IN THE BOX
"Devant l'Inquisition, quand on vient a jube,
Si l'on ne soit roti, l'on soit au moins flambe."
It was not light that pressed upon the retina of the eye. There was no
vibration to the sensitive lenses. It was a sudden vision not of the
eye, but in the memory-cells of the brain which now and then filled the
dreadful blackness with a fierce radiance, filled it for an
infinitesimal fraction of a second.
And then all was dark again.
It was not dark with the darkness that ordinary men know. At no time, in
all probability, has any man or woman escaped a long sleepless night in
a darkened room. The candle is out; the silence begins to nibble at the
nerves; there is no sound but the uneasy tossing upon the bed. It seems,
one would rather say, that there is no sound save only that made by the
sufferer. At such hours comes a dread weariness of life, a restlessness
which is but the physical embroidery upon despair. The body itself is at
the lowest pitch of its vitality. Through the haunted chambers of the
mind fantastic thoughts chase each other, and evil things--evil
_personalities_ it almost seems--uncoil themselves and erect their
heads.
But it is not really darkness, not really despair, as people know when
the night has gone and dawn begins. Nor is it really _silence_. The ear
becomes attuned to its environment; a little wind moans round the house.
There is the soft patter of falling rain--the distant moaning of the
sea.
Furniture creaks as the temperature changes; there are rustlings,
whispers, unexplained noises--the night is indeed full of sound.
Nor is it really _darkness_, as the mind discovers towards the end of
the sick and restless vigil. The eye also is attuned to that which
limits and surrounds its potentialities. The blinds are drawn, but still
some faint mysterious greyness creeps between them and the window. The
room, then, is a real room still! Over there is the long mirror which
will presently begin to stir and reflect the birth-pangs of light. That
squat, black monster, which crouches in the corner of the dark, will
grow larger, and become only the wardrobe after all. And soon the air of
the chamber will take on a subtle and indefinable change. It will have a
new savour, it will tell that far down in the under world the sun is
moaning and muttering in the last throes of sleep. The blackness will
go. Dim, inchoate nothingness will change to wan dove-coloured light,
and with the first chirpings of half-awakened birds the casement will
show "a slowly glimmering square," and the tortured brain will sink to
rest.
Day has come! There is no longer any need for fear. The nervous pain,
more terrible than all, has gone. The heart is calmed, the brain is
soothed, utter prostration and despair appears, mercifully, a thing of
long ago.
Some such experience as this all modern men have endured. To John
Commendone, in the prison of the Inquisition where he had been put, no
such alleviation came.
For him there was no blessed morning; for him the darkness was that
awful negation of light--of physical light--and of hope, which is
without remedy.
He did not know how long it had been since he was caught up suddenly out
of the rich room where he was dining with his love--dining among the
scent of flowers, with the echo of music in his ears, his whole heart
suffused with thankfulness and peace.
He did not know how long it had been; he only remembered the hurried
progress in a closed carriage from the hotel to the fortress of the
Triana in the suburbs, which was the prison and assize of the Holy
Office.
In all Europe in this era prisons were dark, damp holes. They were real
graves, full of mould, animal filth, the pest-breeding smells. It was
the boast of the Inquisition, and even Llorente speaks of it, that the
prisons were "well-arched, light and dry rooms where the prisoners could
make some movement."
This was generally true, and Commendone had heard of it from Don Perez.
It was not true in his case. He had been taken hurriedly into the prison
as night fell, marched silently through interminable courtyards and
passage-ways--corridors which slanted downwards, ever downwards--until
in a dark stone passage, illuminated only by the torches which were
carried by those who conducted him, he had come to a low door, heavily
studded with iron.
This had been opened with a key. The wards of the lock had shot back
with a well-oiled and gentle click. He had bent his head a little as
they pushed him into the living tomb--a box of stone five feet square
exactly. He was nearly six feet in height; he could not stand erect; he
could not stretch himself at full length. The thing was a refinement of
the dreadful "little-ease" of the Tower of London and many other secular
prisons where wretches were tortured for a week before their execution.
He had heard of places like them, but he realised that it was not the
design of those who had him fast to kill him yet. He knew that he must
undergo an infinity of mental and bodily torture ere ever the scarred
and trembling soul would be allowed to wing its way from the still,
broken body.
He was in absolute, complete darkness, buried in a box of stone.
