The Captive.
"Ay, but for _me_--my name called---drawn
Like a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn
He has dipped into on the battle dawn.
Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,
Stumbling, mute mazed, at Nature's chance
With a rapid finger circling round,
Fixed to the first poor inch of ground
To fight from, where his foot was found,
Whose ear but a moment since was free
To the wide camp's hum and gossipry--
Summoned, a solitary man,
To end his life where his life began,
From the safe glad rear to the awful van."--R. Browning
On the night of his arrest, when Don Carlos Alvarez was left alone in
his dungeon, he stood motionless as one in a dream. At length he raised
his head, and began to look around him. A lamp had been left with him;
and its light illumined a cell ten feet square, with a vaulted roof.
Through a narrow grating, too high for him to reach, one or two stars
were shining; but these he saw not. He only saw the inner door sheathed
with iron; the mat of rushes on which he was to sleep; the stool that
was to be his seat; the two earthen pitchers of water that completed his
scanty furniture. From the first moment these things looked strangely
familiar to him. He threw himself on the mat to think and pray. He
comprehended his situation perfectly. It seemed as if he had been all
his life expecting this hour; as if he had been born for it, and led up
to it gradually through all his previous experience. As yet he did not
think that his fate was terrible; he only thought that it was
inevitable--something that was to come upon him, and that in due course
had come at last. It was his impression that he should always remain
there, and never more see anything beyond that grated window and that
iron door.
There was a degree of unreality about this mood. For the past
fortnight, or more, his mind had been strained to its utmost tension.
Suspense, more wearing even than sorrow, had held him on the rack.
Sleep had seldom visited his eyes; and when it came, it had been broken
and fitful.
Now the worst had befallen him. Suspense was over; certainty had come.
This brought at first a kind of rest to the overtaxed mind and frame.
He was as one who hears a sentence of death, but who is taken off the
rack. No dread of the future could quite overpower the present
unreasoning sense of relief.
Thus it happened that an hour afterwards he was sleeping the dreamless
sleep of exhaustion. Well for him if, instead of "death's
twin-brother," the angel of death himself had been sent to open the
prison doors and set the captive free! And yet, after all, _would_ it
have been well for him?
So utter was his exhaustion, that when food was placed in his cell the
next morning, he only awaked for a moment, then slept again as soundly
as before. Not till some hours later did he finally shake off his
slumber. He lay still for some time, examining with a strange kind of
curiosity the little bolted aperture which was near the top of his door,
and watching a solitary broken sunbeam which had struggled through the
grating that served him for a window, and threw a gleam of light on the
opposite wall.
Then, with a start, he asked himself, "_Where am I?_" The answer
brought an agony of fear, of horror, of bitter pain. "Lost! lost! God
have mercy on me! I am lost!" As one in intense bodily anguish, he
writhed, moaned--ay, even cried aloud.
No wonder. Hope, love, life--alike in its noblest aims and its
commonest joys--all were behind him. Before him were the dreary dungeon
days and nights--it might be months or years; the death of agony and
shame; and, worst of all, the unutterable horrors of the torture-room,
from which he shrank as any one of us would shrink to-day.
Slowly and at last came the large burning tears. But very few of them
fell; for his anguish was as yet too fierce for many tears. All that
day the storm raged on. When the alcayde brought his evening meal, he
lay still, his face covered with his cloak. But as night drew on he
rose, and paced his narrow cell with hasty, irregular steps, like those
of a caged wild animal.
How should he endure the horrible loneliness of the present, the
maddening terror of all that was to come? And this life was to _last_.
To last, until it should be succeeded by worse horrors and fiercer
anguish. Words of prayer died on his lips. Or, even when he uttered
them, it seemed as if God heard not--as if those thick walls and grated
doors shut him out too.
Yet one thing was clear to him from the beginning. Deeper than all
other fears within him lay the fear of denying his Lord. Again and again
did he repeat, "When called in question, I will at once confess all."
For he knew that, according to a law recently enacted by the Holy
Office, and sanctioned by the Pope, no subsequent retractation could
save a prisoner who had once confessed--he must die. And he desired
finally and for ever to put it out of his own power to save his life and
lose it.
As every dreary morning dawned upon him, he thought that ere its sun set
he might be called to confess his Master's name before the solemn
tribunal. At first he awaited the summons with a trembling heart. But
as time passed on, the delay became more dreadful than the anticipated
examination. At last he began to long for _any_ change that might break
the monotony of his prison-life.
The only person, with the exception of his gaoler, that ever entered his
cell, was a member of the Board of Inquisitors, who was obliged by their
rules to make a fortnightly inspection of the prisons. But the
Dominican monk to whom this duty was relegated merely asked the prisoner
a few formal questions: such as, whether he was well, whether he
received his appointed provision, whether his warder used him with
civility. To these Carlos always answered prudently that he had no
complaint to make. At first he was wont to inquire, in his turn, when
his case might be expected to come on. To this it would be answered,
that there was no hurry about the matter. The Lords Inquisitors had
much business on hand, and many more important cases than his to attend
to; he must await their leisure and their pleasure.
