THE SPANISH BROTHERS (continued 6)

In the afternoon of that day visitors were announced. Carlos was not surprised to see the stern narrow face and white hair of the Dominican prior. But he was a little surprised to observe that the person who followed him wore the gray cowl of St. Francis. The prior merely bestowed the customary salutation upon him, and then, stepping aside, allowed his companion to approach.

But as soon as Carlos saw his face, he raised himself eagerly, and stretching out both his hands, grasped those of the Franciscan. "Dear Fray Sebastian!" he cried; "my good, kind tutor!"

"My lord the prior has been graciously pleased to allow me to visit your Excellency."

"It is truly kind of you, my lord. I thank you heartily," said Carlos, frankly and promptly turning towards the Dominican, who looked at him with somewhat the air of one who is trying to be stern with a child.

"I have ventured to allow you this indulgence," he said, "in the hope that the counsels of one whom you hold in honour may lead you to repentance."

Carlos turned once more to Fray Sebastian, whose hand he still held. "It is a great joy to see you," he said. "Only to-day I had been longing for a familiar face. And you are changed never a whit since you used to teach me my humanities. How have you come hither? Where have you been all these years?"

Poor Fray Sebastian vainly tried to frame an answer to these simple questions. He had come to that prison straight from Munebrãga's splendid patio, where, amidst the gleam of azulejos and of many-coloured marbles, the scent of rare exotics and the music of rippling fountains, he had partaken of a sumptuous mid-day repast. In this dark foul dungeon there was nothing to please the senses, not even God's free air and light. Everything on which his eye rested was coarse, painful, loathsome. By the prisoner's side lay the remains of a meal, in great contrast to his. And the sleeve, fallen back from the hand that held his own, showed deep scars on the wrist. He knew whence they were. Yet the face that was looking in his, with kindling eyes, and a smile on the parted lips, might have been the face of the boy Carlos, when he praised him for a successful task, only for the pain in it, and, far deeper than pain, a look of assured peace that boyhood could scarcely know.

Repressing a choking sensation, he faltered, "Señor Don Carlos, it grieves me to the heart to see you here."

"Do not grieve for me, dear Fray Sebastian; for I tell you truly, I have never known such happy hours as since I came here. At first, indeed, I suffered; there was storm and darkness. But then"--here for a moment his voice failed, and his flushed cheek and quivering lip betrayed the anguish a too hasty movement cost the broken frame. But, recovering himself quickly, he went on: "Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the sea; and there was a great calm. That calm lasts still. And oftentimes this narrow room seems to me the house of God, the very gate of heaven. Moreover," he added, with a smile of strange brightness, "there is heaven itself beyond."

"But, señor and your Excellency, consider the disgrace and sorrow of your noble family--that is, I mean"--here the speaker paused in perplexity, and met the keen eye of the prior, fixed somewhat scornfully, as he thought, upon him. He was quite conscious that the Dominican was thinking him incapable, and incompetent to the task he had so earnestly solicited. He had sedulously prepared himself for this important interview, had gone through it in imagination beforehand, laying up in his memory several convincing and most pertinent exhortations, which could not fail to benefit his old pupil. But these were of no avail now; in fact, they all vanished from his recollection. He had just begun something rather vague and incoherent about Holy Church, when the prior broke in.

"Honoured brother," he said, addressing with scrupulous politeness the member of a rival fraternity, "the prisoner may be more willing to listen to your pious exhortations, and you may have more freedom in addressing him, if you are left for a brief space alone together. Therefore, though it is scarcely regular, I will visit a prisoner in a neighbouring apartment, and return hither for you in due time."

Fray Sebastian thanked him, and he withdrew, saying as he did so, "It is not necessary for me to remind my reverend brother that conversation upon worldly matters is strictly forbidden in the Holy House."

Whether the prior visited the other prisoner or no, it is not for us to inquire; but if he did, his visit was a short one; for it is certain that for some time he paced the gloomy corridor with troubled footsteps. He was thinking of a woman's face, a fair young face, to which that of Don Carlos Alvarez wore a startling likeness. "Too harsh, needlessly harsh," he murmured; "for, after all, she was no heretic. But which of us is always in the right? Ave Maria Sanctissima, ora pro me! But if I can, I would fain make some reparation--to him. If ever there was a true and sincere penitent, he is one."

After a little further delay, he summoned Fray Sebastian by a peremptory knock at the inner door, the outer one of course remaining open. The Franciscan came, his broad, good-humoured face bathed in tears, which he scarcely made an effort to conceal.

The prior glanced at him for a moment, then signed to Herrera, who was waiting in the gallery, to come and make the door fast. They walked on together in silence, until at length Fray Sebastian said, in a trembling voice, "My lord, you are very powerful here; can you do nothing for him?"

"I have done much. At my intercession he had nine months of solitude, in which to recollect himself and ponder his situation, ere he was called on to make answer at all. Judge my amazement when, instead of entering upon his defence, or calling witnesses to his character, he at once confessed all. Judge my greater amazement at his continued obstinacy since. When a man has broken a giant oak in two, he may feel some surprise at being baffled by a sapling."

"He will not relent," said Fray Sebastian, hardly restraining his sobs. "He will die."

"I see one chance to save him," returned the prior; "but it is a hazardous experiment. The consent of the Supreme Council is necessary, as well as that of my Lord Vice-Inquisitor, and neither may be very easy to obtain."

"To save his body or his soul?" Fray Sebastian asked anxiously.

"Both, if it succeeds. But I can say no more," he added rather haughtily; "for my plan is bound up with a secret, of which few living men, save myself, are in possession."

XXXIV.

Fray Sebastian's Trouble.

"Now, with fainting frame,

With soul just lingering on the flight begun,

To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one,

I bless thee. Peace be on thy noble head.

Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!

I bid this prayer survive me, and retain

Its power again to bless thee, and again.

Thou hast been gathered into my dark fate

Too much; too long for my sake desolate

Hath been thine exiled youth; but now take back

From dying hands thy freedom."--Hemans

It was late in August. All day long the sky had been molten fire, and the earth brass. Every one had dozed away the sultry noontide hours in the coolest recesses of dwellings made to exclude heat, as ours to exclude cold. But when at last the sun sank in flame beneath the horizon, people began to creep out languidly to woo the refreshment of the evening breeze.

The beautiful gardens of the Triana were still deserted, save by two persons. One of these, a young lad--we beg pardon, a young gentleman--of fifteen or sixteen, sat, or rather reclined, by the river-side, eating slices from an enormous melon, which he cut with a small silver-hilted dagger. A plumed cap, and a gay velvet jerkin lined with satin, had been thrown aside for coolness' sake, and lay near him on the ground; so that his present dress consisted merely of a mass of the finest white holland, delicately starched and frilled, velvet hosen, long silk stockings, and fashionable square-toed shoes. Curls of scented hair were thrown back from a face beautiful as that of a girl, but bold and insolent in its expression as that of a spoiled and mischievous boy.

The other person was seated in the arbour mentioned once before, with a book in his hand, of which, however, he did not in the course of an hour turn over a single leaf. A look of chronic discontent and dejection had replaced the good-humoured smiles of Fray Sebastian Gomez. Everything was wrong with the poor Franciscan now. Even the delicacies of his patron's table ceased to please him; and he, in his turn, was fast ceasing to please his patron. How could it be otherwise, when he had lost not only his happy art of indirect ingenious flattery, but his power to be commonly agreeable or amusing? No more poems--not so much as the briefest sonnet--on the suppression of heresy were to be had from him; and he was fast becoming incapable of turning a jest or telling a story.

It is said that idiots often manifest peculiar pain and terror at the sound of music, because it awakens within them faint stirrings of that higher life from which God's mysterious dispensation has shut them out. And it is true that the first stirrings of higher life usually come to all of us with pain and terror. Moreover, if we do not crush them out, but cherish and foster them, they are very apt to take away the brightness and pleasantness of the old lower life altogether, and to make it seem worthless and distasteful.

A new and higher life had begun for Fray Sebastian. It was not his conscience that was quickened, only his heart. Hitherto he had chiefly cared for himself. He was a good-natured man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; yet no sympathy for others had ever spoiled his appetite or hindered his digestion. But for the past three months he had been feeling as he had not felt since he clung weeping to the mother who left him in the parlour of the Franciscan convent--a child of eight years old. The patient suffering face of the young prisoner in the Triana had laid upon him a spell that he could not break.

To say that he would have done anything in his power to save Don Carlos, is to say little. Willingly would he have lived for a month on black bread and brackish water, if that could have even mitigated his fate. But the very intensity of his desire to help him was fast making him incapable of rendering him the smallest service. Munebrãga's flatterer and favourite might possibly, by dint of the utmost self-possession and the most adroit management, have accomplished some little good. But Fray Sebastian was now consciously forfeiting even the miserable fragment of power that had once been his. He thought himself like the salt that had lost its savour, and was fit neither for the land nor yet for the dunghill.

Absorbed in his mournful reflections, he continued unconscious of the presence of such an important personage as Don Alonzo de Munebrãga, the Lord Vice-Inquisitor's favourite page. At length, however, he was made aware of the fact by a loud angry shout, "Off with you, varlets, scum of the people! How dare you put your accursed fishing-smack to shore in my lord's garden, and under his very eyes?"

