strength and patience to drink of _his_ cup. Sometimes he prayed that
prayer with strong crying and tears; sometimes with cold mute lips, too
weary to cry any longer. If he was heard and answered, he knew it not
then.
Days of suspense wore on. They were only less dreary than the nights,
when sleep fled from his eyes, and horrible visions (which yet he knew
were less horrible than the truth) rose in quick succession before his
mind.
One evening, seated on his bench in the twilight, he fell into an
uneasy slumber. The dark dread that never left him, mingling with the
sunny gleam of old memories, wove a vivid dream of Nuera, of that
summer morning when the first great conflict of his life found an
ending in the strong resolve, "Juan, brother! I will never wrong thee,
so help me God!"
The grating of the key in the door and the sudden flash of the lamp
aroused him. He started to his feet at the alcayde's entrance. This
time no change of dress was prescribed him. He knew his doom. He cried,
but to no human ear. From the very depths of his being the prayer
arose, "Father, save--sustain me; _I am thine_!"
XXXIII.
On the Other Side.
"Happy are they who learn at last,--
Though silent suffering teach
The secret of enduring strength,
And praise too deep for speech,--
Peace that no pressure from without,
No storm within can reach.
"There is no death for me to fear,
For Christ my Lord hath died:
There is no curse in all my pain,
For he was crucified;
And it is fellowship with him
That keeps me near his side."
A.L. WARING.
When the light of the next morning streamed in through the narrow
grating of his cell, Carlos was there once more, lying on his bed of
rushes. But was it indeed the next morning, or was it ten years, twenty
years afterwards? Without a painful effort of thought and memory, he
himself could scarcely have told. That last night was like a great
gulf, fixed between his present and all his past. The moment when he
entered that torch-lit subterranean room seemed a sharp, black dividing
line, sundering his life into two halves. And the latter half seemed
longer than that which had gone before.
Nor could years of suffering have left a sadder impress on the young
face, out of which the look of youth had passed, apparently for ever.
Brow and lips were pale; but two crimson spots, still telling of
feverish pain, burned on the hollow cheeks, while the large lustrous
eyes beamed with even unnatural brilliance.
The poor woman, who was doing the work of God's bright angels in
that dismal prison, came softly in. How she obtained entrance there
Carlos did not know, and was far too weak to ask, or even to wonder.
But probably she was sent by Benevidio, who knew that, in his present
condition, some human help was indispensable to the prisoner.
Maria Gonsalez was too well accustomed to scenes of horror to be
over-much surprised or shocked by what she saw. Silently, though with a
heart full of compassion, she rendered the few little services in her
power. She placed the broken frame in as easy a position as she could,
and once and again she raised to the parched lips the "cup of cold
water" so eagerly desired.
He roused himself to murmur a word of thanks; then, as she prepared to
leave him, his eyes followed her wistfully.
"Can I do anything more for you, señor?" she asked.
"Yes, mother. Tell me--have you spoken to my brother?"
"Ay de mi! no, señor," said the poor woman, whose ability was not equal
to her goodwill. "I have tried, God wot; but I could not get from my
master the name of the place where he lives without making him suspect
something, and never since have I had the good fortune to see his face."
"I know you have done--what you could. My message does not matter now.
Not so much. Still, best he should go. Tell him so, when you find him.
But, remember, tell him nought of this. You promise, mother? He must
never know it--_never_!"
She spoke a few words of pity and condolence.
"It _was_ horrible!" he faltered, in faint, broken tones. "Worst of
all--the return to life. For I thought all was over, and that I should
awake face to face with Christ. But--I cannot speak of it."
There was a long silence; then his eye kindled, and a look of joy--ay,
even of triumph--flashed across the wasted, suffering face. "But _I
have overcome_! No; not I. Christ has overcome in me, the weakest of
his members. Now I am beyond it--on the other side."
To the poor tortured captive there had been given a foretaste, strange
and sweet, of what they feel who stand on the sea of glass, having
the harps of God in their hands. Men had done their worst--their very
worst. He knew now all "the dread mystery of pain;" all that flesh
could accomplish in its fiercest conflict with spirit. Yet not one word
that could injure any one he loved had been wrung from his lips.
