The Spanish brothers
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Title: The Spanish brothers
A tale of the sixteenth century
Creator: Deborah Alcock
Release date: July 26, 2012 [eBook #40346]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40346
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPANISH BROTHERS ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: THE ALGUAZILS PRODUCING THEIR WARRANT FOR ARREST.]
THE
SPANISH BROTHERS.
A Tale of the Sixteenth Century.
_By the Author of_
"_THE CZAR: A TALE OF THE FIRST NAPOLEON._"
&c. &c.
[Transcriber's note: Author was Deborah Alcock]
"Thy loving-kindness is better than life."
London
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1888.
CONTENTS.
I. BOYHOOD
II. THE MONK'S LETTER
III. SWORD AND CASSOCK
IV. ALCALA DE HENAREZ
V. DON CARLOS FORGETS HIMSELF
VI. DON CARLOS FORGETS HIMSELF STILL FURTHER
VII. THE DESENGANO
VIII. THE MULETEER
IX. EL DORADO FOUND
X. DOLORES
XI. THE LIGHT ENJOYED
XII. THE LIGHT DIVIDED FROM THE DARKNESS
XIII. SEVILLE
XIV. THE MONKS OF SAN ISODRO
XV. THE GREAT SANBENITO
XVI. WELCOME HOME
XVII. DISCLOSURES
XVIII. THE AGED MONK
XIX. TRUTH AND FREEDOM
XX. THE FIRST DROP OF A THUNDER SHOWER
XXI. BY THE GUADALQUIVIR
XXII. THE FLOOD-GATES OPENED
XXIII. THE REIGN OF TERROR
XXIV. A GLEAM OF LIGHT
XXV. WAITING
XXVI. DON GONSALVO'S REVENGE
XXVII. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER
XXVIII. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
XXIX. A FRIEND AT COURT
XXX. THE CAPTIVE
XXXI. MINISTERING ANGELS
XXXII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH
XXXIII. ON THE OTHER SIDE
XXXIV. FRAY SEBASTIAN'S TROUBLE
XXXV. THE EVE OF THE AUTO
XXXVI. "THE HORRIBLE AND TREMENDOUS SPECTACLE"
XXXVII. SOMETHING ENDED AND SOMETHING BEGUN
XXXVIII. NUERA AGAIN
XXXIX. LEFT BEHIND
XL. "A SATISFACTORY PENITENT"
XLI. MORE ABOUT THE PENITENT
XLII. QUIET DAYS
XLIII. EL DORADO FOUND AGAIN
XLIV. ONE PRISONER SET FREE
XLV. TRIUMPHANT
XLVI. IS IT TOO LATE?
XLVII. THE DOMINICAN PRIOR
XLVIII. SAN ISODRO ONCE MORE
XLIX. FAREWELL
THE SPANISH BROTHERS.
I.
Boyhood.
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."--Longfellow.
On one of the green slopes of the Sierra Morena, shaded by a few
cork-trees, and with wild craggy heights and bare brown wastes
stretching far above, there stood, about the middle of the sixteenth
century, a castle even then old and rather dilapidated. It had once
been a strong place, but was not very spacious; and certainly, according
to our modern ideas of comfort, the interior could not have been a
particularly comfortable dwelling-place. A large proportion of it was
occupied by the great hall, which was hung with faded, well-repaired
tapestry, and furnished with oaken tables, settles, and benches, very
elaborately carved, but bearing evident marks of age. Narrow unglazed
slits in the thick wall admitted the light and air; and beside one of
these, on a gloomy autumn morning, two boys stood together, watching the
rain that poured down without intermission.
They were dressed exactly alike, in loose jackets of blue cloth,
homespun, indeed, but so fresh and neatly-fashioned as to look more
becoming than many a costlier dress. Their long stockings were of silk,
and their cuffs and wide shirt-frills of fine Holland, carefully
starched and plaited. The elder--a very handsome lad, who looked
fourteen at least, but was really a year younger--had raven hair, black
sparkling eager eyes, good but strongly-marked features, and a
complexion originally dark, and well-tanned by exposure to sun and wind.
A broader forehead, wider nostrils, and a weaker mouth, distinguished
the more delicate-looking younger brother, whose hair was also less
dark, and his complexion fairer.
"Rain--rain! Will it rain for ever?" cried, in a tone of impatience,
the elder, whose name was Juan; or rather, his proper style and title
(and very angry would he have felt had any part been curtailed or
omitted) was Don Juan Rodrigo Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya. He was
of the purest blood in Spain; by the father's side, of noblest Castilian
lineage; by the mother's, of an ancient Asturian family. Well he knew
it, and proudly he held up his young head in consequence, in spite of
poverty, and of what was still worse, the mysterious blight that had
fallen on the name and fortunes of his house, bringing poverty in its
train, as the least of its attendant evils.
"'Rising early will not make the daylight come sooner,' nor watching
bring the sunshine," said the quick-witted Carlos, who, apt in learning
whatever he heard, was already an adept in the proverbial philosophy
which was then, and is now, the inheritance of his race.
"True enough. So let us fetch the canes, and have a merry play. Or,
better still, the foils for a fencing match."
Carlos acquiesced readily, though apparently without pleasure. In all
outward things, such as the choice of pursuits and games, Juan was the
unquestioned leader, Carlos never dreamed of disputing his fiat. Yet in
other, and really more important matters, it was Carlos who, quite
unconsciously to himself, performed the part of guide to his
stronger-willed but less thoughtful brother.
