that
innocence must be proved!"

The lady exhibited extraordinary impatience at this reply.

"You do not believe me guilty?" asked Wagner.

She shook her head in a determined manner, to show how profound was her
conviction of his innocence.

"Then do not urge me, beloved one, to escape and be dishonored forever,"
was the urgent prayer he conveyed to her.

"The evidence against you will be overwhelming," she gave him to
understand: then with an air of the most heart appealing supplication,
she added, "Escape, dearest Fernand, for my sake!"

"But I should be compelled to fly from Florence--and wouldst thou
accompany me?"

She shook her head mournfully.

"Then I will remain here--in this dungeon! If my innocence be proved, I
may yet hope to call the sister of the Count of Riverola my wife: if I
be condemned----"

He paused:--for he knew that, even if he were sentenced to death, he
could not die,--that some power, of which, however, he had only a vague
notion, would rescue him,--that the compact, which gave him renewed
youth and a long life on the fatal condition of his periodical
transformation into a horrid monster, must be fulfilled; and, though he
saw not--understood not how all this was to be, still he knew that it
_would_ happen if he should really be condemned!

Nisida was not aware of the motive which had checked her lover as he was
conveying to her his sense of the dread alternatives before him; and she
hastened to intimate to him the following thought:--

"You would say that if you be condemned, you will know how to meet death
as becomes a brave man. But think of _me_--of Nisida, who loves you!"

"Would you continue to love a man branded as a murderer?"

"I should only think of you as my own dear Fernand!"

He shook his head--as much as to say, "It cannot be!"--and then once
more embraced her fondly--for he beheld, in her anxiety for his escape,
only a proof of her ardent affection.

At this moment the jailer returned: and while he was unbolting the door,
Nisida made one last, imploring appeal to her lover to give his assent
to escape, if the arrangements were made for that purpose.

But he conveyed to her his resolute determination to meet the charge,
with the hope of proving his innocence: and for a few moments Nisida
seemed convulsed with the most intense anguish of soul.

The jailer made his appearance; and Wagner, to maintain the deceit which
Nisida informed him to have been practiced on