"What wouldst thou, Adelheid?"
"Thou hast felt resentment against this unfortunate man?"
"I deny it not: could a brother feel otherwise?"
"But now--now that God hath so fearfully visited him?"
"From my soul I forgive him. Had we met in Italy, whither I knew he was going--but this is foolish."
"Worse than that, Sigismund."
"From my inmost soul I pardon him. I never thought him worthy of her whose simple affection, were won by the first signs of his pretended into rest; but I could not wish him so cruel and sudden an end. May God have mercy on him, as he is pardoned by me!"
Adelheid received the silent pressure of the hand which followed with pious satisfaction. They then separated, he to join the group that was collected around the body, and she to take her station again near Christine. The former, however, was met by the Signor Grimaldi, who urged his immediate departure with the females for the convent, promising that the rest of the travellers should follow as soon as the present melancholy duty was ended. As Sigismund had no wish to be a party in what was going on, and there was reason to think his sister would be spared much pain by quitting the spot, he gladly acquiesced in the proposal. Immediate steps were taken for its accomplishment.
Christine mounted her mule, in obedience to her brother's desire, quietly, and without remonstrance; but her death-like countenance and fixed eye betrayed the violence of the shock she had received. During the whole of the ride to the convent she spoke not, and, as those around her felt for, and understood, her distress, the little cavalcade could not have been more melancholy and silent had it borne with it the body of the slain. In an hour they reached the long sought for and so anxiously desired place of rest.
While this disposition of the feebler portion of the party was making, a different scene had taken place near what have been already so well called the houses of the living and the dead. As there existed no human habitation within several leagues of the abode of the Augustines on either side of the mountain, and as the paths were much frequented in the summer, the monks exercised a species of civil jurisdiction in such cases as required a prompt exercise of justice, or a necessary respect for those forms that might be important in its ad ministration hereafter before the more regular authorities. It was no sooner known, therefore, that there was reason to suspect an act of violence had been committed, than the good clavier set seriously about taking the necessary steps to authenticate all those circumstances that could be accurately ascertained.