Juan now fetched the carefully guarded foils with which the boys were
accustomed to practise fencing; either, as now, simply for their own
amusement, or under the instructions of the gray-haired Diego, who had
served with their father in the Emperor's wars, and was now mayor-domo,
butler, and seneschal, all in one. He it was, moreover, from whom
Carlos had learned his store of proverbs.
"Now stand up. Oh, you are too low; wait a moment." Juan left the hall
again, but quickly returned with a large heavy volume, which he threw on
the floor, directing his brother to take his stand upon it.
Carlos hesitated. "But what if the Fray should catch us using our great
Horace after such a fashion!"
"I just wish he might," answered Juan, with a mischievous sparkle in his
black eyes.
The matter of height being thus satisfactorily adjusted, the game began,
and for some time went merrily forward. To do the elder brother
justice, he gave every advantage to his less active and less skilful
companion; often shouting (with very unnecessary exertion of his lungs)
words of direction or warning about fore-thrust, side-thrust, back-hand
strokes, hitting, and parrying. At last, however, in an unlucky moment,
Carlos, through some awkward movement of his own in violation of the
rules of the game, received a blow on the cheek from his brother's foil,
severe enough to make the blood flow. Juan instantly sprang forward,
full of vexation, with an "Ay de mi!" on his lips. But Carlos turned
away from him, covering his face with both hands; and Juan, much to his
disgust, soon heard the sound of a heavy sob.
"You little coward!" he exclaimed, "to weep for a blow. Shame--shame
upon you."
"Coward yourself, to call me ill names when I cannot fight you,"
retorted Carlos, as soon as he could speak for weeping.
"That is ever your way, little tearful. _You_ to talk of going to find
our father! A brave man you would make to sail to the Indies and fight
the savages. Better sit at home and spin, with Mother Dolores."
Far too deeply stung to find a proverb suited to the occasion, or indeed
to make any answer whatever, Carlos, still in tears, left the hall with
hasty footsteps, and took refuge in a smaller apartment that opened into
it.
The hangings of this room were comparatively new and very beautiful,
being tastefully wrought with the needle; and the furniture was much
more costly than that in the hall. There was also a glazed window, and
near this Carlos took his stand, looking moodily out on the falling
rain, and thinking hard thoughts of his brother, who had first hurt him
so sorely, then called him coward, and last, and far worst of all, had
taunted him with his unfitness for the task which, child as he was, his
whole heart and soul were bent on attempting.
But he could not quarrel very seriously with Juan, nor indeed could he
for any considerable time do without him. Before long his anger began
to give way to utter loneliness and discomfort, and a great longing to
"be friends" again.
Nor was Juan much more comfortable, though he told himself he was quite
right to reprove his brother sharply for his lack of manliness; and that
he would be ready to die for shame if Carlos, when he went to Seville,
should disgrace himself before his cousins by crying when he was hurt,
like a baby or a girl. It is true that in his heart he rather wished he
himself had held his peace, or at least had spoken more gently; but he
braved it out, and stamped up and down the hall, singing, in as cheery a
voice as he could command,--
"The Cid rode through the horse-shoe gate, Omega like it stood,
A symbol of the moon that waned before the Christian rood.
He was all sheathed in golden mail, his cloak was white as
shroud:
His vizor down, his sword unsheathed, corpse still he rode, and
proud."
"Ruy!" Carlos called at last, just a little timidly, from the next
room--"Ruy!"
Ruy is the Spanish diminutive of Rodrigo, Juan's second name, and the
one by which, for reasons of his own, it pleased him best to be called;
so the very use of it by Carlos was a kind of overture for peace. Juan
came right gladly at the call; and having convinced himself, by a
moment's inspection, that his brother's hurt signified nothing, he
completed the reconciliation by putting his arm, in familiar boyish
fashion, round his neck. Thus, without a word spoken, the brief quarrel
was at an end. It happened that the rain was over also, and the sun
just beginning to shine out again. It was, indeed, an effect of the
sunlight which had given Carlos a pretext for calling Juan again to his
side.
"Look, Ruy," he said, "the sun shines on our father's words!"
These children had a secret of their own, carefully guarded, with the
strange reticence of childhood, even from Dolores, who had been the
faithful nurse of their infancy, and who still cast upon their young
lives the only shadow of motherly love they had ever known--a shadow, it
is true, pale and faint, yet the best thing that had fallen to their
lot: for even Juan could remember neither parent; while Carlos had never
seen his father's face, and his mother had died at his birth.
Yet it happened that in the imaginary world which the children had
created around them, and where they chiefly lived, their unknown father
was by far the most important personage. All great nations in their
childhood have their legends, their epics, written or unwritten, and
their hero, one or many of them, upon whose exploits Fancy rings its
changes at will during the ages when national language, literature, and
character are in process of development. So it is with individuals.
Children of imagination--especially if they are brought up in seclusion,
and guarded from coarse and worldly companionship--are sure to have
their legends, perhaps their unwritten epic, certainly their hero. Nor
are these dreams of childhood idle fancies. In their time they are good
and beautiful gifts of God--healthful for the present, helpful for
after-years. There is deep truth in the poet's words, "When thou art a
man, reverence the dreams of thy youth."
