She was already seated in the saddle, and the reins just grasped in a

delicate but masterly hand, when Georges, stepping forward and bending

a knee--almost, as it would seem, in mockery--informed her that her

confederates in the meditated slaughter of Elizabeth were convicted;

that it was the pleasure of the queen that her grace of Scotland should

proceed at once to the sure castle of Fotheringay, and that it was

resolved that she should set forth upon the instant. For a moment,

but for a single moment, did Mary gaze into the eyes of the courtly

speaker, with a gaze of incredulity, almost of terror; a quick shudder

ran through every limb; and once she wrung her hands bitterly--but not

a word escaped her pallid lips, not a tear disgraced her noble race.

“It is well, sir,” she said, “it is well. We thank you, no less for

your pleasant tidings, than the knightly considerations which prompted

you to choose so well your opportunity for conveying them to our ear

when we were about to set forth in search of such brief pleasure as

might for a moment gild the monotony of a prisoner’s life! We thank

you, sir, most warmly, and we doubt not your own noble heart will

reward you by that best of gifts, a happy and approving conscience! For

the rest--lead on! it matters little to the wretched and the captive

by what title the prison-bars, which shut them out from light, and

liberty, and hope, are dignified; and well do we know that for us there

is but one exit from our dungeon, or rest from our calamities--the

grave!”

She had commenced her speech in that tone of calm and polished raillery

for which she had in her earlier days been so renowned, and which even

pierced deeper into the feelings of those who writhed beneath it than

the most bitter sarcasm; but her concluding sentences were uttered

with deep feeling: and, as she turned her liquid eyes toward heaven,

it seemed most wonderful that men should exist capable of exciting a

single pang in the heart of such a creature.

The gates of Fotheringay received her; and, as she rode beneath the

gloomy archway, a prophetic chill fell upon her soul, and she felt

that here her wanderings and her sorrows would shortly be brought to a

close! Scarcely had she reached the miserable privacy of her chamber,

when steps were heard without. Mildmay, Paulet, and Barker, entered,

and delivering a letter full of hypocritical regrets and feigned

affection, informed her that the queen’s commissioners were even then

assembled in the castle-hall, and prayed the lady Mary to descend and

refute the foul charges preferred against her name.

Enfeebled as she had been by sufferings and sorrows, wearied by

her long and rapid journey, and, above all things, crushed by this

last blow, it little seemed that so frail and delicate a form could

have contained a soul so mighty as flashed forth in one blaze of

indignation. Her pale cheek crimsoned, her sunken eye glared with

unwonted fire; she started upon her feet, her limbs trembling, not with

terror or debility, but with strong and terrible excitement.

“Knows not your mistress,” she cried, in clear, high tones, “that I,

too, am a queen? or would she knowingly debase the dignity which is

common to her with me? Away! I will not deign to plead! I--I, the

queen of Scotland, the mother and the wife of kings--I plead to mine

inferiors? Go tell your mistress that neither eighteen years of vile

captivity, nor dread, nor misery, has sunk the soul of Mary Stuart so

low, that she will speak one syllable to guard her life, save in the

presence of her peers! Let her assemble her high courts of parliament,

if she so will it: to them, and to them only, will I plead. Here she

may slay me, it is true; but she must slay me by the assassin’s knife,

not by the prostituted sword of justice. I have spoken!”--and she

threw herself at once into a seat, immoveable alike in position and in

resolve.

Well had it been for her had she continued firm in that determination;

but what could a weak woman’s unassisted intellect avail against

the united force of talents such as those of Hatton and Burleigh? A

thousand specious arguments were summoned to overcome her scruples,

but summoned all in vain, till the last hint--that her unwillingness

to plead could arise only from a consciousness of guilt--aroused

her. Pride, fatal pride, determined the debate, and she descended.

Eloquently, sorrowfully, manfully, did she plead her cause, combating

the vile chicaneries, the extorted evidences, the absence or the want

of legal witnesses, with the native powers of a clear and vigorous

mind. Once during that judicial mockery did her passions burst the

control of her judgment, and she openly, in full court, charged the

secretary, Walsingham--and, as many now believe, most justly charged

him--with the forgery of the only documents that bore upon her

character, or on the case in point. But all was fruitless! For what

eloquence should convince men resolved in any circumstances to convict?

what facts should clear away the imputed guilt of one whom it was fully

determined to destroy?

The trial was concluded. With the air of a queen she stood erect, with

a calm brow and serene eye, as the commissioners departed, one by one.

No doom had been pronounced against her, but she read it in the eyes

of all; and as she saw her misnamed judges quit her presence, she

muttered, in the low notes of a determined spirit: “The tragedy is well

nigh closed--the last act is at hand! Peace--peace--I soon shall find

thee in the grave.”

THE CLOSING SCENE.

“Still as the lips that’s closed in death,

Each gazer’s bosom held his breath;

But yet afar, from man to man,

A cold, electric shiver ran,

As down the deadly blow descended,

On her whose love and life thus ended.”--PARISINA.

It was a dark, but lovely night; moonless, but liquid and transparent;

the stars which gemmed the firmament glittered more brightly from the

absence of the mightier planet, and from the influence of a slight

degree of frost upon the atmosphere, although it was indeed so slight,

that its presence could be traced only in the crispness of the herbage,

and in the uncommon purity of the heavens. Beneath a sky such as I have

vainly endeavored to portray, the towers of Fotheringay rose black and

dismal above the ancestral oaks and sweeping glades of its demesne.

It would have appeared to a casual observer that all were at rest,

buried in utter forgetfulness of all their hopes and sorrows, within

that massive pile, save the lonely sentinel, whose progress round the

battlements, although invisible, might be traced by the clatter of

his harness, and the sullen echoes of his steel-shod stride. But to

a nearer and more accurate survey, a single light, feebly twinkling

through a casement of the dungeon-keep, told a far different tale.

At times that solitary ray streamed in unbroken lines far into the

bosom of the darkness; at times it was momentarily obscured, as if by

the passage of some opaque body, though the transit, if such it were,

was too brief to reveal the form or motions of the obstacle. Once,

however, the shadow paused, and then, as its outlines stood forth in

strong relief against the illumination of the chamber, the delicate

proportions and musing attitude of a female might be discerned with

certainty. It was the queen of Scotland. Her earthly sorrows were

drawing to their close; the peace, for which she had long ceased to

look, save in the silence of the tomb, was now within her grasp. Mary’s

last sun had set.

Of life she had taken her farewell long, long ago; and death--the

bugbear of the happy, the terror of the dastard--dark, mysterious,

unknown death--had become to her an intimate, and, as it were, familiar

friend. It was not that she had lessoned her shrinking spirit to endure

with calmness that which it had shuddered to encounter; it was not that

she had weaned her heart, yet clinging to the vanities of a heartless

world, with difficulty and trembling, to their abandonment; least of

all was it that she had been taught to regard that final separation

with the stoic’s apathy, or to look for that dull and sunless rest,

that absence of all feelings, whether of good or evil; that total

annihilation of mind, in the great hereafter, which, to a sensitive

temperament, and soul not rendered wholly callous by the debasing

contact with this world’s idols, must seem a punishment secondary, if

secondary, only to an eternity of wo. Born to a station lofty as the

most vaulting ambition could desire, nurtured in gentleness and luxury,

gifted with a mind such as rarely dwells within a mortal form, and

having that mind invested in a frame, by its resplendent beauty fitted

to be the door of immortality, she had felt, in a succession of sorrows

almost unexampled, that the very qualities which should have ministered

to her for bliss, had been converted into the instruments of misery

and pain. Attached to her native land with the Switzer’s patriotism,

she had endured from it the extremities of scorn and hatred. Full

of the warmest sympathies even for the meanest of mankind, she had

never loved a single being but he had recompensed that love with

coals of fire heaped upon her head; or if a few had passed unscathed

through the trying ordeal of benefits received, they had themselves

miserably perished for their gratitude toward one whose love seemed

fated to blight the virtues, or destroy the being of all on whom it

was bestowed. If the sun of her morning had ridden gloriously forth

in a serene heaven, with the promise of a splendid noontide and an

unclouded setting, yet scarcely had it scaled one half of its meridian

height, ere it had been compassed about with gloom and darkness; and

ere its setting the thunders had rolled and the deadly lightnings

flashed between the daygod and its scattered worshippers. She had been

led step by step from the keenest enjoyment to the utmost disregard

of the pleasures of the earth; she had drained the cup, and knew its

bitterness too well to languish for a second draught. Yet there was

nothing of resentment, nothing of hard-heartedness or scorn, in the

feelings with which she looked back on the world and its adorers. She

did not despise the many for that they still lingered in pursuit of

a star which she had found, by sad experience, to be but a delusive

meteor; much less did she hate the happy few to whom that valley, which

had been to her indeed a vale of tears and of the shadow of death, had

been a region of perpetual sunshine and unclouded happiness.

From Mary’s earliest years there had been a deep spring of piety in

her heart which, never utterly dried up, though choked at times, and

turned from its true course by the thorny cares and troubles of life,

had burst from the briers which so long concealed it in redoubled

purity as it flowed nearer to the close. There was an innate tenderness

in all her sentiments toward all men and all things which could never

degenerate into hatred, much less into misanthropy. She looked then

upon life in its true light; as a mingled landscape, now obscured by

clouds, now called into glory by the sunshine; as a region, tangled

here with forests, and cumbered with barren rocks, there swelling into

hills of vintage, or subsiding into glens of verdure. And if to her

the landscape had been most viewed beneath the influence of a dark and

threatening sky--if to her life’s path had lain, for the most part,

through the wilderness and over the mountains--she knew that such was

the result of her own misfortune, perhaps of her own misconduct, not

of defect in the wonderful contrivance, or of improvidence in the

all-glorious contriver.

In proportion as she had learned to dwell on the insufficiency of

earthly good to satiate that deep thirst for happiness which is not the

least among the proofs of the soul’s immortality, she had come to look

upon the void of futurity as the unexplored region of bliss; upon death

as the portal through which we must pass from the desert of toil and

sorrow to the Eden of hope and happiness. That she was drawing rapidly

near to this portal she had for a long time been aware; and, during the

latter years of her captivity, she had longed to see the leaves of that

gate unfolded for her exit, with a sense of pining sickness, similar to

that of the imprisoned eagle. The mockery of her trial she had beheld

as the avenue through which she should arrive, and that right shortly,

at the desired end; and although she knew that the scaffold and the

axe, or the secret knife of the assassin, must need be the key to that

gate, she recked but little of the means, so that the way of escape was

left open to her.