The rayless gloom was without any relief whatever; it was the enclosing
sable of death itself; a pitchy oblivion that lay upon him like a solid
weight, a thing obscene and hopeless. And the silence was a real
silence, an utter stillness such as no modern man ever knows--save only
the few demoniac prisoners in the _cachot noir_ of the French convict
prisons of Noumea.
Once every two days--if there indeed were such things as days and hours
in this still hell--the door of the cell was noiselessly opened. There
was a dim red glow in the stone corridor without, a pitcher of water,
some black bread, and every now and then a few ripe figs, were pushed
into the box.
Then a clang, the oily swish of the bolts, and another eternity of
silence.
The man's brain did not go. It was too soon for that. He lay a
fortnight--ten thousand years it seemed to him--in this box of horror.
He was not to die yet. He was not even to lose his mind; of that he was
perfectly aware. He was no ordinary prisoner. No usual fate was in store
for him; that also he knew. A charge of heresy in his case was absurd.
No witnesses could be brought who, speaking truth, could condemn him for
heresy. But what Don Perez had told him was now easily understood. He
was in a place where there was no appeal, a situation with no egress.
There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that a dreadful vengeance
was to be taken upon him for his treatment of the King of Spain. The
Holy Office was a royal court provided with ecclesiastical weapons. Its
familiars had got him in their grip; he was to die the death.
As he lay motionless day after day, night after night, in the
silence--the hideous silence without light--the walls so close, pressing
on him, forbidding him free movement, at every moment seeming as if they
would rush together and crush him in this night of Erebus, he began to
have visitors.
Sometimes a sulphurous radiance would fill the place. He would see the
bowing, mocking figure of King Philip, the long yellow face looking down
upon him with a malign smile. He would hear a great hoarse voice, and a
little woman with a shrivelled face and covered with jewels, would
squeak and gibber at him. Then, with a clank of armour, and a sudden
fresh smell of the fields, Sir Henry Commendone would stand there, with
a "How like you this life of the pit, Johnnie?" ... "How like you this
blackness, my son?"
Then he would put up his hands and press these grisly phantoms out of
the dark. He would press them away with one great effort of the will.
They would go, and he remained trembling in the chill, damp negation of
light, which was so far more than darkness. He would grope for the
pieces of his miserable food, and search the earthen pitcher for water.
And all this, these tortures beyond belief, beyond understanding of the
ordinary man, were but as soft couches to one who is weary, food to one
hungered, water to lips parched in a desert--compared with the deepest,
unutterable descent of all.
The cold and stinking blackness which held him tight as a fossil in a
bed of clay was not the worst. His eyes that saw nothing, his limbs that
were shot with cramping pain, his nostrils and stomach that could not
endure this uncleaned cage, were a torture beyond thinking.
Many a time he thought of the mercy of Bishop Bonner and Queen Mary--the
mercy that let a gentleman ride under the pleasant skies of England to a
twenty minutes' death--God! these were pleasant tortures! His own
present hopelessness, all that he endured in body--why, dear God! these
were but pleasant tortures too, things to bite upon and endure, compared
with the Satanic horror, the icy dread, the bitter, hopeless tears, when
he thought of Elizabeth.
He had long since ceased praying for himself. It mattered little or
nothing what happened to him. That he should be taken out to torture
would be a relief, a happiness. He would lie in the rack laughing. They
could fill his belly with water, or strain the greasy hempen ropes into
his flesh, and still he would laugh and forgive them--Dr. Taylor had
forgiven less than they would do to him, he would forgive more than all
for the sake of Christ and His Maid-Mother. How easy that would be! To
be given something to endure, to prove himself a man and a Christian!
But to forgive them for what they might be doing, they might have done,
to his dear lady--how could he forgive _that_ to these blood-stained
men?
Through all the icy hours he thought of one thing, until his own pains
vanished to nothingness.
Perchance, and the dreadful uncertainty in his utter impotence and
silence swung like a bell in his brain, and cut through his soul like
the swinging pendola which they said the familiars of the Holy Office
used, Elizabeth had already suffered unspeakable things.
He saw again a pair of hands--cruel hands--hands with thick thumbs. Had
hands like these grasped and twisted the white limbs of the girl he
loved? Divorced from him, helpless, away from any comfort, any kind
voice, was it not true--_was_ it true?--that already his sweetheart had
been tortured to her death?
He had tried over and over again to pray for Elizabeth, to call to the
seat where God was, that He might save the dear child from these
torments unspeakable.