The Cid Campeador, the Charlemagne, and the King Arthur of our youthful
Spanish brothers, was no other than Don Juan Alvarez de Menaya, second
and last Conde de Nuera. And as the historical foundation of national
romance is apt to be of the slightest--nay, the testimony of credible
history is often ruthlessly set at defiance--so it is with the romances
of children; nor did the present instance form any exception. All the
world said that their father's bones lay bleaching on a wild Araucanian
battle-field; but this went for nothing in the eyes of Juan and Carlos
Alvarez. Quite enough to build their childish faith upon was a
confidential whisper of Dolores--when she thought them sleeping--to the
village barber-surgeon, who was helping her to tend them through some
childish malady: "Dead? Would to all the Saints, and the blessed Queen
of Heaven, that we only had assurance of it!"
They had, however, more than this. Almost every day they read and
re-read those mysterious words, traced with a diamond by their father's
hand--as it never entered their heads to doubt--on the window of the
room which had once been his favourite place of retirement:--
"El Dorado
Yo he trovado."
"I have found El Dorado."
No eyes but their own had ever noticed this inscription; and marvellous
indeed was the superstructure their fancy contrived to raise on the
slight and airy foundation of its enigmatical five words. They had
heard from the lips of Diego many of the fables current at the period
about the "golden country" of which Spanish adventurers dreamed so
wildly, and which they sought so vainly in the New World. They were
aware that their father in his early days had actually made a voyage to
the Indies: and they had thoroughly persuaded themselves, therefore, of
nothing less than that he was the fortunate discoverer of El Dorado;
that he had returned thither, and was reigning there as a king, rich and
happy--only, perhaps, longing for his brave boys to come and join him.
And join him one day they surely would, even though unheard of dangers
(of which giants twelve feet high and fiery dragons--things in which
they quite believed--were among the least) might lie in their way, thick
as the leaves of the cork-trees when the autumn winds swept down through
the mountain gorges.
"Look, Ruy," said Carlos, "the light is on our father's words!"
"So it is! What good fortune is coming now? Something always comes to
us when they look like that."
"What do you wish for most?"
"A new bow, and a set of real arrows tipped with steel. And you?"
"Well--the 'Chronicles of the Cid,' I think."
"I should like that too. But I should like better still--"
"What!"
"That Fray Sebastian would fall ill of the rheum, and find the mountain
air too cold for his health; or get some kind of good place at his
beloved Complutum."
"We might go farther and fare worse, like those that go to look for
better bread than wheaten," returned Carlos, laughing. "Wish again,
Juan; and truly this time--your wish of wishes."
"What else but to find my father?"
"I mean, next to that."
"Well, truly, to go once more to Seville, to see the shops, and the
bull-fights, and the great Church; to tilt with our cousins, and dance
the cachuca with Dona Beatriz."
"That would not I. There be folk that go out for wool, and come home
shorn. Though I like Dona Beatriz as well as any one."
"Hush! here comes Dolores."
A tall, slender woman, robed in black serge, relieved by a neat white
head-dress, entered the room. Dark hair, threaded with silver, and
pale, sunken, care-worn features, made her look older than she really
was. She had once been beautiful; and it seemed as though her beauty
had been burned up in the glare of some fierce agony, rather than had
faded gradually beneath the suns of passing years. With the silent
strength of a deep, passionate heart, that had nothing else left to
cling to, Dolores loved the children of her idolized mistress and
foster-sister. It was chiefly her talent and energy that kept together
the poor remains of their fortune. She surrounded them with as many
inexpensive comforts as possible; still, like a true Spaniard, she would
at any moment have sacrificed their comfort to the maintenance of their
rank, or the due upholding of their dignity. On this occasion she held
an open letter in her hand.
"Young gentlemen," she said, using the formal style of address no
familiarity ever induced her to drop, "I bring your worships good
tidings. Your noble uncle, Don Manuel, is about to honour your castle
with his presence."
"Good tidings indeed! I am as glad as if you had given me a satin
doublet. He may take us back with him to Seville," cried Juan.
"He might have stayed at home, with good luck and my blessing," murmured
Carlos.
"Whether you go to Seville or no, Senor Don Juan," said Dolores,
gravely, "may very probably depend on the contentment you give your
noble uncle respecting your progress in your Latin, your grammar, and
your other humanities."
"A green fig for my noble uncle's contentment!" said Juan, irreverently.
"I know already as much as any gentleman need, and ten times more than
he does himself."
"Ay, truly," struck in Carlos, coming forward from the embrasure of the
window; "my uncle thinks a man of learning--except he be a fellow of
college, perchance--not worth his ears full of water. I heard him say
such only trouble the world, and bring sorrow on themselves and all
their kin. So, Juan, it is you who are likely to find favour in his
sight, after all."
"Senor Don Carlos, what ails your face?" asked Dolores, noticing now for
the first time the marks of the hurt he had received.
Both the boys spoke together.
"Only a blow caught in fencing; all through my own awkwardness. It is
nothing," said Carlos, eagerly.
"I hurt him with my foil. It was a mischance. I am very sorry," said
Juan, putting his hand on his brother's shoulder.
Dolores wisely abstained from exhorting them to greater carefulness.
She only said,--
"Young gentlemen who mean to be knights and captains must learn to give
hard blows and take them." Adding mentally--"Bless the lads! May they
stand by each other as loyally ten or twenty years hence as they do
now."
II.
The Monk's Letter
"Quoth the good fat friar,
Wiping his own mouth--'twas refection time."--R. Browning.
"Fray Sebastian Gomez, to the Honourable Senor Felipe de Santa Maria,
Licentiate of Theology, residing at Alcala de Henarez, commonly called
Complutum.
