IV

In the morning, though only a few hours of sleep had intervened, the

enthusiasm of the night had somewhat subsided. "Whence came the

inspiration of Moses?" flew up to his mind almost as soon as he opened

his eyes on the sunlit world. He threw open the protrusive casement of

his bedroom to the balmy air, tinged with a whiff of salt, and gazed

pensively at the white town rambling down towards the shining river.

Had God indeed revealed Himself on Mount Sinai? But this fresh doubt

was banished by the renewed suspicion which, after having disturbed

his dreams in nebulous distortions, sprang up in daylight clearness.

It was his babbling about Dom Diego that had ruined the genial old

physician. After days of gathering uneasiness, being unable to gain

any satisfaction from the friar, he sought the secretary of the

Inquisition in his bureau at a monastery of the Dominicans. The

secretary rubbed his hands at the sight of the speechful face. "Aha!

What new foxes hast thou scented?" The greeting stung like a stab.

"None," he replied, with a tremor in his speech and in his limbs. "I

did but desire to learn if I am to blame for Dom Diego's arrest."

"To blame?" and the secretary looked askance at him. "Say, rather, to

praise."

"Nay, to blame," repeated Gabriel staunchly. "Mayhap I mistook or

misrendered his conversation. 'Tis scant evidence to imprison a man

on. I trust ye have found more."

"Ay, thou didst but set Frei José on the track. We did not even

trouble thee to appear before the Qualifiers."

"And he is, indeed, a Jew!"

"A Hebrew of Hebrews, by his stiff-neckedness. But 'twas not quite

proven; the fox is a cunning beast. Already he hath had the three

'first audiences,' but he will not confess and be made a Penitent.

This morning we try other means."

"Torture?" said Gabriel, paling. The secretary nodded.

"But if he is innocent."

"No fear of that; he will confess at the first twinge. Come, unknit

thy brow. Wouldst make sure thou hast served Heaven? Thou shalt hear

his confession--as a reward for thy zeal."

"He will deem I have come to gloat."

"Here is a mask for thee."

Gabriel took it hesitatingly, repelled, but more strongly fascinated,

and after a feverish half-hour of waiting he found himself with the

secretary, the judge of the Inquisition, the surgeon, and another

masked man in an underground vault faintly lit by hanging lamps. On

one side were the massive doors studded with rusty knobs, of airless

cells; on the rough, spider-webbed wall opposite, against which leaned

an iron ladder, were fixed iron rings at varying heights. A thumbscrew

stood in the corner, and in the centre was a small writing-table, at

which the judge seated himself.

The secretary unlocked a dungeon door, and through the holes of his

mask Gabriel had a glimpse of the despondent figure of the burly

physician crouching in a cell nigh too narrow for turning room.

"Stand forth, Dom Abraham de Balthasar!" said the judge,

ostentatiously referring to a paper.

The physician blinked his eyes at the increased light, but did not

budge.

"My name is Dom Diego," he said.

"Thy baptismal name imports no more to us than to thee. Perchance I

should have said Dom Isaac. Stand forth!"

The physician straightened himself sullenly. "A pretty treatment for a

loyal son of Holy Church who hath served his Most Faithful and

Catholic Sovereign at the University," he grumbled. "Who accuses me of

Judaism? Confront me with the rogue!"

"'Tis against our law," said the secretary.

"Let me hear the specific charges. Read me the counts."

"In the audience-chamber. Anon."

"Confess! confess!" snapped the judge testily.

"To confess needs a sin. I have none but those I have told the priest.

But I know my accuser--'tis Gabriel da Costa, a sober and studious

young senhor with no ear for a jest, who did not understand that I was

rallying the market-woman upon the clearance of her stock by these

stinking heretics. I am no more a Jew than Da Costa himself." But even

as he spoke, Gabriel knew that they were brother-Jews--he and the

prisoner.

"Thou hypocrite!" he cried involuntarily.

"Ha!" said the secretary, his eye beaming triumph.

"This persistent denial will avail thee naught," said the judge,

"'twill only bring thee torture."

"Torture an innocent man! 'Tis monstrous!" the physician protested.

"Any tyro in the logics will tell thee that the onus of proving lies

with the accuser."

"Tush! tush! This is no University. Executioner, do thy work."

The other masked man seized the old physician and stripped him to the

skin.

"Confess!" said the judge warningly.

"If I confessed I was a Jew, I should be doubly a bad Christian,

inasmuch as I should be lying."

"None of thy metaphysical quibbles. If thou expirest under the torture

(let the secretary take note), thy death shall not be laid at the door

of the Holy Office, but of thine own obstinacy."

"Christ will avenge His martyrs," said Dom Diego, with so sublime a

mien that Gabriel doubted whether, after all, instinct had not misled

him.

The judge made an impatient sign, and the masked man tied the victim's

hands and feet together with a thick cord, and winding it around the

breast, placed the hunched, nude figure upon a stool, while he passed

the ends of the cord through two of the iron rings in the wall. Then,

kicking away the stool, he left the victim suspended in air by cords

that cut into his flesh.

"Confess!" said the judge.

But Dom Diego set his teeth. The executioner drew the cords tighter

and tighter, till the blood burst from under his victim's nails, and

ever and anon he let the sharp-staved iron ladder fall against his

naked shins.

"O Sancta Maria!" groaned the physician at length.

