Left alone with her husband in an apartment, which though commodious, was still part of a prison, Kara Aziek looked round her with an air of distraction: her eyes were wild and tearless, her hands burning as she clasped those of Sebastian. “Here then, we are to die!” she exclaimed, “or here we are to live, buried from our child!” She fell senseless on his breast as she spoke, and lost for awhile all consciousness of their misfortune. Her recovery was followed by tears and incessant sighs, that pierced the heart of Sebastian: he sought to comfort her, but every delusive expression faltered on his tongue, and at length he remained silent, hopeless of success. The silent and deep sadness of him who was still the dearest object of her love, made Kara Aziek sensible to the cruelty of indulging her own sorrow: she checked her sobs, she wiped away her tears, and firmly striving to resign herself to her fate, she rose from his supporting arms. “We have not yet lost all!” she cried, “since we retain each other! for that greatest of mercies, O may I be properly thankful! pardon your Aziek my Sebastian, she is herself again.” Sebastian embraced her without speaking, for now tenderness subdued him, and his words were suffocated. The remainder of their night was spent in mutual attempts at animating the courage of each other, and in secret aspirations to the only source of real fortitude. When the governor appeared on the morrow, to make a courteous offer of any service he might venture to bestow, Sebastian charged him with a second message to the senate, demanding the reason of this outrageous treatment, and calling on them to remember the respect due to the Lord’s anointed. He had to learn that the senate of Venice no longer acknowledged his claim to such a title. Morosini’s moral apostacy had given them all a plausible pretext for violating the law of hospitality in the person of their dubious guest. If he were indeed an impostor, no crowned head would resent their treatment of him, no individual blame it: without having recourse to the plea of religion, (which might embroil them with potentates professing the same faith with their victim) they might surely detain and punish him as a deceiver. Most of the lords believed Morosini’s assertion, (who had nearly persuaded himself to believe it also) that an extreme likeness had misled him, together with some circumstances which accident might have brought to the knowledge of the pretended King, but that in their last interview, these were rendered of no importance, since the incredible difference between the religion of the true and the false Sebastian, was a decisive proof of his imposture. Many Venetians doubted this explanation; but they were spell-bound by spiritual terrors, and were willing to let events take their course. Both parties united in outwardly discrediting his identity, and to that effect they answered his message.