his power, the traces of his crime. Bastiano's evidence did not receive a
minute's consideration: he, to destroy the idea of premeditation,
declared that the young fisherman had left him only at the moment when
the storm broke over the island; but, in the first place, the young diver
was known to be Gabriel's most devoted friend and his sister's warmest
admirer, and, in the second, he had been seen to land at Torre during the
same hour in which he had affirmed that he was near to Nisida. As for
the prince's passion for the poor peasant girl, the magistrates simply
shrugged their shoulders at the ridiculous assertion of that, and
especially at the young girl's alleged resistance and the extreme
measures to which the prince was supposed to have resorted to conquer the
virtue of Nisida. Eligi of Brancaleone was so young, so handsome, so
seductive, and at the same time so cool amid his successes, that he had
never been suspected of violence, except in getting rid of his
mistresses. Finally, an overwhelming and unanswerable proof overthrew
all the arguments for the defence: under the fisherman's bed had been
found a purse with the Brancaleone arms, full of gold, the purse which,
if our readers remember, the prince had flung as a last insult at
Gabriel's feet.

The old man did not lose heart at this fabric of lies; after the
pleadings of the advocates whose ruinous eloquence he had bought with
heavy gold, he defended his son himself, and put so much truth, so much
passion, and so many tears into his speech, that the whole audience was
moved, and three of the judges voted for an acquittal; but the majority
was against it, and the fatal verdict was pronounced.

The news at once spread throughout the little island, and caused the
deepest dejection there. The fishers who, at the first irruption of
force, had risen as one man to defend their comrade's cause, bowed their