Page:Tales from the German - Oxenford.djvu/464

 dent, during my statement, was alternately flushed and pale, and that when I concluded, he started up furiously, crying to me, "What, wretch! Do you wish to charge the crime you committed from avarice upon another?" The senator called him to order for his interruption, as he had voluntarily resigned his right of judgment, remarking, moreover, that it was by no means proved that I committed the crime from avarice, as, by his own deposition, nothing had been stolen from the murdered. Indeed, he went still further, declaring that the president must give an account of the life of his daughter, for that only could enable them to determine whether I had spoken the truth or not. He now dismissed the court for that day to consult, as he said, the papers of the deceased, which the president would deliver to him.

I was again led back to my prison where I spent a sorrowful day, still ardently hoping that some connexion between the dead lady and the Red Cloak might be discovered. Full of this hope I entered the judgment hall the following day. Several letters lay on the table, and the aged senator asked me whether they were written by me. I looked at them, and found they must be by the same hand as the two slips of paper I had received. This I stated to the senate, but they did not seem to regard it, and answered that I could, and must, have written both, the initial on both letters being evidently a Z, the initial letter of my name. The letters contained menaces to the deceased, and warnings against the marriage which she was about to contract.

The president appeared to have given singular information respecting my person, for they treated me on this day more suspiciously and severely. In justification of myself I appealed to my papers which must be found in my lodgings, but they told me that they had searched and found nothing. Thus, at the closing of the court, all my hopes vanished, and when, on the third day, I was again led into the hall, the sentence was read to me that I was convicted of premeditated murder and was to die. To this condition had I come! Forsaken by all that was dear on earth, far distant from my native country, I was, though innocent, to die by the axe in the flower of youth. As I was sitting in my lonely dungeon on the evening of this terrible day that had decided my fate, all my hopes having fled, and all my thoughts being seriously fixed on death, the door opened and a man entered, who looked silently at me for a long time.

"Do I thus find you again, Zaleukos?" said he.

The faint glimmer of my lamp prevented me from recognising him, but the sound of his voice awakened in me recollections of former days. It was Valetti, one of the few friends I had known in Paris while there pursuing my studies. He told me that he happened to come to Florence where his father lived much respected, that he had heard my history, and had come to see me once more, and to learn from me how I could have committed such