"Most Illustrious and Reverend Senor,--
"In my place of banishment, amidst these gloomy and inhospitable
mountains, I frequently solace my mind by reflections upon the friends
of my youth, and the happy period spent in those ancient halls of
learning, where in the morning of our days you and I together attended
the erudite prelections of those noble and most orthodox Grecians,
Demetrius Ducas and Nicetus Phaustus, or sat at the feet of that
venerable patriarch of science, Don Fernando Nunez. Fortunate are you,
O friend, in being able to pass your days amidst scenes so pleasant and
occupations so congenial; while I, unhappy, am compelled by fate, and by
the neglect of friends and patrons, to take what I may have, in place of
having what I might wish. I am, alas! under the necessity of wearing
out my days in the ungrateful occupation of instilling the rudiments of
humane learning into the dull and careless minds of children, whom to
instruct is truly to write upon sand or water. But not to weary your
excellent and illustrious friendship with undue prolixity, I shall
briefly relate the circumstances which led to my sojourn here."
(The good friar proceeds with his personal narrative, but by no means
briefly; and as it has, moreover, little or nothing to do with our
story, it may be omitted with advantage.)
"In this desert, as I may truly style it" (he continues), "nutriment for
the corporeal frame is as poor and bare as nutriment for the
intellectual part is altogether lacking. Alas! for the golden wine of
Xerez, that ambery nectar wherewith we were wont to refresh our jaded
spirits! I may not mention now our temperate banquets: the crisp red
mullet, the succulent pasties, the delicious ham of Estremadura, the
savoury olla podrida. Here beef is rarely seen, veal never. Our olla
is of lean mutton (if it be not rather of the flesh of goats), washed
down with bad vinegar, called wine by courtesy, and supplemented by a
few naughty figs or roasted chestnuts, with cheese of goat's milk, hard
as the heads of the rustics who make it. Certainly I am experiencing the
truth of the proverb, 'A bad cook is an inconvenient relation.' And
marvellously would a cask of Xerez wine, if, through the kindness of my
generous friends, it could find its way to these remote mountains, mend
my fare, and in all probability prolong my days. The provider here is
an antiquated, sour-faced duenna, who rules everything in this old ruin
of a castle, where poverty and pride are the only things to be found in
plenty. She is an Asturian, and came hither in the train of the late
unfortunate countess. Like all of that race, where the very shepherds
style themselves nobles, she is proud; but it is just to add that she is
also active, industrious, and thrifty to a miracle.
"But to pass on to affairs of greater importance. I have presumed, on
the part of my illustrious friend, some acquaintance with the sorrowful
history of my young pupils' family. You will remember the sudden shadow
that fell, like the eclipse of one of the bright orbs of heaven, upon
the fame and fortunes of the Conde de Nuera, known, some fifteen years
ago or more, as a brilliant soldier and courtier, and personal favourite
of his Imperial Majesty. There was a rumour of some black treason, I
know not what, but men said it even struck at the life of the great
Emperor, his friend and patron. It is supposed that the Emperor (whom
God preserve!), in his just wrath remembered mercy, and generously saved
the honour, while he punished the crime, of his ungrateful servant. At
all events, the world was told that the Count had accepted a command in
the Indies, and that he sailed thither from some port in the Low
Countries to which the Emperor had summoned him, without returning to
Spain. It is believed that, to save his neck from the axe and his name
from dire disgrace, he signed away, by his own act, his large property
to the Emperor and to Holy Church, reserving only a pittance for his
children. One year afterwards, his death, in battle with the Araucanian
savages, was announced, and, if I am not mistaken, His Majesty was
gracious enough to have masses said for his soul. But, at the time, the
tongue of rumour whispered a far more dreadful ending to the tale. Men
hinted that, upon the discovery of his treason, he despaired alike of
human and divine compassion, and perished miserably by his own hand.
But all possible pains were taken, for the sake of the family, to hush
up the affair; and nothing certain has ever, or probably will ever,
transpire. I am doubtful whether I am not a transgressor in having
committed to paper what is written above. Still, as it is written, it
shall stand. With you, most illustrious and honourable friend, all
things are safe.
"The youths whom it is my task to instruct are not deficient in parts.
But the elder, Don Juan, is idle and insolent; and withal, of so fiery a
temper, that he will brook no manner of correction. The younger, Don
Carlos is more toward in disposition, and really apt at his humanities,
were it not that his good-for-nothing brother is for ever leading him
into mischief. Don Manuel Alvarez, their uncle and guardian, who is a
shrewd man of the world, will certainly cause him to enter the Church.
But I pray, as I am bound in Christian charity, that it may not occur to
him to make the lad a Minorite friar, since, as I can testify from
sorrowful experience, such go barely enough through this wicked and
miserable world.
"In conclusion, I entreat of you, most illustrious friend, with the
utmost despatch and carefulness, to commit this writing to the flames;
and so I pray our Lady and the blessed St. Luke, upon whose vigil I
write, to have you in their good keeping.--Your unworthy brother,
"SEBASTIAN."
Thus, with averted face, or head shaken doubtfully, or murmured "Ay de
mi," the world spoke of him, of whom his own children, happy at least in
this, knew scarce anything, save words that seemed like a cry of joy.
III.
Sword and Cassock.
