Part 43 (2/2)

”Vaya, vaya! have we not had enough of it all?”

”Nay; I have made a promise. I must entreat you to tell me how Dona Maria de Bohorques met her doom.”

”With unflinching hardihood. Don Juan Ponce tried to urge her to yield somewhat. But she refused, saying it was not now a time for reasoning, and that they ought rather to meditate on the Lord's death and pa.s.sion.

(They believe in _that_, it seems.) When she was bound to the stake, the monks and friars crowded round her, and pressed her only to repeat the Credo. She did so; but began to add some explanations, which, I suppose, were heretical. Then immediately the command was given to strangle her; and so, in one moment, while she was yet speaking, death came to her.”

”Then she did not suffer? She escaped the fire! Thank G.o.d!”

Five minutes afterwards, Dona Inez stood by her brother's bed. He lay in the same posture, his face still shaded by his hand.

”Brother,” she said gently--”brother, all is over. She did not suffer.

It was done in one moment.”

There was no answer.

”Brother, are you not glad she did not feel the fire? Can you not thank G.o.d for it? Speak to me.”

Still no answer.

He could not be asleep! Impossible!--”Speak to me, Gonsalvo!--_Brother!_”

She drew close to him; she touched his hand to remove it from his face.

The next moment a cry of horror rang through the house. It brought the servants and Don Garcia himself to the room.

”He is dead! G.o.d and Our Lady have mercy on his soul!” said Don Garcia, after a brief examination.

”If only he had had the Holy Sacrament, I could have borne it!” said Dona Inez; and then, kneeling down beside the couch, she wept bitterly.

So pa.s.sed the beggar with the King's sons, through the golden gate into the King's own presence-chamber. His wrecked and troublous life over, his pa.s.sionate heart at rest for ever, the erring, repentant Gonsalvo found entrance into the same heaven as D'Arellano, and Gonsalez, and Losada, with their radiant martyr-crowns. In the many mansions there was a place for him, as for those heroic and triumphant ones. He wore the same robe as they--a robe washed and made white, not in the blood of martyrs, but in the blood of the Lamb.

x.x.xVIII.

Nuera Again.

”Happy places have grown holy; If ye went where once ye went, Only tears would fall down slowly.

As at solemn Sacrament Household names, that used to flutter Through your laughter unawares, G.o.d's divine one ye can utter With less trembling in your prayers.”--E. B. Browning

A chill and dreary torpor stole over Juan's fiery spirit after the Auto.

The settled conviction that his brother was dead took possession of his mind. Moreover, his soul had lost its hold upon the faith which he once embraced so warmly. He had consciously ceased to be true to his best convictions, and those convictions, in turn, had ceased to support him.

His confidence in himself, his trust in his own heart, had been shaken to its foundations. And he was very far from having gained in its stead that strong confidence in G.o.d which would have infinitely more than counter-balanced its loss.

Thus two or three slow and melancholy months wore away. Then, fortunately for him, events happened that forced him, in spite of himself, to the exertion that saves from the deadly slumber of despair.

It became evident, that if he did not wish to see the last earthly treasure that remained to him swept out of his reach for ever, he must rouse himself from his lethargy so far as to grasp and hold it; for now Don Manuel _commanded_ his ward to bestow her hand upon his rival, Senor Luis Rotelo.

<script>