But there was always the silence, the dead physical blackness and
silence. He beat his hands upon the stone wall; he bruised his head upon
the roof of darkness which would not let him stand upright, and he
knew--as it is appointed to some chosen men to know--that unutterable,
unthinkable despair of travail which made Our Lord Himself call out in
the last hour of His passion, [Greek: Eli, Eli lama sabachthani]
There was no response to his prayers. Into his heart came no answering
message of hope.
And then the mind of this man, which had borne so much, and suffered so
greatly, began to become powerless to feel. A bottle can only hold a
certain amount of water, the strings of an instrument be plucked to a
certain measure of sound, the brain of a man can endure up to a certain
strain, and then it snaps entirely, or is drowsed with misery.
Physically, the young man was in perfect health when they had taken him
to his prison. He had lived always a cleanly and athletic life. No
sensual ease had ever dimmed his faculties. And therefore, though he
knew it not, the frightful mental agony he had undergone had but drawn
upon the reserve of his physical forces, and had hardly injured his body
at all. The food they gave him, at any rate for the time of his
disappearance from the world of sentient beings, was enough to support
life. And while he lay in dreadful hopelessness, while his limbs were
racked with pain, and it seemed to him that he stood upon the very
threshold of death, he was in reality physically competent, and a few
hours of relief would bring his body back to its pristine strength.
There came a time when he lay upon his stone floor perfectly motionless.
The merciful anodyne that comes to all tortured people when either the
brain or body can bear no more, had come to him now.
It seemed but a short moment--in reality it was several hours--since his
jailors, those masked still-moving figures, had brought him a renewal of
his food. He could not eat the bread, but two figs upon the platter
were grateful and cooling to his throat, though he was unconscious of
any physical gratification. He knew, sometime after, that sustenance had
been brought to him, and that he had a great thirst. He stretched out
his hand mechanically for the pitcher, rising from the floor and
pressing the brim to his lips.
He drank deeply, and as he drank became suddenly aware that this was not
the lukewarm water of the past darkness, but something that ran through
his veins, that swiftly ran through them, and as the blood mounted to
his brain gave him courage, awoke him, fed the starved nerves. It was
wine he was drinking! wine that perhaps would be red in the light; wine
that once more filled him with endeavour, and a desperate desire which
was not hope but the last protest against his fate.
He lay back once more, by no means the same man he had been some little
time agone, and as he reclined in a happy physical stupor--the while his
brain was alive again and began to work--he said many times to himself
the name of Jesus.
"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"--it was all he could say; it was all he could
think of, it was his last prayer. Just the name alone.
And very speedily the prayer was answered. Out of the depths he
cried--"_De profundis clamavit_"--and the door opened, as it opened to
the Apostle Paul, and the place where he was was filled with red light.
For a moment he was unable to realise it. He passed one wasted and
dirty hand before his eyes. "Jesus!" he said again, in a dreamy,
wondering voice.
He felt himself lifted up from where he lay. Two strong hands were under
his arms; he was taken out of the stinking _oubliette_ into the corridor
beyond.
He stood upright. He stretched out his arms. He breathed another air. It
was a damp, foetid, underground air, but it seemed to him that it came
from the gardens of the Hesperides.
Then he became conscious of a voice speaking quietly, quickly, and with
great insistence.
The voice in his ear!
... "Senor, we have had to wait. You have had to lie in this dungeon,
and I could do nothing for you--for you that saved my life. It hath
taken many days to think out a plan to save you and the Senorita. But
'tis done now, 'tis cut and dried, and neither you nor she shall go to
the death designed for you both. It hath been designed by the Assessor
and the Procurator Fiscal, acting under orders of the Grand Inquisitor,
that you shall be tortured to death, or near to it, and that to the
Senorita shall be done the same. Then you are to be taken to the
Quemadero--that great altar of stone supported by figures of the Holy
Apostles--and there burnt to death at the forthcoming _auto da fe_."
"Then what,"--Johnnie's voice came from him in a hollow whisper.
"Hush, hush," the other voice answered him; "'tis all arranged. 'Tis all
settled, but still it dependeth upon you, Senor. Will you save your lady
love, and go free with her from here, and with your servant also, or
will you die and let her die too?"
"Then she hath not been tortured?"
"Not yet; it is for to-night. You come afterwards. But you do not know
me, Senor; you do not realise who I am."
At this Johnnie looked into the face of the man who supported him.
"Ah," he said, in a dreamy voice, "Alonso!--I took you from the sea, did
not I?"
Everything was circling round him, he wanted to fall, to lie down and
sleep in this new air....
The torturer saw it--he had a dreadful knowledge of those who were about
to faint. He caught hold of Johnnie somewhere at the back of the neck.