"The helmet and the cap make houses strong"--Spanish Proverb
Don Manual Alvarez stayed for several days at Nuera, as the half-ruined
castle in the Sierra Morena was styled. Grievous, during this period,
were the sufferings of Dolores, and unceasing her efforts to provide
suitable accommodation, not merely for the stately and fastidious guest
himself, but also for the troop of retainers he saw fit to bring with
him, comprising three or four personal attendants, and half a score of
men-at-arms--the last perhaps really necessary for a journey through
that wild district. Don Manuel scarcely enjoyed the situation more than
did his entertainers but he esteemed it his duty to pay an occasional
visit to the estate of his orphan nephews, to see that it was properly
taken care of. Perhaps the only member of the party quite at his ease
was the worthy Fray Sebastian, a good-natured, self-indulgent friar,
with a better education and more refined tastes than the average of his
order; fond of eating and drinking, fond of gossip, fond of a little
superficial literature, and not fond of troubling himself about
anything. He was comforted by the improved fare Don Manuel's visit
introduced; and was, moreover, soon relieved from his very natural
apprehensions that the guardian of his pupils might express discontent
at the slowness of their progress. He speedily discovered that Don
Manuel did not care to have his nephews made good scholars: he only
cared to have them ready, in two or three years, to go to the University
of Complutum, or to that of Salamanca, where they might remain until
they were satisfactorily provided for--one in the Army, the other in the
Church.
As for Juan and Carlos, they felt, with the sure instinct of children,
in this respect something like that of animals, that their uncle had
little love for them. Juan dreaded, more than under the circumstances
he need have done, too careful inquiries into his progress; and Carlos,
while he stood in great outward awe of his uncle, all the time contrived
to despise him in his heart, because he neither knew Latin, nor could
repeat any of the ballads of the Cid.
On the third day of his visit, after dinner, which was at noon, Don
Manuel solemnly seated himself in the great carved armchair that stood
on the estrada at one end of the hall, and summoned his nephews to his
side. He was a tall, wiry-looking man, with a narrow forehead, thin
lips, and a pointed beard. His dress was of the finest mulberry-coloured
cloth, turned back with velvet; everything about him was rich, handsome,
and in good keeping, but without extravagance. His manner was
dignified, perhaps a little pompous, like that of a man bent upon making
the most of himself, as he had unquestionably made the most of his
fortune.
He first addressed Juan, whom he gravely reminded that his father's
_imprudence_ had left him nothing save that poor ruin of a castle, and a
few barren acres of rocky ground, at which the boy's eyes flashed, and
he shrugged his shoulders and bit his lip. Don Manuel then proceeded, at
some length, to extol the noble profession of arms as the road to fame
and fortune. This kind of language proved much more acceptable to his
nephew, and looking up, he said promptly, "Yes, senor my uncle, I will
gladly be a soldier, as all my fathers were."
"Well spoken. And when thou art old enough, I promise to use my
influence to obtain for thee a good appointment in His Imperial
Majesty's army. I trust thou wilt honour thine ancient name."
"You may trust me," said Juan, in slow, earnest tones. Then raising his
head, he went on more rapidly: "Beside his own name, Juan, my father
gave me that of Rodrigo, borne by the Cid Ruy Diaz, the Campeador,
meaning no doubt to show--"
"Peace, boy!" Don Manuel interrupted, cutting short the only words that
his nephew had ever spoken really from his heart in his presence, with
as much unconsciousness as a countryman might set his foot on a
glow-worm. "Thou wert never named Rodrigo after thy Cid and his idle
romances. Thy father called thee so after some madcap friend of his own,
of whom the less spoken the better."
"My father's friend must have been good and noble, like himself," said
Juan proudly, almost defiantly.
"Young man," returned Don Manuel severely, and lifting his eyebrows as
if in surprise at his audacity, "learn that a humbler tone and more
courteous manners would become thee in the presence of thy superiors."
Then turning haughtily away from him, he addressed himself to Carlos:
"As for thee, nephew Carlos, I hear with pleasure of thy progress in
learning. Fray Sebastian reports of thee that thou hast a good ready
wit and a retentive memory. Moreover, if I mistake not, sword cuts are
less in thy way than in thy brother's. The service of Holy Mother
Church will fit thee like a glove; and let me tell thee, boy, for thou
art old enough to understand me, 'tis a right good service. Churchmen
eat well and drink well--churchmen sleep soft--churchmen spend their
days fingering the gold other folk toil and bleed for. For those who
have fair interest in high places, and shuffle their own cards deftly,
there be good fat benefices, comfortable canonries, and perhaps--who
knows?--a rich bishopric at the end of all; with a matter of ten
thousand hard ducats, at the least, coming in every year to save or
spend, or lend, if you like it better."
"Ten thousand ducats!" said Carlos, who had been gazing in his uncle's
face, his large blue eyes full of half-incredulous, half-uncomprehending
wonder.
"Ay, my son, that is about the least. The Archbishop of Seville has
sixty thousand every year, and more."
"Ten thousand ducats!" Carlos repeated again in a kind of awe-struck
whisper. "That would buy a ship."
"Yes," said Don Manuel, highly pleased with what he considered an
indication of precocious intelligence in money matters. "And an
excellent thought that is of thine, my son. A good ship chartered for
the Indies, and properly freighted, would bring thee back thy ducats
_well perfumed_.[#] For a ship is sailing while you are sleeping. As
the saying is, Let the idle man buy a ship or marry a wife. I perceive
thou art a youth of much ingenuity. What thinkest thou, then, of the
Church?"
[#] With good interest.
