This duty may have been a privilege in the dark ages
but it is now become a tax that none, who have been educated with better
hopes, can endure to pay. My father, trained from infancy to expect the
employment, and accustomed to its discharge in contemplation, succeeded to
his parent while yet young; and, though formed by nature a meek and even a
compassionate man, he has never shrunk from his bloody tasks, whenever
required to fulfil them by the command of his superiors. But, touched by a
sentiment of humanity, it was his wish to avert from me what his better
reason led him to think the calamity of our race. I am the eldest born,
and, strictly, I was the child most liable to be called to assume the
office, but, as I have heard, the tender love of my mother induced her to
suggest a plan by which I, at least, might be rescued from the odium that
had so long been attached to our name. I was secretly conveyed from the
house while yet an infant; a feigned death concealed the pious fraud, and
thus far, Heaven be praised! the authorities are ignorant of my birth!"
"And thy mother, Sigismund; I have great respect for that noble mother,
who, doubtless, is endowed with more than her sex's firmness and
constancy, since she must have sworn faith and love to thy father, knowing
his duties and the hopelessness of their being evaded? I feel a reverence
for a woman so superior to the weaknesses, and yet so true to the real and
best affections, of her sex!"
The young man smiled so painfully as to cause his enthusiastic companion
to regret that she had put the question.
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