She had pleaded, it is true, with brilliant eloquence and earnestness,

in behalf, not of life, but of her honor. She wished for death, and she

cared not for the vulgar ignominy of the scaffold; but she did care,

she did shrink from the ignominy of a condemnation--a condemnation not

by the suborned commissioners, not by the jealous rival, not by the

perjured and terror-stricken populace of the day, but by Time and by

Eternity. This was the condemnation from which she shrank; this was the

ignominy which she combated; this was the doom which, by the masterly

and dauntless efforts of her unassisted woman heart, she turned not

only from herself, but back upon her murderers.

From the departure of the commissioners, she had been convinced that

she was hovering as it were on the confines of life and immortality.

Happy and calm herself, she had labored to render calm and happy the

little group of friends--for domestics when faithful, are friends--who

still preserved their allegiance. She craved no more the wanderings in

the green-wood; she had even refused to join in her once-loved sports

of field and forest, which, denied to her when she would have grasped

the boon, were freely proffered now, as though her enemies, with a

far-reaching malignity that would stretch its arm beyond the grave,

had wished to reawaken in her bosom that love for things of this life

which had sunk to sleep, and to sharpen the bitterness of death by the

added tortures of regret. If such, indeed, were their intentions--and

who shall presume to judge?--their barbarity was frustrated; and if

they indeed envied their poor victim the miserable consolation of

passing cheerfully and in peace from the sphere of her sorrows, we may

be assured that the frustration of their wicked views was sufficient

punishment to them while here, and none can even dare to conjecture

what will be their doom hereafter.

This night had brought at length the balm to all her cares--the

restless eagerness to be assured of that which was to come was

over--the goal was reached, the gates were half-unclosed, and, to

her enthusiastic and poetical imagination, the hymns and harpings of

expectant seraphs seemed to pour in their soothing chimes, whispering

of peace, pardon, and beatitude for evermore between the parted

portals. With a bigotry, which in these days of universal toleration

it is equally difficult to conceive or to condemn sufficiently, it was

denied to the departing sinner--for who that is most perfect here is

other than a sinner--to enjoy the consolations of a priest of her own

persuasion. A firm and conscientious, though not a bigoted catholic, it

was a cruelty of the worst and most outrageous nature, to deny her that

which she deemed of the highest importance to her eternal welfare, and

which they could not deem prejudicial, without being themselves victims

of a superstition so slavish as to disprove their participation in a

faith which boasts itself no less a religion of freedom than of truth.

Steadily refusing the aid of the protestant divines, who harassed her

with an assiduity that spoke more of polemical pride than of Christian

sincerity, she had performed her orisons with deep devotion, and had

arisen from their performance assured of forgiveness, confident in her

own repentance, and in the mercy of Him who alone is perfect; in peace

and charity even with her direst foes, and happy in the anticipation of

the morrow. She had sat down to her last earthly meal with an appetite

unimpaired by the knowledge that it was to be her last; she had

conversed cheerfully, gayly, with her weeping friends; she had drunk

one cup of wine to their health and happiness, and, in token of her

own gratitude, to each she had distributed some little pledge of her

affectionate regard; and then--amid the notes of dreadful preparation,

the creaking of saws and the clang of hammers, busily converting the

castle-hall into a place of slaughter, as it had been not long before

a place of misnamed justice--she had sunk to sleep so calmly, and

slumbered on with a countenance so moveless in its innocent repose, and

with a bosom so regular in its healthful pulsations, that her admiring

ladies began to look on her as one about to start upon a pleasant

voyage to the harbor of all her wishes, rather than as one about to

perish by a cruel and ignominious death on the scaffold. Hours flew

over the lovely sleeper, and the eyes of her watchers waxed heavier,

till they wept themselves to sleep; and one--an aged woman, who had

watched her infancy and gloried in the promise of her youth--after her

eyes were sealed in sleep, yet continued, by the heavy sobs which burst

from the lips of the slumberer, to manifest the extent of that misery

which abode in all its vividness within the mind, although the body was

wrapt in that state which men have called oblivion.

Such had been the state of things in Mary’s chamber from the first

close of evening to the dead hour of midnight; but ere the east had

begun again to redden with the returning glories of its luminary,

sleep, which still sat leadlike on the eyelids of her attendants,

forsook the hapless sovereign. Silently she arose, and, throwing

a single garment carelessly about her person, passed from her

sleeping-apartment into a little oratory adjoining, without disturbing

from her painful slumbers one of those faithful beings to whom the

distinct consciousness of waking sorrow must have been yet more

painfully acute.

Here, as with a quick but regular step she traversed the narrow turret,

she viewed as it were in the space of a single hour the crowded

events of a life which, unnaturally shortened as it was about to be,

yet contained naught of remote and rare occurrence, but in rapid and

complete succession--those events which make an epoch and an era of

every hour, and lengthen years of time into ages of the mind.

Calmly, piously, without a shade of sorrow for the past or of

solicitude for the future, save that mysterious and yet natural anxiety

which must haunt every mind, however well prepared to endure its final

separation from the body, as the hour of dissolution approaches, did

she expect the morning. This anxiety and this alone was blended with

the various feelings which coursed through the soul of Mary during this

the last night of her existence.

It was in such a frame of mind that Mary, in the solitude of that last

earthly night, diverting her attention entirely from the terrible shock

she was about to undergo on the morrow, thought upon her native land,

still dear though still ungrateful, a prey to the fierce contentions

of her own factious offspring--of her son, torn at the earliest dawn

of his affections from the arms of a mother, nurtured among those who

would teach him to eradicate every warmer recollection--to pluck forth,

as if it were an offending eye, every lingering tenderness for that

being, who, amid all her sins and all her sorrows, had never ceased to

love him with an entire and perfect love. There is, in truth, something

more evidently divine, partaking more nearly of that which we believe

to be the very essence of Divinity, in a mother’s love, than in any

other pang or passion--for every passion, how sweet soever it may be,

has something of a pang mingled with it--in the human soul. All other

love is liable to diminution, to change, or to extinction; all other

love may be alienated by the neglect, chilled by the coldness, frozen

to the core by the worthlessness, of the object once beloved. All

other affections are influenced by a thousand trivial circumstances of

time and place: absence may weaken their influence, time obscure their

vividness, and, above all, custom may rob them of their value. But on

the love of a mother--commencing as it does before the object of her

solicitude possesses form or being; springing from agony and sorrow;

ripening in anxiety and care, and reaping too often the bitter harvest

of ingratitude--all incidental causes, all external influences, are

powerless and vain. Time but excites her admiration, but increases her

solicitude, but redoubles her affections. Absence but causes her to

dwell with a more engrossing memory on him from whom her heart is never

absent. Custom but hallows the sentiment to which nature has given

birth. Neglect and coldness but cause her to strain every nerve to

merit more and more the poor return of filial love--the solitary aim of

her existence, if heartlessly denied to her. Nay, worthlessness itself

but binds her more closely to him whom the hard world has cast aside,

to find a refuge in the only bosom which will not perceive his errors

or credit his utter destitution.

Thus it was with Mary! She knew that the child of her affections

regarded those affections as vile and worthless weeds! She knew that

he was selfish, vain, and heartless! She knew that a single word from

that child whom she still adored--if conveyed to her persecutor in

the strong language of sincerity and earnestness--if borne, not by

a fawning courtier, but by one of those high spirits which Scotland

has found ever ready to her need--if enforced by threats of instant

war--would have broken her fetters in a moment, and conveyed her from

the dungeons of Fotheringay to the courts of Holyrood! All this she

knew, yet her heart would not know it! And when all Europe rang with

curses on the unnatural vacillation of that son; when every Scottish

heart, whatever might be its policy or its party, despised his abject

cringing; while Elizabeth herself, while she flattered his vanity,

and affected to honor and esteem his virtue, scoffed in her royal

privacy at the tool she designed to use in public--Mary alone, Mary,

the only sufferer and victim of his baseness, still clung to the idea

of his worth, still adored the child who was driving her out, as the

scape-goat of the Jews, to expiate the sins of himself and his people

by her own destruction! But it was not on James alone that her wayward

memory was fixed. At a time when any soul less dauntless, any spirit

less exalted, would have failed beneath its load of sorrows, Mary had a

fond regret, a tear of sorrow, a sigh of sincere gratitude, for every

gallant life that had devoted itself to ward from her that fate which

their united loyalty had availed only to defer, not to avert. Chastelar

passed before her, with his tones of sweetest melancholy, and that

unutterable love, which made him invoke blessings on her who had doomed

him to the block: and Darnley, as he had seemed in the few short hours

when he had been, when he had deserved to be, the idol of her heart:

and Bothwell, the eloquent, the glorious, but guilty Bothwell, her ruin

and her betrayer: and Douglas, the noble, hapless Douglas, he who had

riven the bolts of Loch Leven, and sent her forth to a short freedom

and worse captivity: Huntley, and Hamilton, and Seyton, and Kirkaldy,

the most formidable of her foes until he became the firmest of her

friends--all passed in sad review before the eyes of her entranced

imagination.

Thus it was that the last queen of Scotland passed the latest night

of her existence. With no consciousness of time, with no care for the

present, no apprehension for the future, she had paced the narrow floor

of her apartment during the still hours of midnight. Unperceived by

her had the stars paled, then vanished from the brightening firmament;

unseen had the first dappling of the east gone into the clear, cold

light of a wintry morning; unheeded had the castle clock sent forth

its giant echoes hour after hour, to be heard by every watcher over

leagues of field and forest. Another sound rose heavily, and she was at

once collected--time, place, and circumstances, flashed fully on her

mind--she was prepared to meet them: it was the roar of the morning

culverin; and scarcely had its deafening voice passed over, before a

single bell, hoarse, slow, and solemn, pealed minute after minute, the

signal of her approaching dissolution.

