situation could not help finding its place in her thoughts. She
felt no concern for the death of young Conrad, except
commiseration; and she was not sorry to be delivered from a
marriage which had promised her little felicity, either from her
destined bridegroom, or from the severe temper of Manfred, who,
though he had distinguished her by great indulgence, had imprinted
her mind with terror, from his causeless rigour to such amiable
princesses as Hippolita and Matilda.

While the ladies were conveying the wretched mother to her bed,
Manfred remained in the court, gazing on the ominous casque, and
regardless of the crowd which the strangeness of the event had now
assembled around him. The few words he articulated, tended solely
to inquiries, whether any man knew from whence it could have come?
Nobody could give him the least information. However, as it seemed
to be the sole object of his curiosity, it soon became so to the
rest of the spectators, whose conjectures were as absurd and
improbable, as the catastrophe itself was unprecedented. In the
midst of their senseless guesses, a young peasant, whom rumour had
drawn thither from a neighbouring village, observed that the
miraculous helmet was exactly like that on the figure in black
marble of Alfonso the Good, one of their former princes, in the
church of St. Nicholas.

"Villain! What sayest thou?" cried Manfred, starting from his
trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the
collar; "how darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall pay
for it."

The spectators, who as little comprehended the cause of the