_All_ was over now. In that there was mercy--far more mercy than was
shown to others. He had been permitted to drain the cup at a single
draught. _Now_ he could feel grateful to the physicians, who with truly
kind cruelty (and not without some risk to themselves) had prevented,
in his case, that fiendish device, "the suspension of the torture."
Even according to the execrable laws of the Inquisition, he had won his
right to die in peace.
As time passed on, a blessed sense that he was now out of the hands of
man, and in those of God alone, sank like balm upon his weary spirit.
Fear was gone; grief had passed away; even memory had almost ceased to
give him a pang. For how could he long for the loved faces of former
days, when day and night Christ himself was near him? So strangely
near, so intimately present, that he sometimes thought that if, through
some wonderful relenting of his persecutors, Juan were permitted to
come and stand beside him, that loved brother would still seem further
away, less real, than the unseen Friend who was keeping watch by his
couch. And even the bodily pain, that so seldom left him, was not hard
to hear, for it was only the touch of His finger.
He had passed into the clear air upon the mountain top, where the sun
shines ever, and the storm winds cannot come. Nothing hurt him; nothing
disturbed him now. He had visitors; for what had really placed him
beyond the reach of his enemies was, not unnaturally, supposed by them
to have brought him into a fitting state to receive their exhortations.
So Inquisitors, monks, and friars--"persons of good learning and honest
repute"--came in due course to his lonely cell, armed with persuasions
and arguments, which were always weighted with threats and promises.
Their voices seemed to reach him faintly, from a great distance. Into
"the secret place of the Lord," where he dwelt now, they could not
enter. Threats and promises fell powerless on his ear. What more could
they do to him? As far as the mere facts of the case were concerned,
this security may have been misplaced--nay, it _was_ misplaced; but it
saved him from much suffering. And as for promises, had they thrown
open the door of his dungeon and bid him go forth free, only that one
intense longing to see his brother's face would have nerved him to make
the effort.
Arguments he was glad to answer when permitted. It was a joy to speak
for his Lord, who had done, and was doing, such great things for him.
As far as he could, he made use of those Scripture words with which his
memory was so richly stored. But more than once it happened that he
was forced to take up the weapons which he had learned in the schools
to use so skilfully. He tore sophisms to pieces with the dexterity of
one who knew how they were constructed, and astonished the students of
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas by vanquishing them on their own ground.
Reproach and insult he met with a fearless meekness that nothing could
ruffle. Why should he feel anger? Rather did he pity those who stood
without in the darkness, not seeing the Face he saw, not hearing the
Voice he heard. Usually, however, those who visited him yielded to the
spell of his own sweet and perfect courtesy, and were kinder than they
intended to be to the "professed impenitent heretic."
His heart, now "at leisure from itself," was filled with sympathy for
his imprisoned brethren and sisters. But, except to Maria Gonsalez,
he dared not speak of them, lest the simplest remark or question
might give rise to some new suspicion, or supply some link, hitherto
missing, in the chain of evidence against them. But those who came
to visit him sometimes gave him unasked intelligence about them. He
could not, however, rely upon the truth of what reached him in this
way. He was told that Losada had retracted; he did not believe it.
Equally did he disbelieve a similar story of Don Juan Ponce de Leon,
in which, unhappily, there was some truth. The constancy of that
gentle, generous-hearted nobleman had yielded under torture and cruel
imprisonment, and concessions had been wrung from him that dimmed the
brightness of his martyr crown. On the other hand, the waverer, Garçias
Arias, known as the "White Doctor," had come forward with a hardihood
truly marvellous, and not only confessed his own faith, but mocked and
defied the Inquisitors.
Of Fray Constantino, the most contradictory stories were told him.