Fray Sebastian looked up, and saw no fishing-boat, but a decent covered barge, from which, in spite of the page's remonstrance, two persons were landing: an elderly female clad in deep mourning, and her attendant, apparently a tradesman's apprentice, or serving-man.

Fray Sebastian knew well how many distracted petitioners daily sought access to Munebrãga, to plead (alas, how vainly!) for the lives of parents, husbands, sons, or daughters. This was doubtless one of them. He heard her plead, "For the love of Heaven, dear young gentleman, hinder me not. Have you a mother? My only son lies--"

"Out upon thee, woman!" interrupted the page; "and the foul fiend take thee and thy only son together."

"Hush, Don Alonzo!" Fray Sebastian interposed, coming forward towards the spot; and perhaps for the first time in his life there was something like dignity in his tone and manner. "You must be aware, señora," he said, turning to the woman, "that the right of using this landing-place is restricted to my lord's household. You will be admitted at the gate of the Triana, if you present yourself at a proper hour."

"Alas! good father, once and again have I sought admission to my lord's presence. I am the unhappy mother of Luis D'Abrego, he who used to paint and illuminate the church missals so beautifully. More than a year agone they tore him from me, and carried him away to yonder tower, and since then, so help me the good God, never a word of him have I heard. Whether he is living or dead, this day I know not."

"Oh, a Lutheran dog! Serve him right," cried the page. "I hope they have put him on the pulley."

Fray Sebastian turned suddenly, and dealt the lad a stinging blow on the side of his face. To the latest hour of his life this act of passion remained incomprehensible to himself. He could only ascribe it to the direct agency of the evil one. "I was tempted by the Devil," he would say with a sigh. "Vade retro me, Satana."

Crimson to the roots of his perfumed hair, the boy sought his dagger. "Vile caitiff! beggarly trencher-scraping Franciscan!" he cried, "you shall repent of this."

But apparently changing his mind the next moment, he allowed the dagger to drop from his hand, and snatching up his jerkin, ran at full speed towards the house.

Fray Sebastian crossed himself, and gazed after him bewildered; his unwonted passion dying as suddenly as it had flamed up, and giving place to fear.

Meanwhile the mother of Abrego, to whom it did not occur that the buffet bestowed on the page could have any serious consequences, resumed her pleadings. "Your reverence seems to have a heart that can feel for the unhappy," she said. "For Heaven's sake refuse not the prayer of the most unhappy woman in the world. Only let me see his lordship--let me throw myself at his feet and tell him the whole truth. My poor lad had nothing at all to do with the Lutherans; he was a good, true Christian, and an old one, like all his family."

"Nay, nay, my good woman; I fear I can do nothing to help you. And I entreat of you to leave this place, else some of my lord's household are sure to come and compel you. Ay, there they are."

It was true enough. Don Alonzo, as he ran through the porch, shouted to the numerous idle attendants who were lounging about, and some of them immediately rushed out into the garden.

In justice to Fray Sebastian, it must be recorded, that before he consulted for his personal safety, he led the poor woman back to the barge, and saw her depart in it. Then he made good his own retreat, going straight to the lodging of Don Juan Alvarez.

He found Juan lying asleep on a settle. The day was hot; he had nothing to do; and, moreover, the fiery energy of his southern blood was dashed by the southern taint of occasional torpor. Starting up suddenly, and seeing Fray Sebastian standing before him with a look of terror, he asked in alarm, "Any tidings, Fray? Speak--tell me quickly."

"None, Señor Don Juan. But I must leave this place at once." And the friar briefly narrated the scene that had just taken place, adding mournfully, "Ay de mi! I cannot tell what came over me--me, the mildest-tempered man in all the Spains!"

"And what of all that?" asked Juan rather contemptuously. "I see nothing to regret, save that you did not give the insolent lad what he deserved, a sound beating."

"But, Señor Don Juan, you don't understand," gasped the poor friar. "I must fly immediately. If I stay here over to-night I shall find myself before the morning--there." And with a significant gesture he pointed to the grim fortress that loomed above them.

"Nonsense. They cannot suspect a man of heresy, even de levi,[#] for boxing the ear of an impudent serving-lad."

[#] Lightly.

"Ay, and can they not, your worship? Do you not know that the gardener of the Triana has lain for many a weary month in one of those dismal cells; and all for the grave offence of snatching a reed out of the hand of one of my lord's lackeys so roughly as to make it bleed?"[#]

[#] A fact.

"Truly! Now are things come to a strange pass in our free and royal land of Spain! A beggarly upstart, such as this Munebrãga, who could not, to save himself from the rack, tell you the name of his own great-grandfather, drags the sons and brothers--ay, and God help us! the wives and daughters--of our knights and nobles to the dungeon and the stake before our eyes. And it is not enough for him to set his own heel on our necks. His minions--his very grooms and pages--must lord it over us, and woe to him who dares to chastise their insolence. Nathless, I would feel it a comfort to make every bone in that urchin's body ache soundly. I have a mind--but this is folly. I believe you are right, Fray. You should go."

"Moreover," said the friar mournfully, "I am doing no good here."

"No one can do good now," returned Juan, in a tone of deep dejection. "And to-day the last blow has fallen. The poor woman who showed him kindness, and sometimes told us how he fared, is herself a prisoner."

"What! she has been discovered?"

"Even so: and with those fiends mercy is the greatest of all crimes. The child met me to-day (whether by accident or design, I know not), and told me, weeping bitterly."

"God help her!"

"Some would gladly endure her punishment if they might commit her crime," said Don Juan. There was a pause; then he resumed, "I had been about to ask you to apply once more to the prior."

Fray Sebastian shook his head. "That were of no use," he said; "for it is certain that my lord the Vice-Inquisitor and the prior have had a misunderstanding about the matter. And the prior, so far from obtaining permission to deal with him as he desired, is not even allowed to see him now."

"And yourself?--whither do you mean to go?" asked Juan, rather abruptly.

"In sooth, I know not, señor. I have had no time to think. But go I must."

"I will tell you what to do. Go to Nuera. There for the present you will be safe. And if any man inquire your business, you have a fair and ready answer. I send you to look after my affairs. Stay; I will write by you to Dolores. Poor, true-hearted Dolores!" Don Juan seemed to fall into a reverie, so long did he sit motionless, his face shaded by his hand.

His mournful air, his unwonted listlessness, his attenuated frame--all struck Fray Sebastian painfully. After musing a while in silence, he said at last, very suddenly, "Señor Don Juan!"

Juan looked up.

"Have you ever thought since on the message he sent you by me?"

Don Juan looked as though that question were worse than needless. Was not every word of his brother's message burned into his heart? This it was: "My Ruy, thou hast done all for me that the best of brothers could. Leave me now to God, unto whom I am going quickly, and in peace. Quit the country as soon as thou canst; and God's best blessings surround thy path and guard thee evermore."

One fact Carlos had most earnestly entreated Fray Sebastian to withhold from his brother. Juan must never know that he had endured the horrors of the Question. The monk would have promised almost anything that could bring a glow of pleasure to that pale, patient face. And he had kept his promise, though at the expense of a few falsehoods, that did not greatly embarrass his conscience. He had conveyed the impression to Don Juan that it was merely from the effects of his long and cruel imprisonment that his brother was sinking into the only refuge that remained to him--a quiet grave.

After a pause, he resumed, looking earnestly at Juan--"He wished you to go."

"Do you not know that next month they say there will be--an Auto?"

"Yes; but it is not likely--"

They gazed at each other in silence, neither saying what was not likely.

"Any horror is possible," said Juan at last. "But no more of this. Until after the Auto, with its chances of some termination to this dreadful suspense, I stir not from Seville. Now, we must think for you. I know where to find a boat, the owner of which will take you some miles on your way up the river to-night. Then you can hire a horse."

Fray Sebastian groaned. Neither the journey itself, its cause, nor its manner were anything but disagreeable to the poor friar. But there was no help for him. Juan gave him some further directions about his way; then set food and wine before him.

"Eat and drink," he said. "Meanwhile I will secure the boat. When I return, I can write to Dolores."

All was done as he planned; and ere the morning broke, Fray Sebastian was far on his way to Nuera, with the letter to Dolores stitched into the lining of his doublet.

XXXV.

The Eve of the Auto.

"It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.

He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be

hope."--Lamentations iii, 27-29

On the 21st of September 1559, all Seville wore a festive appearance. The shops were closed, and the streets were filled with idle loiterers in their gay holiday apparel. For it was the eve of the great Auto, and the preliminary ceremonies were going forward amidst the admiration of gazing thousands. Two stately scaffolds, in the form of an amphitheatre, had been erected in the great square of the city, then called the Square of St. Francis; and thither, when the work was completed, flags and crosses were borne in solemn procession, with music and singing.

But a still more significant ceremonial was enacted in another place. Outside the walls, on the Prado San Sebastian, stood the ghastly Quemadero--the great altar upon which, for generations, men had offered human sacrifices to the God of peace and love. Thither came long files of barefooted friars, carrying bushes and faggots, which they laid in order on the place of death, while, in sweet yet solemn tones, they chanted the "Miserere" and "De Profundis."

