Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/255

 gladly taken refuge in a hovel; it was in some sort the fortune of war. I have seen my wife die in exile, and have laid her by the highway; I have suffered the total wreck of all fortune; but I have abstained from a word of plaint because in my dark days I have aided you and others to inflict similar misery and death on the wives and children of men better than we; and I have done it in the name of the Lord Christ. I have seen my daughter given to the flames by that ferocious fanaticism that has slaughtered multitudes in the name of faith, and has given men only the same paganism under another name, like two idols cut from the same stick; and I have endured it as being the natural result of my own evil methods inflicted by inevitable natural retaliation on myself.”

Here Rudolph showed some sign of impatience, but the stern voice and gesture of the old man held him bound.

“But no instance of treachery, no act of deceit, no violation of hospitality, no insidious message, no profanation of my hearthstone and its sacredness, no abnegation of my own honor has ever sullied the life or the thought of Boppo.” Then taking the mantle and crosses, he said, “I received these things from you as emblems of the same unsullied honor in the giver. Take them, sir, I fling them down; I repudiate them, stained as they now are with the knightly treachery of the man who gave them. Such evil deeds as this you have committed strongly indicate to me the spirit and the conduct of your house