At one time he was assured that the great preacher had not only
admitted his own guilt, but also, on the rack, had informed against
his brethren. Again he was told, and this time with truth, that the
Emperor's former chaplain and favourite had been spared the horrors of
the Question, but that the eagerly desired evidence against him had
been obtained by accident. A lady of rank, one of his chief friends,
was amongst the prisoners; and the Inquisitors sent an Alguazil
to her house to demand possession of her jewels. Her son, without
waiting to ascertain the precise object of the officer's visit,
surrendered to him in a panic some books which Fray Constantino had
given his mother to conceal. Amongst them was a volume in his own
handwriting, containing the most explicit avowal of the principles of
the Reformation. On this being shown to the prisoner, he struggled no
longer. "You have there a full and candid confession of my belief,"
he said. And he was now in one of the dark and loathsome subterranean
cells of the Triana.
Amongst those who most frequently visited Carlos was the prior of the
Dominican convent. This man seemed to take a peculiar interest in the
young heretic's fate. He was a good specimen of a character oftener
talked about than met with in real life,--the genuine fanatic. When he
threatened Carlos, as he spared not to do, with the fire that is never
quenched, at least he believed with all his heart that he was in danger
of it. Carlos soon perceived this, and accepting his honest intention
to benefit him, came to regard him with a kind of friendliness.
Besides, the prior listened to what he said with more attention than
did most of the others, and even in the prison of the Inquisition a man
likes to be listened to, especially when his opportunities of speaking
are few and brief.
Many weeks passed by, and still Carlos lay on his mat, in weakness and
suffering of body, though in calm gladness of spirit. Surgical and
medical aid had been afforded him in due course. And it was not the
fault of either surgeon or physician that he did not recover. They
could stanch wounds and set dislocated joints, but when the springs of
life were sapped, how could they renew them? How could they quicken the
feeble pulse, or send back life and energy into the broken, exhausted
frame? At this time Carlos himself felt certain--even more certain than
did his physician--that never again would his footsteps pass the limits
of that narrow cell.
Once, indeed, there came to him a brief and fleeting pang of regret.
It was in the spring-time; everywhere else so bright and fair,
but making little change in those gloomy cells. Maria Gonsalez now
sometimes obtained access to him, partly through Benevidio's increased
inattention to all his duties, partly because, any attempt at escape
on the part of the captive being obviously out of the question, he was
somewhat less jealously watched. And more than once the gaoler's little
daughter stole in timidly beside her nurse, bearing some trifling gift
for the sick prisoner. To Carlos these visits came like sunbeams; and
in a very short time he succeeded in establishing quite an intimate
friendship with the child.
One morning she entered his cell with Maria, carrying a basket, from
which she produced, with shy pleasure, a few golden oranges. "Look,
señor," she said, "they are good to eat now, for the blossoms are
out.[24] I gathered some to show you;" and filling both her hands with
the luscious wealth of the orange flowers, she flung them carelessly
down on the mat beside him. In her eyes they were of no value compared
with the fruit.
[24] The people of Seville do not think the oranges fit to eat
until the new blossoms come out in spring.
With Carlos it was far otherwise. The rich perfume that filled the cell
filled his heart also with sweet sad dreams, which lasted long after
his kindly visitors had left him. The orange-trees had just been in
flower last spring when all God's free earth and sky were shut out from
his sight for ever. Only a year ago! What a long, long year it seemed!
And only one year further back he was walking in the orange gardens
with Doña Beatriz, in all the delicious intoxication of his first and
last dream of youthful love. "Better here than there, better now than
then," he murmured, though the tears gathered in his eyes. "But oh, for
one hour of the old free life, one look at orange-trees in flower, or
blue skies, or the grassy slopes and cork-trees of Nuera! Or"--and more
painfully intense the yearning grew--"one familiar face, belonging to
the past, to show me it was not all a dream, as I am sometimes tempted
to think it. Thine, Ruy, if it might be--O Ruy, Ruy!--But, thank God, I
have not betrayed thee!"
In the afternoon of that day visitors were announced. Carlos was not
surprised to see the stern narrow face and white hair of the Dominican
prior. But he was a little surprised to observe that the person who
followed him wore the gray cowl of St. Francis. The prior merely
bestowed the customary salutation upon him, and then, stepping aside,
allowed his companion to approach.
But as soon as Carlos saw his face, he raised himself eagerly, and
stretching out both his hands, grasped those of the Franciscan. "Dear
Fray Sebastian!" he cried; "my good, kind tutor!"
"My lord the prior has been graciously pleased to allow me to visit
your Excellency."
