he
hair the severed head of the Duke of Lithuania.

There ran a thrill of horror through the assembly. But, the next
moment, a loud hysterical shriek drew the attention of all parties to
the queen: she had fallen insensible at the feet of the king. The
council was abruptly dismissed.

CHAPTER V.

Thus far the cause of the chancellor had prospered. Poland had been
preserved from the horrors of a civil war. The king's life had also
been saved, and a great crime prevented; the career of assassination
and of poisoning, into which the queen afterwards entered, was at all
events postponed. As a public man, the minister was fully triumphant.
But the minister was a father; at this side he was vulnerable; and
fortune dealt her blow with cruel and unexpected severity.

We have seen with what stern fidelity to his ministerial duty, and at
how great a peril to his daughter's happiness, the chancellor had
arrested Augustus Glinski. The rebellion quelled, the author of it
punished and decapitated, there seemed no just motive for holding
longer in imprisonment a youth who could not be accused of having any
guilty participation in the crime of his father. He accordingly
proposed his release. But the anger of the king against the late duke,
who to his political offence had added that of personal ingratitude,
(for it was Sigismund himself who had bestowed on him the powerful
duchy of Lithuania,) was still unappeased, and he insisted upon
including the son in the guilt and punishment of his parent. The
representations of the minister were here unavailing; he would listen
to nothing but the dictates of his own vindictive feelings.

Count Laski detailed the manner of his arrest, and explained the
singular interest he felt in the pardon and liberation of this youth;
adding, that if Angustus Glinski died upon the scaffold, he feared the
life of his daughter. But even this was unavailing. The old monarch
thought he was displaying a great acuteness when he detected, as he
imagined, in this plea of a daughter's happiness, a scheme of selfish
aggrandizement. "Ha! ha!" said he, "so the wind sits in that quarter.
A good match--duchess of Lithuania! I would rather you asked for the
dukedom yourself, and married your daughter to another."

It was in vain that the minister again repeated his simple and true
statement; it was in vain that he limited his request to the life of
the younger Glinski, consenting to the forfeiture of his title