“Disgrace!” repeated Adelheid, in a voice that was nearly choked.  “The word is fearful, coming from one of thy regulated mind, and as applied to himself.”

“I cannot choose another.  Disgrace it is by the common consent of men—­by long and enduing opinion—­it would almost seem by the just judgment of God.  Dost thou not believe, Adelheid, that there are certain races which are deemed accursed, to answer some great and unseen end—­races on whom the holy blessings of Heaven never descend, as they visit the meek and well-deserving that come of other lines!”

“How can I believe this gross injustice, on the part of a Power that is wise without bounds, and forgiving to parental love?”

“Thy answer would be well, were this earth the universe, or this state of being the last.  But he whose sight extends beyond the grave, who fashions justice, and mercy, and goodness, on a scale commensurate with his own attributes, and not according to our limited means, is not to be estimated by the narrow rules that we apply to men.  No, we must not measure the ordinances of God by laws that are plausible in our own eyes.  Justice is a relative and not an abstract quality; and, until we understand the relations of the Deity to ourselves as well as we understand our own relations to the Deity, we reason in the dark.”

“I do not like to hear thee speak thus, Sigismund, and, least of all, with a brow so clouded, and in a voice so hollow!”

“I will tell my tale more cheerfully, dearest.  I have no right to make thee the partner of my misery; and yet this is the manner I have reasoned, and thought, and pondered—­ay, until my brain has grown heated, and the power to reason itself has nearly tottered.  Ever since that accursed hour, in which the truth became known to me, and I was made the master of the fatal secret, have I endeavored to feel and reason thus.”

“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.”