Very close together on those festive days were "strong light and deep shadow." But our way leads us, for the present, into the light. Turning away from the Square of St. Francis, and the Prado San Sebastian, we enter a cool upper room in the stately mansion of Don Garçia Ramirez. There, in the midst of gold and gems, and of silk and lace, Doña Inez is standing, busily engaged in the task of selecting the fairest treasures of her wardrobe to grace the grand festival of the following day. Doña Beatriz de Lavella, and the young waiting-woman who had been employed in the vain though generous effort to save Don Carlos, are both aiding her in the choice.

"Please your ladyship," said the girl, "I should recommend rose colour for the basquina. Then, with those beautiful pearls, my lord's late gift, my lady will be as fine as a duchess; of whom, I hear, many will be there.--But what will Señora Doña Beatriz please to wear?"

"I do not intend to go, Juanita," said Doña Beatriz, with a little embarrassment.

"Not intend to go!" cried the girl, crossing herself in surprise. "Not go to see the grandest sight there has been in Seville for many a year! Worth a hundred bull-feasts! Ay de mi! what a pity!"

"Juanita," interposed her mistress, "I think I hear the señorita's voice in the garden. It is far too hot for her to be out of doors. Oblige me by bringing her in at once."

As soon as the attendant was gone, Doña Inez turned to her cousin. "It is really most unreasonable of Don Juan," she said, "to keep you shut up here, whilst all Seville is making holiday."

"I am glad--I have no heart to go forth," said Doña Beatriz, with a quivering lip.

"Nor have I too much, for that matter. My poor brother is so weak and ill to-day, it grieves me to the heart. Moreover, he is still so thoughtless about his poor soul. That is the worst of all. I never cease praying Our Lady to bring him to a better mind. If he would only consent to see a priest; but he was ever obstinate. And if I urge the point too strongly, he will think I suppose him dying."

"I thought his health had improved since you had him brought over here."

"Certainly he is happier here than he was in his father's house. But of late he seems to me to be sinking, and that quickly. And now, the Auto--"

"What of that?" asked Doña Beatriz, with a quick look, half suspicious and half frightened.

Doña Inez closed the door carefully, and drew nearer to her cousin. "They say she will be amongst the relaxed,"[#] she whispered.

[#] Those delivered over to the secular arm--that is, to death.

"Does he know it?" asked Beatriz.

"I fear he suspects something; and what to tell him, or not to tell him, I know not--Our Lady help me! Ay de mi! 'Tis a horrible business from beginning to end. And the last thing--the arrest of the sister, Doña Juana! A duke's daughter--a noble's bride. But--best be silent.

'Con el re e la Inquisition,

Chiton! Chiton!'"[#]

[#]| "With the King or the Inquisition, Hush! Hush!"--A Spanish proverb.

Thus, only in a few hurried words, spoken with 'bated breath, did Doña Inez venture to allude to the darkest and saddest of the horrible tragedies in that time of horrors. Nor shall we do more.

"Still, you know, amiga mia," she continued, "one must do like one's neighbours. It would be so ridiculous to look gloomy on a festival day. Besides, every one would talk."

"That is why I say I am glad Don Juan made it his prayer to me that I would not go. For not to look sorrowful, when thy father, Don Manuel, and my aunt, Doña Katarina, are both doing their utmost to drive me out of my senses, would be past my power."

"Have they been urging the suit of Señor Luis upon thee again? My poor Beatriz, I am truly sorrow for thee," said Doña Inez, with genuine sympathy.

"Urging it again!" Beatriz repeated with flashing eyes. "Nay; but they have never ceased to urge it. And they spare not to say such wicked, cruel words. They tell me Don Juan is dishonoured by his brother's crime. Dishonoured, forsooth! Think of dishonour touching him! After the day of St. Quentin, the Duke of Savoy was not of that mind, nor our Catholic King himself. And they have the audacity to say that I can easily get absolved of my troth to him. Absolved of a solemn promise made in the sight of God and of Our Lady, and all the holy Saints! If that be not heresy, as bad as--"

"Hush!" interrupted Doña Inez. "These are dangerous subjects. Moreover, I hear some one knocking at the door."

It proved to be a page bearing a message.

"If it please Doña Beatriz de Lavella, Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya kisses the señora's feet, and most humbly desires the favour of an audience."

"I go," said Beatriz.

"Request Señor Don Juan to have the goodness to untire himself a little, and bring his Excellency fruit and wine," added Doña Inez. "My cousin," she said, turning to Beatriz as soon as the page left the room, "do you not know your cheeks are all aflame? Don Juan will think we have quarrelled. Rest you here a minute, and let me bathe them for you with this water of orange-flowers."

Beatriz submitted, though reluctantly, to her cousin's good offices. While she performed them she whispered, "And be not so downcast, amiga mia. There is a remedy for most troubles. And as for yours, I see not why Don Juan himself should not save you out of them once for all." She added, in a whisper, two or three words that more than undid all the benefit which the cheeks of Beatriz might otherwise have derived from the application of the fragrant water.

"No use," was the agitated reply. "Even were it possible, they would not permit it."

"You can come to visit me. Then trust me to manage the rest. The truth is, amiga mia," Doña Inez continued hurriedly, as she smoothed her cousin's dark glossy hair, "what between sickness, and quarrelling, and the Faith, and heresy, and prisons, there is so much trouble in the world that no one can help, it seems a pity not to help all one can. So you may tell Don Juan that if Doña Inez can do him a good turn she will not be found wanting. There, I despair of your cheeks. Yet I must allow that their crimson becomes you well. But you would rather hear that from Don Juan's lips than from mine. Go to him, my cousin." And with a parting kiss Beatriz was dismissed.

But if she expected any flattery that day from the lips of Don Juan, she was disappointed. His heart was far too sorrowful. He had merely come to tell his betrothed what he intended to do on the morrow--that dreadful morrow! "I have secured a station," he said, "from whence I can watch the whole procession, as it issues from the gate of the Triana. If he is there, I shall dare everything for a last look and word. And a desperate man is seldom baffled. If even his dust is there, I shall stand beside it till all is over. If not--" Here he broke off, leaving his sentence unfinished, as if in that case it did not matter what he did.

Just then Doña Inez entered. After customary salutations, she said, "I have a request to make of you, my cousin, on the part of my brother, Don Gonsalvo. He desires to see you for a few moments."

"Señora my cousin, I am very much at your service, and at his."

Juan was accordingly conducted to the upper room where Gonsalvo lay. And at the special request of the sick man, they were left alone together.

He stretched out a wasted hand to his cousin, who took it in silence, but with a look of compassion. For it needed only a glance at his face to show that death was there.

"I should be glad to think you forgave me," he said.

"I do forgive you," Juan answered. "You intended no evil."

"Will you, then, do me a great kindness? It is the last I shall ask. Tell me the names of any of the--the victims that have come to your knowledge."

"It is only through rumour one can hear these things. Not yet have I succeeded in discovering whether the name dearest to me is amongst them."

"Tell me--has rumour named in your hearing--Doña Maria de Xeres y Bohorques?"

Juan was still ignorant of the secret which Doña Inez had but recently confided to his betrothed. He therefore answered, without hesitation, though in a low, sad tone, "Yes; they say she is to die to-morrow."

Don Gonsalvo flung his hand across his face, and there was a great silence.

Which the awed and wondering Juan broke at last. Guessing at the truth, he said, "It may be I have done wrong to tell you."

"No; you have done right. I knew it ere you told me. It is well--for her."

"A brave word, bravely spoken."

"Nigh upon eighteen months--long slow months of grief and pain. All ended now. To-morrow night she will see the glory of God."

There was another long pause. At last Juan said,--

"Perhaps, if you could, you would gladly share her fate?"

Gonsalvo half raised himself, and a flush overspread the wan face that already wore the ashy hue of approaching death. "Share that fate!" he cried, with an eagerness contrasting strangely with his former slow and measured utterance. "Change with them? Ask the beggar, who sits all day at the King's gate, waiting for his dole of crumbs, would he gladly change with the King's children, when he sees the golden gate flung open before them, and watches them pass in robed and crowned, to the presence-chamber of the King himself."

"Your faith is greater than mine," said Juan in surprise.

"In one way, yes," replied Gonsalvo, sinking back, and resuming his low, quiet tone. "For the beggar dares to hope that the King has looked with pity even on him."

"You do well to hope in the mercy of God."

"Cousin, do you know what my life has been?"

"I think I do."

"I am past disguise now. Standing on the brink of the grave, I dare speak the truth, though it be to my own shame. There was no evil, no sin--stay, I will sum up all in one word. One pure, blameless life--a man's life, too--I have watched from day to day, from childhood to manhood. All that your brother Don Carlos was, I was not; all he was not, I was."

"Yet you once thought that life incomplete, unmanly," said Juan, remembering the taunts that in past days had so often aroused his wrath.