Carlos was still too much the child to say anything in answer except,
"If it please you, senor my uncle, I should like it well."
And thus, with rather more than less consideration of their tastes and
capacities than was usual at the time, the future of Juan and Carlos
Alvarez was decided.
When the brothers were alone together, Juan said, "Dolores must have
been praying Our Lady for us, Carlos. An appointment in the army is the
very thing for me. I shall perform some great feat of arms, like
Alphonso Vives, for instance, who took the Duke of Saxony prisoner; I
shall win fame and promotion, and then come back and ask my uncle for
the hand of his ward, Dona Beatriz."
"Ah, and I--if I enter the Church, I can never marry," said Carlos
rather ruefully, and with a vague perception that his brother was to
have some good thing from which he must be shut out for ever.
"Of course not; but you will not care."
"Never a whit," said the boy of twelve, very confidently. "I shall ever
have thee, Juan. And all the gold my uncle says churchmen win so
easily, I will save to buy our ship."
"I will also save, so that one day we may sail together. I will be the
captain, and thou shall be the mass-priest, Carlos."
"But I marvel if it be true that churchmen grow rich so fast. The cura
in the village must be very poor, for Diego told me he took old Pedro's
cloak because he could not pay the dues for his wife's burial."
"More shame for him, the greedy vulture. Carlos, you and I have each
half a ducat; let us buy it back."
"With all my heart. It will be worth something to see the old man's
face."
"The cura is covetous rather than poor," said Juan. "But poor or no, no
one dreams of _your_ being a beggarly cura like that. It is only vulgar
fellows of whom they make parish priests in the country. You will get
some fine preferment, my uncle says. And he ought to know, for he has
feathered his own nest well."
"Why is he rich when we are poor, Juan? Where does he get all his
money?"
"The saints know best. He has places under Government. Something about
the taxes, I think, that he buys and sells again."
"In truth, he's not one to measure oil without getting some on his
fingers. How different from him our father must have been."
"Yes," said Juan. "_His_ riches, won by his own sword and battle-axe,
and his good right hand, will be worth having. Ay, and even worth
seeing; will they not?"
So these children dreamed of the future--that future of which nothing
was certain, except its unlikeness to their dreams. No thing was
certain; but what was only too probable? That the brave, free-hearted
boy, who had never willingly injured any one, and who was ready to share
his last coin with the poor man, would be hardened and brutalized into a
soldier of fortune, like those who massacred tribes of trusting,
unoffending Indians, or burned Flemish cities to the ground, amidst
atrocities that even now make hearts quail and ears tingle. And yet
worse, that the fair child beside him, whose life still shone with that
child-like innocence which is truly the dew of youth, as bright and as
fleeting, would be turned over, soul and spirit, to a system of training
too surely calculated to obliterate the sense of truth, to deprave the
moral taste, to make natural and healthful joys impossible, and unlawful
and degrading ones fearfully easy and attainable; to teach the strong
nature the love of power, the mean the love of money, and all alike
falsehood, cowardice, and cruelty.
IV.
Alcala de Henarez
"Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of morning,
Her tears and her smiles are worth evening's best light."--Moore
Few are the lives in which seven years come and go with out witnessing
any great event. But whether they are eventful or no, the years that
change children into men must necessarily be important. Three years of
these important seven, Juan and Carlos Alvarez spent in their mountain
home, the remaining four at the University of Alcala, or Complutum. The
university training was of course needful for the younger brother, who
was intended for the Church. That the elder was allowed to share the
privilege, although destined for the profession of arms, was the result
of circumstances. His guardian, Don Manuel Alvarez, although worldly
and selfish, still retained a lingering regard for the memory of that
lost brother whose latest message to him had been, "Have my boy
carefully educated." And, moreover, he could scarcely have left the
high-spirited youth to wear out the years that must elapse before he
could obtain his commission in the dreary solitude of his mountain home,
with Diego and Dolores for companions, and for sole amusement, a horse
and a few greyhounds. Better that he should take his chance at Alcala,
and enjoy himself there as best he might, with no obligation to severe
study, and but one duty strongly impressed on him--that of keeping out
of debt.
He derived real benefit from the university training, though no academic
laurels rested on his brow, nor did he take a degree. Fray Sebastian
had taught him to read and write, and had even contrived to pass him
through the Latin grammar, of which he afterwards remembered scarcely
anything. To have urged him to learn more would have required severity
only too popular at the time; but this Fray Sebastian was too timid,
perhaps too prudent, to employ; while of interesting him in his studies
he never thought. At Alcala, however, he was interested. He did not
care, indeed, for the ordinary scholastic course; but he found in the
college library all the books yet written in his native language, and it
was then the palmy age of Spanish literature. Beginning with the poems
and romances relating to the history of his country, he read through
everything; poetry, romance, history, science, nothing came amiss to
him, except perhaps theology. He studied with especial care all that
had reference to the story of the New World, whither he hoped one day to
go. He attended lectures; he even acquired Latin enough to learn
anything he really wanted to know, and could not find except in that
language.
Thus, at the end of his four years' residence, he had acquired a good
deal of useful though somewhat desultory information; and he had gained
the art of expressing himself in the purest Castilian, by tongue or pen,
with energy, vigour, and precision.
The sixteenth century gives us many specimens of such men--and not a few
of them were Spaniards--men of intelligence and general cultivation,
whose profession was that of arms, but who can handle the pen with as
much ease and dexterity as the sword; men who could not only do valiant
deeds, but also describe them when done, and that often with singular
effectiveness.
