Part 38 (2/2)

He was thinking of a woman's face, a fair young face, to which that of Don Carlos Alvarez wore a startling likeness. ”Too harsh, needlessly harsh,” he murmured; ”for, after all, _she_ was no heretic. But which of us is always in the right? Ave Maria Sanctissima, ora pro me! But if I can, I would fain make some reparation--to _him_. If ever there was a true and sincere penitent, he is one.”

After a little further delay, he summoned Fray Sebastian by a peremptory knock at the inner door, the outer one of course remaining open. The Franciscan came, his broad, good-humoured face bathed in tears, which he scarcely made an effort to conceal.

The prior glanced at him for a moment, then signed to Herrera, who was waiting in the gallery, to come and make the door fast. They walked on together in silence, until at length Fray Sebastian said, in a trembling voice, ”My lord, you are very powerful here; can _you_ do nothing for him?”

”I _have_ done much. At my intercession he had nine months of solitude, in which to recollect himself and ponder his situation, ere he was called on to make answer at all. Judge my amazement when, instead of entering upon his defence, or calling witnesses to his character, he at once confessed all. Judge my greater amazement at his continued obstinacy since. When a man has broken a giant oak in two, he may feel some surprise at being baffled by a sapling.”

”He will not relent,” said Fray Sebastian, hardly restraining his sobs.

”He will die.”

”I see one chance to save him,” returned the prior; ”but it is a hazardous experiment. The consent of the Supreme Council is necessary, as well as that of my Lord Vice-Inquisitor, and neither may be very easy to obtain.”

”To save his body or his soul?” Fray Sebastian asked anxiously.

”Both, if it succeeds. But I can say no more,” he added rather haughtily; ”for my plan is bound up with a secret, of which few living men, save myself, are in possession.”

x.x.xIV.

Fray Sebastian's Trouble.

”Now, with fainting frame, With soul just lingering on the flight begun, To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one, I bless thee. Peace be on thy n.o.ble head.

Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!

I bid this prayer survive me, and retain Its power again to bless thee, and again.

Thou hast been gathered into my dark fate Too much; too long for my sake desolate Hath been thine exiled youth; but now take back From dying hands thy freedom.”--Hemans

It was late in August. All day long the sky had been molten fire, and the earth bra.s.s. Every one had dozed away the sultry noontide hours in the coolest recesses of dwellings made to exclude heat, as ours to exclude cold. But when at last the sun sank in flame beneath the horizon, people began to creep out languidly to woo the refreshment of the evening breeze.

The beautiful gardens of the Triana were still deserted, save by two persons. One of these, a young lad--we beg pardon, a young gentleman--of fifteen or sixteen, sat, or rather reclined, by the river-side, eating slices from an enormous melon, which he cut with a small silver-hilted dagger. A plumed cap, and a gay velvet jerkin lined with satin, had been thrown aside for coolness' sake, and lay near him on the ground; so that his present dress consisted merely of a ma.s.s of the finest white holland, delicately starched and frilled, velvet hosen, long silk stockings, and fas.h.i.+onable square-toed shoes. Curls of scented hair were thrown back from a face beautiful as that of a girl, but bold and insolent in its expression as that of a spoiled and mischievous boy.

The other person was seated in the arbour mentioned once before, with a book in his hand, of which, however, he did not in the course of an hour turn over a single leaf. A look of chronic discontent and dejection had replaced the good-humoured smiles of Fray Sebastian Gomez. Everything was wrong with the poor Franciscan now. Even the delicacies of his patron's table ceased to please him; and he, in his turn, was fast ceasing to please his patron. How could it be otherwise, when he had lost not only his happy art of indirect ingenious flattery, but his power to be commonly agreeable or amusing? No more poems--not so much as the briefest sonnet--on the suppression of heresy were to be had from him; and he was fast becoming incapable of turning a jest or telling a story.

It is said that idiots often manifest peculiar pain and terror at the sound of music, because it awakens within them faint stirrings of that higher life from which G.o.d's mysterious dispensation has shut them out.

And it is true that the first stirrings of higher life usually come to all of us with pain and terror. Moreover, if we do not crush them out, but cherish and foster them, they are very apt to take away the brightness and pleasantness of the old lower life altogether, and to make it seem worthless and distasteful.

A new and higher life had begun for Fray Sebastian. It was not his conscience that was quickened, only his heart. Hitherto he had chiefly cared for himself. He was a good-natured man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; yet no sympathy for others had ever spoiled his appet.i.te or hindered his digestion. But for the past three months he had been feeling as he had not felt since he clung weeping to the mother who left him in the parlour of the Franciscan convent--a child of eight years old. The patient suffering face of the young prisoner in the Triana had laid upon him a spell that he could not break.

To say that he would have done anything in his power to save Don Carlos, is to say little. Willingly would he have lived for a month on black bread and brackish water, if that could have even mitigated his fate.

But the very intensity of his desire to help him was fast making him incapable of rendering him the smallest service. Munebrga's flatterer and favourite might possibly, by dint of the utmost self-possession and the most adroit management, have accomplished some little good. But Fray Sebastian was now consciously forfeiting even the miserable fragment of power that had once been his. He thought himself like the salt that had lost its savour, and was fit neither for the land nor yet for the dunghill.

Absorbed in his mournful reflections, he continued unconscious of the presence of such an important personage as Don Alonzo de Munebrga, the Lord Vice-Inquisitor's favourite page. At length, however, he was made aware of the fact by a loud angry shout, ”Off with you, varlets, sc.u.m of the people! How dare you put your accursed fis.h.i.+ng-smack to sh.o.r.e in my lord's garden, and under his very eyes?”

Fray Sebastian looked up, and saw no fis.h.i.+ng-boat, but a decent covered barge, from which, in spite of the page's remonstrance, two persons were landing: an elderly female clad in deep mourning, and her attendant, apparently a tradesman's apprentice, or serving-man.

Fray Sebastian knew well how many distracted pet.i.tioners daily sought access to Munebrga, to plead (alas, how vainly!) for the lives of parents, husbands, sons, or daughters. This was doubtless one of them.

He heard her plead, ”For the love of Heaven, dear young gentleman, hinder me not. Have you a mother? My only son lies--”

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