Part 34 (1/2)
”Impossible, senor--utterly impossible.”
”Why? They sometimes send friars to reason with the--the prisoners.”
”Always Dominicans or Jesuits--men well-known and trusted by the Board of the Inquisition. However, senor, nothing that a man may do shall be wanting on my part. Will not that content your Excellency?”
”_Content_ me? Well, as far as you are concerned, yes. But, in truth, I am haunted day and night by one horrible dread. What if--if they should _torture_ him? My gentle brother, frail in mind and body, tender and sensitive as a woman! Terror and pain would drive him mad.” The last words were a quick broken whisper. But outward expressions of emotion with Don Juan were always speedily repressed. Recovering apparent calmness, he stretched out his hand to Fray Sebastian, saying, with a faint smile, ”I have kept you too long from my lord's supper-table--pardon me.”
”Your Excellency's condescension in conversing with me deserves my profound grat.i.tude,” replied the monk, in true Castilian fas.h.i.+on. His residence at the Inquisitor's Court had certainly improved his manners.
Don Juan gave him his address, and it was agreed that he should call on him in a few days. Fray Sebastian then offered to bring him on his way through the garden and court of that part of the Triana which formed the Inquisitor's residence. But Juan declined the favour. He could not answer for himself when brought face to face with the impious pomp and luxury of the persecutor of the saints. He feared that, by some wild word or deed, he might imperil the cause he had at heart. So he hailed a waterman who was guiding his little boat down the tranquil stream in the waning light. The boat was soon brought to the place where the Inquisitor had landed from his barge; and Juan, after shaking the dust from his feet, both literally and metaphorically, sprang into it.
The popular ideal of a persecutor is very far from the truth. At the word there rises before most minds the vision of a lean, pale-faced, fierce-eyed monk, whose frame is worn with fasting, and his scourge red with his own blood. He is a fanatic--pitiless, pa.s.sionate, narrow-minded, perhaps half insane--but penetrated to the very core of his being with intense zeal for his Church's interest, and prepared in her service both to inflict and to endure all things.
Very unlike this ideal were _most_ of the great persecutors who carried out the behests of Antichrist. They were generally able men. But they were pre-eminently men wise in their generation, men _of_ their generation, men who ”loved this present world.” They gave the Church the service of strong hand and skilful brain that she needed; and she gave _them_, in return, ”gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls; and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all sweet wood; and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of bra.s.s, and of iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment, and frankincense; and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat; and beasts, and sheep, and horses and chariots, and slaves and souls of men.” It was for these things, not for abstract ideas, not for high places in heaven, that they tortured and murdered the saints of G.o.d. Whilst the cry of the oppressed reached the ears of the Most High, those who were ”wearing them out” lived in unhallowed luxury, in degrading sensuality. Gonzales de Munebrga was a good specimen of the cla.s.s to which he belonged--he was no exceptional case.
Nor was Fray Sebastian anything but an ordinary character. He was amiable, good-natured, free from gross vices--what is usually called ”well disposed.” But he ”loved wine and oil,” and to obtain what he loved he was willing to become the servant and the flatterer of worse men than himself, at the terrible risk of sinking to their level.
With all the force of his strong nature, Don Juan Alvarez loathed Munebrga, and scorned Fray Sebastian. Gradually a strange alteration appeared to come over the little book he constantly studied--his brother's Spanish Testament. The words of promise, and hope, and comfort, in which he used to delight, seemed to be blotted from its pages; while ever more and more those pages were filled with fearful threatenings and denunciations of doom--against hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, false teachers and wicked high priests--against great Babylon, the mother of abominations. The peace-breathing, ”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” grew fainter and more faint, until at last it faded completely from his memory; while there stood out before him night and day, in characters of fire, ”Serpents, generation of vipers, how can ye escape the d.a.m.nation of h.e.l.l!”
x.x.x.
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 s.h.i.+ning; 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! G.o.d 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 n.o.blest 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.