"What? You, the priest, counsel against pity and pardon?" asked Hilda, in astonishment.
"I am also chancellor of this kingdom. The former King would be far too dangerous if he were set at liberty. Romans, Catholics,--he is said secretly to have joined this church,--might gather round him, and 'the rightful King of the Vandals' would be a much-desired weapon against the 'Tyrant' Gelimer. The prisoners will be better off where they are. Their lives are safe--"
"They have repeatedly requested an audience; they wish to justify themselves. These petitions--"
"Were always granted. I have heard them myself."
"What resulted from them?"
"Nothing that I did not already know. Did you not feel the armor under Hilderic's robe, wrest the dagger from his hand yourself?"
"Alas, yes! Yet I so easily distrust myself. Ambition, desire for this crown (one of my heaviest sins), made me only too ready to believe in Hilderic's guilt. And now the captive King, protesting his innocence, appealing to a warning letter received by him on that day, which would explain and prove everything, requests another trial. Yet you have fulfilled the prisoner's wish and searched for it in the place he named?"
"Certainly," said Verus, quietly, his lifeless features growing even more rigid, more sternly controlled. "That letter is an invention. As Hilderic repeatedly asserted that he had concealed it in a secret drawer of 'Genseric's Golden Chest,'--you know the coffer, Gibamund?--I searched the whole chest with my own hands and alone. I even found the secret drawer and opened it; nothing of the kind was there. Nay, at the prisoner's earnest entreaties, I had the coffer carried to his dungeon and examined by himself in the presence of witnesses. He, too, found nothing."
"And no one could have previously removed the letter?" asked Gelimer.
"You and I alone have the keys to the chest which contains the most important documents. But I must leave you now," said the priest. "I have many letters to write to-night. Farewell!"