With his contemporaries Juan was popular, for his pride was
inaggressive, and his fiery temper was counterbalanced by great
generosity of disposition. During his residence at Alcala he fought
three duels; one to chastise a fellow-student who had called his brother
"Dona Carlotta," the other two on being provoked by the far more serious
offence of covert sneers at his father's memory. He also caned severely
a youth whom he did not think of sufficient rank to honour with his
sword, merely for observing, when Carlos won a prize from him, "Don
Carlos Alvarez unites genius and industry, as he would need to do, who
is _the son of his own good works_." But afterwards, when the same
student was in danger, through poverty, of having to give up his career
and return home, Juan stole into his chamber during his absence, and
furtively deposited four gold ducats (which he could ill spare) between
the leaves of his breviary.
Far more outwardly successful, but more really disastrous, was the
academic career of Carlos. As student of theology, most of his days,
and even some of his nights, were spent over the musty tomes of the
Schoolmen. Like living water on the desert, his young bright intellect
was poured out on the dreary sands of scholastic divinity (little else,
in truth, than "bad metaphysics"), to no appreciable result, except its
own utter waste. The kindred study of casuistry was even worse than
waste of intellect; it was positive defilement and degradation. It was
bad enough to tread with painful steps through roads that led nowhere;
but it became worse when the roads were miry, and the mud at every step
clung to the traveller's feet. Though here the parallel must cease; for
the moral defilement, alas! is most deadly and dangerous when least felt
or heeded.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, according as we look on the things seen
or the things not seen, Carlos offered to his instructors admirable raw
material out of which to fashion a successful, even a great Churchman.
He came to them a stripling of fifteen, innocent, truthful,
affectionate. He had "parts," as they styled them, and singularly good
ones. He had just the acute perception, the fine and ready wit, which
enabled him to cut his way through scholastic subtleties and conceits
with ease and credit. And, to do his teachers justice, they sharpened
his intellectual weapon well, until its temper grew as exquisite as that
of the scimitar of Saladin, which could divide a gauze kerchief by the
thread at a single blow. But how would it fare with such a weapon, and
with him who, having proved no other, could wield only that, in the
great conflict with the Dragon that guarded the golden apples of truth?
The question is idle, for truth was a luxury of which Carlos was not
taught to dream. To find truth, to think truth, to speak truth, to act
truth, was not placed before him as an object worth his attainment. Not
the _True_, but the _Best_, was always held up to him as the mark to be
aimed at: the best for the Church, the best for his family, the best for
himself.
He had much imagination, he was quick in invention and ready in
expedients; good gifts in themselves, but very perilous where the sense
of truth is lacking, or blunted. He was timid, as sensitive and
reflective natures are apt to be, perhaps also from physical causes.
And in those rough ages, the Church offered almost the only path in
which the timid man could not only escape infamy, but actually attain to
honour. In her service a strong head could more than atone for weak
nerves. Power, fame, wealth, might be gained in abundance by the
Churchman without stirring from his cell or chapel, or facing a single
drawn sword or loaded musket. Always provided that his subtle,
cultivated intellect could guide the rough hands that wielded the
swords, or, better still, the crowned head that commanded them.
There may have been even then at that very university (there certainly
were a few years earlier), a little band of students who had quite other
aims, and who followed other studies than those from which Carlos hoped
to reap worldly success and fame. These youths really desired to find
the truth and to keep it; and therefore they turned from the pages of
the Fathers and the Schoolmen to the Scriptures in the original
languages. But the "Biblists," as they were called, were few and
obscure. Carlos did not, during his whole term of residence, come in
contact with any of them. The study of Hebrew, and even of Greek, was
by this time discouraged; the breath of calumny had blown upon it,
linking it with all that was horrible in the eyes of Spanish Catholics,
summed up in the one word, heresy. Carlos never even dreamed of any
excursion out of the beaten path marked out for him, and which he was
travelling so successfully as to distance nearly all his competitors.
Both Juan and Carlos still clung fondly to their early dream; though
their wider knowledge had necessarily modified some of its details.
Carlos, at least, was not quite so confident as he had once been about
the existence of El Dorado; but he was as fully determined as Juan to
search out the mystery of their father's fate, and either to clasp his
living hand, or to stand beside his grave. The love of the brothers,
and their trust in each other, had only strengthened with their years,
and was beautiful to witness.
Occasional journeys to Seville, and brief intervals of making holiday
there, varied the monotony of their college life, and were not without
important results.
It was the summer of 1556. The great Carlos, so lately King and Kaiser,
had laid down the heavy burden of sovereignty, and would soon be on his
way to pleasant San Yuste, to mortify the flesh, and prepare for his
approaching end, as the world believed; but in reality to eat, drink,
and enjoy himself as well as his worn-out body and mind would allow him.
Just then our young Juan, healthy, hearty, hopeful, and with the world
before him, received the long wished-for appointment in the army of the
new King of all the Spains, Don Felipe Segunde.
The brothers have eaten their last temperate meal together, in their
handsome, though not very comfortable, lodging at Alcala. Juan pushes
away the wine-cup that Carlos would fain have refilled, and toys
absently with the rind of a melon. "Carlos," he says, without looking
his brother in the face, "remember that thing of which we spoke;" adding
in lower and more earnest tones, "and so may God remember thee."
"Surely, brother. You have, however, little to fear."
