"The Horrible and Tremendous Spectacle."[#]
"All have passed:
The fearful, and the desperate, and the strong.
Some like the barque that rushes with the blast;
Some like the leaf borne tremblingly along;
And some like men who have but one more field
To fight, and then may slumber on their shield--
Therefore they arm in hope."--Hemans.
[#] So called by the Inquisitor, De Pegna.
At earliest dawn next morning, Juan established himself in an upper room
of one of the high houses which overlooked the gate of the Triana. He
had hired it from the owners for the purpose, stipulating for sole
possession and perfect loneliness.
At sunrise the great Cathedral bell tolled out solemnly, and all the
bells in the city responded. Through the crowd, which had already
gathered in the street, richly dressed citizens were threading their way
on foot. He knew they were those who, out of zeal for the faith, had
volunteered to act as _patrinos_, or god-fathers, to the prisoners,
walking beside them in the procession. Amongst them he recognized his
cousins, Don Manuel and Don Balthazar. They were all admitted into the
castle by a private door.
Ere long the great gate was flung open. Juan's eyes were rivetted to
the spot. There was a sound of singing, sweet and low, as of childish
voices; for the first to issue from those gloomy portals were the boys
of the College of Doctrine, dressed in white surplices, and chanting
litanies to the saints. Clear and full at intervals rose from their lips
the "Ora pro nobis" of the response; and tears gathered unconsciously in
the eyes of Juan at the old familiar words.
In great contrast with the white-robed children came the next in order.
Juan drew his breath hard, for here were the penitents: pale, melancholy
faces, "ghastly and disconsolate beyond what can be imagined;"[#] forms
clothed in black, without sleeves, and barefooted--hands carrying
extinguished tapers.
[#] Report of De Pegna.
Those who walked foremost in the procession had only been convicted of
such _minor_ offences as blasphemy, sorcery, or polygamy. But by-and-by
there came others, wearing ugly sanbenitos--yellow, with red
crosses--and conical paper mitres on their heads. Juan's eye kindled
with intenser interest; for he knew that these were Lutherans. Not
without a wild dream--hope, perhaps--that the near approach of death
might have subdued his brother's fortitude, did he scan in turn every
mournful face. There was Luis D'Abrego, the illuminator of church
books; there, walking long afterwards, as far more guilty, was Medel
D'Espinosa, the dealer in embroidery, who had received the Testaments
brought by Juliano. There were many others of much higher rank, with
whom he was well acquainted. Altogether more than eighty in number, the
long and melancholy train swept by, every man or woman attended by two
monks and a patrino. But Carlos was not amongst them.
Then came the great Cross of the Inquisition; the face turned towards
the penitent, the back to the _impenitent_--those devoted to the death
of fire. And now Juan's breath came and went--his lips trembled; all
his soul was in his eager, straining eyes Now first he saw the hideous
zamarra--a black robe, painted all over with saffron-coloured flames,
into which devils and serpents, rudely represented, were thrusting the
impenitent heretic. A paper crown, or carroza, similarly adorned,
covered the victim's head. But the face of the wearer was unknown to
Juan. He was a poor artizan--Juan de Leon by name--who had made his
escape by flight, but had been afterwards apprehended in the Low
Countries. Torture and cruel imprisonment had almost killed him
already; but his heart was strong to suffer for the Lord he loved, and
though the pallor of death was on his cheek, there was no fear there.
But the countenances of those that followed Juan knew too well. Never
afterwards could he exactly recall the order in which they walked; yet
every individual face stamped itself indelibly on his memory. He would
carry those looks in his heart until his dying hour.
No less than four of the victims wore the white tunic and brown mantle
of St. Jerome. One of these was an old man--leaning on his staff for
very age, but with joy and confidence beaming in his countenance. The
white locks, from which Garcias Arias had gained the name of Doctor
Blanco, had been shorn away; but Juan easily recognized the waverer of
past days, now strengthened with all might, according to the glorious
power of Him whom at last he had learned to trust. The accomplished
Cristobal D'Arellano, and Fernando de San Juan, Master of the College of
Doctrine, followed calm and dauntless. Steadfast, too, though not
without a little natural shrinking from the doom of fire, was a mere
youth--Juan Crisostomo.
Then came one clad in a doctor's robe, with the step of a conqueror and
the mien of a king. As he issued from the Triana he chanted, in a clear
and steady voice, the words of the Hundred and ninth Psalm: "Hold not
thy peace, O God of my praise; for the mouth of the ungodly, yea, the
mouth of the deceitful, is opened upon me: and they have spoken against
me with false tongues. They compassed me about also with words of
hatred, and fought against me without a cause.... Help me, O Lord my
God: O save me according to thy mercy; and they shall know how that this
is thine hand, and that thou, Lord, hast done it. Though they curse,
yet bless thou." So died away the voice of Juan Gonsalez, one of the
noblest of Christ's noble band of witnesses in Spain.
