“I know it! Who should know it so well as I!” and Ronsard set a delicate rose-tree roughly in the hole he had dug for it, and began to fiercely pile in the earth around it;--“Fate is fate, and there is no gainsaying it! The law of Compensation will always have its way! Look you, man!--and listen! I, Réné Ronsard, once killed a king!--and now in my old age, the only creature I ever loved is tricked by the son of a king! It is just! So be it!” He bent his white head over his digging again, and Von Glauben was for a moment silent, vaguely amazed and stupefied by this sudden declaration of a past crime. “You should not say ‘tricked,’ my friend!” he at last ventured to remark; “Prince Humphry is an honest lad;--he means to keep his word!” Ronsard looked up, his eyes gleaming with fury. “Keep his word? Bah! How can he? Who in this wide realm will give him the honourable liberty to keep his word? Will he acknowledge Gloria as his wife before the nation?--she a foundling and a castaway? Will he make her his future queen? Not he! He will forsake her, and live with another woman, in sin which the law will sanctify!” He went on planting the rose-tree, then,--dropping his spade,--tossed up his head and hands with a wild gesture. “What, and who is this God who so ordains our destiny!” he exclaimed; “For surely this is His work,--not mine! Hidden away from all the world with my life’s secret buried in my soul, I, without wife, or children or friends, or any soul on earth to care whether I lived or died, was sent an angel comforter;--the child I rescued from the sea! ‘Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo!’ the choristers sang in the church when I found her! I thought it true! With her,--in every action, in every thought and word, I strove,--and have faithfully striven,--to atone for my past crime;--for I was forced through others to kill that king! When proved guilty of the deed, I was told by my associates to assume madness,--a mere matter of acting,--and, being adjudged as insane, I was sent with other criminals on a convict ship, bound for a certain coast-prison, where we were all to be kept for life. The ship was wrecked off the rocks yonder, and it was reported that every soul on board went down, but I escaped--only I,--for what inscrutable reason God alone knows! Finding myself saved and free, I devoted my life to hard work, and to doing all the good I could think of to atone--to atone--always to atone! Then the child was sent to me; and I thought it was a sign that my penance was accepted; but no!--no!--the compensating curse falls,--not on me,--not on me, for if only so, I would welcome it--but on Her!--the child of my love--the heart of my heart!--on Her!” He turned away his face, and a hard sob broke from his labouring chest. Von Glauben laid a gentle, protective hand on his shoulder.