It was not until he had traversed a large portion of the mountain, that he thought he heard the sound of voices, mingled with sighs. Then, and not till then, his pace was stealthy. He proceeded silently, and at last he was able to see that Rachel was not alone.
The dogs of Louis started up suddenly, and their loud and vehement barking could be heard far and near.
The two lovers, absorbed alike in their sorrow and their affection, seemed to be ignorant of all that was passing around them, when the mountaineer, who had contrived to conceal himself behind the block of marble, suddenly appeared, and, it could be seen, foaming with rage, while his right hand brandished his cutlass, which he presented at the breast of Louis. A frightful struggle took place. Louis in vain endeavored to make use of his fowling-piece ; it was held by a more vigorous hand than his own, and, as he sought to free it from the grasp of the savage, he felt that he was wounded in the breast. He writhed with pain, and as he did so, the mountaineer's brawny arms grasped him as if he were a child, and bearing him to the edge of a deep abyss, hurled him down, the body crashing, crackling, and bursting, as it descended ! Rachel, clinging to the Mountaineer with all the energy that despair can give to weakness, sought also to precipitate herself into the gulph ; but drawn back by the vigorous gripe of her lover's executioner, she was flung upon the bare face of the rock. In a few moments afterward, nought could be heard near the place where the lovers had met, but the howling of the dogs as they scented the blood of Louis. CHAPTER III . IT was in the middle of the month of November in the same year - , in which the transactions already detailed took place, that the Lords of Savoy were summoned by order of his Majesty, the King of Sardinia, to examine into a case of great importance. It was in November that these senatorial Lords were to be seen seated upon their thrones of crimson velvet, whilst there was brought before them Solomon Levi, the Jew, accused of the wilful murder of the Count Louis. These senatorial Lords seemed alike to forget their character as Christians and as judges, when they beheld the unhappy Jew, heavily ironed before them. It was indignation alone that animated them when they gazed upon the Israelite surrounded by his guards, and, by a sad combination of human prejudices, even the crowd that was collected in the Court, shuddered as the unhappy man passed through them, as if there were contamination in misfortune, and that a difference of creed could justify the obliteration of all traces of humanity . The accused was more calm, more cool, and more collected, than his judges, his accusors, or
the auditory. He had that calmness that results from innocence and resignation. Unfortunately for the Jew, he had arrived at the cottage, in which he sought a retreat for his daughter, upon the very evening that her lover Louis had been assassinated . Rachel, who had been carried thither by the fierce mountaineer, could not, when she arrived, recognise her father. She had lost her reason, and with it, the remembrance of the past. The Jew, however, observed that there were some drops of blood upon her dress, and, driven to despair, he asked what had occasioned this unlooked-for misfortune. The assassin stuttered out an explanation , namely, that he had found | Rachel stretched at the foot of a rock, and at the same moment, he had remarked a hunter, who fled away through the passes of the mountain. " Ah !" cried the Jew, "it was Louis- Louis, who must have discovered where I had hidden her, as I thought, from his sight :" and saying this, he turned to his daughter, and exclaimed , " Daughter of Jerusalem gentle flower, whose tender head had been struck down by the tempest. I thought to have preserved thee pure from the Christian ; I thought to have placed thee here as in a promised land, where thou mightest be saved from the hands of Pharaoh ." But he could not continue, so much was his soul afflicted by the cruel spectacle that he gazed upon . All that night he watched by the pillow of his daughter, and aided in his cares by the ancient female cottager. The mountaineer, on the contrary, hid himself in a corner of a cottage, keeping his blood-stained countenance carefully concealed beneath his cloak. The next day Rachel had, in some degree, recovered her strength, and she was immediately removed to Susa, where the most watchful and tender cares were bestowed upon her. The same day, a shepherd, who was passing along the stream, discovered the dead body of Louis. It was frightfully disfigured from the fall ; two dogs were resting beside it-the one seemed to be watching the first fatal wound that had been inflicted on his master, while the other was nestling close to that face, to which hitherto it had looked up with affection, and that had always repaid it with smiles. In a few days afterward, the Hebrew was arrested at Susa, and he was dragged from the arms of his daughter to be plunged into the dark cells of the senatorial prison. Many attempts were made upon the Jew to induce him to avow his guilt ; but he withstood them with a firmness in which innocence when subjected to the agonies of the torture has often been found wanting. At length, the Jew was taken from his prison to go through the forms of a trial, and to find that for one of his tribe there is no mercy. The sentence of the judges was already determined upon, although the proofs were defective, and the witnesses could state nothing certain.