At length a kind of lethargy stole over him; though it was broken
frequently by sharp bursts of anguish. He ceased to take note of time,
ceased to make fruitless inquiries of his gaoler, who would never tell
him anything. Upon one occasion he asked this man for a Breviary, since
he sometimes found it difficult to recall even the gospel words that he
knew so well. But he was answered in the set terms the Inquisitors
taught their officials, that the book he ought now to study was the book
of his own heart, which he should examine diligently, in order to the
confession and repentance of his sins.
During the morning hours the outer door of his cell (there were two) was
usually left open, in order to admit a little fresh air. At such times
he often heard footsteps in the corridors, and doors opening and
shutting. With a kind of sick yearning, not unmixed with hope, he
longed that some visitant would enter his cell. But none ever came.
Some of the Inquisitors were keen observers and good students of
character. They had watched Carlos narrowly before his arrest, and they
had arrived at the conclusion that utter and prolonged solitude was the
best remedy for his disease.
Such solitude has driven many a weary tortured soul to insanity. But
that divine compassion which no dungeon walls or prison bars avail to
shut out, saved Carlos from such a fate.
One morning he knew from the stir outside that some of his
fellow-captives had received a visit. But the deep stillness that
followed the dying away of footsteps in the corridor was broken by a
most unwonted sound. A loud, clear, and even cheerful voice sang out,--
"Vencidos van los frailes; vencidos van!
Corridas van los lobos; corridos van!"
[There go the friars; there they run!
There go the wolves, the wolves are done!][#]
[#] Everything related of Juliano Hernandez is strictly true.
Every nerve and fibre of the lonely captive's heart thrilled responsive
to that strain. Evidently the song was one of triumph. But from whose
lips? Who could dare to triumph in the abode of misery, the very seat
of Satan?
Carlos Alvarez had heard that voice before. A striking peculiarity in
the dialect rivetted this fact upon his mind. The words were neither
the pure sonorous Castilian that he spoke himself, nor the soft gliding
sibilant Andaluz that he heard in Seville, nor yet the patois of the
Manchegan peasants around his mountain home. In such accents one, and
one alone, had ever spoken in his hearing. And that was the man who
said, "For the joy of bringing food to the perishing, water to the
thirsty, light to those that sit in darkness, rest to the weary and
heavy-laden, I have counted the cost, and I shall pay the price right
willingly."
Whatever men had done to the body, it was evident that Juliano Hernandez
was still unbroken in heart, strong in hope and courage. A fettered,
tortured captive, he was yet enabled, not only to hold his own faith
fast, but actually to minister to that of others. His rough rhyme
intimated to his fellow-captives that "the wolves" of Rome were leaving
his cell, vanquished by the sword of the Spirit. And that, as he
overcame, so might they also.
Carlos heard, understood, and felt from that hour that he was not alone.
Moreover, the grace and strength so richly given to his fellow-sufferer
seemed to bring Christ nearer to himself. "Surely God is in this
place--even here," he said, "and I knew it not." And then, bowing his
head, he wept--wept such tears as bring help and healing with them.
Up to this time he had held Christ's hand indeed, else had he "utterly
fainted." But he held it in the dark. He clung to him desperately, as
if for mere life and reason. Now the light began to dawn upon him. He
began to see the face of Him to whom he had been clinging. His good and
gracious words--such words as, "Let not your heart be troubled," "My
peace I give unto you"--became again, as in old times, full of meaning,
instinct with life. He "remembered the years of the right hand of the
Most High;" he thought of those days that now seemed so long ago, when,
with such thrilling joy, he received the truth from Juliano's book. And
he knew that the same joy might be his even in that dreary prison,
because the same God was above him, and the same Lord was "rich unto all
that call upon him."
On the next occasion when Juliano raised his brave song of victory,
Carlos had the courage to respond, by chanting in the vulgar tongue,
"The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob
defend thee. Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out
of Zion."
But this brought him a visit from the alcayde, who commanded him to
"forbear that noise."
"I only chanted a versicle from one of the Psalms," he explained.
"No matter. Prisoners are not permitted to disturb the Santa Casa,"
said Gasper Benevidio, as he quitted the cell.
The "Santa Casa," or Holy House, was the proper style and title of the
prison of the Holy Inquisition. At first sight the name appears a
hideous mockery. We seem to catch in it an echo of the laughter of
fiends, as in that other kindred name, "The Society of Jesus." Yet,
just then, the Triana was truly a holy house. Precious in the sight of
the Lord were those who crowded its dismal cells. Many a lonely captive
wept and prayed and agonized there, who, though now forgotten on earth,
shall one day shine with a brightness eclipsing kings and conquerors--"a
star for ever and ever."