There was a sudden scientific pressure of the flat thumb upon a nerve,
and the sinking senses of the captive came back to him in a flood of
painful consciousness.
"Ah!" he cried, "but I feel better now! Go on, go on, tell me, what is
all this?..."
One big thumb was pressed gently at the back of Johnnie's head. "It is
this," said the voice, "and now, Senor, listen to me as if you had never
listened to any other voice in this whole world. In the first place, you
have much money; you have much money to be employed for you, in the
hands of your servant, and from him I hear that you are noble and
wealthy in England. I myself am a young man, but lately introduced to do
the work I do. I am in debt, Senor, and neither my father nor my brother
will help me. There is a family feud between us. Now my father is the
head sworn-torturer of the Holy Office; my brother is his assistant, and
I am the assistant to my brother. The three of us do rack and put to
pain those who come before us. But I myself am tired of this business,
and would away to a country where I can earn a more honest and kindly
living. Therefore if thou wilt help me to do this, all will be well.
There is a carrack sailing for the port of Rome this very night, and we
can all be aboard of it, and save ourselves, if thou wilt do what we
have made a plan of."
"And what is that?" Johnnie asked.
"'Tis a dangerous and deadly thing. We may win a way to safety and joy,
or it may be that we perish. I'll put it upon the throw of the die, and
so must you, Senor."
Johnnie clutched Alonso by the arm. "Man! man!" he said, "there is some
doubt in your voice. What is it? what is it? I would do anything but
lose my immortal soul to save the Senorita from what is to be done to
her to-night."
"'Tis well," the other answered briefly. "Then now I will tell you what
you must do. 'Tis now the hour of sunset. In two hours more the Senorita
will be brought to the rooms of the Question. Thy servant is of the
height and build of my father. Thou art the same as regards my brother.
If you consent to what I shall tell you, you and your servant will take
the place of my brother and father. No one will know you from them,
because we wear black linen garments and a hood which covereth our
faces. I will go away, and I will put something in their wine which will
send my father and my brother to sleep for long hours--sometimes we put
it in the water we give to drink to those who come to us for torture,
and who are able, or their relatives indeed, to pay well for such
service. My people will know nothing, and you, with Juan thy servant,
will take their places. Nor will the Inquisitor know. It hath been well
thought out, Senor. I shall give you your directions, and understanding
Spanish you will follow them out as if you were indeed my blood-brother.
As for the man Juan, it will be your part to whisper to him what he has
to do, for I cannot otherwise make him understand."
Suddenly a dreadful thought flashed into Johnnie's mind. This man
understood no word of English. How, then, had he plotted this scheme of
rescue and escape with John Hull? Was this not one of those dreadful
traps--themselves part of a devilish scheme of torture--of which he had
heard in England, and of which Don Perez had more than hinted?
"And how dost _thou_ understand my man John," he said, "seeing that thou
knowest no word of his language?"
The other made an impatient movement of his hands. "Senor," he said, "I
marked that you did not seem to trust me. I am here to adventure my
life, in recompense for that you did so for me. I am here also to get
away from Spain with the aid of thy money--to get away to Rome, where
the Holy Office will reach none of us. In doing this, I am risking my
life, as I have said. And for me I am risking far more than life. I,
that have done so many grievous things to others, am a great coward, and
go in horrid fear of pain. I could not stand the least of the tortures,
and if I am caught in this enterprise, I shall endure the worst of all.
In any case, thou hast nothing to lose, for if I am indeed endeavouring
to entrap you, you will gain nothing. The worst is reserved for you--as
we have previous orders--for it is whispered that yours is not so much a
matter of heresy, but that you did things against King Philip's Majesty
in England."
Johnnie nodded. "'Tis true," he said; "but still, tell me for a further
sign and token of thy fidelity how thou camest to be in communication
with John Hull."
"Did I not tell thee?" the man answered, in amazement. "Why, 'twas
through the second captain of the _St. Iago_, I cannot say his name, who
hath been with Juan these many days, and speakest Spanish near as well
as you."
Johnnie realised the truth at once, surprised that it had not come to
him before. It was Mr. Mew, whom he had tackled for his friendship with
Alonso! "Then what am I to do?" he said.
Alonso began to speak slowly and with some hesitation.
"The work to do to-night," he said, "is to put a Carthusian monk, Luis
Mercader, to the torture of the _trampezo_. After that, the Senorita
will be brought in, interrogated, and is to be scourged as the first of
her tortures."
