“Be it so!” she exclaimed. “As I have eaten of meat so precious, it fits not that inferior food should ever again pass these lips! This is the last supper which I shall taste on earth!” “What! dare you thus shamelessly avow to me your passion?” “Ay! as God who beholds us knows, never did woman more passionately and truly love mortal man, than did Marguerite of Roussillon the pure and noble Guillaume de Cabestaign. It is true! I fear not to say it now! Now, indeed, I am his only and forever!” Transported with fury at what he heard, Raymond drew his dagger, and rushed to where she stood. But she did not await his weapon. Anticipating his wrath, she darted headlong through a door which opened upon a balcony, over the balustrade of which, with a second effort, she flung herself into the court below. All this was the work of but one impulse and of a single instant Raymond reached the balcony as the delicate frame of the beautiful woman was crushed upon the flag-stones of the court. Life had utterly departed when they raised her from the ground! * * * * * This terrible catastrophe struck society every where with consternation. At a season, when not only chivalry, but the church, gave its most absolute sanction to the existence and encouragement of that strange conventional love which we have sought to describe, the crime of Raymond provoked an universal honor. Love, artificial and sentimental rather than passionate, was the soul equally of military achievement and of aristocratic society. It was then of vast importance, as an element of power, in the use of religious enthusiasm. The shock given to those who cherished this sentiment, by this dreadful history, was felt to all the extremities of the social circle. The friends and kindred of the lovers—the princes and princesses of the land—noble lords, knights and ladies, all combined, as by a common impulse, to denounce and to destroy the bloody-minded criminal. Alphonso, King of Arragon, devoted himself to the work of justice. Raymond was seized and cast into a dungeon. His castle was razed to the ground, under a public decree, which scarcely anticipated the eager rage of hundreds who rushed to the work of demolition. The criminal himself was suffered to live; but he lived either in prison or in exile, with loss of caste and society, and amidst universal detestation!