Calmly, as if she were about to prepare for some gay festival, she

turned to the apartment where her ladies, overdone by wo and watching,

yet slumbered, forgetful of the dread occasion.

“Arise,” she said, in sweet, low tones; “arise, my girls, and do your

last of duties for the mistress ye have served so well! Nay, start not

up so wildly, nor blush that ye have slept while we were watching.

Dear girls, the time has come--the time for which my soul so long has

thirsted. Array me, then, as to a banquet, a glorious banquet of

immortality! See,” she continued, scattering her long locks over her

shoulders--“see, they were bright of yore as the last sunbeam of a

summer day, yet I am prouder of them now, with their long streaks of

untimely snow--for they now tell a tale of sorrows, borne as it becomes

a queen to bear them. Braid them with all your skill, and place yon

pearls around my velvet head-gear. We will go forth to die, clad as a

bride; and now methinks the queen of France and Scotland owns but a

single robe of fair device. Bring forth our royal train and broidered

farthingale: it fits us not to die with our limbs clad in the garb of

mourning, when Heaven knows that our heart is clothed in gladness!”

Tearless, while all around were drowned in lamentations, she strove to

cheer them to the performance of this last sad office--not with the

commonplace assurances, the miserable resources of earthly consolation,

much less with aught of heartless levity, or of that unfeeling parade

which has so often adorned the scaffold with a jest, and concealed

the anxiety of a heart ill at ease beneath the semblance of ill-timed

merriment--but by suffering them to read her inmost soul; by showing

them the true position of her existence; by pointing out to them the

actual hardships of the body, and the yet deeper humiliations of the

soul, from which the door of her escape was even now unclosing.

Scarcely had she completed her attire, and tasted of the consecrated

wafer--long ago procured from the holy Pius, and preserved for this

extremity--when the tread of many feet without, and a slight clash of

weapons at the door of the ante-chamber, announced that the hour had

arrived.

Once and again, ere she gave the signal to unclose the door, she

embraced each one of her attendants. “Dear, faithful friends, adieu,

adieu,” she said, “for ever; and now remember, remember the last

words of Mary. Weep not for me, and, if ye love me, shake not my

steadfastness, which, thanks to Him who is the Father and the Friend

of the afflicted, the fear of death can not shake, by useless fear or

lamentation. We would die as a martyr cheerfully, as a queen nobly!

Fare ye well, and remember!” With an air of royal dignity she seated

herself, and, with her maidens standing around her chair, she bore the

mien of a high sovereign awaiting the arrival of some proud legation,

rather than that of a captive awaiting a summons to the block. “And

now,” she said, as she arranged her draperies with dignified serenity,

“admit their envoy.”

The doors were instantly thrown open as she spoke, the sheriff uttered

his ordinary summons, and without a shudder she rose. “Lead on,”

she said; “we follow thee more joyously than thou, methinks, canst

marshal us. Sir Amias Paulet, lend us thine arm; it fits us not that

we proceed, even to the death, without some show of courtesy. Maidens,

bear up our train; and now, sir, we are ready.”

But a heavier trial than the axe awaited the unhappy sovereign; for

as she set her foot on the first step of the stairs, Melville, her

faithful steward, flung himself at her feet, with almost girlish

wailings. Friendly and familiarly she raised him from the ground.

“Nay, sorrow not for me,” she said, “true friend. Subject for sorrow

there is none, unless thou grievest that Mary is set free--that for

the captive’s weeds she shall put on a robe of immortality, and, for a

crown of earthly misery, the glory of beatitude.”

“Alas! alas! God grant that I may die, rather than look upon this

damned deed.”

“Nay, live, good Melville, for my sake live; commend me to my son, and

say to him, Mary’s last thoughts on earth were given to France and

Scotland, her last but these to him: say, that she died unshaken in

her faith to God, unswerving in her courage, confident in her reward.

Farewell, true servant, take from the lips of Mary the last kiss that

mortal e’er shall take of them, and fare thee well for ever.”

At this moment the earl of Kent stepped forward, and roughly bade her

dismiss her women also, “for the present matter tasked other ministers

than such as these.” For a moment she condescended to plead that they

might be suffered to attend her to the last; but when she was again

refused, her ancient spirit flashed out in every tone, as she cried,

trumpet-like and clear, “Proud lord, beware! I too am cousin to your

queen--I too am sprung from the high-blood of England’s royalty--I too

am an anointed queen. I say thou shalt obey, and these shall follow

their mistress to the death, or with foul violence shall they force me

thither. Beware! beware, I say, how thou shalt answer doing me this

dishonor!”

Her words prevailed. Without a shudder she descended, entered the

fatal hall, looked with an air of smiling condescension, almost of

pity, on the spectators crowded almost to suffocation, and, mounting

the scaffold, stood in proud and abstracted unconcern, while, in the

measured sounds of a proclamation, the warrant for her death was read

beside her elbow.

The bishop of Peterborough then drew nigh, and, in a loud voice and

inflated style, harassed her ears with an oration, which, whatever

might have been its merits, was at that time but a barbarous and

useless outrage.

“Trouble not yourself,” she broke in at length, disgusted with his

intemperate eloquence, “trouble not yourself any more about this

matter, for I was born in this religion, I have lived in this religion,

and in this religion I am resolved to die.” Turning suddenly aside,

as if determined to hear no further, she knelt apart, fervently

prayed, and repeatedly kissed the sculptured image which she bore

of Him who died to save. As she arose from her orisons, the earl of

Kent, her constant and unrelenting persecutor, with heartless cruelty

burst into loud revilings against “that popish trumpery” which she

adored. “Suffer me now,” she said, gazing on him with an expression of

beautiful resignation, that might have disarmed the malice of a fiend,

“suffer me now to depart in peace. I have come hither, not to dispute

on points of doctrine, but to die.”

Without another word she began to disrobe herself; but once, as her

maidens hung weeping about her person, she laid her finger on her lips,

and repeated emphatically the word “Remember.” And once again, as the

executioner would have lent his aid to remove her upper garments,

“Good friend,” she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, “we will

dispense with thine assistance. The queen of Scotland is not wont to be

disrobed before so many eyes, nor yet by varlets such as thou.”

All now was ready. The lovely neck was bared. The wretch who was to

perform the deed of blood stood grasping the fatal axe, and the fierce

earl of Kent beat the ground with his heel in savage eagerness. Without

a sigh she knelt; without a sign of trepidation, a quicker heave of

her bosom, or a brighter flush on her brow, she laid down her innocent

head, and without a struggle, or convulsion of her limbs, as the axe

flashed, and the life-blood spouted, did her spirit pass away.

A general burst of lamentation broke the silence; but amidst that burst

the heavy stride of Kent was heard, as he sprang upon the scaffold,

and raised the ghastly visage, the eyes yet twinkling, and the lips

quivering in the death-struggle. A single voice, that of the zealot

bishop, cried aloud, “Thus perish all the foes of Queen Elizabeth.”

But ere the response had passed the lips of Kent, a shriller cry

rang through the hall--the sharp yell of a small greyhound, the fond

companion of the queen’s captivity. Bursting from the attendants, who

vainly strove to hold her back, with a short, sharp cry she dashed full

at the throat of the astonished earl; but ere he could move a limb the

danger, if danger there were, was passed. The spirit was too mighty for

the little frame. The energies of the faithful animal were exhausted,

its heart broken, in that death-spring. It struck the headless body of

its mistress as it fell, and in an agony of tenderness, died licking

the hand that had fed and cherished it so long. Wonderful, that when

all men had deserted her, a brute should be found so constant in its

pure allegiance! And yet more wonderful, that the same blow should have

completed the destiny of the two rival sovereigns! and yet so it was!

The same axe gave the death-blow to the body of the Scottish, and to

the fame of the English queen! The same stroke completed the sorrows of

Mary, and the infamy of Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH’S REMORSE.

----“Guilty! guilty!

I shall despair! There is no creature loves me:

And, if I die, no soul will pity me!

Nay, wherefore should they? since I myself

Find in myself no mercy to myself!”--KING RICHARD III.

The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the

steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke

lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster.

It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of

the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of

carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the

streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no

music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the

great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion

out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according

to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with

an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of

moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard.

A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal

in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still

preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost

noiseless steps--his corslet and the broad head of his shouldered

partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as

he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal

residence--distinguished by no prouder decorations--of her before whose

wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the

clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel,

and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber

upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had

called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place.

The prolonged cry of the watcher, telling at each successive hour

that all was well, had scarcely passed his lips, before the distant

tramp of a horse, and the challenge of a sentry from the bridge, came

heavily up the wind. For a moment the yeoman listened with all his

senses; then, as it became evident that the rider was approaching, he

stirred the nearest sleeper with the butt of his heavy halbert. “Up,

Gilbert! up, man, and to your tools, ere they be wanted. What though

the earl’s proud head lie low?--he hath friends and fautors enough in

the city, I trow, to raise a coil whene’er it lists them!” The slumbers

of the yeomen were exchanged on the instant for the guarded bustle of

preparations; and, before the horseman, whose approach had caused so

much excitement, drew bridle at the palace-gate, a dozen bright sparks

glimmering under the dark portal, like glow-worms beneath some bushy

coppice, announced the readiness of as many levelled matchlocks.

“Stand, ho! the word--”

“A post to her grace of England!” was the irregular reply, as the

rider, hastily throwing himself from off his jaded hackney, advanced

toward the yeoman.

“Stand there, I say!--no nearer, on your life! Shoot, Gilbert, shoot,

an’ he stir but a hand-breadth!”

“Tush! friend, delay me not,” replied the intruder, halting, however,

as he was required to do; “my haste is urgent, and that which I bear

with me passeth ceremony--a letter to the queen! On your heads be it,

if I meet impediment! See that ye pass it to her grace forthwith.”

“A letter? ha! There may be some device in this; yet pass it

hitherward.” A broad parchment, secured by a fold of floss silk, with

its deeply-sealed wax attached, was placed in his hand. A light was

obtained from the hatch of a caliver, and the superscription, evidently

too important for delay, hurried the guards to action. “The earl of

Nottingham”--it ran--“to his most high and sovereign lady, Elizabeth

of England. For life! for life! for life!--Ride and run--haste, haste,

post-haste, till this be delivered!”