"These be but the beginning of thy tortures, an thou confessest not,"

said the judge, "Draw tighter."

"Nay," here interrupted the surgeon. "Another draw and he may expire."

Another tightening, and Gabriel da Costa would have fainted. Deadly

pale beneath his mask, he felt sick and trembling--the cords seemed to

be cutting into his own flesh. His heart was equally hot against the

torturers and the tortured, and he admired the physician's courage

even while he abhorred his cowardice. And while the surgeon was

busying himself to mend the victim for new tortures, Gabriel da Costa

had a shuddering perception of the tragedy of Israel--sublime and

sordid.

V

It was with equally mingled feelings, complicated by astonishment,

that he learned a week or so later that Dom Diego had been acquitted

of Judaism and set free. Impulse drove him to seek speech with the

sufferer. He crossed the river to the physician's house, but only by

extreme insistence did he procure access to the high vaulted room in

which the old man lay abed, surrounded by huge tomes on pillow and

counterpane, and overbrooded by an image of the Christ.

"Pardon that I have been reluctant to go back without a sight of

thee," said Gabriel. "My anxiety to see how thou farest after thy

mauling by the hell-hounds must be my excuse."

Dom Diego cast upon him a look of surprise and suspicion.

"The hounds may follow a wrong scent; but they are of heaven, not

hell," he said rebukingly. "If I suffered wrongly, 'tis Christian to

suffer, and Christian to forgive."

"Then forgive me," said Gabriel, mazed by this persistent

masquerading, "for 'twas I who innocently made thee suffer. Rather

would I have torn out my tongue than injured a fellow Jew."

"I am no Jew," cried the physician fiercely.

"But why deny it to me when I tell thee I am one?"

"'In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird,'" quoted Dom

Diego angrily. "Thou art as good a Christian as I,--and a worse

fowler. A Jew, indeed, who knows not of the herbs! Nay, the bird-lime

is smeared too thick, and there is no cord between the holes of the

net."

"True, I am neither Jew nor Christian," said the young man sadly. "I

was bred a Christian, but my soul is torn with questionings. See, I

trust my life in thy hand."

But Dom Diego remained long obdurate, even when Gabriel made the

candid admission that he was the masked man who had cried "Hypocrite!"

in the torture-vault; 'twas not till, limping from the bed, he had

satisfied himself that the young man had posted no auditors without,

that he said at last: "Well, 'tis my word against thine. Mayhap I am

but feigning so as to draw thee out." Then, winking, he took down the

effigy of the Christ and thrust it into a drawer, and filling two

wine-glasses from a decanter that stood at the bedside, he cried

jovially, "Come! Confusion to the Holy Office!"

A great weight seemed lifted off the young man's breast. He smiled as

he quaffed the rich wine.

"Meseems thou hast already wrought confusion to the Holy Office."

"Ha! ha!" laughed the physician, expanding in the glow of the wine.

"Yea, the fox hath escaped from the trap, but not with a whole skin."

"No, alas! How feel thy wounds?"

"I meant not my corporeal skin," said the physician, though he rubbed

it with rueful recollection. "I meant the skin whereof my purse was

made. To prove my loyalty to Holy Church I offered her half my estate,

and the proof was accepted. 'Twas the surgeon of the Inquisition who

gave me the hint. He is one of us!"

"What! a Jew!" cried Gabriel, thunderstruck.

"Hush! hush! or we shall have him replaced by an enemy. 'Twas his

fellow-feeling to me, both as a brother and a medicus, that made him

declare me on the point of death when I was still as lusty as a false

credo. For the rest, I had sufficient science to hold in my breath

while the clown tied me with cords, else had I been too straitened to

breathe. But thou needest a biscuit with thy wine. Ianthe!"

A pretty little girl stepped in from an adjoining room, her dark eyes

drooping shyly at the sight of the stranger.

"Thou seest I have a witness against thee," laughed the physician;

"while the evidence against me which the fools could not find we will

eat up. The remainder of the _Motsas_, daughterling!" And drawing a

key from under his pillow, he handed it to her. "Soft, now, my little

one, and hide them well."

When the child had gone, the father grumbled, over another glass of

wine, at having to train her to a double life. "But it sharpens the

wits," said he. "Ianthe should grow up subtle as the secret cupboard

within a cupboard which she is now opening. But a woman scarcely needs

the training." He was yet laughing over his jape when Ianthe returned,

and produced from under a napkin some large, thick biscuits,

peculiarly reticulated. Gabriel looked at them curiously.

"Knowest thou not Passover cakes?" asked Dom Diego.

Gabriel shook his head.

"Thou hast never eaten unleavened bread?"

"Unleavened bread! Ah, I was reading thereof in the Pentateuch but

yesterday. Stay, is it not one of the Inquisition's tests? But I

figured it not thus."

"'Tis the immemorial pattern, smuggled in from Amsterdam," said the

wine-flushed physician, throwing caution to the winds. "Taste! 'Tis

more palatable than the Host."

"Is Amsterdam, then, a Jewish town?"

"Nay, but 'tis the Jerusalem of the West. Little Holland, since she

shook off Papistry, hath no persecuting polity like the other nations.

And natural enough, for 'tis more a ship than a country. Half my old

friends have drifted thither--'tis a sad drain for our old Portuguese

community."