"It is truly kind of you, my lord. I thank you heartily," said Carlos,
frankly and promptly turning towards the Dominican, who looked at him
with somewhat the air of one who is trying to be stern with a child.
"I have ventured to allow you this indulgence," he said, "in the hope
that the counsels of one whom you hold in honour may lead you to
repentance."
Carlos turned once more to Fray Sebastian, whose hand he still held.
"It is a great joy to see you," he said. "Only to-day I had been
longing for a familiar face. And you are changed never a whit since you
used to teach me my humanities. How have you come hither? Where have
you been all these years?"
Poor Fray Sebastian vainly tried to frame an answer to these simple
questions. He had come to that prison straight from Munebrãga's
splendid patio, where, amidst the gleam of azulejos and of
many-coloured marbles, the scent of rare exotics and the music of
rippling fountains, he had partaken of a sumptuous mid-day repast.
In this dark foul dungeon there was nothing to please the senses, not
even God's free air and light. Everything on which his eye rested was
coarse, painful, loathsome. By the prisoner's side lay the remains of
a meal, in great contrast to his. And the sleeve, fallen back from the
hand that held his own, showed deep scars on the wrist. He knew whence
they were. Yet the face that was looking in his, with kindling eyes,
and a smile on the parted lips, might have been the face of the boy
Carlos, when he praised him for a successful task, only for the pain
in it, and, far deeper than pain, a look of assured peace that boyhood
could scarcely know.
Repressing a choking sensation, he faltered, "Señor Don Carlos, it
grieves me to the heart to see you here."
"Do not grieve for me, dear Fray Sebastian, for I tell you truly, I
have never known such happy hours as since I came here. At first,
indeed, I suffered; there was storm and darkness. But then"--here for
a moment his voice failed, and his flushed cheek and quivering lip
betrayed the anguish a too hasty movement cost the broken frame. But,
recovering himself quickly, he went on: "Then He arose and rebuked
the wind and the sea; and there was a great calm. That calm lasts
still. And oftentimes this narrow room seems to me the house of God,
the very gate of heaven. Moreover," he added, with a smile of strange
brightness, "there is heaven itself beyond."
"But, señor and your Excellency, consider the disgrace and sorrow
of your noble family--that is, I mean"--here the speaker paused
in perplexity, and met the keen eye of the prior, fixed somewhat
scornfully, as he thought, upon him. He was quite conscious that the
Dominican was thinking him incapable, and incompetent to the task
he had so earnestly solicited. He had sedulously prepared himself
for this important interview, had gone through it in imagination
beforehand, laying up in his memory several convincing and most
pertinent exhortations, which could not fail to benefit his old pupil.
But these were of no avail now; in fact, they all vanished from his
recollection. He had just begun something rather vague and incoherent
about Holy Church, when the prior broke in.
"Honoured brother," he said, addressing with scrupulous politeness
the member of a rival fraternity, "the prisoner may be more willing
to listen to your pious exhortations, and you may have more freedom
in addressing him, if you are left for a brief space alone together.
Therefore, though it is scarcely regular, I will visit a prisoner in a
neighbouring apartment, and return hither for you in due time."
Fray Sebastian thanked him, and he withdrew, saying as he did so, "It
is not necessary for me to remind my reverend brother that conversation
upon worldly matters is strictly forbidden in the Holy House."
Whether the prior visited the other prisoner or no, it is not for
us to inquire; but if he did, his visit was a short one; for it is
certain that for some time he paced the gloomy corridor with troubled
footsteps. He was thinking of a woman's face, a fair young face, to
which that of Don Carlos Alvarez bore a startling likeness. "Too harsh,
needlessly harsh," he murmured; "for, after all, _she_ was no heretic."
But which of us is always in the right? Ave Maria Sanctissima, ora pro
me! But if I can, I would fain make some reparation--to _him_. If ever
there was a true and sincere penitent, he is one."
After a little further delay, he summoned Fray Sebastian by a
peremptory knock at the inner door, the outer one of course remaining
open. The Franciscan came, his broad, good-humoured face bathed in
tears, which he scarcely made an effort to conceal.