After a moment’s conference among the warders, the bearer was directed

to advance; a yeoman led the panting horse away to the royal meuf; and

the corporal of the guard, striking the wicket with his dagger-hilt,

shortly obtained a hearing and admission from the gentleman-pensioner

on duty. Within the palace no result was immediately perceived from

the occurrence which had caused so much bustle outside the gates;

the soldiers on duty conversed for a while in stifled whispers, then

relapsed into their customary silence; the night wore on without

further interruption to their watch, and ere they were relieved they

had well nigh forgotten the messenger’s arrival.

Not so, however, was the letter received by the inmates of the royal

residence. Ushers and pages were awakened, lights glanced, and

hurried steps and whispering voices echoed through the corridors. The

chamberlain, so great was considered the urgency of the matter, was

summoned from his pillow; and he with no small trepidation proceeded at

once to the apartment of Elizabeth. His hesitating tap at the door of

the ante-chamber--occupied by the ladies whose duty it was to watch the

person of their imperious mistress by night--failed indeed to excite

the attention of the sleeping maidens, but caught at once the ear of

the extraordinary woman whom they served.

“Without there!” she cried, in a clear, unbroken tone, although full

sixty winters had passed over her head.

“Hunsdon, so please your grace, with a despatch of import from the earl

of Nottingham.”

“God’s death! ye lazy wenches! hear ye not the man without, that I must

rive my throat with clamoring? Up, hussies, up--or, by the soul of my

father, ye shall sleep for ever!” The frightened girls sprang from

their couches at the raised voice of their angry queen, like a covey

of partridges at the yelp of the springer, and for a moment all was

confusion.

“What now, ye fools!” she cried again, in harsh and excited accents,

that reached the ears of the old earl without--“hear ye not that my

chamberlain awaits an audience? Fling yonder robe of velvet o’er our

person, and rid us of this night-gear--so!--the mirror now! my ruff and

curch! and now--admit him!”

“Admit him! an’ it list your grace, it were scarce seemly in ladies to

appear thus disarrayed--”

“Heard ye, or heard ye not? I say, admit him! Think ye old Hunsdon

cares to look upon such trumpery as ye, or must I wait upon my wenches’

pleasure? God’s head, but ye grow malapert!”

The old queen’s voice had not yet ceased, before the door was opened;

and although the ladies had taken the precaution of extinguishing

the light, and seeking such concealment as the angles of the

chamber afforded, the sturdy old earl--who, notwithstanding the

queen’s assertion, had as quick an eye for beauty as many a younger

gallant--could easily discover that the modesty which had demurred

to the admission of a man was not by any means uncalled for or even

squeamish. Had he been, however, much more inclined to linger by the

way than his old-fashioned courtesy permitted, he must have been a

bold man to delay; for twice, ere he could cross the floor to her

chamber, did his name reach his ears in the impatient accents of

Elizabeth: “Hunsdon! I say--Hunsdon! ’s death! art thou crippled, man?”

There was little of the neatness or taste of modern days displayed in

the decorations of the royal chamber. Tapestries there were, and velvet

hangings, carpets from Turkey, and huge mirrors of Venetian steel; but

a plentiful lack of linen, and of those thousand nameless comforts,

which a peasant’s dame would miss to-day, uncared for in those rude

times by princesses. Huge waxen torches flared in the wind, which found

its way through the ill-constructed lattice; and a greater proportion

of the smoke, from the logs smouldering in the jams of a chimney wider

than that of a modern kitchen, reeked upward to the blackened rafters

of the unceiled roof.

Rigid and haughty, in the midst of this strange medley of negligence

and splendor, sat the dreaded monarch, approached by none even of

her most favored ministers save with fear and trembling. Her person,

tall and slender from her earliest years, and now emaciated to almost

superhuman leanness by the workings of her own restless spirit, even

more than by her years, presented an aspect terrible, yet magnificent

withal. It seemed as though the dauntless firmness of a more than

masculine soul had won the power to support and animate a frame which

it had rescued from the grave; it seemed as though the years which had

blighted had failed in their efforts to destroy; it seemed as though

that faded tenement of clay might yet endure, like the blasted oak,

for countless years, although the summer foliage, which rendered it so

beautiful of yore, had long since been scattered by the wild autumnal

hurricane, or seared by the nipping frosts of winter. Her eye alone,

in the general decay of her person, retained its wonted brilliancy,

shining forth from her pale and withered features with a lustre so

remarkable as to appear almost supernatural.

“So! give us the letter--there! Pause not for thy knee, man; give

us the letter!”--and tearing the frail band by which it was secured

asunder, she was in a moment entirely engrossed, as it would seem, in

its contents. Her countenance waxed paler and paler as she read; and

the shadows of an autumn morning flit not more changefully across the

landscape, as cloud after cloud is driven over the sun’s disk, than

did the varying expressions of anxiety, doubt, and sorrow, chase one

another from the speaking lineaments of Elizabeth.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, after a long pause, “this must be looked to.

See that our barge be manned forthwith, and tarry not for aught of

state or ceremony. Thyself will go with us, and stop not thou to

don thy newest-fashioned doublet: this is no matter that brooks

ruffling!--’Sdeath, man! ’tis life or death! And now begone, sir! we

lack our tirewoman’s service!”

An hour had not elapsed before a barge--easily distinguished as one

belonging to the royal household, by its decorations, and the garb of

the rowers--shot through a side arch of Westminster bridge, and passed

rapidly, under sail and oar, down the swift current of the river,

now almost at ebb tide. It was not, however, the barge of state, in

which the progresses of the sovereign were usually made; nor was it

followed by the long train of vessels, freighted with ladies of the

court, guards, and musicians, which were wont to follow in its wake.

In the stern-sheets sat two persons: a man advanced in years, and

remarkable for an air of nobility, which could not be disguised even

by the thick boat-cloak he had wrapped about him, as much perhaps to

afford protection against the eyes of the inquisitive as against the

dense mists of the Thames; and a lady, whose tall person was folded in

wrappings so voluminous as to defy the closest scrutiny. At a short

distance in the rear, another boat came sweeping along, in the crew

and passengers of which it would have required a penetrating glance to

discover a dozen or two of the yeomen of the guard, in their undress

liveries of gray and black, without either badge or cognizance, and

their carbines concealed beneath a pile of cloaks.

It was Elizabeth herself, who, in compliance with the mysterious

despatch she had so lately received, was braving the cold damps of

the river at an hour so unusual, and in a guise so far short of her

accustomed state. The moon had already set, and the stars were feebly

twinkling through the haze that rose in massive volumes from the

steaming surface of the water, but no symptoms of approaching day were

as yet visible in the east; the buildings on the shore were entirely

shrouded from view by the fog, and the few lighters and smaller craft,

moored here and there between the bridges, could scarcely be discovered

in time to suffer the barge to be sheered clear of their moorings. It

was perhaps on account of these obstacles that their progress was less

rapid than might reasonably have been expected from the rate at which

they cut the water.

Of the six stately piles which may now be seen spanning the noble

stream, but two were standing at the period of which we write; and

several long reaches were to be passed before the fantastic mass of

London bridge, with its dwelling-houses and stalls for merchandise

towering above the irregular thoroughfares of the city, loomed darkly

up against the horizon. Scarcely had they threaded its narrow and

cavern-like arches, before a pale and sickly light, of a faint yellow

hue, more resembling the glare of torches than the blessed radiance

of the sun, gilded the decreasing fog-wreaths, and glanced upon the

level water. The sun had risen, and for a time hung blinking on the

misty horizon, and shorn of half his beams, till a fresh breeze from

the westward brushed the vapors aloft, and hurried them seaward with

a velocity which shortly left the scenery to be viewed in unobscured

beauty. Just as this change was wrought upon the face of nature, the

royal barge was darting, with a speed that increased every instant,

before the esplanade and frowning artillery of the Tower; the short

waves were squabbling and splashing beneath the dark jaws and lowered

portcullis of the “Traitor’s Gate,” that fatal passage through which so

many of the best and bravest of England’s nobility had entered, never

to return!

Brief as was the moment of their transit in front of that sad portal,

Hunsdon had yet time to mark the terrible expression of misery, almost

of despair, that gleamed across the features of the queen. She spoke

not, but she wrung her hands with a sigh, that uttered volumes of

repentance and regret, too late to be availing; and the stern old

chamberlain, who felt his heart yearn at the sorrows of a mistress

whom he loved no less than he revered, knew that the mute gesture and

the painful sigh were extorted from that masculine bosom only by the

extremity of anguish. She had not looked upon that “den of drunkards

with the blood of princes” since it had been glutted with its last and

noblest victim. Essex, the princely, the valiant, the generous, and

the noble Essex--the favorite of the people, the admired of men, the

idol, the cherished idol of Elizabeth--had gone, a few short moons

before, through that abhorred gateway--had gone to die--had died by

her unwilling mandate! Bitter and long had been the struggle between

her wounded pride and her sincere affection; between her love for

the man and her wrath against the rebel: thrice had she signed the

fatal warrant, and as often consigned it to the flames; and when at

length her indignation prevailed, and she affixed her name to the fell

scroll--which, once executed, she never smiled again--that indignation

was excited, not so much by the violence of his proceedings against her

crown, as by his obstinate delay in claiming pity and pardon from an

offended but indulgent mistress.

Onward, onward they went, the light boat dancing over the waves that

added to its speed, the canvass fluttering merrily, and the swell

which their own velocity excited laughing in their wake. It was a

time and a scene to enliven every bosom, to make every English heart

bound happily and proudly. Vessels-of-war, and traders, galliot, and

caravel, and bark, and ship, lay moored in the centre of the pool and

along the wharves, the thousand dwellings of a floating city. All this

Elizabeth herself had done: the commerce of England was the fruit of

her fostering; the power of her courage and sagacity; the mighty navy

of her creation.

They passed below the dark broadsides and massive armaments of forty

ships-of-war, some of the unwonted bulk of a thousand tons, with the

victorious flags of Howard, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, streaming

from mast and yard; but not a smile chased the dull expression of fixed

grief from the brow of her who had “marred the Armada’s pride;” nor

did the slightest symptom on board her three most chosen vessels--the

Speedwell, the Tryeright, or the Blak-Galley, the very models of the

world for naval architecture--show that the queen and mistress of them

all was gliding in such humble trim below their victorious batteries.