"I was a fool. It is just retribution that I--I who called him coward--should see him march in there triumphant, with the palm of victory in his hand. But let me end; for I think it is the last time I shall speak of myself in any human ear. I sowed to the flesh, and of the flesh I have reaped--corruption. It is an awful word, Don Juan. All the life in me turned to death; all the good in me (what God meant for good, such as force, fire, passion) turned to evil. What availed it me that I loved a star in heaven--a bright, lonely, distant star--while I was earthy, of the earth? Because I could not (and thank God for that!) pluck down my star from the sky and hold it in my hand, even that love became corruption too. I fulfilled my course, the earthly grew sensual, the sensual grew devilish. And then God smote me, though not then for the first time. The stroke of his hand was heavy. My heart was crushed, my frame left powerless." He paused for a while, then slowly resumed. "The stroke of his hand, your brother's words, your brother's book--by these he taught me. There is deliverance even from the bondage of corruption, through him who came to call not the righteous, but sinners. One day--and that soon--I, even I, shall kneel at his feet, and thank him for saving the lost. And then I shall see my star, shining far above me in his glorious heaven, and be content and glad."

"God has been very gracious to you, my cousin," said Juan in a tone of emotion. "And what he has cleansed I dare not call common. Were my brother here to-day, I think he would stretch out to you the right hand, not of forgiveness, but of fellowship. I have told you how he longed for your soul."

"God can fulfil more desires of his than that, Don Juan, and I doubt not he will. What know we of his dealings? we who all these dreary months have been mourning for and pitying his prisoners, to-morrow to be his crowned and sainted martyrs? It were a small thing with him to flood the dungeon's gloom with light, and give--even here, even now--all their hearts long for to those who suffer for him."

Juan was silent. Truly the last was first, and the first last now. Gonsalvo had reached some truths which were still far beyond his ken. He did not know how their seed had been sown in his heart by his own brother's hand. At length he answered, in a low and faltering voice, "There is much in what you say. Fray Sebastian told me--"

"Ay," cried Gonsalvo eagerly, "what did Fray Sebastian tell you of him?"

"That he found him in perfect peace, though ill and weak in body. It is my hope that God himself has delivered him ere now out of their cruel hands. And I ought to tell you that he spoke of all his relatives with affection, and made special inquiry after your health."

Gonsalvo said quietly, "It is likely I shall see him before you."

Juan sighed. "To-morrow will reveal something," he said.

"Many things, perhaps," Gonsalvo returned. "Well--Doña Beatriz waits you now. There is no poison in that wine, though it be of an earthly vintage; and God himself puts the cup in your hand; so take it, and be comforted. Yet stay, have you patience for one word more?"

"For a thousand, if you will, my cousin."

"I know that in heart you share his--our faith."

Juan shrank a little from his gaze.

"Of course," he replied, "I have been obliged to conceal my opinions; and, indeed, of late all things have seemed to grow dim and uncertain with me. Sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I cannot tell what truth is."

"'He came not to call the righteous, but sinners,'" said Gonsalvo. "And the sinner who has heard his call must believe, let others doubt as they may. Thank God, the sinner may not only believe, but love. Yes; in that the beggar at the gate may take his stand beside the king's children unreproved. Even I dare to say, 'Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.' Only to them it is given to prove it; while I--ay, there was the bitter thought. Long it haunted me. At last I prayed that if indeed he deigned to accept me, all sinful as I was, he would give me for a sign something to do, to suffer, or to give up, whereby I might prove my love."

"And did he hear you?"

"Yes. He showed me one thing harder to give up than life; one thing harder to do than to brave the torture and the death of fire."

"What is that?"

Once more Gonsalvo veiled his face. Then he murmured--"Harder to give up--vengeance, hatred; harder to do--to pray for their murderers."

"I could never do it," said Juan, starting.

"And if at last--at last--I can,--I, whose anger was fierce, and whose wrath was cruel, even unto death,--is not that His own work in me?"

Juan half turned away, and did not answer immediately. In his heart many thoughts were struggling. Far, indeed, was he from praying for his brother's murderers; almost as far from wishing to do it. Rather would he invoke God's vengeance upon them. Had Gonsalvo, in the depths of his misery, remorse, and penitence, actually found something which Don Juan Alvarez still lacked? He said at last, with a humility new and strange to him,--

"My cousin, you are nearer heaven than I."

"As to time--yes," said Gonsalvo, with a faint smile. "Now farewell, cousin; and thank you."

"Can I do nothing more for you?"

"Yes; tell my sister that I know all. Now, God bless you, and deliver you from the evils that beset your path, and bring you and yours to some land where you may worship him in peace and safety."

And so the cousins parted, never to meet again upon earth.

XXXVI.

"The Horrible and Tremendous Spectacle."[#]

"All have passed:

The fearful, and the desperate, and the strong.

Some like the barque that rushes with the blast;

Some like the leaf borne tremblingly along;

And some like men who have but one more field

To fight, and then may slumber on their shield--

Therefore they arm in hope."--Hemans.

[#] So called by the Inquisitor, De Pegna.

At earliest dawn next morning, Juan established himself in an upper room of one of the high houses which overlooked the gate of the Triana. He had hired it from the owners for the purpose, stipulating for sole possession and perfect loneliness.

At sunrise the great Cathedral bell tolled out solemnly, and all the bells in the city responded. Through the crowd, which had already gathered in the street, richly dressed citizens were threading their way on foot. He knew they were those who, out of zeal for the faith, had volunteered to act as patrinos, or god-fathers, to the prisoners, walking beside them in the procession. Amongst them he recognized his cousins, Don Manuel and Don Balthazar. They were all admitted into the castle by a private door.

Ere long the great gate was flung open. Juan's eyes were rivetted to the spot. There was a sound of singing, sweet and low, as of childish voices; for the first to issue from those gloomy portals were the boys of the College of Doctrine, dressed in white surplices, and chanting litanies to the saints. Clear and full at intervals rose from their lips the "Ora pro nobis" of the response; and tears gathered unconsciously in the eyes of Juan at the old familiar words.

In great contrast with the white-robed children came the next in order. Juan drew his breath hard, for here were the penitents: pale, melancholy faces, "ghastly and disconsolate beyond what can be imagined;"[#] forms clothed in black, without sleeves, and barefooted--hands carrying extinguished tapers.

[#] Report of De Pegna.

Those who walked foremost in the procession had only been convicted of such minor offences as blasphemy, sorcery, or polygamy. But by-and-by there came others, wearing ugly sanbenitos--yellow, with red crosses--and conical paper mitres on their heads. Juan's eye kindled with intenser interest; for he knew that these were Lutherans. Not without a wild dream--hope, perhaps--that the near approach of death might have subdued his brother's fortitude, did he scan in turn every mournful face. There was Luis D'Abrego, the illuminator of church books; there, walking long afterwards, as far more guilty, was Medel D'Espinosa, the dealer in embroidery, who had received the Testaments brought by Juliano. There were many others of much higher rank, with whom he was well acquainted. Altogether more than eighty in number, the long and melancholy train swept by, every man or woman attended by two monks and a patrino. But Carlos was not amongst them.

Then came the great Cross of the Inquisition; the face turned towards the penitent, the back to the impenitent--those devoted to the death of fire. And now Juan's breath came and went--his lips trembled; all his soul was in his eager, straining eyes Now first he saw the hideous zamarra--a black robe, painted all over with saffron-coloured flames, into which devils and serpents, rudely represented, were thrusting the impenitent heretic. A paper crown, or carroza, similarly adorned, covered the victim's head. But the face of the wearer was unknown to Juan. He was a poor artizan--Juan de Leon by name--who had made his escape by flight, but had been afterwards apprehended in the Low Countries. Torture and cruel imprisonment had almost killed him already; but his heart was strong to suffer for the Lord he loved, and though the pallor of death was on his cheek, there was no fear there.

But the countenances of those that followed Juan knew too well. Never afterwards could he exactly recall the order in which they walked; yet every individual face stamped itself indelibly on his memory. He would carry those looks in his heart until his dying hour.

No less than four of the victims wore the white tunic and brown mantle of St. Jerome. One of these was an old man--leaning on his staff for very age, but with joy and confidence beaming in his countenance. The white locks, from which Garçias Ariâs had gained the name of Doctor Blanco, had been shorn away; but Juan easily recognized the waverer of past days, now strengthened with all might, according to the glorious power of Him whom at last he had learned to trust. The accomplished Cristobal D'Arellano, and Fernando de San Juan, Master of the College of Doctrine, followed calm and dauntless. Steadfast, too, though not without a little natural shrinking from the doom of fire, was a mere youth--Juan Crisostomo.

Then came one clad in a doctor's robe, with the step of a conqueror and the mien of a king. As he issued from the Triana he chanted, in a clear and steady voice, the words of the Hundred and ninth Psalm: "Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise; for the mouth of the ungodly, yea, the mouth of the deceitful, is opened upon me: and they have spoken against me with false tongues. They compassed me about also with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause.... Help me, O Lord my God: O save me according to thy mercy; and they shall know how that this is thine hand, and that thou, Lord, hast done it. Though they curse, yet bless thou." So died away the voice of Juan Gonsalez, one of the noblest of Christ's noble band of witnesses in Spain.

All these were arrayed in the garments of their ecclesiastical orders, to be solemnly degraded on the scaffold in the Square of St. Francis. But there followed one already in the full infamy, or glory, of the zamarra and carroza, with painted flames and demons;--with a thrill of emotion, Juan recognized his friend and teacher, Cristobal Losada--looking calm and fearless--a hero marching to his last battle, conquering and to conquer.