The prior glanced at him for a moment, then signed to Herrera, who was
waiting in the gallery, to come and make the door fast. They walked
on together in silence, until at length Fray Sebastian said, in a
trembling voice, "My lord, you are very powerful here; can _you_ do
nothing for him?"
"I _have_ done much. At my intercession he had nine months of solitude,
in which to recollect himself and ponder his situation, ere he was
called on to make answer at all. Judge my amazement when, instead of
entering upon his defence, or calling witnesses to his character, he
at once confessed all. Judge my greater amazement at his continued
obstinacy since. When a man has broken a giant oak in two, he may feel
some surprise at being battled by a sapling."
"He will not relent," said Fray Sebastian, hardly restraining his sobs.
"He will die."
"I see one chance to save him," returned the prior; "but it is a
hazardous experiment. The consent of the Supreme Council is necessary,
as well as that of my Lord Vice-Inquisitor, and neither may be very
easy to obtain."
"To save his body or his soul?" Fray Sebastian asked anxiously.
"Both, if it succeeds. But I can say no more," he added rather
haughtily; "for my plan is bound up with a secret, of which few living
men, save myself, are in possession."
XXXIV.
Fray Sebastian's Trouble.
"Now, with fainting frame,
With soul just lingering on the flight begun,
To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one,
I bless thee. Peace be on thy noble head,
Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!
I bid this prayer survive me, and retain
Its power again to bless thee, and again.
Thou hast been gathered into my dark fate
Too much; too long for my sake desolate
Hath been thine exiled youth; but now take back
From dying hands thy freedom."
HEMANS.
It was late in August. All day long the sky had been molten fire, and
the earth brass. Every one had dozed away the sultry noontide hours
in the coolest recesses of dwellings made to exclude heat, as ours
to exclude cold. But when at last the sun sank in flame beneath the
horizon, people began to creep out languidly to woo the refreshment of
the evening breeze.
The beautiful gardens of the Triana were still deserted, save by
two persons. One of these, a young lad--we beg pardon, a young
gentleman--of fifteen or sixteen, sat, or rather reclined, by the
river-side, eating slices from an enormous melon, which he cut with a
small silver-hilted dagger. A plumed cap, and a gay velvet jerkin lined
with satin, had been thrown aside for coolness sake, and lay near him
on the ground; so that his present dress consisted merely of a mass
of the finest white holland, delicately starched and frilled, velvet
hosen, long silk stockings, and fashionable square-toed shoes. Curls
of scented hair were thrown back from a face beautiful as that of a
girl, but bold and insolent in its expression as that of a spoiled and
mischievous boy.
The other person was seated in the arbour mentioned once before, with
a book in his hand, of which, however, he did not in the course of
an hour turn over a single leaf. A look of chronic discontent and
dejection had replaced the good-humoured smiles of Fray Sebastian
Gomez. Everything was wrong with the poor Franciscan now. Even the
delicacies of his patron's table ceased to please him; and he, in his
turn, was fast ceasing to please his patron. How could it be otherwise,
when he had lost not only his happy art of indirect ingenious flattery,
but his power to be commonly agreeable or amusing? No more poems--not
so much as the briefest sonnet--on the suppression of heresy were to be
had from him; and he was fast becoming incapable of turning a jest or
telling a story.
It is said that idiots often manifest peculiar pain and terror at the
sound of music, because it awakens within them faint stirrings of that
higher life from which God's mysterious dispensation has shut them out.
And it is true that the first stirrings of higher life usually come
to all of us with pain and terror. Moreover, if we do not crush them
out, but cherish and foster them, they are very apt to take away the
brightness and pleasantness of the old lower life altogether, and to
make it seem worthless and distasteful.
A new and higher life had begun for Fray Sebastian. It was not his
conscience that was quickened, only his heart. Hitherto he had
chiefly cared for himself. He was a good-natured man, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term; yet no sympathy for others had ever spoiled
his appetite or hindered his digestion. But for the past three months
he had been feeling as he had not felt since he clung weeping to the
mother who left him in the parlour of the Franciscan convent--a child
of eight years old. The patient suffering face of the young prisoner in
the Triana had laid upon him a spell that he could not break.