The limits of the city were already left far behind; green meadows

and noble trees now filled the place of the crowded haunts of wealth

and industry, while here and there a lordly dwelling, with its trim

avenues, and terraced gardens sloping to the water’s edge, adorned the

prospect. The turrets of Nottingham house, the suburban palace of that

powerful peer, were soon in view; when a pageant swept along the river,

stemming the ebb tide with a proud and stately motion--a pageant which,

at any other period, would have been calculated, above all things

else, to wake the lion-like exultation of the queen, though now it was

passed in silence, and unheeded. The rover Cavendish[H]--who, a few

years before, a gentleman of wealth and worship, had dissipated his

paternal fortunes, and in the southern seas and on the Spanish main had

become a famous free-booter--was entering the river with his prizes in

goodly triumph. The flag-ship, a caravel of a hundred and twenty tons

only, led the van, close-hauled and laden almost gunwale-deep with the

precious spoils of Spain. Her distended topsail flashed in the sunlight

like a royal banner, a single sheet of the richest cloth of gold; her

courses were of crimson damask, her mariners clad in garments of the

finest silk; banners flaunted from every part of the rigging; and over

all the “meteor flag of England,” the red cross of St. George, streamed

rearward, as if pointing to the long train of prizes which followed.

Nineteen vessels, of every size and description then in use--carracks

of the western Indies, galleons of Castile and Leon, with the flag of

Spain, so late the mistress of the sea, disgracefully reversed beneath

the captor’s ensign--sailed on in long and even array; while in the

rear of all, the remainder of the predatory squadron, two little

sea-wasps of forty and sixty tons burden, presented themselves in proud

contrast to their bulky prizes, the hardy crews filling the air with

clamors, and the light cannon booming in feeble but proud exultation.

Time was when such a sight had roused her enthusiastic spirit almost

to frenzy, but now that spirit was occupied, engrossed by cares

peculiarly its own. The coxswain of the royal barge, his eye kindling

with patriotic pride, and presuming a little on his long and faithful

services, put up the helm, as if about to run alongside of the leading

galley; but a cold frown and a forward wafture of the hand repelled

his ardor; and the men their oars bending to the work, the barge was

at her moorings ere many minutes had elapsed, by the water-gate of

Nottingham-house--and the queen made her way, unannounced and almost

unattended, to the chamber of the aged countess.

[H] This incident, which is strictly historical, even to the

smallest details, did in fact occur several years earlier;

as the death of Elizabeth did not take place until the year

1603, whereas the triumphant return of Thomas Cavendish is

related by Hume as having happened A. D. 1587. It is hoped

that the anachronism will be pardoned, in behalf of the

picture of the times afforded by its introduction.

The sick woman had been for weeks wasting away beneath a slow and

painful malady; her strength had failed her, and for days her end had

been almost hourly expected. Still, with that strange and unnatural

tenacity through which the dying sometimes cling to earth, even

after every rational hope of a day’s prolonged existence has been

extinguished--she had hovered as it were on the confines of life and

death, the vital flame flickering like that of a lamp whose aliment has

long since been exhausted, fitfully playing about the wick which can no

longer support it. Her reason, which had been partially obscured during

the latter period of her malady, had been restored to its full vigor on

the preceding evening; but the only fruit of its restoration was the

utmost anguish of mental suffering and conscientious remorse. From the

moment when the messenger, whose arrival we have already witnessed, had

been despatched on his nocturnal mission, she had passed the time in

fearful struggles with the last foe, wrestling as it were bodily with

the dark angel; now pleading with the Almighty, and adjuring him by

her sufferings and by her very sins, to spare her yet a little while;

now shrieking on the name of Elizabeth, and calling her, as she valued

her soul’s salvation, to make no long tarrying. In the opinion of the

leeches who watched around her pillow, and of the terrified preacher

who communed with his own heart and was still, her life was kept up

only by this fierce and feverish excitement.

At a glance she recognised the queen, before another eye had marked her

entrance. “Ha!” she groaned, in deep, sepulchral tones, “she is come,

before whose coming my guilty soul had not the power to pass away! She

is come to witness the damnation of an immortal spirit! to hear a tale

of sin and sorrow that has no parallel! Hear my words, O queen! hear

my words now, and laugh--laugh if you can; for, by Him who made us

both, and is now dealing with me according to my merits, never shall

you laugh again! Hereafter you shall groan, and weep, and tremble, and

curse yourself, as I do! Laugh, I say, Elizabeth of England--laugh now,

or never laugh again!”

For a moment the spirit of the queen, manly and strong as it was,

beyond perhaps all precedent, was fairly overawed and cowed by the

fierce intensity of the dying woman’s manner. Not long, however, could

that proud soul quail to any created thing.

“’Fore God, woman,” she cried, “thou art bewitched, or desperately

wicked! What, in the fiend’s name, mean ye?”

“In the fiend’s name truly, for he alone inspired me! Look here--and

then pardon me, Elizabeth; in God’s name, pardon me!”

As she spoke, she held aloft, in her thin and bird-like fingers, a

massive ring of gold, from which a sapphire of rare price gleamed

brilliantly, casting a bright, dancing spark of blue reflection upon

her hollow, ghastly features. “Know you,” she screamed, “this token?”

“Where got you it, woman? Speak, I say, speak, or I curse you!--where

got you that same token?” The proud queen shook and shuddered as she

spoke, like one in an ague-fit.

“Essex!” sighed the dying countess, through her set teeth--“the

murthered Essex!”

“Murthered? God’s death, thou liest! He was a traitor--done to death!

O God! O God! I know not what I say!” and a big tear-drop--the first

in many a year, the first perhaps that ever had bedewed that iron

cheek--slid slowly down the face of Elizabeth, and fell heavily on the

brow of the glaring sufferer, who still held the ring aloft, in hands

clasped close in attitude of supplication. “Speak,” she said again, in

milder accents, “speak, Nottingham: what of--of Essex?”

“That ring he gave to me, to bear it to thy footstool, and to pray a

gracious mistress’s favor to an erring but a grateful servant--”

“And thou, woman--thou!” absolutely shrieked the queen.

“Gave it not to thee--that Essex might die, not live!” was the steady

reply. “Pardon me before I die; pardon me, as God shall pardon thee!--”

“God shall not pardon me, woman!--neither do I pardon thee! He, an’ he

will, may pardon thee; but that will I do never! never!--by the life of

the Eternal, NEVER!”--and, in the overpowering fury and agitation of

the moment, she seized the dying sinner with an iron gripe, and shook

her in the bed, till the ponderous fabric creaked and quivered. Not

another word, not another sob passed the lips of the old countess: her

frame was shaken by a mightier hand than that of the indignant queen;

a deep, harsh rattle came from her chest; she raised one skinny arm

aloft, and after the jaw had dropped, and the glaring eyeball fixed,

that wretched limb stood erect, appealing as it were from a mortal to

an immortal Judge!

The paroxysm was over. Speechless, and all but motionless, the

miserable queen was borne by her attendants to the barge; the tide

had shifted, and was still in their favor, though their course was

altered. On their return, they again passed the triumphant fleet of

Cavendish, bearing the mightiest sovereign of the world, the envied

of all the earth--a wretched, feeble, heart-broken woman, grovelling

like a crushed worm beneath the bitterest of human pangs, the agonies

of self-merited misery! A few hours found her outstretched upon

the floor of her chamber, giving away to anguish uncontrolled and

uncontrollable. Refusing the earnest prayers of her women, and of her

physicians, to suffer herself to be disrobed, and to recline upon

her bed; feeding on tears and groans alone; uttering no sound but

the name of Essex, in one plaintive and oft-repeated cry; mocking

at all consolation; acknowledging no comforter except despair--ten

long days and nights she lingered thus, in pangs a thousand times

more intolerable than those which she had inflicted on her Scottish

rival: and when, at length, the council of the state assembled, in

her last moments, around the death-bed of a sovereign truly and not

metaphorically lying in dust and ashes--she named to them, as her

successor in the kingdom, the son of that same rival. Who shall say

that the death of Mary Stuart went unavenged?

THE MOORISH FATHER.

A TALE OF MALAGA.

It was the morning of the day succeeding that which had beheld the

terrible defeat, among the savage glens and mountain fastnesses of

Axarquia, of that magnificent array of cavaliers which, not a week

before, had pranced forth from the walls of Antiquera, superbly mounted

on Andalusian steeds, fiery, and fleet, and fearless, with helm and

shield and corslet engrailed with arabesques of gold, surcoats of

velvet and rich broidery, plumes of the desert bird, and all in short

that can add pomp and circumstance to the dread game of war. The strife

was over in the mountain valleys; the lonely hollows on the bare

hill-side, the stony channels of the torrent, the tangled thicket, and

the bleak barren summit, were cumbered with the carcasses of Spain’s

most noble cavaliers. War-steeds beside their riders, knights of the

proudest lineage among their lowliest vassals, lay cold and grim and

ghastly, each where the shaft, the stone, the assagay, had stretched

beneath him, beneath the garish lustre of the broad southern sun.

The Moorish foe had vanished from the field, which he had won almost

without a struggle--the plunderer of the dead plied his hateful trade

even to satiety, and, gorged with booty that might well satiate the

wildest avarice, had left the field of slaughter to the possession of

his brute comrades, the wolf, the raven, and the eagle.

It was now morning, and the broad sun, high already, was pouring

down a flood of light over the giant crags, the deep precipitous

defiles, and all the stern though glorious features which mark the

mountain scenery of Malaga; and far beyond over the broad, luxuriant

Vega, watered by its ten thousand streams of crystal, waving with

olive-groves, and vineyards, and dark woodlands; and farther yet over

the laughing waters of the bright Mediterranean. But one, who having

found concealment during that night of wo and slaughter in some dark

cave, or gully so sequestered that it had escaped the keen eyes of

the Moorish mountaineers, now plied his bloody spurs almost in vain,

so weary and so faint was the beautiful bay steed which bore him. He

paused not to look upon the wonders of his road, tarried not to observe

the play of light and shadow over that glorious plain, although by

nature he was fitted to admire and to love all that she had framed of

wild, of beautiful, or of romantic. Nay more, he scarcely turned his

eye to gaze upon the miserable relics of some beloved comrade, who had

so often revelled gayly, and in that last awful carnage had striven

fearlessly and well, even when all was lost, beside him. He was a tall

dark-featured youth, with a profusion of black hair clustered in short

close curls about a high pale forehead; an eye that glanced like fire

at every touch of passion, yet melted at the slightest claim upon his

pity; an aquiline, thin nose, and mouth well cut, but compressed and

closely set, completed the detail of his eminently handsome features.

