“What will become of you, my poor Nisida?”

“Bah!  I will pray to the Madonna.  Does she not watch over us?” The girl stopped, struck by the sound of her own words, which the circumstances so cruelly contradicted.  But looking at her brother, she went on in a low tone:  “Assuredly she does watch over us.  She appeared to me last night in a dream.  She held her child Jesus on her arm, and looked at me with a mother’s tenderness.  She wishes to make saints of us, for she loves us; and to be a saint, you see, Gabriel, one must suffer.”

“Well, go and pray for me, my kind sister; go away from the view of this sad place, which will eventually shake your firmness, and perhaps mine.  Go; we shall see each other again in heaven above, where our mother is waiting for us—­our mother whom you have not known, and to whom I shall often speak of you.  Farewell, my sister, until we meet again!”

And he kissed her on the forehead.

The young girl called up all her strength into her heart for this supreme moment; she walked with a firm step; having reached the threshold, she turned round and waved him a farewell, preventing herself by a nervous contraction from bursting into tears, but as soon as she was in the corridor, a sob broke from her bosom, and Gabriel, who heard it echo from the vaulted roof, thought that his heart would break.

Then he threw himself on his knees, and, lifting his hands to heaven, cried, “I have finished suffering; I have nothing more that holds me to life.  I thank Thee, my God!  Thou hast kept my father away, and hast been willing to spare the poor old man a grief that would have been beyond his strength.”

It was at the hour of noon, after having exhausted every possible means, poured out his gold to the last piece, and embraced the knees of the lowest serving man, that Solomon the fisherman took his way to his son’s prison.  His brow was so woebegone that the guards drew back, seized with pity, and the gaoler wept as he closed the door of the cell upon him.  The old man remained some moments without advancing a step, absorbed in contemplation of his son.  By the tawny gleam of his eye might be divined that the soul of the man was moved at that instant by some dark project.  He seemed nevertheless struck by the-beauty of Gabriel’s face.  Three months in prison had restored to his skin the whiteness that the sun had turned brown; his fine dark hair fell in curls around his neck, his eyes rested on his father with a liquid and brilliant gaze.  Never had this head been so beautiful as now, when it was to fall.

“Alas, my poor son!” said the old man, “there is no hope left; you must die.”

“I know it,” answered Gabriel in a tone of tender reproach, “and it is not that which most afflicts me at this moment.  But you, too, why do you wish to give me pain, at your age?  Why did you not stay in the town?”

“In the town,” the old man returned, “they have no pity; I cast myself at the king’s feet, at everybody’s feet; there is no pardon, no mercy for us.”