Left Behind.
"They are all gone into a world of light.
And I alone am lingering here."--Henry Vaughan.
The change of seasons brought little change to those dark cells in the
Triana, where neither the glory of summer nor the breath of spring could
come. While the world, with its living interests, its hopes and fears,
its joys and sorrows, kept surging round them, not even an echo of its
many voices reached the doomed ones within, who lay so near, yet so far
from all, "fast bound in misery and iron."
Not yet had the Deliverer come to Carlos. More than once he had seemed
very near. During the summer heats, so terrible in that prison, fever
had wasted the captive's already enfeebled frame; but this was the means
of prolonging his life, for the eve of the Auto found him unable to walk
across his cell. Still he heard without very keen sorrow the fate of his
beloved friends, so soon did he hope to follow them.
And yet, month after month, life lingered on. In his circumstances
restoration to health was simply impossible. Not that he endured more
than others, or even as much as some. He was not loaded with fetters,
or buried in one of the frightful subterranean cells where daylight
never entered. Still, when to the many physical sufferings his position
entailed was added the weight of sickness, weakness, and utter
loneliness, they formed together a burden heavy enough to have crushed
even a strong heart to despair.
Long ago the last gleam of human sympathy and kindness had faded from
him. Maria Gonsalez was herself a prisoner, receiving such payment as
men had to give her for her brave deeds of charity. God's payment,
however, was yet to come, and would be of another sort. Herrera, the
under-gaoler, was humane, but very timid; moreover, his duties seldom
led him to that part of the prison where Carlos lay. So that he was
left dependent upon the tender mercies of Caspar Benevidio, which were
indeed cruel.
And yet, in spite of all, he was not crushed, not despairing. The lamp
of patient endurance burned on steadily, because it was continually fed
with oil by an unseen Hand.
It has been beautifully said, "The personal love of Christ to you, felt,
delighted in, returned, is actually, truly, simply, without
exaggeration, the deepest joy and the deepest feeling that the heart of
man or woman can know. It will absolutely satisfy your heart. It would
satisfy your heart if it were his will that you should spend the rest of
your life alone in a dungeon."
Just this, nothing else, nothing less, sustained Carlos throughout those
long slow months of suffering, which had now come to "add themselves and
make the years." It proved sufficient for him. It has proved
sufficient for thousands--God's unknown saints and martyrs, whose names
we shall learn first in heaven.
Those who still occasionally sought access to him, in the hope of
transforming the obstinate heretic into a penitent, marvelled greatly at
the cheerful calm with which he was wont to receive them and to answer
their arguments.
Sometimes he would even brave all the wrath of Benevidio, and raising
his voice as loud as he could, he would make the gloomy vaults re-echo
to such words as these: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom
shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be
afraid?" Or these: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none
upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth;
but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."
But still it was not in Christ's promise, nor was it to be expected,
that his prisoner should never know hours of sorrow, weariness, and
heart-sinking. Such hours came sometimes. And on the very morning when
Don Juan and Dona Beatriz were going forth together into the spring
sunshine through the castle gate of Nuera, Carlos, in his dungeon, was
passing through one of the darkest of these. He lay on his mat, his
face covered with his wasted hands, through which tears were slowly
falling. It was but very seldom that he wept now; tears had grown rare
and scarce with him.
The evening before, he had received a visit from two Jesuits, bound on
the only errand which would have procured their admission there.
Irritated by his bold and ready answers to the usual arguments, they had
recourse to declamation. And one of them bethought himself of
mentioning the fate of the Lutherans who suffered at the two great Autos
of Valladolid. "Most of the heretics," said the Jesuit, "though when
they were in prison they were as obstinate as thou art now, yet had
their eyes opened in the end to the error of their ways, and accepted
reconciliation at the stake. At the last great Act of Faith, held in
the presence of King Philip, only Don Carlos de Seso--" Here he
stopped, surprised at the agitation of the prisoner, who had heard their
threatenings against himself so calmly.
"De Seso! De Seso! Have they murdered him too!" moaned Carlos, and for
a few brief moments he gave way to natural emotion. But quickly
recovering himself, he said, "I shall only see him the sooner."
"Were you acquainted with him?" asked the Jesuit.
"I loved and honoured him. My avowing that cannot hurt him now,"
answered Carlos, who had grown used to the bitter thought that any name
would be disgraced, and its owner imperilled, by his mentioning it with
affection.
"But if you will do me so much kindness," he added, "I pray you to tell
me anything you know of his last hours. Any word he spoke."
"He could speak nothing," said the younger of his two visitors. "Before
he left the prison he had uttered so many horrible blasphemies against
Holy Church and Our Lady that he was obliged to wear the gag during the
whole ceremony, 'lest he should offend the little ones.'"[#]
[#] A genuine Inquisitorial expression.
This last cruel wrong--the refusal of leave to the dying to speak one
word in defence of the truths he died for--stung Carlos to the quick.
It wrung from lips so patient hitherto words of indignant threatening.
"God will judge your cruelty," he said. "Go on, fill up the measure of
your guilt, for your time is short. One day, and that soon, there will
be a grand spectacle, grander than your Autos. Then shall you,
torturers of God's saints, call upon the mountains and rocks to cover
you, and to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb."
Once more alone, his passionate anger died away. And it was well.
Surrounded as he was on every side by strong, cold, relentless wrong and
cruelty, if his spirit had beaten its wings against those bars of iron,
it would soon have fallen to the ground faint and helpless, with crushed
pinions. It was not in such vain strivings that he could find, or keep,
the deep calm peace with which his heart was filled; it was in the quiet
place at his Saviour's feet, from whence, if he looked at his enemies at
all, it was only to pity and forgive them.
