Part 55 (1/2)
”Tell the prior Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya desires to speak with him, and that instantly,” said Juan to the drowsy lay brother who at last answered his impatient summons, lantern in hand.
”My lord has but just retired to rest, and cannot now be disturbed,”
answered the attendant, looking with some curiosity, not to say surprise, at the visitor, who seemed to think three o'clock of a winter morning a proper and suitable hour to demand instant audience of a great man.
”I will wait,” said Juan, walking into the court.
The attendant led him to a parlour; then, holding the door ajar, he said, ”Let his Excellency pardon me, I did not hear distinctly his wors.h.i.+p's honourable name.”
”Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya. The prior knows it--too well.”
It was evident from his face that the poor lay brother knew it also.
And so that night did every man, woman, and child in Seville. It had become a name of infamy.
With a hasty ”Yes, yes, senor,” the door was closed, and Juan was left alone.
What had brought him there? Did he mean to accuse the Dominican of his brother's murder, or did he only intend to reproach him--him who had once shown some pity to the captive--for not saving him from that horrible doom? He himself scarcely knew. He had been driven thither by a wild, unreasoning impulse, an instinct of pa.s.sionate rage, prompting him to grasp at the only shadow of revenge that lay within his reach. If he could not execute G.o.d's awful judgments against the persecutors, at least he could denounce them. A poor subst.i.tute, but all that remained to him. Without it his heart must break.
Yet that unreasoning impulse had a kind of unconscious reason in it, since it led him to seek the presence of the Dominican prior, and not that of the far more guilty Munebrga. For who would accuse a tiger, reproach a wolf? Words would be wasted upon such. For them there is no argument but the spear and the bullet. A man can only speak to men.
To do Fray Ricardo justice, he was so much of a man that sleep did not visit his eyes that night. When at length his attendants thought fit to inform him that Don Juan desired to see him, he was still kneeling, as he had knelt for hours, before the crucifix in his private oratory.
”Saviour of the world, so much didst thou suffer,” this was the key-note of his thoughts; ”and shall I weakly pity thine enemies, or shrink from seeing them suffer what they have deserved at thy hands and those of thy holy Church?”
”Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya waits below!” Just then Don Fray Ricardo would rather have held his right hand in the fire than have gone forth to face one bearing that name. But, for that very reason, no sooner did he hear that Don Juan awaited him than he robed himself in his cowl and mantle, took a lamp in his hand (for it was still dark), and went down to meet the visitor. For that morning he was in the mood to welcome any form of self-torture that came in his way, and to find a strange but real relief in it.
”Peace be with thee, my son,” was his grave but courteous salutation, as he entered the parlour. He looked upon Juan with mournful compa.s.sion, as the last of a race over which there hung a terrible doom.
”Let your peace be with murderers like yourselves, or with slaves like those that work your will; I fling it back to you in scorn,” was the fierce reply.
The Dominican recoiled a step--only a step, for he was a brave man, and his face, pale with conflict and watching, grew a shade paler.
”Do you think I mean to harm you?” cried Juan in yet fiercer scorn.
”Not a hair of your tonsured head. See there!” He unbuckled his sword, and threw it from him, and it fell with a clang on the floor.
”Young man, you would consult your own safety as well as your own honour by adopting a different tone,” said the prior, not without dignity.
”My safety is little worth consulting. I am a bold, rough soldier, used to peril and violence. Would it were such, and such alone, that you menaced. But, fiends that you are, would no one serve you for a victim save my young, gentle, unoffending brother; he who never harmed you nor any one? Would nothing satisfy your malice but to immure him in your hideous dungeons for two-and-thirty long slow months, in what suffering of mind and body G.o.d alone can tell; and then, at last, to bring him forth to that horrible death? I curse you! I curse you! Nay, that is nothing; who am I to curse? I invoke G.o.d's curse upon you! I give you up into G.o.d's hands this hour! When He maketh inquisition for blood--another inquisition than yours--I pray him to exact from you, murderers of the innocent, torturers of the just, every drop of blood, every tear, every pang of which he has been the witness, as he shall be the avenger.”
At last the prior found a voice. Hitherto he had listened spell-bound, as one oppressed by nightmare, powerless to free himself from the hideous burden. ”Man!” he cried, ”you are raving; the Holy Office--”
”Is the arch-fiend's own contrivance, and its ministers his favourite servants,” interrupted Juan, reckless in his rage, and defying all consequences.
”Blasphemy! This may not be borne,” and Fray Ricardo stretched out his hand towards a bell that lay on the table.
But Juan's strong grasp prevented his touching it. He could not shake off that as easily as he had shaken off a pale thin hand two days before. ”I shall speak forth my mind this once,” he said. ”After that, what you please.--Go on. Fill your cup full to the brim. Immure, plunder, burn, destroy. Pile up, high as heaven, your hecatomb of victims, offered to the G.o.d of love. At least there is one thing that may be said in your favour. In your cruelties there is a horrible impartiality. It can never be spoken of you that you have gone out into the highways and hedges, taken the blind and the lame, and made of them your burnt sacrifice. No. You go into the closest guarded homes; you take thence the gentlest, the tenderest, the fairest, the best, and of such you make your burnt-offering. And you--are your hearts human, or are they not? If they are, stifle them, crush them down into silence while you can; for a day will come when you can stifle them no longer.
That will begin your punishment. You will feel remorse.”
”Man, let me go!” interrupted the indignant yet half-frightened prior, struggling vainly to free himself from his grasp. ”Cease your blasphemies. Men only feel remorse when they have sinned; and I serve G.o.d and the Church.”
”Yet, servant of the Church (for G.o.d's servant I am not profane enough to call you), speak to me this once as man to man, and tell me, did a victim's pale face never haunt you, a victim's agonized cry never ring in your ears?”