All these were arrayed in the garments of their ecclesiastical orders,
to be solemnly degraded on the scaffold in the Square of St. Francis.
But there followed one already in the full infamy, or glory, of the
zamarra and carroza, with painted flames and demons;--with a thrill of
emotion, Juan recognized his friend and teacher, Cristobal
Losada--looking calm and fearless--a hero marching to his last battle,
conquering and to conquer.
Yet even that face soon faded from Juan's thoughts. For there walked in
that gloomy death procession six females--persons of rank; nearly all of
them young and beautiful, but worn by imprisonment, and more than one
amongst them maimed by torture. Yet if man was cruel, Christ, for whom
they suffered, was pitiful. Their countenances, calm and even radiant,
revealed the hidden power by which they were sustained. Their
names--which deserve a place beside those of the women of old who were
last at his cross and first beside his open sepulchre--were, Dona
Isabella de Baena, in whose house the church was wont to meet; the two
sisters of Juan Gonsalez; Dona Maria de Virves; Dona Maria de Cornel;
and, last of all, Dona Maria de Bohorques, whose face shone as the first
martyr's, looking up into heaven. She alone, of all the female martyr
band, appeared wearing the gag, an honour due to her heroic efforts to
console and sustain her companions in the court of the Triana.
Juan's brave heart well-nigh burst with impotent, indignant anguish.
"Ay de mi, my Spain!" he cried; "thou seest these things, and endurest
them. Lucifer, son of the morning, thou art fallen--fallen from thy
high place amongst the nations."
It was true. From the man, or nation, "that hath not," shall be taken
"even that which he seemeth to have." Had the spirit of chivalry,
Spain's boast and pride, been faithful to its own dim light, it might
even then have saved Spain. But its light became darkness; its trust
was betrayed into the hand of superstition. Therefore, in the just
judgment of God, its own degradation quickly followed. Spain's chivalry
lost gradually all that was genuine, all that was noble in it; until it
became only a faint and ghastly mockery, a sign of corruption, like the
phosphoric light that flickers above the grave.
Absorbed in his bitter thoughts, Juan well-nigh missed the last of the
doomed ones--last because highest in worldly rank. Sad and slow, with
eyes bent down, Don Juan Ponce de Leon walked along. The flames on his
zamarra were reversed; poor symbol of the poor mercy for which he sold
his joy and triumph and dimmed the brightness of his martyr crown. Yet
surely he did not lose the glad welcome that awaited him at the close of
that terrible day; nor the right to say, with the erring restored
apostle, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee."
All the living victims had passed now. And Don Carlos Alvarez was not
amongst them. Juan breathed a sigh of relief; but not yet did his
straining eyes relax their gaze. For Rome's vengeance reached even to
the grave. Next, there were borne along the statues of those who had
died in heresy, robed in the hideous zamarra, and followed by black
chests containing their bones to be burned.
Not there!--No--not there! At last Juan's trembling hands let go the
framework of the window to which they had been clinging; and, the
intense strain over, he fell back exhausted.
The stately pageant swept by, unwatched by him. He never saw, what all
Seville was gazing on with admiration, the grand procession of the
judges and counsellors of the city, in their robes of office; the
chapter of the Cathedral; the long slow train of priests and monks that
followed. And then, in a space left empty out of reverence, the great
green standard of the Inquisition was borne aloft, and over it a gilded
crucifix. Then came the Inquisitors themselves, in their splendid
official dresses. And lastly, on horseback and in gorgeous apparel, the
familiars of the Inquisition.
It was well that Juan's eyes were turned from that sight. What avails it
for lips white with passion to heap wild curses on the heads of those
for whom God's curse already "waits in calm shadow," until the day of
reckoning be fully come? Curses, after all, are weapons dangerous to
use, and apt to pierce the hand that wields them.
His first feeling was one of intense relief, almost of joy. He had
escaped the maddening torture of seeing his brother dragged before his
eyes to the death of anguish and shame. But to that succeeded the bitter
thought, growing soon into full, mournful conviction, "I shall see his
face no more on earth. He is dead--or dying."
Yet that day the deep, strong current of his brotherly love was crossed
by another tide of emotion. Those heroic men and women, whom he watched
as they passed along so calmly to their doom, had he no bond of sympathy
with them? Was it so long since he had pressed Losada's hand in
grateful friendship, and thanked Dona Isabella de Baena for the teaching
received beneath her roof? With a thrill of keen and sudden shame the
gallant soldier saw himself a recreant, who had flaunted his gay uniform
on the parade and at the field-day, but when the hour of conflict came,
had stepped aside, and let the sword and the bullet find out braver and
truer hearts.
_He_ could not die thus for his faith. On the contrary, it cost him but
little to conceal it, to live in every respect like an orthodox
Catholic. What, then, had they which he had not? Something that enabled
his young brother--the boy who used to weep for a blow--to stand and
look fearless in the face of a horrible death. Something that enabled
even poor, wild, passionate Gonsalvo to forgive and pray for the
murderers of the woman he loved. What was it?