Yet even that face soon faded from Juan's thoughts. For there walked in that gloomy death procession six females--persons of rank; nearly all of them young and beautiful, but worn by imprisonment, and more than one amongst them maimed by torture. Yet if man was cruel, Christ, for whom they suffered, was pitiful. Their countenances, calm and even radiant, revealed the hidden power by which they were sustained. Their names--which deserve a place beside those of the women of old who were last at his cross and first beside his open sepulchre--were, Doña Isabella de Baena, in whose house the church was wont to meet; the two sisters of Juan Gonsalez; Doña Maria de Virves; Doña Maria de Cornel; and, last of all, Doña Maria de Bohorques, whose face shone as the first martyr's, looking up into heaven. She alone, of all the female martyr band, appeared wearing the gag, an honour due to her heroic efforts to console and sustain her companions in the court of the Triana.

Juan's brave heart well-nigh burst with impotent, indignant anguish. "Ay de mi, my Spain!" he cried; "thou seest these things, and endurest them. Lucifer, son of the morning, thou art fallen--fallen from thy high place amongst the nations."

It was true. From the man, or nation, "that hath not," shall be taken "even that which he seemeth to have." Had the spirit of chivalry, Spain's boast and pride, been faithful to its own dim light, it might even then have saved Spain. But its light became darkness; its trust was betrayed into the hand of superstition. Therefore, in the just judgment of God, its own degradation quickly followed. Spain's chivalry lost gradually all that was genuine, all that was noble in it; until it became only a faint and ghastly mockery, a sign of corruption, like the phosphoric light that flickers above the grave.

Absorbed in his bitter thoughts, Juan well-nigh missed the last of the doomed ones--last because highest in worldly rank. Sad and slow, with eyes bent down, Don Juan Ponce de Leon walked along. The flames on his zamarra were reversed; poor symbol of the poor mercy for which he sold his joy and triumph and dimmed the brightness of his martyr crown. Yet surely he did not lose the glad welcome that awaited him at the close of that terrible day; nor the right to say, with the erring restored apostle, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee."

All the living victims had passed now. And Don Carlos Alvarez was not amongst them. Juan breathed a sigh of relief; but not yet did his straining eyes relax their gaze. For Rome's vengeance reached even to the grave. Next, there were borne along the statues of those who had died in heresy, robed in the hideous zamarra, and followed by black chests containing their bones to be burned.

Not there!--No--not there! At last Juan's trembling hands let go the framework of the window to which they had been clinging; and, the intense strain over, he fell back exhausted.

The stately pageant swept by, unwatched by him. He never saw, what all Seville was gazing on with admiration, the grand procession of the judges and counsellors of the city, in their robes of office; the chapter of the Cathedral; the long slow train of priests and monks that followed. And then, in a space left empty out of reverence, the great green standard of the Inquisition was borne aloft, and over it a gilded crucifix. Then came the Inquisitors themselves, in their splendid official dresses. And lastly, on horseback and in gorgeous apparel, the familiars of the Inquisition.

It was well that Juan's eyes were turned from that sight. What avails it for lips white with passion to heap wild curses on the heads of those for whom God's curse already "waits in calm shadow," until the day of reckoning be fully come? Curses, after all, are weapons dangerous to use, and apt to pierce the hand that wields them.

His first feeling was one of intense relief, almost of joy. He had escaped the maddening torture of seeing his brother dragged before his eyes to the death of anguish and shame. But to that succeeded the bitter thought, growing soon into full, mournful conviction, "I shall see his face no more on earth. He is dead--or dying."

Yet that day the deep, strong current of his brotherly love was crossed by another tide of emotion. Those heroic men and women, whom he watched as they passed along so calmly to their doom, had he no bond of sympathy with them? Was it so long since he had pressed Losada's hand in grateful friendship, and thanked Doña Isabella de Baena for the teaching received beneath her roof? With a thrill of keen and sudden shame the gallant soldier saw himself a recreant, who had flaunted his gay uniform on the parade and at the field-day, but when the hour of conflict came, had stepped aside, and let the sword and the bullet find out braver and truer hearts.

He could not die thus for his faith. On the contrary, it cost him but little to conceal it, to live in every respect like an orthodox Catholic. What, then, had they which he had not? Something that enabled his young brother--the boy who used to weep for a blow--to stand and look fearless in the face of a horrible death. Something that enabled even poor, wild, passionate Gonsalvo to forgive and pray for the murderers of the woman he loved. What was it?

XXXVII.

Something Ended and Something Begun.

"O sweet and strange it is to think that ere this day is done.

The voice that now is speaking may be beyond the sun:

For ever and for ever with those just souls and true--

And what is life that we should mourn, why make we such ado?"--Tennyson

Late in the afternoon of that day, Doña Inez entered her sick brother's room. A glitter of silk, rose-coloured and black, of costly lace and of gems and gold, seemed to surround her. But as she threw aside the mantilla that partially shaded her face, and almost sank on a seat beside the bed, it was easy to see that she was very faint and weary, if not also very sick at heart.

"Santa Maria! I am tired to death," she murmured. "The heat was killing; and the whole business interminably long."

Gonsalvo gazed at her with eager eyes, as a man dying of thirst might gaze on one who holds a cup of water; but for a while he did not speak. At last he said, pointing to some wine that lay near, beside an untasted meal,--

"Drink, then."

"What, my brother!" said Doña Inez, reproachfully, "you have not touched food to-day! You--so ill and weak?"

"I am a man--even still," said Gonsalvo with a little bitterness in his tone.

Doña Inez drank, and for a few moments fanned herself in silence, distress and embarrassment in her face.

At last Gonsalvo, who had never withdrawn his eager gaze, said in a low voice,--

"Sister, remember your promise."

"I am afraid--for you."

"You need not," he gasped. "Only tell me all."

Doña Inez passed her hand wearily across her brow.

"Everything floats before me," she said. "What with the music, and the mass, and the incense; and the crosses, and banners, and gorgeous robes; and then the taking of the oaths, and the sermon of the faith."

"Still--you kept my charge?"

"I did, brother." She lowered her voice. "Hard as it was, I looked at her. If it comforts you to know that, all through that long day, her face was as calm as ever I have seen it listening to Fray Constantino's sermons, you may take that comfort to your heart When her sentence had been read, she was asked to recant; and I heard her answer rise clear and distinct, 'I neither can nor will recant.' Ave Maria Sanctissima! it is all a great mystery."

There was a silence, then she resumed,--

"And Señor Cristobal Losada--" but the thought of the kind and skilful physician who had watched beside her own sick-bed, and brought back her babe from the gates of the grave, almost overcame her. Turning quickly to other victims, she went on--

"There were four monks of St. Jerome. Think of the White Doctor, that every one believed so good a man, so pious and orthodox! Another of them, Fray Cristobal D'Arellano, was accused in his sentence of some wicked words against Our Lady which, it would seem, he never said. He cried out boldly, before them all, 'It is false! I never advanced such a blasphemy; and I am ready to prove the contrary with the Bible in my hand.' Every one seemed too much amazed even to think of ordering him to be gagged: and, for my part, I am glad the poor wretch had his word for the last time. I cannot help wishing they had equally forgotten to silence Doctor Juan Gonzales; for it does not appear that he was speaking any blasphemy, but merely a word of comfort to a poor pale girl, his sister, as they told me. Two of them are to die with him--God help them!--Holy Saints forgive me; I forgot we were told not to pray for them," and she crossed herself.

"Does my sister really believe that compassionate word a sin in God's sight?"

"How am I to know? I believe whatever the Church says, of course. And surely there is enough in these days to inspire us with a pious horror of heresy. Pues," she resumed, "there was that long and terrible ceremony of degrading from the priesthood. And yet that Gonsalez passed through it all as calm and unmoved as though he were but putting on his robes to say mass. His mother and his two brothers are still in prison, it is said, awaiting their doom. Of all the relaxed, I am told that only Don Juan Ponce de Leon showed any sign of penitence. For the sake of his noble house, one is glad to think he is not so hardened as the rest. Ay de mi! Whether it be right or wrong, I cannot help pitying their unhappy souls."

"Pity your own soul, not theirs," said Gonsalvo. "For I tell you Christ himself, in all his glory and majesty, at the right hand of the Father, will stand up to receive them this night, as he did to welcome St. Stephen long ago."

"Oh, my poor brother, what dreadful words you speak! It is a mortal sin even to listen to you. Take thought, I implore you, of your own situation."

"I have taken thought," interrupted Gonsalvo, faintly. "But I can bear no more--just now. Leave me, I pray you, alone with God."

"If you would even try to say an Ave!--But I fear you are ill--suffering. I do not like to leave you thus."

"Do not heed me; I shall be better soon. And a vow is upon me that I must keep to-day." Once more he flung the wasted hand across his face to conceal it.

Irresolute whether to go or stay, she stood for some minutes watching him silently. At length she caught a low murmur, and hoping that he prayed, she bent over him to hear. Only three words reached her ear. They were these--"Father, forgive them."

After an interval, Gonsalvo looked up again. "I thought you were gone," he said. "Go now, I entreat of you. But so soon as you know the end, spare not to come and tell me. For I wait for that."

Thus entreated, Doña Inez had no choice but to leave him alone, which she did.

Evening had worn to night, and night was beginning to wear towards daybreak, when at last Don Garçia Ramirez, and those of his servants who had accompanied him to the Prado San Sebastian to see the end, returned home.

