But I have none! I cannot so perjure myself as to deny one word of the charges brought against me, save that of murder! Of thoughts of hate and wrath, ay, and blood, but such blood as honorable men would shed, I am guilty, I now feel, unredeemably guilty, but not of murder! I am not silent because conscious of enacted guilt.

I will not go down to the dishonored grave, now yawning for me, permitting, by silence, your Highness, and these your subjects, to believe me the monster of ingratitude, the treacherous coward which appearances pronounce me.

No!" he continued, raising his right hand as high as his fetters would permit, and speaking in a tone which fell with the eloquence of truth, on every heart--"No: here, as on the scaffold--now, as with my dying breath, I will proclaim aloud my innocence; I call on the Almighty Judge himself, as on every Saint in heaven, to attest it--ay, and I believe it WILL be attested, when nought but my memory is left to be cleared from shame--I am not the murderer of Don Ferdinand Morales! Had he been in every deed my foe--had he given me cause for the indulgence of those ungovernable passions which I now feel were roused against him so causelessly and sinfully, I might have sought their gratification by honorable combat, but not by midnight murder! I speak not, I repeat, to save my life: it is justly forfeited for thoughts of crime! I speak that, when in after years my innocence will be made evident by the discovery of the real assassin, you will all remember what I now say--that I have not so basely requited the King and Country who so generously and trustingly befriended me--that I am no murderer!" "Then, if so convinced of innocence, young man, wherefore not attempt defence ?" demanded the Sub-Prior of St.Francis.

"Knowest thou not that wilfully to throw away the life intrusted to you, for some wise purpose, is amenable before the throne of the Most High as self-committed murder?
Proofs of this strongly asserted innocence, thou must have." "I have none," calmly answered the prisoner, "I have but words, and who will believe them?
Who, here present, will credit the strange tale, that, tortured and restless from mental suffering, I courted the fury of the elements, and rushed from my quarters on the night of the murder _without_ my sword ?--that, in securing the belt, I missed the weapon, but still sought not for it as I ought ?--who will believe that it was accident, not design, which took me to the Calle Soledad?
and that it was a fall over the murdered body of Don Ferdinand which deluged my hands and dress with the blood that dyed the ground?
Who will credit that it was seeing him thus which chained me, paralyzed, horror-stricken, to the spot?
In the wild fury of my passions I had believed him my enemy, and sworn his death; then was it marvel that thus beholding him turned me well-nigh to stone, and that, in my horror, I had no power to call for aid, or raise the shout after the murderer, for my own thoughts arose as fiends, to whisper, such might have been nay work--that I had wished his death?
Great God! the awful wakening from the delusion of weeks--the dread recognition in that murdered corse of my own thoughts of sin!" He paused involuntarily, for his strong agitation completely choked his voice, and shook his whole frame.

After a brief silence, which none in the hall had heart to break, he continued calmly, "Let the trial proceed, gracious Sovereign.