The president shrank back in his seat; the judges, hitherto motionless upon the bench, bent toward one another in confusion, like trees beaten by opposing winds. The commotion was even greater in the audience. The spectators climbed upon stone cornices and iron rails; the entire assembly spoke through a single mouth; and the guards, forgetting to insist upon silence, added their ejaculations to the general uproar. Only those accustomed to sudden emotions can imagine Ethel’s feelings. Who could describe that unwonted mixture of agonizing joy and delicious grief; that anxious expectation, which was alike fear and hope, and yet not quite either? He stood before her, but he could not see her. There was her beloved Ordener,--her Ordener,--whom she had believed dead, whom she knew was lost to her; her friend who had deceived her, and whom she adored with renewed adoration. He was there; yes, he was there. She was not the victim of a vain dream. Oh, it was really he,--that Ordener, alas! whom she had seen in dreams more often than in reality. But did he appear within these gloomy precincts as an angel of deliverance, or a spirit of evil? Was she to hope in him, or to tremble for him? A thousand conjectures crowded upon her at once, and oppressed her mind like a flame choked by too much fuel; all the ideas and sensations which we have suggested flashed through her brain as the son of the Norwegian viceroy pronounced his name. She was the first to recognize him, and before any one else had recognized him, she had fainted. She soon recovered her senses for the second time, thanks to the attentions of her mysterious neighbor. With pale cheeks, she again opened her eyes, in which the tears had been suddenly dried. She cast an eager glance at the young man still standing unmoved amid the general confusion; and after all agitation had ceased in the court and among the people, Ordener Guldenlew’s name still rang in her ears. With painful alarm she observed that he wore his arm in a sling, and that his wrists were chained; she noticed that his mantle was torn in several places, and that his faithful sword no longer hung at his side. Nothing escaped her solicitude, for the eye of a lover is like that of a mother. Her whole soul flew to the rescue of him whom she could not shield with her body; and, be it said to the glory and the shame of love, in that room, which contained her father and her father’s persecutors, Ethel saw but one man. Silence was gradually restored. The president resumed his examination of the viceroy’s son. “My lord Baron,” said he, in a tremulous voice. “I am not ‘my lord Baron’ here,” firmly answered Ordener. “I am Ordener Guldenlew, just as he who was once Count Griffenfeld is John Schumacker here.”