But the dark curls--for he had been on the preceding day unhelmed and

slightly wounded--were clotted with stiff gore, matted with dust, and

bleached by the hot sun under which he had for hours fought bareheaded.

The keen, quick eye was dull and glazed, the haughty lineaments clouded

with shame, anxiety, and grief, and the chiselled lips pale and cold

as ashes. His armor, which had been splendid in the extreme, richly

embossed and sculptured, was all defaced with dust and gore, broken

and dinted, and in many places riven quite asunder. The surcoat which

he had donned a few short days before, of azure damask, charged with

the bearings of his proud ancestral race, fluttered in rags upon the

morning breeze--his shield was gone, as were the mace and battle-axe

which had swung from his saddle-bow--his sword, a long, cross-handled

blade, and his lance, its azure pennoncelle no less than its steel

head, crusted and black with blood, alone remained to him. The

scabbard of his poignard was empty, and the silver hilt of his sword,

ill-matched with the gilded sheath, showed plainly that it was not the

weapon to which his hand was used. Yet still, though disarrayed, weary,

and travel-spent, and worn with wo and watching, no eye could have

looked on him without recognising in every trait, in every gesture, the

undaunted knight and the accomplished noble.

Hours had passed away, since, with the first gray twilight of the dawn

he had come forth from the precarious hiding-place wherein he had spent

a terrible and painful night; and so far he had seen no human form,

living at least, and heard no human voice! Unimpaired, save by the

faintness of his reeling charger, he had ridden six long leagues over

the perilous and rugged path by which, late on the previous night, the

bravest of the brave, Alonzo de Aguilar, had by hard dint of hoof and

spur escaped from the wild infantry of El Zagal to the far walls of

Antiquera; and now from a bold and projecting summit he looked down

upon the ramparts of that city, across a rich and level plain, into

which sloped abruptly the steep ridge on which he stood, at less than

a league’s distance. Here, for the first time, since he had set forth

on his toilsome route, the knight drew up his staggering horse--for

the first time a gleam of hope irradiating his wan brow--and, as a

pious cavalier is ever bound to do, stretched forth his gauntleted

hands to Heaven, and in a low, deep murmur breathed forth his heartfelt

thanksgivings to Him, who had preserved him from the clutches of the

pitiless heathen. This duty finished, with a lighter heart he wheeled

his charger round an abrupt angle of the limestone-rock, and, plunging

into the shade of the dense cork-woods which clothed the whole descent,

followed the steep and zigzag path, by which he hoped ere long to reach

his friends in safety. His horse, too, which had staggered wearily and

stumbled often, as he ascended the rude hills, seemed to have gained

new courage; for as he turned the corner of the rock, he pricked his

ears and snorted, and the next moment uttered a long, tremulous,

shrill neigh, quickening his pace--which for the last two hours he had

hardly done at the solicitation of the spur--into a brisk and lively

canter. Before, however, his rider had found time to debate upon the

cause of this fresh vigor, the neigh was answered from below by the

sharp whinny of a war-horse, which was succeeded instantly by the

clatter of several hoofs, and the long barbaric blast of a Moorish

horn. The first impulse of the cavalier was to quit the beaten path,

and dashing into the thickets to conceal himself until his foemen

should have passed by. Prudent, however, as was his determination,

and promptly as he turned to execute it, he was anticipated by the

appearance of at least half a score of Moorish horsemen--who, sitting

erect in their deep Turkish saddles, goring the sides of their slight

Arabian coursers with the edges of their broad sharp stirrups, and

brandishing their long assagays above their heads, dashed forward with

their loud ringing Lelilies, to charge the solitary Spaniard. Faint as

he was, and in ill-plight for battle, there needed but the sight of

the heathen foe to send each drop of his Castilian blood eddying in

hot currents through every vein of the brave Spaniard. “St. Jago!”

he cried, in clear and musical tones, “St. Jago and God aid!” and

with the word he laid his long lance in the rest, and spurred his

charger to the shock. It was not, however, either the usual mode of

warfare with the Moors, or their intent at present to meet the shock

of the impetuous and heavily armed cavalier. One of their number, it

is true, dashed out as if to meet him--a spare gray-headed man, whose

years, although they had worn away the soundness, and destroyed the

muscular symmetry of his frame, had spared the lithe and wiry sinews;

had dried up all that was superfluous of his flesh, and withered all

that was comely of his aspect; but had left him erect, and strong and

hardy as in his youngest days of warfare. His dress, caftan and turban

both, were of that dark-green hue, which bespoke an emir, or lineal

descendant of the prophet--the only order of nobility acknowledged by

the Moslemin--while the rich materials of which they were composed,

the jewels which bedecked the hilt and scabbard of both cimeter and

yatagan, the necklaces of gold which encircled the broad glossy chest

of his high-blooded black Arabian, proved as unerringly his wealth

and consequence. Forth he dashed then, with the national war-cry,

“La illah allah la!” brandishing in his right hand the long, light

javelin, grasped by the middle, which his countrymen were wont to hurl

against their adversaries, with such unerring accuracy both of hand

and eye; and swinging on his left arm a light round buckler, of the

tough hide of the African buffalo, studded with knobs of silver; while

with his long reins flying as it would seem quite loose, by aid of

his sharp Moorish curb, he wheeled his fiery horse from side to side

so rapidly as quite to balk the aim of the Spaniard’s level lance.

As the old mussulman advanced, fearlessly as it seemed, against the

Christian knight, his comrades galloped on abreast with him, but by

no means with the same steadiness of purpose, the track was indeed

so narrow that three could hardly ride abreast in it; yet narrow as

it was, the nearest followers of the emir did not attempt to keep

it; on the contrary, giving their wild coursers the sharp edge of

their stirrups, they leaped and bolted from one side to the other of

the path now plunging into the open wood on either hand, and dashing

furiously over rock and stone, now pressing straightforward for perhaps

a hundred yards as if to bear down bodily on their antagonist. All

this, it must be understood, passed in less time than it has taken

to describe it; for though the enemies, when first their eyes caught

sight of one another, were some five hundred yards apart, the speed

of their fleet horses brought them rapidly to close quarters. And now

they were upon the very point of meeting--the Spaniard bowing his

unhelmed head behind his charger’s neck, to shield as best he might

that vital part from the thrust of the flashing assagay with his lance

projecting ten feet at the least, before the chamfront which protected

the brow of his barbed war-horse, and the sheath of his twohanded

broadsword clanging and rattling at every bound of the horse against

the steel-plates which protected the legs of the man-at-arms!--the Moor

sitting erect, nay, almost standing up in his short stirrups, with

his keen, black eye glancing from beneath the shadow of his turban,

and his spear poised and quivering on high. Now they were scarce a

horse’s length asunder, when, with a shrill, peculiar yell, the old

Moor wheeled his horse out of the road, and dashed into the wood, his

balked antagonist being borne aimlessly right onward into the little

knot of men who followed on the emir’s track. Not far, however, was

he borne onward; for, with a second yell, even shriller than before,

the moslem curbed his Arab, till he stood bolt upright, and turning

sharp round, with such velocity that he seemed actually to whirl about

as if upon a pivot, darted back on him, and with the speed of light

hurled the long assagay. Just at that point of time the lance point

of the Spaniard was within a hand’s breadth of the buckler--frail

guard to the breast--of the second of those eastern warriors, but it

was never doomed to pierce it. The light reed hurtled through the

air, and its keen head of steel, hurled with most accurate aim, found

a joint in the barbings of the war-horse. Exactly in that open and

unguarded spot, which intervenes between the hip-bone and the ribs,

it entered--it drove through the bright and glistening hide, through

muscle, brawn, and sinew--clear through the vitals of the tortured

brute, and even--with such tremendous vigor was it sent from that old

arm--through the ribs on the farther side. With an appalling shriek,

the agonized animal sprung up, with all his feet into the air, six feet

at least in height, then plunged head foremost! Yet, strange to say,

such was the masterly and splendid horsemanship, such was the cool

steadiness of the European warrior, that, as his charger fell, rolling

over and over, writhing and kicking in the fierce death-struggle, he

alighted firmly and fairly on his feet. Without a second’s interval,

for he had cast his heavy lance far from him, while his steed was yet

in air, he whirled his long sword from its scabbard, and struck with

the full sweep of his practised arm at the nearest of the Saracens,

who were now wheeling round him, circling and yelling like a flock of

sea-fowl. Full on the neck of a delicate and fine-limbed Arab, just at

the juncture of the spine and skull, did the sheer blow take place;

and cleaving the vertebræ asunder, and half the thickness of the

muscular flesh below them, hurled the horse lifeless, and the rider

stunned and senseless to the earth at his feet. A second sweep of the

same ponderous blade brought down a second warrior, with his right arm

half-severed from his body; a third time it was raised; but ere it

fell, another javelin, launched by the same aged hand, whizzed through

the air, and took effect a little way below the elbow-joint, just where

the brassard and the gauntlet met, the trenchant-point pierced through

between the bones, narrowly missing the great artery, and the uplifted

sword sunk harmless! A dull expression of despair settled at once over

the bright expressive features, which had so lately been enkindled by

the fierce ardor and excitement of the conflict. His left hand dropped,

as it were instinctively, to the place where it should have found the

hilt of his dagger; but the sheath was empty, and the proud warrior

stood, with his right arm dropping to his side, transfixed by the long

lance, and streaming with dark blood, glaring, in impotent defiance,

upon his now triumphant enemies. The nature of the Moorish tribes

had been, it should be here observed, very materially altered, since

they had crossed the straits; they were no longer the cruel, pitiless

invaders offering no option to the vanquished, but of the Koran or the

cimeter; but, softened by intercourse with the Christians, and having

imbibed, during the lapse of ages spent in continual warfare against

the most gallant and accomplished cavaliers of Europe, much of the true

spirit of chivalry, they had adopted many of the best points of that

singular institution. Among the principal results of this alteration

in the national character was this--that they now no longer ruthlessly

slaughtered unresisting foes, but, affecting to be guided by the

principles of knightly courtesy, held all to mercy who were willing to

confess themselves overcome. When, therefore, it was evident that any

farther resistance was out of the question, the old emir leaping down

from his charger’s back, with all the agility of a boy, unsheathed his

Damascus cimeter, a narrow, crooked blade, with a hilt elaborately

carved and jewelled, and strode slowly up to face the wounded Christian.