The man started away--Johnnie had growled in his throat like a dog....
"It will not be, it will not be, Senor," Alonso said. "When Luis is
finished with, he will be taken away by the surgeon and afterwards by
the jailors. Then they will bring the Senorita and retire. There will be
none in the room of the Question but thou, Juan, and myself, wearing our
linen hoods, and Father Deza, that is the Grand Inquisitor newly come
from England, his notary, and the physician. The doors leading to the
prisons will be locked, for none must see the torture save only the
officials concerned therein--as hath long been the law. It will be easy
for us three to overpower the Inquisitor, the surgeon, and the notary.
Then we can escape through the private rooms of us torturers, which lead
to the back entrance of the fortress. The _caballeros_ will not be
discovered, if bound--or killed, indeed--for some hours, for none are
allowed to approach the room of Question from the prisons until they are
summoned by a bell. I shall have everything ready, and mules waiting,
so that we may go straight to the _muelle_--the wharf to which the
carrack is tied. The captain thereof is the Italian mariner Pozzi, who
hath no love towards Spain, and we shall be upon the high seas before
even our absence is discovered."
"Good," Johnnie answered, his voice unconsciously assuming the note of
command it was wont to use, the wine having reanimated him, his whole
body and brain tense with excitement, ready for the daring deed that
awaited him.
"My friend," he said, "I will not only take you away from all this
wickedness and horror, but you shall have money enough to live like a
gentleman in Italy. I have--now I understand it--plenty of money in the
hands of my servant to bring us well to Rome. Once in Rome, I can send
letters to my friends in England, and be rich in a few short months. I
shall not forget you; I shall see to your guerdon."
The man spat upon his hands and rubbed them together--those large
prehensile hands. "I knew it," he said, half to himself, "I pay a debt
for my life, as is but right and just, and I win a fortune too! I knew
it!"
"Tell me exactly what is to happen," Johnnie said.
In the flickering light of the torch, once more Alonso looked curiously
at Commendone. He hesitated for a moment, and then he spoke.
"There is just the business of the heretic Luis," he said. "He must be
tortured before ever the Senorita is brought in. And you and Juan must
help in the torture to sustain your parts."
Johnnie started. Until this very moment he had not realised that hideous
necessity. He understood Alonso's hesitation now.
There was a dead silence for a moment or two. Alonso broke it.
"I shall do the principal part, Senor," he said hurriedly. "It is
nothing to me. I have done so much of it! But there are certain things
that thou must do and thy servant also, or at least must seem to do.
There is no other way."
Johnnie put his poor soiled hands to his face. "I cannot do it," he
said, in a low voice, from which hope, which had rung in it before, had
now departed. "I cannot do it. I will not stain my honour thus."
"So said Juan to me at first," the other answered. "They have been
hunting high and low for Juan, but he hath escaped the Familiars, in
that I have hid him. For himself, Juan said he would do nothing of the
sort, but for you he finally said he would do it. 'For, look you,' Juan
said to me, 'I love the gentleman that is my master, and I love my
little mistress better, so that I will even help to torture this
Spaniard, and let no word escape me in the doing of it that may betray
our design.' That was what thy servant said, Senor. And now, what sayest
thou?"
"She would not wish it," Commendone half said, half sobbed. "If she
knew, she would die a thousand deaths rather than that I should do it."
"That may be very sure, Senor, but she will never know it if we win to
safety. And as for this Luis Mercader, he must die, anyhow. There is no
hope for him. He _must_ be tortured, if not by you, Juan, and I, then by
myself, my father, and my brother. It is remediless."
"I cannot do evil that good may come," Johnnie replied, in a whisper.
Alonso stamped upon the ground in his impatience. He could not
understand the prisoner's attitude, though he had realised some
possibility of it from his conferences with John Hull. He had half
known, when he came to Commendone, that there would be something of this
sort. If the rough man of his own rank turned in horror and dislike from
the only opportunity presented for saving the Senorita, how much more
would the master do so?
For himself, he could not understand it. He did his hideous work with
the regularity of a machine, and with as little pity. Outside in his
private life, he was much as other men. He could be tender to a woman he
loved, kindly and generous to his friends. But business was business,
and he was hardly human at his work.
Habit makes slaves of us all, and this mental attitude of the sworn
torturer--horrible as it may seem at first glance--is very easily
understood by the psychologist, though hardly by the sentimentalist,
who is always a thoroughly illogical person. Alonso tortured human
beings. In doing this he had the sanction and the order of his social
superiors and his ecclesiastical directors. In 1910 one has not heard,
for example, that a pretty and gentle girl refuses to marry a butcher
because he plunges his knife into the neck of the sheep tied down upon
the stool, twists his little cord around the snout of some shrieking pig
and cuts its throat with his keen blade....
