_THINKING OF EXILE._
As Montoro de Diego entered the deep portico of his palace entrance,
he stumbled against some obstruction in the way. He stooped, and found
there was a man dead, or in a deep swoon, lying at his feet.
Before he could ascertain more, or summon his servants, a third person
stepped out of the obscurity and muttered rapidly:
"Remember, the gold is to be mine. It is not my fault that he has thus
suffered before release."
Then the whisperer of those significant words was gone, and the
young man was alone with the prostrate form of his father-in-law.
Relinquishing his intention to call for aid, he lifted the inanimate
body in his own strong arms, and bore his burden into a small inner
apartment, reserved for his own devotion to such learned studies as
were then flourishing in Aragon under the fostering care of royal
encouragement. Something of medicine and surgery he had also acquired,
but he soon discovered with bitter sorrow that in the present case
his skill was useless. The old man was dying. Every limb had been
dislocated on the rack.
"They tortured me to try to extort the secret of my child's
hiding-place," murmured the old man quietly. "But thanks be to the
Lord, He gave me strength. This day I shall be with Him. They have but
hastened my coming home, my children."
And so, with forgiveness and love in his heart, and the light of coming
glory on his face, this rescued victim of the Inquisition died in his
daughter's arms, just as the sun's first golden rays were brightening
the streets of Saragossa. Those rays that were glowing on the walls of
the dungeons, within which slept, for the last time on earth, those
innocent ones who were that day to be burnt in one of the awful Autos
da Fé; those rays that were glowing on the walls and windows of the
palace where Arbues the Inquisitor still slumbered.
"For so He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good."
The morning was still young when Don Diego received two visitors.
The first, Jerome Tivoli, was quickly dismissed with the curt but
satisfying speech:
"A noble of Aragon ever keeps his word. The miserable treasure you
crave is yours."
His interview with Don Alonso was far longer.
"Surely now you must join us," urged that fiery spirit with impatient
indignation. "You cannot refuse to aid in avenging the wrongs of your
father-in-law."
"His mode," murmured the other, "of avenging his own wrongs, was to
pray for light for his murderers."
But Don Alonso was marching with hasty strides up and down the
apartment, and did not hear the words. His own conscience was ill
at ease, as the head of conspirators having assassination for their
object, and he had an unacknowledged feeling that he would be more
comfortable in his mind if the upright Montoro would throw in his lot
with them. But Don Diego was firm in his refusal. That recent death-bed
scene had given him back his faith in the wisdom and love of God, in
spite of the darkness now around him, and he ended the discussion at
last, by saying:
"No, Alonso, I will keep my honour whatever else I may be forced to
lose. But, although I will not join you, I will tell you whom I would
join, were my Rachel a man, or, being a woman, had she but been inured
to hardships as a mountain peasant. I would suffer exile thankfully, so
embittered to me has my native land become."
"Embittered indeed to us all," almost groaned the other, adding, "But
whom then is it you would join in your exile? Any of our friends, or
one I know not?"
"One you know not, nor I either, personally," was the reply; "but one
whom we both know well by reputation. That Christopher Colon, the
Genoese, who, for the past six months almost, has been wearying our
Queen Isabella of Castile to provide him means to find some strange
new world; some vision of wonder that has risen in his imagination,
brilliant with lands of gold and pearl, and perfumed with sweeter
spices than the Indies."
Don Alonso uttered a short laugh of contempt.
"Ah, ha! And you mean to tell me that you would be willing to throw in
your lot with that beggarly, visionary adventurer! Our King Ferdinand
knows better than to waste his maravedis on such moon-struck projects,
or to let his consort do so either."
"And yet," said Montoro, somewhat doubtfully, "and yet, although of
course new worlds are foolishness to dream of, some islands might
perchance fall to our share, if we adventured somewhat to find them,
as such good and profitable prizes have been falling, during the
past fifty years, pretty plentifully, to our clever neighbours, the
Portuguese."
"Ay, and even they won't listen to this Genoese, you may recollect.
Besides, the Pope has given everything in the seas and on it, I have
heard, to those lucky neighbours of ours, so of what use for Spaniards
to jeopardize lives and treasure to benefit the Portuguese?"
"Nay," answered Don Diego, "the Pope's grant to them is only for the
countries from Cape Horn to India. Why should not we obtain a grant for
lands in the other hemisphere?"
And so the poor young nobleman tried to stifle grief and apprehension
in dreams of other lands, of whose discovery he would not live to hear,
although his son would one day help others to found new homes on their
far-off soil.