But though anger was gone, a heavy burden of sorrow remained. De Seso's
noble form, shrouded in the hideous zamarra, his head crowned with the
carroza, his face disfigured by the gag,--these were ever before his
eyes. He well-nigh forgot that all this was over now--that for him the
conflict was ended and the triumph begun.
Could he have known even as much as we know now of the close of that
heroic life, it might have comforted him.
Don Carlos de Seso met his doom at the second of the two great Autos
celebrated at Valladolid during the year 1559. At the first, the most
steadfast sufferers were Francisco de Vibero Cazalla, one of a family of
confessors; and Antonio Herezuelo, whose pathetic story--the most
thrilling episode of Spanish martyrology--would need an abler pen than
ours.
During his lingering imprisonment of a year and a half, De Seso never
varied in his own clear testimony to the truth, never compromised any of
his brethren. Informed at last that he was to die the next day, he
requested writing materials. These being furnished him, he placed on
record a confession of his faith, which Llorente, the historian of the
Inquisition, thus describes:--"It would be difficult to convey an idea
of the uncommon vigour of sentiment with which he filled two sheets of
paper, though he was then in the presence of death. He handed what he
had written to the Alguazil, with these words: 'This is the true faith
of the gospel, as opposed to that of the Church of Rome, which has been
corrupted for ages. In this faith I wish to die, and in the remembrance
and lively belief of the passion of Jesus Christ, to offer to God my
body, now reduced so low.'"
All that night and the next morning were spent by the friars in vain
endeavours to induce him to recant. During the Auto, though he could
not speak, his countenance showed the steadfastness of his soul--a
steadfastness which even the sight of his beloved wife amongst those
condemned to perpetual imprisonment failed to disturb. When at last, as
he was bound to the stake, the gag was removed, he said to those who
stood around him, still urging him to yield, "I could show you that you
ruin yourselves by not following my example; but there is no time.
Executioners, light the fire that is to consume me."
Even in the act of death it was given him, though unconsciously, to
strengthen the faith of another. In the martyr band was a poor man,
Juan Sanchez, who had been a servant of the Cazallas, and was
apprehended in Flanders with Juan de Leon. He had borne himself bravely
throughout; but when the fire was kindled, the ropes that bound him to
the stake having given way, the instinct of self-preservation made him
rush from the flames, and, not knowing what he did, spring upon the
scaffold where those who yielded at the last were wont to receive
absolution. The attendant monks at once surrounded him, offering him
the alternative of the milder death. Recovering self-possession, he
looked around him. At one side knelt the penitents, at the other,
motionless amidst the flames, De Seso stood,
"As standing in his own high hall."
His choice was made. "I will die like De Seso," he said calmly; and
then walked deliberately back to the stake, where he met his doom with
joy.
Another brave sufferer at this Auto, Don Domingo de Roxas, ventured to
make appeal to the justice of the King, only to receive the memorable
reply, never to be read without a shudder,--"I would carry wood to burn
my son, if he were such a wretch as thou!"
All these circumstances Carlos never heard on this side of the grave.
But in the quiet Sabbath-keeping that remaineth for the people of God,
there will surely be leisure enough to talk over past trials and
triumphs. At present, however, he only saw the dark side--only knew the
bare and bitter facts of suffering and death. He had not merely loved
De Seso as his instructor; he had admired him with the generous
enthusiasm of a young man for a senior in whom he recognizes his
ideal--all that he himself would fain become. If the Spains had but
known the day of their visitation, he doubted not that man would have
been their leader in the path of reform. But they knew it not; and so,
instead, the chariot of fire had come for him. For him, and for nearly
all the men and women whose hands Carlos had been wont to clasp in
loving brotherhood. Losada, D'Arellano, Ponce de Leon, Dona Isabella de
Baena, Dona Maria de Bohorques,--all these honoured names, and many
more, did he repeat, adding after each one of them, "At rest with
Christ." Somewhere in the depths of those dreary dungeons it might be
that the heroic Juliano, his father in the faith, was lingering still;
and also Fray Constantino, and the young monk of San Isodro, Fray
Fernando. But the prison walls sundered them quite as hopelessly from
him as the River of Death itself.
Earlier ties sometimes seemed to him only like things he had read or
dreamed of. During his fever, indeed, old familiar faces had often
flitted round him. Dolores sat beside him, laying her hand on his
burning brow; Fray Sebastian taught him disjointed, meaningless
fragments from the schoolmen; Juan himself either spoke cheerful words
of hope and trust, or else talked idly of long-forgotten trifles.
But all this was over now: neither dream nor fancy came to break his
utter, terrible loneliness. He knew that he was never to see Juan
again, nor Dolores, nor even Fray Sebastian. The world was dead to him,
and he to it. And as for his brethren in the faith, they had gone "to
the light beyond the clouds, and the rest beyond the storms," where he
would so gladly be. Why, then, was he left so long, like one standing
without in the cold? Why did not the golden gate open for him as well
as for them? What was he doing in this place?--what _could_ he do for
his Master's cause or his Master's honour? He did not murmur. By this
time his Saviour's prayer, "Not my will, but thine be done," had been
wrought into the texture of his being with the scarlet, purple, and
golden threads of pain, of patience, and of faith. But it is well for
His tried ones that He knows longing is not murmuring. Very full of
longing were the words--words rather of pleading than of prayer--that
rose continually from the lips of Carlos that day,--"And now, Lord,
_what wait I for?_"