Chapter 11

Fortune had smil'd upon Guelberto's birth.
The heir of Valdespesa's rich domain;
An only child, he grew in years and worth,
And well repaid a father's anxious pain.

Southey.

As Sigismund uttered this communication, so terrible to the ear of his
listener, he arose and fled from the room. The possession of a kingdom
would not have tempted him to remain and note troubled air and rapid
strides as he passed them, but, too simple to suspect more than the
ordinary impetuosity of youth, he succeeded in getting through the
inferior gate of the castle and into the fields, without attracting any
embarrassing attention to his movements. Here he began to breathe more
freely, and the load which had nearly choked his respiration became
lightened. For half an hour the young man paced the greensward scarcely
conscious whither he went, until he found that his steps had again led him
beneath the window of the knights' hall. Glancing an eye upward, he saw
Adelheid still seated at the balcony, and apparently yet alone. He thought
she had been weeping, and he cursed the weakness which had kept him from
effecting the often-renewed resolution to remove himself, and his cruel
fortunes, for ever from before her mind. A second look, however, showed
him that he was again beckoned to ascend! The revolutions in the purposes
of lovers are sudden and easily effected; and Sigismund, through whose
mind a dozen ill-digested plans of placing the sea between himself and her
he loved had just been floating, was now hurriedly retracing his steps to
her presence.

Adelheid had necessarily been educated under the influence of the
prejudices of the age and of the country in which she lived. The existence
of the office of headsman in Berne, and the nature of its hereditary
duties, were well known to her: and, though superior to the inimical
feeling which had so lately been exhibited against the luckless Balthazar,
she had certainly never anticipated a shock so cruel as was now produced,
by abruptly learning that this despised and persecuted being was the
father of the youth to whom she had yielded her virgin affections. When
the words which proclaimed the connexion had escaped the lips of
Sigismund, she listened like one who fancied that her ears deceived her.
She had prepared herself to learn that he derived his being from some
peasant or ignoble artisan, and, once or twice, as he drew nearer to the
fatal declaration, awkward glimmerings of a suspicion that some repulsive
moral unworthiness was connected with his origin troubled her imagination;
but her apprehensions could not, by possibility, once turn in the
direction of the revolting truth. It was some time before she was able to
collect her thoughts, or to reflect on the course