"
"What truth?--what secret?--If thou lovest me, Sigismund, speak calmly and
without reserve."
The young man gazed at her anxious face in a way to show how deeply he
felt the weight of the blow he was about to give. Then, after a pause he
continued.
"We have lately passed through a terrible scene together, dearest
Adelheid. It was one that may well lessen the distances set between us by
human laws and the tyranny of opinions. Had it been the will of God that
the bark should perish, what a confused crowd of ill-assorted spirits
would have passed together into eternity! We had them, there, of all
degrees of vice, as of nearly all degrees of cultivation, from the subtle
iniquity of the wily Neapolitan juggler to thine own pure soul. There
would have died in the Winkelried the noble of high degree, the reverend
priest, the soldier in the pride of his strength, and the mendicant! Death
is an uncompromising leveller, and the depths of the lake, at least, might
have washed out all our infamy, whether it came of real demerits or merely
from received usage; even the luckless Balthazar, the persecuted and hated
headsman, might have found those who would have mourned his loss.
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