“Yield thee,” he said, in calm and almost courteous tones--using

the _lingua Franca_, or mixed tongue, half Arabic, half Spanish,

which formed the ordinary medium of communication between the two

discordant races which at that time occupied the great peninsula of

Europe--“yield thee, sir knight! thou art sore wounded, and enough hast

thou done already, and enough suffered, to entitle thee to all praise

of valor, to all privilege of courtesy.”

“To whom must I yield me, emir?” queried the Christian, in reply; “to

whom must I yield? since yield I needs must; for, as you truly say, I

can indeed resist no longer. I pray thee, of thy courtesy, inform me?”

“To me--Muley Abdallah el Zagal!”

“Nor unto nobler chief or braver warrior could any cavalier surrender.

Therefore, I yield myself true captive, rescue or no rescue!” and

as he spoke he handed the long silver-hilted sword, which he had so

well wielded, to his captor. But the old Moor put aside the proffered

weapon. “Wear it,” he said, “wear it, sir, your pledged word suffices

that you will not unsheath it. Shame were it to deprive so good a

cavalier of the sword he hath used so gallantly! But lo! your wound

bleeds grievously. I pray you sit, and let your hurt be tended--Ho!

Hamet, Hassan, lend a hand here to unarm this good gentleman. I pray

you, sir, inform me of your style and title.”

“I am styled Roderigo de Narvaez,” returned the cavalier, “equerry and

banner-bearer to the most noble Don Diego de Cordova, the famous count

of Cabra!”

“Then be assured, Don Roderigo, of being, at my hands, entreated with

all due courtesy and honor--till that the good count shall arrange for

thy ransom or exchange.”

A little while sufficed to draw off the gauntlet, to cut the shaft of

the lance, where the steel protruded entirely through the wounded arm,

and to draw it out by main force from between the bones, which it had

actually strained asunder. But so great was the violence which it was

necessary to exert, and so great was the suffering which it caused,

that the stout warrior actually swooned away; nor did he altogether

recover his senses, although every possible means at that time known

were applied for his restoration, until the blood had been stanched,

and a rude, temporary litter, framed of lances bound together by the

scarfs and baldrics of the emir’s retinue, and strewn with war-cloaks

was prepared for him. Just as this slender vehicle was perfected

and slung between the saddles of four warriors, the color returned

to the pallid lips and cheeks of the brave Spaniard, and gradually

animation was restored. In the meantime, the escort of El Zagal had

been increased by the arrival of many bands of steel-clad warriors,

returning from the pursuit of the routed Spaniards; until at length a

grand host was collected, comprising several thousands of soldiery, of

every species of force at that time in use--cavalry, archers, infantry,

arrayed beneath hundreds of many colored banners, and marching gayly on

to the blithe music of war-drum, atabal, and clarion. The direction of

the route taken by this martial company was the same wild, desolate,

and toilsome road, by which Don Roderigo had so nearly escaped that

morning. All day long did they march beneath a burning sun and

cloudless sky, the fierce heat insupportably reflected from the white

limestone crags, and sandy surface of the roads; and so tremendous were

its effects, that many of the horses and mules, laden with baggage,

which accompanied the cavalcade, died on the wayside; while the wounded

captive, between anxiety and pain, and the incessant jolting of the

litter, was in a state of fever bordering nearly on delirium, during

the whole of the long march.

At length, just when the sun was setting, and the soft dews of evening

were falling silently on the parched and scanty herbage, the train of

El Zagal reached the foot of a rugged and precipitous hill, crowned by

a lofty watch-tower. Ordering his troops to bivouac as best they might,

at the base of the steep acclivity, the old Moor spurred up its side

with his immediate train and his enfeebled captive. Just as he reached

the brow the gates flew open, and the loveliest girl that ever met a

sire’s embrace, rushed forth with her attendants--the sternness melted

from the old warrior’s brow, as he clasped her to his bosom, before

he entered the dark portal. Within that mountain fortalice long lay

the Christian warrior, struggling midway between the gates of life and

death; and when at length he awoke from his appalling dreams, strange

visions of dark eyes compassionately beaming upon his, soft hands that

tended his worn limbs, and shapes angelically graceful floating about

his pillow, were blent with the dark recollections of his hot delirium,

and that too so distinctly, that he long doubted whether these too were

the creations of his fevered fancy. Well had it been for him, well for

one lovelier and frailer being, had they indeed been dreams; but who

shall struggle against his destiny!

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward; and, as they fled, brought

health and vigor to the body of the wounded knight; but brought no

restoration to his overwrought and excited mind. The war still raged in

ruthless and unsparing fury, between the politic and crafty Ferdinand,

backed by the chivalry of the most puissant realm of Europe, and the

ill-fated Moorish prince, who, last and least of a proud race, survived

to weep the downfall of that lovely kingdom which he had lacked the

energy to govern or defend. Field after field was fought, and foray

followed foray, till every streamlet of Grenada had been empurpled by

the mingled streams of Saracen and Christian gore, till every plain and

valley had teemed with that rank verdure, which betrays a soil watered

by human blood. So constant was the strife, so general the havoc, so

wide the desolation, that those who fell were scarcely mourned by their

surviving comrades, forgotten almost ere the life had left them. Hardly

a family in Spain but had lost sire, son, husband, brother; and so fast

came the tidings in, of slaughter and of death, that the ear scarce

could drink one tale of sorrow, before another banished it. And thus

it was with Roderigo de Narvaez. For a brief space, indeed, after the

fatal day of Axarquia, his name had been syllabled by those who had

escaped from the dread slaughter, with those of others as illustrious

in birth, as famous in renown, and as unfortunate, for all believed

that he had fallen in the catastrophe of their career. For a brief

space his name had swelled the charging cry of Antiquera’s chivalry,

when thirsting for revenge, and all on fire to retrieve their tarnished

laurels, they burst upon their dark-complexioned foemen. A brief space,

and he was forgotten! His death avenged by tenfold slaughter--his

soul redeemed by many a midnight mass--his virtues celebrated, and

his name recorded, even while yet he lived, on the sepulchral marble,

and the bold banner-bearer was even as though he had never been.

Alone, alone in the small mountain tower, he passed his weary days,

his long and woful nights. Ever alone! He gazed forth from the lofty

lattices over the bare and sun-scourged summits of the wild crags of

Malaga, and sighed for the fair _huertas_, the rich vineyards, and

the shadowy olives of his dear native province. He listened to the

clank of harness, to the wild summons of the Moorish horn, to the

thick-beating clatter of the hoofs, as with his fiery hordes old Muley

el Zagal swooped like some bird of rapine from his far mountain eyry

on the rich booty of the vales below; but he saw not, marked not, at

least, the gorgeousness and pomp of their array; for, when he would

have looked forth on their merry mustering, his heart would swell

within him as though it would have burst from his proud bosom--his

eyes would dazzle and grow dim, filled with unbidden tears, that his

manhood vainly strove to check--his ears would be heavy with a sound,

as it were of many falling waters. Thus, hour by hour, the heavy

days lagged on, and though the flesh of the imprisoned knight waxed

stronger still and stronger, the spirit daily flagged and faltered.

The fierce old emir noted the yielding of his captive soul, noted the

dimness of the eye, the absence of the high and sparkling fire, that

had so won his admiration on their first encounter; he noted, and to do

him justice, noted it with compassion; and ever, when he sallied forth

to battle, determined that he would grasp the earliest opportunity,

afforded by the capture of any one of his own stout adherents, to

ransom or exchange his prisoner. But, as at times, things will fall

out perversely, and, as it were, directly contrary to their accustomed

course; though he lost many by the lance, the harquebus, the sword, no

man of his brave followers was taken; nay more, so rancorous and savage

had the war latterly become, that Moor and Spaniard now, where’er they

met, charged instantly--with neither word nor parley--and fought it out

with murderous fury, till one or both had fallen. And thus it chanced,

that, while his friends esteemed him dead, and dropped him quietly into

oblivion, and his more generous captor would, had he possessed the

power, have sent him forth to liberty on easy terms of ransom, fate

kept him still in thrall.

After a while, there came a change in his demeanor; the head no longer

was propped listlessly from morn to noon, from noon “to dewy eve,” upon

his burning hand; the cheek regained its hue, the eye its quick clear

glance, keen and pervading as the falcon’s; the features beamed with

their old energy of pride and valiant resolution; his movements were

elastic, his step free and bold, his head erect and fearless; and the

old Moor observed the change, and watched, if he perchance might fathom

the mysterious cause, and queried of his menials; and yet remained

long, very long, in darkness and in doubt.

And what was that mysterious cause, that sudden overmastering power,

that spell, potent as the magician’s charm, which weaned the prisoner

from its melancholy yearnings; which kindled his eye once again with

its old fire; which roused him from his oblivious stupor, and made

him bear himself once more, not as the tame heart-broken captive, but

as the free, bold, dauntless, energetic champion; clothed as in arms

of proof, in the complete, invulnerable panoply of a soul; proud,

active, and enthusiastic, and, at a moment’s notice, prepared for

every fortune? What should it be but love--the tamer of the proud and

strong--the strengthener of the weak and timid--the tyrant of all

minds--the change of all natures--what should it be but love?