Doña Inez sat awaiting her husband in the patio. She looked pale and languid; apparently the great holiday of Seville had been anything but a joyful day to her.

Don Garçia divested himself of his cloak and sword, and dismissed the servants to their beds. But when his wife invited him to partake of the supper she had prepared, he turned upon her with very unusual ill-humour. "It is little like thy wonted wit, señora mia, to bid a man to his breakfast at midnight," he said. Yet he drank deeply of the Xeres wine that stood on the board beside the venison pasty and the manchet bread.

At last, after long patience, Doña Inez won from his lips what she desired to hear. "Oh yes; all is over. Our Lady defend us! I have never seen such obstinacy; nor could I have believed it possible unless I had seen it. The criminals encouraged each other to the very last. Those girls, the sisters of Gonsalez, repeated their Credo at the stake; whereupon the attendant Brethren entreated them to have so much pity on their own souls as to say, 'I believe in the Roman Catholic Church.' They answered, 'We will do as our brother does.' So the gag was removed, and Doctor Juan cried aloud, 'Add nothing to the good confession you have made already.' But for all that, order was given to strangle them; and one of the friars told us they died in the true faith. I suppose it is not a sin to hope they did."

After a pause, he continued, in a deeper tone, "Señor Cristobal amazed me as much as any of them. At the very stake, some of the Brethren undertook to argue with him. But seeing that we were all listening, and might hear somewhat to the hurt of our souls, they began to speak in the Latin tongue. Our physician immediately did the same. I am no scholar myself; but there were learned men there who marked every word, and one of them told me afterwards that the doomed man spoke with as much elegance and propriety as if he had been contending for an academic prize, instead of waiting for the lighting of the fire which was to consume him. This unheard-of calmness and composure, whence is it? The devil's own work, or"----he broke off suddenly and resumed in a different tone, "Señora mia, have you thought of the hour? In Heaven's name, let us to our beds!"

"I cannot go to rest until you tell me one thing more. Doña Maria de Bohorques?"

"Vaya, vaya! have we not had enough of it all?"

"Nay; I have made a promise. I must entreat you to tell me how Doña Maria de Bohorques met her doom."

"With unflinching hardihood. Don Juan Ponce tried to urge her to yield somewhat. But she refused, saying it was not now a time for reasoning, and that they ought rather to meditate on the Lord's death and passion. (They believe in that, it seems.) When she was bound to the stake, the monks and friars crowded round her, and pressed her only to repeat the Credo. She did so; but began to add some explanations, which, I suppose, were heretical. Then immediately the command was given to strangle her; and so, in one moment, while she was yet speaking, death came to her."

"Then she did not suffer? She escaped the fire! Thank God!"

Five minutes afterwards, Doña Inez stood by her brother's bed. He lay in the same posture, his face still shaded by his hand.

"Brother," she said gently--"brother, all is over. She did not suffer. It was done in one moment."

There was no answer.

"Brother, are you not glad she did not feel the fire? Can you not thank God for it? Speak to me."

Still no answer.

He could not be asleep! Impossible!--"Speak to me, Gonsalvo!--Brother!"

She drew close to him; she touched his hand to remove it from his face. The next moment a cry of horror rang through the house. It brought the servants and Don Garçia himself to the room.

"He is dead! God and Our Lady have mercy on his soul!" said Don Garçia, after a brief examination.

"If only he had had the Holy Sacrament, I could have borne it!" said Doña Inez; and then, kneeling down beside the couch, she wept bitterly.

So passed the beggar with the King's sons, through the golden gate into the King's own presence-chamber. His wrecked and troublous life over, his passionate heart at rest for ever, the erring, repentant Gonsalvo found entrance into the same heaven as D'Arellano, and Gonsalez, and Losada, with their radiant martyr-crowns. In the many mansions there was a place for him, as for those heroic and triumphant ones. He wore the same robe as they--a robe washed and made white, not in the blood of martyrs, but in the blood of the Lamb.

XXXVIII.

Nuera Again.

"Happy places have grown holy;

If ye went where once ye went,

Only tears would fall down slowly.

As at solemn Sacrament

Household names, that used to flutter

Through your laughter unawares,

God's divine one ye can utter

With less trembling in your prayers."--E. B. Browning

A chill and dreary torpor stole over Juan's fiery spirit after the Auto. The settled conviction that his brother was dead took possession of his mind. Moreover, his soul had lost its hold upon the faith which he once embraced so warmly. He had consciously ceased to be true to his best convictions, and those convictions, in turn, had ceased to support him. His confidence in himself, his trust in his own heart, had been shaken to its foundations. And he was very far from having gained in its stead that strong confidence in God which would have infinitely more than counter-balanced its loss.

Thus two or three slow and melancholy months wore away. Then, fortunately for him, events happened that forced him, in spite of himself, to the exertion that saves from the deadly slumber of despair. It became evident, that if he did not wish to see the last earthly treasure that remained to him swept out of his reach for ever, he must rouse himself from his lethargy so far as to grasp and hold it; for now Don Manuel commanded his ward to bestow her hand upon his rival, Señor Luis Rotelo.

In her anguish and dismay, Beatriz fled for refuge to her kind-hearted cousin, Doña Inez.

Doña Inez received her into her house, where she soothed and comforted her; and soon found means to despatch an "esquelita," or billet, to Don Juan, to the following effect:--"Doña Beatriz is here. Remember, my cousin, 'that a leap over a ditch is better than another man's prayer.'"

To which Juan replied immediately:--

"Señora and my cousin, I kiss your feet. Lend me a helping hand, and I take the leap."

Doña Inez desired nothing better. Being a Spanish lady, she loved an intrigue for its own sake; being a very kindly disposed lady, she loved an intrigue for a benevolent object. With her active co-operation and assistance, and her husband's connivance, it was quickly arranged that Don Juan should carry off Doña Beatriz from their house to a little country chapel in the neighbourhood, where a priest would be in readiness to perform the solemn rite which should unite them for ever. Thence they were to proceed at once to Nuera, Don Juan disguising himself for the journey as the lady's attendant. Doña Inez did not anticipate that her father and brothers would take any hostile steps after the conclusion of the affair--glad though they might have been to prevent it--since there was nothing which they hated and dreaded so much as a public scandal.

All Juan's latent fire and energy woke up again to meet the peril and to secure the prize. He was successful in everything; the plan had been well laid, and was well and promptly carried out. And thus it happened, that amidst December-snows he bore his beautiful bride home to Nuera in triumph. If triumph it could be called, overcast by the ever-present memory of the one who "was not," which rested like a deep shadow upon all joy, and subdued and chastened it. Few things in life are sadder than a great, long-expected blessing coming thus;--like a friend from a foreign land whose return has been eagerly anticipated, but who, after years of absence, meets us changed in countenance and in heart, unrecognizing and unrecognized.

Dolores welcomed her young master and his bride with affection and thankfulness. But he noticed that the dark hair, at the time of his last visit still only threaded with silver, had grown white as the mountain snows. In former days Dolores, could not have told which of the noble youths, her lady's gallant sons, had been the dearer to her. But now she knew full well. Her heart was in the grave with the boy she had taken a helpless babe from his dying mother's arms. But, after all, was he in the grave? This was the question which she asked herself day by day, and many times a day. She was not quite so sure of the answer as Señor Don Juan seemed to be. Since the day of the Auto, he had assumed all the outward signs of mourning for his brother.

Fray Sebastian was also at Nuera, and proved a real help and comfort to its inmates. His very presence served to shield the household from any suspicions that might have been awakened with regard to their faith. For who could doubt the orthodoxy of Don Juan Alvarez, while he not only contributed liberally to the support of his parish church, but also kept a pious Franciscan in his family, in the capacity of private chaplain? Though it must be confessed that the Fray's duties were anything but onerous; now, as in former days, he showed himself a man fond of quiet, who for the most part held his peace, and let every one do what was right in his own eyes.

He was now on far more cordial terms with Dolores than he had ever been before. This was partly because he had learned that worse physical evils than ollas of lean mutton, or cheese of goat's milk, might be borne with patience, even with thankfulness. But partly also because Dolores now really tried to con suit his tastes and to promote his comfort. Many a savoury dish "which the Fray used to like" did she trouble herself to prepare; many a flask of wine from their diminishing store did she gladly produce, "for the kind words that he spake to him in his sorrow and loneliness."

In spite of the depressing influences around her, Doña Beatriz could not but be very happy. For was not Don Juan hers, all her own, her own for ever? And with the zeal love inspires, and the skill love imparts, she applied herself to the task of brightening his darkened life. Not quite without effect. Even from that stern and gloomy brow the shadows at length began to roll away.

Don Juan could not speak of his sorrow. For weeks indeed after his return to Nuera his brother's name did not pass his lips. Better had it been otherwise, both for himself and for Dolores. Her heart, aching with its own lonely anguish and its vague, dark surmisings, often longed to know her young master's true innermost thought about his brother's fate. But she did not dare to ask him.

At last, however, this painful silence was partially broken through. One morning the old servant accosted her master with an air of some displeasure. It was in the inner room within the hall. Holding in her hand a little book, she said,--"May it please your Excellency to pardon my freedom, but it is not well done of you to leave this lying open on your table. I am a simple woman; still I am at no loss to know what and whence it is. If you will not destroy it, and cannot keep it safe and secret, I implore of your worship to give it to me."

