PART III.
"I looked on the faces of his judges, and felt there was no hope," said an old man as he led away the promised bride of his son, now a prisoner, doomed to death on the morrow.
"Yet the one they call Julian looks so young, so pale, and so sad, there is surely some touch of pity in him; at least, I will kneel at his feet, and implore him for mercy on Frederic."
The old man shook his head, but accompanied her to Julian’s hotel, where the eloquence of some golden coins procured her admittance. She found her way to a large and gloomy chamber, where he sat surrounded with books, papers, and charts, mocking himself with a frenzied belief in the coming amelioration of the world, while his own home was a desert and his own heart a desolation. He did not perceive the fair and agitated creature that knelt at his feet, till her supplicating and broken voice roused his attention. He listened till her words died away into the short thick sobs of utter agony, unable to bear the picture it had conjured up of its coming wretchedness.
"Pity from me!" he exclaimed, with a quick fierce laugh; "Pity!—I do not know the meaning of the word. You might as well address your prayers to yonder bust of the stern old Roman, who sealed his country’s freedom with the life-blood of his child."
The girl unconsciously looked towards the harsh features, made yet harsher by the dark marble in which they were carved. And she started, for she felt that even that stern and sculptured countenance had more of human sympathy than the pale lip and cold eye of the living listener; yet love is desperate in its hope; she flung herself at his feet, she hid her face on the hand which she grasped, for she dared not look up and meet that fixed and passionless face; but still she pleaded as those plead who pray for a life far dearer than their own.
"He is so young—so good—there is so much happiness before us; his poor old father will die—he has no other child—and I—-he must not look to me to supply his place. God of heaven! have you never loved—have you no recollections of affection that can move you to pity others!"
"I have!" said Julian; and rising from his seat, he took the arm of the agitated girl, and led her to a recess in the apartment, and drew back a curtain. Horror for a moment suspended every other feeling; for, laid upon a cushion, the long fair hair streaming around, was a female head, preserved by some curious chemical process; the eyes were closed, but as if in sleep; colour had departed from lip and cheek, and something beyond
