in the second, he had been seen to land at Torre during the same hour in which he had affirmed that he was near to Nisida.  As for the prince’s passion for the poor peasant girl, the magistrates simply shrugged their shoulders at the ridiculous assertion of that, and especially at the young girl’s alleged resistance and the extreme measures to which the prince was supposed to have resorted to conquer the virtue of Nisida.  Eligi of Brancaleone was so young, so handsome, so seductive, and at the same time so cool amid his successes, that he had never been suspected of violence, except in getting rid of his mistresses.  Finally, an overwhelming and unanswerable proof overthrew all the arguments for the defence:  under the fisherman’s bed had been found a purse with the Brancaleone arms, full of gold, the purse which, if our readers remember, the prince had flung as a last insult at Gabriel’s feet.

The old man did not lose heart at this fabric of lies; after the pleadings of the advocates whose ruinous eloquence he had bought with heavy gold, he defended his son himself, and put so much truth, so much passion, and so many tears into his speech, that the whole audience was moved, and three of the judges voted for an acquittal; but the majority was against it, and the fatal verdict was pronounced.