"
"Thy mind naturally returns to thine own unhappy child, poor Gaetano, when
there is so much question of the fortunes of mine."
The Signor Grimaldi turned his look on his friend, but the gleam of
anguish, which was wont to pass athwart his countenance when his mind was
drawn powerfully towards that painful subject, betrayed that he was not
just then able to reply.
"We see in all these events," continued the Genoese, as if too full of his
subject to restrain his words, "the unsearchable designs of Providence.
Here is a youth who is all that a father could desire; worthy in every
sense to be the depository of a beloved and only daughter's weal; manly,
brave, virtuous, and noble in all but the chances of blood, and yet so
accursed by the world's opinion that we might scarce venture to name him
as the associate of an idle hour, were the fact known that he is the man
he has declared himself to be!"
"You put the matter in strong language Signor Grimaldi;" said Adelheid,
starting.
"A youth of a form so commanding that a king might exult at the prospect
of his crown descending on such a head; of a perfection of strength and
masculine excellence that will almost justify the dangerous exultation of
health and vigor; of a reason that is riper than his years; of a virtue of
proof; of all qualities that we respect, and which come of study and not
of accident, and yet a youth condemned of men to live under the reproach
of their hatred and contempt, or to conceal for ever the name of the
mother that bore him! Compare this Sigismund with others that may be
named; with the high-born and pampered heir of some illustrious house, who
riots in men's respect while he shocks men's morals; who presumes on
privilege to trifle with the sacred and the just; who lives for self, and
that in base enjoyments; who is fitter to be the lunatic's companion than
any other's, though destined to rule in the council; who is the type of
the wicked, though called to preside over the virtuous; who cannot be
esteemed, though entitled to be honored; and let us ask why this is so,
what is the wisdom which hath drawn differences so arbitrary, and which,
while proclaiming the necessity of justice, so openly, so wantonly, and so
ingeniously sets its plainest dictates at defiance?"
"Signore, it should not be thus--God never intended it should be so!"
"While every principle would seem to say that each must stand or fall by
his own good or evil deeds, that men are to be honored as they merit,
every device of human institutions is exerted to achieve the opposite.
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