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The Governor seemed to have made some strange disclosures about me, as I was on this day treated more sternly and suspiciously. To justify myself, I called for all the papers that were to be found in my room. But I was told that search had already been made there, and nothing found. When the court broke up, my hope had entirely vanished; and when I was led back to the hall on the third day, the verdict was communicated to me. I had been convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death. To this, then, I had come at last! Deprived of every thing that was still dear to me on earth, far from my home, I should die innocent of crime, and, in the bloom of my youth, under an ax!

I was sitting in my lonely prison on the evening of the day that had decided my fate, with my hopes all dissipated, and my thoughts earnestly turned on death, when my prison door opened, and a man entered, who regarded me long and silently. “And thus I find you once more, Zaleukos?” said he. I had not recognized him by the dull gleam of my lamp, but the tone of his voice awoke old memories in me. It was Valetty, one of the few friends I had made during my studies in Paris. He said that happening to come to Florence, where his father, who was a man of prominence, lived, he heard of my story; he had come to see me, to learn from my own lips how I had come to commit so terrible a crime. I told him the whole story. He seemed very much astonished, and implored me to tell him, my only friend, the whole truth, and not die with a lie on my lips, I swore to him by every thing that was sacred that I had spoken the truth, and that the only burden on my conscience was that, dazed by the glitter of the gold, I had not perceived the improbabilities in the stranger’s story. “Then you did not know Bianca?” asked he. I assured him that I had never seen her before. Valetty then told me that a deep secret hung over the deed, that the Governor had passed sentence on me very hastily, and there was a rumor among the people that I had known Bianca for a long time, and had murdered her out of revenge for her approaching marriage with another. I remarked to him that all this might apply to the man in the red mantle, but that I was unable to prove his participation in the deed. Valetty embraced me, weeping, and promised to make every effort to save my life. I had but little hope, yet I knew that Valetty was a wise man and experienced in the laws, and that he would do his best to save me.

For two long days I remained in uncertainty. At last Valetty appeared. “I bring you consolation, even though it be painful,” said he. “You will live and be set at liberty; but with the loss of a hand.”

Joyfully I thanked my friend for my life. He told me that the Governor was inexorably opposed to opening the case again, but that finally, in order not to appear unjust, he agreed that if a similar case could be found in any books of Florentine history, then my punishment should be regulated by the punishment there recorded. Valetty and his father had thereupon looked through the old books by day and night, and finally found a case the exact counterpart of mine. The punishment there awarded was stated thus: “His left hand shall be amputated, his goods confiscated, and he himself banished forever.” This was now to be my punishment; and I had to prepare myself for the painful ordeal that awaited me. But I will not dwell on that terrible hour when I stood on the public square, laid my hand on the block, and felt my own blood stream over me.