Juan held out his hand for it. "It is dearer to me than any earthly possession," he said briefly.

"It had need to be dearer than your life, señor, if you mean to leave it about in that fashion."

"I have lost the right to say so much," Juan answered. "And yet, Dolores--tell me, would it break your heart if I sold this place--you know it is mortgaged heavily already--and quitted the country?"

Juan expected a start, if not a cry of surprise and dismay. That Alvarez de Meñaya should sell the inheritance of his fathers seemed indeed a monstrous proposal. In the eyes of the world it would be an act of insanity, if not a crime. What then would it appear to one who loved the name of Santillanos y Meñaya far better than her life?

But the still face of Dolores never changed. "Nothing would break my heart now," she said calmly.

"You would come with us?"

She did not even ask whither. She did not care: all her thoughts were in the past.

"That is of course, señor," she answered. "If I had but first assurance of one thing."

"Name it; and if I can assure you, I will."

Instead of naming it she turned silently away. But presently turning again, she asked, "Will your Excellency please to tell me, is it that book that is driving you into exile?"

"It is. I am bound to confess the truth before men; and that is impossible here."

"But are you sure then that it is the truth?"

"Sure. I have read God's message both in the darkness and in the light I have seen it traced in characters of blood--and fire."

"But--forgive the question, señor--does it make you happy?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because, Señor Don Juan"--she spoke with an effort, but firmly, and fixing her eyes on his face--"he who gave you yon book found therein that which made him happy. I know it; he was here, and I watched him. When he came first, he was ill, or else very sorrowful, I know not why. But he learned from that book that God Almighty loved him, and that the Lord and Saviour Christ was his friend; and then his sorrow passed away, and his heart grew full of joy, so full that he must needs be telling me--ay, and even that poor dolt of a cura down there in the village--about the good news. And I think"--but here she stopped, frightened at her own boldness.

"What think you?" asked Juan, with difficulty restraining his emotion.

"Well, Señor Don Juan, I think that if that good news be true, it would not be so hard to suffer for it. Blessed Virgin! Could it be aught but joy to me, for instance, to lie in a dark dungeon, or even to be hanged or burned, if that could work out his deliverance? There be worse things in the world than pain or prisons. For where there's love, señor---- Moreover, it comes upon me sometimes that the Lords Inquisitors may have mistaken his case. Wise and learned they may be, and good and holy they are, of course--'twere sin to doubt it--yet they may mistake sometimes. 'Twas but the other day, my old eyes growing dim apace, that I took a blessed gleam of sunlight that had fallen on yon oak table for a stain, and set to work to rub it off; the Lord forgive me for meddling with one of the best of his works! And, for aught we know, just so may they be doing, mistaking God's light upon the soul for the devil's stain of heresy. But the sunlight is stronger than they, after all."

"Dolores, you are half a Lutheran already yourself," answered Juan in surprise.

"I, señor! The Lord forbid! I am an old Christian, and a good Catholic, and so I hope to die. But if you must hear all the truth, I would walk in a yellow sanbenito, with a taper in my hand, before I would acknowledge that he ever said one word or thought one thought that was not Catholic and Christian too. All his crime was to find out that the good Lord loved him, and to be happy on account of it. If that be your religion also, Señor Don Juan, I have nothing to say against it. And, as I have said, God granting me, in his great mercy, one assurance first, I am ready to follow you and your lady to the world's end."

With these words on her lips she left the room. For a time Juan sat silent in deep thought. Then he opened the Testament, and turned over its leaves until he found the parable of the sower. "'Some fell upon stony places,'" he read, "'where they had not much earth; and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and, because they had no root, they withered away.' There," he said within himself, "in those words is written the history of my life, from the day my brother confessed his faith to me in the garden of San Isodro. God help me, and forgive my backsliding! But at least it is not too late to go humbly back to the beginning, and to ask him who alone can do it to break up the fallow ground."

He closed the book, walked to the window and looked out. Presently his eye was attracted to those dear mystic words on the pane, which both the brothers had loved and dreamed over from their childhood,--

"El Dorado

Yo hé trovado."

And at that moment the sun was shining on them as brightly as it used to do in those old days gone by for ever.

No vague dream of any good, foreshadowed by the omen to him or to his house, crossed the mind of the practical Don Juan. But he seemed to hear once more the voice of his young brother saying close beside him, "Look, Ruy, the light is on our father's words." And memory bore him back to a morning long ago, when some slight boyish quarrel had been ended thus.

Over his stern, handsome face there passed a look that shaded and softened it, and his eyes grew dim--dim with tears.

But just then Doña Beatriz, radiant from a morning walk, and with her hands full of early spring flowers, tripped in, singing a Spanish ballad,--

"Ye men that row the galleys,

I see my lady fair;

She gazes at the fountain

That leaps for pleasure there."

Beatrix was a child of the city; and, moreover, her life hitherto had been an unloved and unloving one. Now her nature was expanding under the wholesome influences of home life and home love, and of simple healthful pleasures. "Look, Don Juan, what pretty things grow in your fields here! I have never seen the like," she said, breaking off in her song to exhibit her treasures.

Don Juan looked carelessly at them, lovingly at her. "I would fain hear a morning hymn from those sweet, tuneful lips," he pleaded.

"Most willingly, amigo mio,--

'Sanctissima--'"

"Hush, my beloved; hush, I entreat of you." And laying his hand lightly on her shoulder, he gazed in her face with a mixture of fond and tender admiration and of gentle reproach difficult to describe. "Not that. For the sake of all that lies between us and the old faith, not that. Rather let us sing together,--

'Vexill Regis prodeunt.'

For you know that between us and our King there stands, and there needs to stand, no human mediator. Do you not, my beloved?"

"I know that you are right," answered Beatrix, still reading her faith in Don Juan's eyes. "But we can sing afterwards, whatever you like, and as much as you will. I pray you let us come forth now into the sunshine together. Look, what a glorious morning it is!"

XXXIX.

Left Behind.

"They are all gone into a world of light.

And I alone am lingering here."--Henry Vaughan.

The change of seasons brought little change to those dark cells in the Triana, where neither the glory of summer nor the breath of spring could come. While the world, with its living interests, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, kept surging round them, not even an echo of its many voices reached the doomed ones within, who lay so near, yet so far from all, "fast bound in misery and iron."

Not yet had the Deliverer come to Carlos. More than once he had seemed very near. During the summer heats, so terrible in that prison, fever had wasted the captive's already enfeebled frame; but this was the means of prolonging his life, for the eve of the Auto found him unable to walk across his cell. Still he heard without very keen sorrow the fate of his beloved friends, so soon did he hope to follow them.

And yet, month after month, life lingered on. In his circumstances restoration to health was simply impossible. Not that he endured more than others, or even as much as some. He was not loaded with fetters, or buried in one of the frightful subterranean cells where daylight never entered. Still, when to the many physical sufferings his position entailed was added the weight of sickness, weakness, and utter loneliness, they formed together a burden heavy enough to have crushed even a strong heart to despair.

Long ago the last gleam of human sympathy and kindness had faded from him. Maria Gonsalez was herself a prisoner, receiving such payment as men had to give her for her brave deeds of charity. God's payment, however, was yet to come, and would be of another sort. Herrera, the under-gaoler, was humane, but very timid; moreover, his duties seldom led him to that part of the prison where Carlos lay. So that he was left dependent upon the tender mercies of Caspar Benevidio, which were indeed cruel.

And yet, in spite of all, he was not crushed, not despairing. The lamp of patient endurance burned on steadily, because it was continually fed with oil by an unseen Hand.

It has been beautifully said, "The personal love of Christ to you, felt, delighted in, returned, is actually, truly, simply, without exaggeration, the deepest joy and the deepest feeling that the heart of man or woman can know. It will absolutely satisfy your heart. It would satisfy your heart if it were his will that you should spend the rest of your life alone in a dungeon."

Just this, nothing else, nothing less, sustained Carlos throughout those long slow months of suffering, which had now come to "add themselves and make the years." It proved sufficient for him. It has proved sufficient for thousands--God's unknown saints and martyrs, whose names we shall learn first in heaven.

Those who still occasionally sought access to him, in the hope of transforming the obstinate heretic into a penitent, marvelled greatly at the cheerful calm with which he was wont to receive them and to answer their arguments.

Sometimes he would even brave all the wrath of Benevidio, and raising his voice as loud as he could, he would make the gloomy vaults re-echo to such words as these: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" Or these: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."

But still it was not in Christ's promise, nor was it to be expected, that his prisoner should never know hours of sorrow, weariness, and heart-sinking. Such hours came sometimes. And on the very morning when Don Juan and Doña Beatriz were going forth together into the spring sunshine through the castle gate of Nuera, Carlos, in his dungeon, was passing through one of the darkest of these. He lay on his mat, his face covered with his wasted hands, through which tears were slowly falling. It was but very seldom that he wept now; tears had grown rare and scarce with him.