The half-remembered images of his delirium--the strong and palpable

impressions, which had so wildly floated among his feverish dreams,

had been clothed with reality--the form, which he had viewed so often

through the half-shut lids of agony and sickness, had stood revealed

in the perfection of substantial beauty before his waking eyesight;

the soft voice, which had soothed his anguish, had answered his in

audible and actual converse. In truth, that form, that voice, those

lineaments, were all-sufficient to have spell-bound the sternest and

the coldest heart, that ever manned itself against the fascinations

of the sex. Framed in the slightest and most sylph-like mould, yet of

proportions exquisitely true, of symmetry most rare, of roundness most

voluptuous, of grace unrivalled, Zelica was in sooth a creature, formed

not so much for mortal love as for ideal adoration. Her coal-black

hair, profuse almost unto redundancy, waving in natural ringlets,

glossy and soft as silk--her wild, full, liquid eyes, now blazing with

intolerable lustre, now melting into the veriest luxury of languor; her

high, pale, intellectual brow; her delicately-chiselled lineaments,

the perfect arch of her small ruby mouth, and, above all, the fleet

and changeful gleams of soul that would flit over that rare face--the

flash of intellect, bright and pervading as the prophet’s glance of

inspiration; the sweet, soft, dream-like melancholy, half lustre and

half shadow, like the transparent twilight of her own lovely skies; the

beaming, soul-entrancing smiles, that laughed out from the eyes before

they curled the ever-dimpling lips--these were the spells that roused

the Christian captive from his dark lethargy of wo.

A first chance interview in the small garden of the fortress--for

in the smallest and most iron fastnesses of the Moors of Spain, the

decoration of a garden, with its dark cypresses, its orange-bowers,

its marble fountains, and arabesque kiosk among its group of fan-like

palms, imported with great care and cost from their far native sands,

was never lacking--a first chance interview, wherein the Moorish

maiden, bashful at being seen beyond the precincts of the harem

unveiled, and that too by a giaour, was all tears, flutter, and

dismay; while the enamored Spaniard--enamored at first sight, and

recognising in the fair, trembling shape before him the ministering

angel who had smoothed his feverish pillow, and flitted round his

bed during those hours of dark and dread delirium--poured forth his

gratitude, his love, his admiration, in a rich flood of soul-fraught

and resistless eloquence: a first chance interview led by degrees, and

after interchange of flowery tokens, and wavings of white kerchiefs

by hands whiter yet, from latticed casements, and all those thousand

nothings, which, imperceptible and nothing worth to the dull world, are

to the lover confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ, to frequent

meetings--meetings sweeter that they were stolen, fonder that they were

brief, during the fierce heat of the noontide, when all beside were

buried in the soft siesta, or by the pale light of the amorous moon,

when every eye that might have spied out their clandestine interviews

was sealed in deepest slumber.

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward, and still the Spanish cavalier

remained a double captive in the lone tower of El Zagal. Captive in

spirit, yet more than in the body--for, having spent the whole of his

gay youth, the whole of his young, fiery manhood, in the midst of

courts and cities; having from early boyhood basked in the smiles of

beauty, endured unharmed the ordeal of most familiar intercourse with

the most lovely maids and matrons of old Spain, and borne away a heart

untouched by any passion, by any fancy, how transient or how brief

soever; and having, at that period of his life when man’s passions

are perhaps the strongest, and surely the most permanent, surrendered

almost at first sight his affections to this wild Moorish maiden--it

seemed as if he voluntarily devoted his whole energies of soul and

body to this one passion; as if he purposely lay by all other wishes,

hopes, pursuits; as if he made himself designedly a slave, a blinded

worshipper.

It was, indeed, a singular, a wondrous subject for the contemplation

of philosophy, to see the keen, cool, polished courtier, the warrior

of a hundred battles, the cavalier of the most glowing courts, the

bland, sagacious, wily, and perhaps cold-hearted citizen of the

great world, bowing a willing slave, surrendering his very privilege

of thought and action, to a mere girl, artless, and frank, and

inexperienced; devoid, as it would seem, of every charm that could have

wrought upon a spirit such as his; skilled in no art, possessing no

accomplishment, whereby to win the field against the deep sagacity, the

wily worldly-heartedness of him whom she had conquered almost without

a struggle. And yet this very artlessness it was which first enchained

him; this very free, clear candor, which, as a thing he never had

before encountered, set all his art at nothing.

Happily fled the winged days in this sweet dream; until at length the

Spaniard woke--woke to envisage his position; to take deep thought as

to his future conduct; to ponder, to resolve, to execute. It needed

not much of the deep knowledge of the world for which, above all else,

Roderigo was so famous, to see that under no contingency would the old

Moor--the fiercest foeman of Spain’s chivalry, the bitterest hater of

the very name of Spaniard--consent to such a union. It needed even less

to teach him that, so thoroughly had he enchained the heart, the fancy,

the affections of the young Zelica, that for him she would willingly

resign, not the home only, and the country, and the creed of her

forefathers, but name and fame, and life itself, if such a sacrifice

were called for. Fervently, passionately did the young Spaniard

love--honestly too, and in all honor; nor would he, to have gained an

empire, have wronged that innocent, confiding, artless being, who had

set all the confidence of a young heart, which, guileless in itself,

feared naught of guile from others, upon the faith and honor of her

lover. At a glance he perceived that their only chance was flight. A

few soft moments of persuasion prevailed with the fair girl; nor was

it long ere opportunity, and bribery, and the quick wit of Roderigo,

wrought on the avarice of one, the trustiest of old Muley’s followers,

to plan for them an exit from the guarded walls, to furnish them with

horses and a guide, the very first time the old emir should go forth to

battle.

Not long had they to wait. As the month waned, and the nights grew dark

and moonless, the note of preparation once again was heard in hall, and

armory, and stable. Harness was buckled on, war-steeds were barbed for

battle, and, for a foray destined to last three weeks, forth sallied El

Zagal.

Three days they waited, waited in wild suspense, in order that the

host might have advanced so far, that they should risk no interruption

from the stragglers of the rear. The destined day arrived, and slowly,

one by one, the weary hours lagged on. At last--at last--the skies are

darkened, and Lucifer, love’s harbinger, is twinkling in the west.

Three saddled barbs, of the best blood of Araby, stand in a gloomy

dingle, about a bow-shot from the castle-walls, tended by one dark,

turbaned servitor. Evening has passed, and midnight, dark, silent,

and serene, broods o’er the sleeping world. Two figures steal down

from the postern gate: one a tall, stately form, sheathed cap-à-pie in

European panoply; the other a slight female figure, veiled closely, and

bedecked with the rich, flowing draperies that, form the costume of all

oriental nations. ’Tis Roderigo and Zelica. Now they have reached the

horses; the cavalier has raised the damsel to her saddle, has vaulted

to his demipique. Stealthily for a hundred yards they creep away at

a foot’s pace, till they have gained the greensward, whence no loud

clank will bruit abroad their progress. Now they give free head to

their steeds--they spur, they gallop! Ha! whence that wild and pealing

yell--“La illah, allah la!” On every side it rings--on every side--and

from bush, brake, and thicket, on every side, up spring turban, and

assagay, and cimeter--all the wild cavalry of El Zagal!

Resistance was vain; but, ere resistance could be offered, up strode

the veteran emir. “This, then,” he said, in tones of bitter scorn,

“this is a Christian’s gratitude--a Spaniard’s honor!--to bring

disgrace--”

“No, sir!” thundered the Spaniard, “no disgrace! A Christian cavalier

disgraces not the noblest demoiselle or dame by offer of his hand!”

“His hand?” again the old Moor interrupted him; “his hand--wouldst thou

then marry--”

“Had we reached Antiquera’s walls this night, to-morrow’s dawn had seen

Zelica the all-honored bride of Roderigo de Narvaez!”

“Ha! is it so, fair sir?” replied the father; “and thou, I trow, young

mistress, thou too art nothing loath?” and taking her embarrassed

silence for assent--“be it so!” he continued, “be it so! deep will we

feast to-night, and with to-morrow’s dawn Zelica shall be the bride of

Roderigo de Narvaez!”

Astonishment rendered the Spaniard mute, but ere long gratitude found

words, and they returned gay, joyous, and supremely happy, to the lone

fortress.

There, in the vaulted hall, the board was set, the feast was spread,

the red wine flowed profusely, the old Moor on his seat of state, and

right and left of him that fair young couple; and music flowed from

unseen minstrels’ harps, and perfumes steamed the hall with their rich

incense, and lights blazed high, and garlands glittered: but blithe as

were all appliances, naught was so blithe or joyous as those young,

happy hearts.

The feast was ended; and Abdallah rose, and filled a goblet to the

brim--a mighty goblet, golden and richly gemmed--with the rare

wine of Shiraz. “Drink,” he said, “Christian, after your country’s

fashion--drink to your bride, and let her too assist in draining this

your nuptial chalice.”

Roderigo seized the cup, and with a lightsome smile drank to his lovely

bride--and deeply he quaffed, and passed it to Zelica; and she, too,

pleased with the ominous pledge, drank as she ne’er had drank before,

as never did she drink thereafter!

The goblet was drained, drained to the very dregs; and, with a fiendish

sneer, Muley Abdallah uprose once again.

“Christian, I said to-morrow’s dawn should see Zelica Roderigo’s

bride, and it shall--in the grave! To prayer--to prayer! if prayer may

now avail ye! Lo! your last cup on earth is drained; your lives are

forfeit--nay, they are gone already!”

Why dwell upon the hateful scene--the agony, the anguish, the despair?

For one short hour, in all the extremities of torture, that hapless

pair writhed, wretchedly convulsed, before the gloating eyes of the

stern murderer! Repressing each all outward symptoms of the tortures

they endured, lest they should add to the dread torments of the

other--not a sigh, not a groan, not a reproach was heard! Locked in

each other’s arms, they wrestled to the last with the dread venom;

locked in each other’s arms, when the last moment came, they lay

together on the cold floor of snowy marble--unhappy victims, fearful

monuments of the dread vengeance of a Moorish father!

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes

Spelling variations were made consistent when a predominant preference

was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

There were many occurrences of unusual or unexpected punctuation and

capitalization (or lack thereof); they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks

were remedied when the proper placement was unambiguous.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of

inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Page 161: “longes” was printed that way.

Page 289: “lounged” was printed that way.

Page 339: “glorious, rash, and hazardous” was misprinted as “rask”. The

footnote refers to documents with the correct spelling.