Alonso could not understand the man whom he hoped to save, but he
recognised and was prepared for his point of view.
"Senor," he said, in a thick, hurried voice, "I will do it all myself.
You will have to help in the binding, and to stand by. That is all.
Think of the little Senorita whom you love. That French lady drove a
table-knife into her heart, rather than endure the torments. Think of
the Senorita! You will not let her die thus? For you, it is different; I
well know that you would endure all that is in store, if it were but a
question of saving your own life. But you must think of her, and you
must remember always that the man Luis is most certainly doomed, and
that no action of yours can stay that doom. You will have to look on,
that is all--to _seem_ as if you approved and were helping."
He had said enough. His cause was won. Johnnie had seen Dr. Rowland
Taylor die in pious agony, and had neither lifted voice nor drawn sword
to prevent it.
"I thank you, I thank you, Alonso," he said. "I must endure it for the
sake of the Senorita. And more than all I thank you that you will not
require me to agonise this unhappy wretch myself."
"Good; that is understood," Alonso answered. "We have already been
talking too long. Get you back, Senor, into your prison, for an hour or
more. Then I will come to you. Indeed, more depends upon this than upon
any other detail of what we purpose. We who are sworn to torture are
distinct and separate from the prison jailors. We are paid a larger
salary, but we have no jurisdiction or power within the prisons
themselves, save only what we make by interest. But the man who bringeth
you your food is a friend of my family, and hath cast an eye upon my
sister, though she as yet has responded little to his overtures. I have
made private cause with Isabella, and she hath given him a meeting this
very night outside the church of Santa Ana. He could not meet with her
this night, were it not for my intervention. He came to me in great
perplexity, longing before anything to meet Isabella. I told him, though
I was difficult to be approached on the point, that I would myself look
after the prisoners in this ward, and that he must give me his keys.
This he hath done, and I am free of this part of the prison. So that,
Senor, in an hour or two I shall come to you again with your dress of a
tormentor. I shall take you through devious ways out of the prison
proper, and into our room on the other side of the Chamber, so all will
be well."
Johnnie took the huge splay hand in his, and stumbled back into the
stone box. There was a clang as the door closed upon him, and he sank
down upon the floor.
He sank down upon the floor no longer in absolute despair. The darkness
was as thick and horrible as ever, but Hope was there.
Then he knelt, placed his hands together, recited a Paternoster, and
began to pray. He prayed first of all for the soul of the man--the
unknown man--whose semi-final torture he was to witness, and perchance
help in. Then he prayed to Our Lord that there might be a happy issue
out of these present afflictions, that if it pleased Jesus he,
Elizabeth, the stout John Hull might yet sail away over the tossing seas
towards safety.
Then he made a prayer for the soul of Madame La Motte--she who had
traded upon virtue, she who had taken her own life, but in whom was yet
some germ of good, a well and fountain of kindliness and sympathy
withal.
After that he pulled himself together, felt his muscle, stretched
himself to see that his great and supple strength had not deserted him,
and remained with a placid mind, waiting for the opening of his prison
door again.
The anguish of his thoughts about Elizabeth was absolutely gone. A cool
certainty came to him that he would save her.
He was waiting now, alert and aware. Every nerve was ready for the
enterprise. With a scrutiny of his own consciousness--for he perfectly
realised that death might still be very near--he asked himself if he had
performed all his religious duties. If he were to die in the next hour
or so, he would have no sacramental absolution. That he knew. Therefore,
he was endeavouring to make his _private_ peace with God, and as he
looked upon his thoughts with the higher super-brain, it did not seem to
him that there was anything lacking in his pious resignation to what
should come.
He was going to make a bold and desperate bid for Lizzie's freedom, his
own, and their mutual happiness.
As well as he was able, he had put his house in order, and was waiting.
But for Don Diego Deza he did not pray at all. He was but human. That he
lacked power to do, and in so far fell away from the Example.
But as he thought of It, and the words so sacrosanct, he remembered that
the torturers of Christ knew not what they did. They were even as this
man Alonso.
But Don Diego, cultured, highly sensitive, a brilliant man, knew what he
did very well.
Even the young man's wholly contrite and more than half-broken heart
could send no message to the Throne for the Grand Inquisitor of
Seville.