The evening before, he had received a visit from two Jesuits, bound on the only errand which would have procured their admission there. Irritated by his bold and ready answers to the usual arguments, they had recourse to declamation. And one of them bethought himself of mentioning the fate of the Lutherans who suffered at the two great Autos of Valladolid. "Most of the heretics," said the Jesuit, "though when they were in prison they were as obstinate as thou art now, yet had their eyes opened in the end to the error of their ways, and accepted reconciliation at the stake. At the last great Act of Faith, held in the presence of King Philip, only Don Carlos de Seso--" Here he stopped, surprised at the agitation of the prisoner, who had heard their threatenings against himself so calmly.

"De Seso! De Seso! Have they murdered him too!" moaned Carlos, and for a few brief moments he gave way to natural emotion. But quickly recovering himself, he said, "I shall only see him the sooner."

"Were you acquainted with him?" asked the Jesuit.

"I loved and honoured him. My avowing that cannot hurt him now," answered Carlos, who had grown used to the bitter thought that any name would be disgraced, and its owner imperilled, by his mentioning it with affection.

"But if you will do me so much kindness," he added, "I pray you to tell me anything you know of his last hours. Any word he spoke."

"He could speak nothing," said the younger of his two visitors. "Before he left the prison he had uttered so many horrible blasphemies against Holy Church and Our Lady that he was obliged to wear the gag during the whole ceremony, 'lest he should offend the little ones.'"[#]

[#] A genuine Inquisitorial expression.

This last cruel wrong--the refusal of leave to the dying to speak one word in defence of the truths he died for--stung Carlos to the quick. It wrung from lips so patient hitherto words of indignant threatening. "God will judge your cruelty," he said. "Go on, fill up the measure of your guilt, for your time is short. One day, and that soon, there will be a grand spectacle, grander than your Autos. Then shall you, torturers of God's saints, call upon the mountains and rocks to cover you, and to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb."

Once more alone, his passionate anger died away. And it was well. Surrounded as he was on every side by strong, cold, relentless wrong and cruelty, if his spirit had beaten its wings against those bars of iron, it would soon have fallen to the ground faint and helpless, with crushed pinions. It was not in such vain strivings that he could find, or keep, the deep calm peace with which his heart was filled; it was in the quiet place at his Saviour's feet, from whence, if he looked at his enemies at all, it was only to pity and forgive them.

But though anger was gone, a heavy burden of sorrow remained. De Seso's noble form, shrouded in the hideous zamarra, his head crowned with the carroza, his face disfigured by the gag,--these were ever before his eyes. He well-nigh forgot that all this was over now--that for him the conflict was ended and the triumph begun.

Could he have known even as much as we know now of the close of that heroic life, it might have comforted him.

Don Carlos de Seso met his doom at the second of the two great Autos celebrated at Valladolid during the year 1559. At the first, the most steadfast sufferers were Francisco de Vibero Cazalla, one of a family of confessors; and Antonio Herezuelo, whose pathetic story--the most thrilling episode of Spanish martyrology--would need an abler pen than ours.

During his lingering imprisonment of a year and a half, De Seso never varied in his own clear testimony to the truth, never compromised any of his brethren. Informed at last that he was to die the next day, he requested writing materials. These being furnished him, he placed on record a confession of his faith, which Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, thus describes:--"It would be difficult to convey an idea of the uncommon vigour of sentiment with which he filled two sheets of paper, though he was then in the presence of death. He handed what he had written to the Alguazil, with these words: 'This is the true faith of the gospel, as opposed to that of the Church of Rome, which has been corrupted for ages. In this faith I wish to die, and in the remembrance and lively belief of the passion of Jesus Christ, to offer to God my body, now reduced so low.'"

All that night and the next morning were spent by the friars in vain endeavours to induce him to recant. During the Auto, though he could not speak, his countenance showed the steadfastness of his soul--a steadfastness which even the sight of his beloved wife amongst those condemned to perpetual imprisonment failed to disturb. When at last, as he was bound to the stake, the gag was removed, he said to those who stood around him, still urging him to yield, "I could show you that you ruin yourselves by not following my example; but there is no time. Executioners, light the fire that is to consume me."

Even in the act of death it was given him, though unconsciously, to strengthen the faith of another. In the martyr band was a poor man, Juan Sanchez, who had been a servant of the Cazallas, and was apprehended in Flanders with Juan de Leon. He had borne himself bravely throughout; but when the fire was kindled, the ropes that bound him to the stake having given way, the instinct of self-preservation made him rush from the flames, and, not knowing what he did, spring upon the scaffold where those who yielded at the last were wont to receive absolution. The attendant monks at once surrounded him, offering him the alternative of the milder death. Recovering self-possession, he looked around him. At one side knelt the penitents, at the other, motionless amidst the flames, De Seso stood,

"As standing in his own high hall."

His choice was made. "I will die like De Seso," he said calmly; and then walked deliberately back to the stake, where he met his doom with joy.

Another brave sufferer at this Auto, Don Domingo de Roxas, ventured to make appeal to the justice of the King, only to receive the memorable reply, never to be read without a shudder,--"I would carry wood to burn my son, if he were such a wretch as thou!"

All these circumstances Carlos never heard on this side of the grave. But in the quiet Sabbath-keeping that remaineth for the people of God, there will surely be leisure enough to talk over past trials and triumphs. At present, however, he only saw the dark side--only knew the bare and bitter facts of suffering and death. He had not merely loved De Seso as his instructor; he had admired him with the generous enthusiasm of a young man for a senior in whom he recognizes his ideal--all that he himself would fain become. If the Spains had but known the day of their visitation, he doubted not that man would have been their leader in the path of reform. But they knew it not; and so, instead, the chariot of fire had come for him. For him, and for nearly all the men and women whose hands Carlos had been wont to clasp in loving brotherhood. Losada, D'Arellano, Ponce de Leon, Doña Isabella de Baena, Doña Maria de Bohorques,--all these honoured names, and many more, did he repeat, adding after each one of them, "At rest with Christ." Somewhere in the depths of those dreary dungeons it might be that the heroic Juliano, his father in the faith, was lingering still; and also Fray Constantino, and the young monk of San Isodro, Fray Fernando. But the prison walls sundered them quite as hopelessly from him as the River of Death itself.

Earlier ties sometimes seemed to him only like things he had read or dreamed of. During his fever, indeed, old familiar faces had often flitted round him. Dolores sat beside him, laying her hand on his burning brow; Fray Sebastian taught him disjointed, meaningless fragments from the schoolmen; Juan himself either spoke cheerful words of hope and trust, or else talked idly of long-forgotten trifles.

But all this was over now: neither dream nor fancy came to break his utter, terrible loneliness. He knew that he was never to see Juan again, nor Dolores, nor even Fray Sebastian. The world was dead to him, and he to it. And as for his brethren in the faith, they had gone "to the light beyond the clouds, and the rest beyond the storms," where he would so gladly be. Why, then, was he left so long, like one standing without in the cold? Why did not the golden gate open for him as well as for them? What was he doing in this place?--what could he do for his Master's cause or his Master's honour? He did not murmur. By this time his Saviour's prayer, "Not my will, but thine be done," had been wrought into the texture of his being with the scarlet, purple, and golden threads of pain, of patience, and of faith. But it is well for His tried ones that He knows longing is not murmuring. Very full of longing were the words--words rather of pleading than of prayer--that rose continually from the lips of Carlos that day,--"And now, Lord, what wait I for?"

XL.

"A Satisfactory Penitent."

"How long in thralldom's grasp I lay

I knew not; for my soul was black,

And knew no change of night or day."--Campbell.

Carlos was sleeping tranquilly in his dungeon on the following night, when the opening of the door aroused him. He started with sickening dread, the horrors of the torture-room rising in an instant before his imagination. Benevidio entered, followed by Herrera, and commanded him to rise and dress immediately. Long experience of the Santa Casa had taught him that he might as well make an inquiry of its doors and walls as of any of its officials. So he obeyed in silence, and slowly and painfully enough. But he was soon relieved from his worst fear by seeing Herrera fold together the few articles of clothing he had been allowed to have with him, preparatory to carrying them away. "It is only, then, a change of prison," he thought; "and wherever they bring me, heaven will be equally near."

His limbs, enfeebled by two years of close confinement, and lame from the effects of one terrible night, were sorely tried by what he thought an almost interminable walk through corridors and down narrow winding stairs. But at last he was conducted to a small postern door, which, greatly to his surprise, Benevidio proceeded to unlock. The kind-hearted Herrera took advantage of the moment when Benevidio was thus occupied to whisper,--

"We are bringing you to the Dominican prison, señor; you will be better used there."

Carlos thanked him by a grateful look and a pressure of the hand. But an instant afterwards he had forgotten his words. He had forgotten everything save that he stood once more in God's free air, and that God's own boundless heaven, spangled with ten thousand stars, was over him, no dungeon roof between. For one rapturous moment he gazed upwards, thanking God in his heart. But the fresh air he breathed seemed to intoxicate him like strong wine. He grew faint, and leaned for support on Herrera.

"Courage, señor; it is not far--only a few paces," said the under-gaoler, kindly.

Weak as he was, Carlos wished the distance a hundred times greater. But it proved quite long enough for his strength. By the time he was delivered over into the keeping of a couple of lay brothers, and locked by them into a cell in the Dominican monastery, he was scarcely conscious of anything save excessive fatigue.