"Little to fear!" and there was the old quick flash in the dark eyes.
"Because, forsooth, to spare my aunt's selfishness and my cousin's
vanity, she must not be seen at dance, or theatre, or bull-feast? It is
enough for her to show her face on the Alameda or at mass to raise me up
a host of rivals."
"Still, my uncle favours you; and Dona Beatriz herself will not be found
of a different mind when you come home with your promotion and your
glory, as you will, my Ruy!"
"Then, brother, watch thou in my absence, and fail not to speak the
right word at the right moment, as thou canst so well. So shall I hold
myself at ease, and give my whole mind to the noble task of breaking the
heads of all the enemies of my liege lord the king."
Then, rising from the table, he girt on his new Toledo sword with its
embroidered belt, threw over his shoulders his short scarlet cloak, and
flung a gay velvet montero over his rich black curls. Don Carlos went
out with him, and mounting the horses a lad from their country-home held
in readiness, they rode together down the street and through the gate of
Alcala Don Juan followed by many an admiring gaze, and many a hearty
"Vaya con Dios,"[#] from his late companions.
[#] Go with God.
V.
Don Carlos forgets Himself
"A fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind."--E. B.
Browning
Don Carlos Alvarez found Alcala, after his brother's departure,
insupportably dull; moreover, he had now almost finished his brilliant
university career. As soon, therefore, as he could, he took his degree
as Licentiate of Theology. He then wrote to inform his uncle of the
fact; adding that he would be glad to spend part of the interval that
must elapse before his ordination at Seville, where he might attend the
lectures of the celebrated Fray Constantino Ponce de la Fuente,
Professor of Divinity in the College of Doctrine in that city. But, in
fact, a desire to fulfil his brother's last charge weighed more with him
than an eagerness for further instruction; especially as rumours that
his watchfulness was not unnecessary had reached his ears at Alcala.
He received a prompt and kind invitation from his uncle to make his
house his home for as long a period as he might desire. Now, although
Don Manuel was highly pleased with the genius and industry of his
younger nephew, the hospitality he extended to him was not altogether
disinterested. He thought Carlos capable of rendering what he deemed an
essential service to a member of his own family.
That family consisted of a beautiful, gay, frivolous wife, three sons,
two daughters, and his wife's orphan niece, Dona Beatriz de Lavella.
The two elder sons were cast in their father's mould; which, to speak
truth, was rather that of a merchant than of a cavalier. Had he been
born of simple parents in the flats of Holland or the back streets of
London, a vulgar Hans or Thomas, his tastes and capabilities might have
brought him honest wealth. But since he had the misfortune to be Don
Manuel Alvarez, of the bluest blood in Spain, he was taught to look on
industry as ineffably degrading, and trade and commerce scarcely less
so. Only one species of trade, one kind of commerce, was open to the
needy and avaricious, but proud grandee. Unhappily it was almost the
only kind that is really degrading--the traffic in public money, in
places, and in taxes. "A sweeping rain leaving no food," such traffic
was, in truth. The Government was defrauded; the people, especially the
poorer classes, were cruelly oppressed. No one was enriched except the
greedy jobber, whose birth rendered him infinitely too proud to work,
but by no means too proud to cheat and steal.
Don Manuel the younger, and Don Balthazar Alvarez, were ready and
longing to tread in their father's footsteps. Of the two pale-faced
dark-eyed sisters, Dona Inez and Dona Sancha, one was already married,
and the other had also plans satisfactory to her parents. But the
person in the family who was not of it was the youngest son, Don
Gonsalvo. He was the representative, not of his father, but of his
grandfather; as we so often see types of character reproduced in the
third generation. The first Conde de Nuera had been a wild soldier of
fortune in the Moorish wars, fierce and fiery, with strong unbridled
passions. At eighteen, Gonsalvo was his image; and there was scarcely
any mischief possible to a youth of fortune in a great city, into which
he had not already found his way. For two years he continued to
scandalize his family, and to vex the soul of his prudent and decorous
father.
Suddenly, however, a change came over him. He reformed, became quiet
and regular in his conduct; gave himself up to study, making
extraordinary progress in a very short time; and even showed what those
around him called "a pious disposition." But these hopeful appearances
passed as suddenly and as unaccountably as they came. After an interval
of less than a year, he returned to his former habits, and plunged even
more madly than ever into all kinds of vice and dissipation.
His father resolved to procure him a commission, and send him away to
the wars. But an accident frustrated his intentions. In those days,
cavaliers of rank frequently sought the dangerous triumphs of the
bull-ring. The part of matador was performed, not, as now, by hired
bravos of the lowest class, but often by scions of the most honourable
houses. Gonsalvo had more than once distinguished himself in the bloody
arena by courage and coolness. But he tempted his fate too often. Upon
one occasion he was flung violently from his horse, and then gored by
the furious bull, whose rage had been excited to the utmost pitch by the
cruel arts usually practised. He escaped with life, but remained a
crippled invalid, apparently condemned for the rest of his days to
inaction, weakness, and suffering.
His father thought a good canonry would be a decent and comfortable
provision for him, and pressed him accordingly to enter the Church. But
the invalided youth manifested an intense repugnance to the step; and
Don Manuel hoped that the influence of Carlos would help to overcome
this feeling; believing that he would gladly endeavour to persuade his
cousin that no way of life was so pleasant or so easy as that which he
himself was about to adopt.
The good nature of Carlos led him to fall heartily into his uncle's
plans. He really pitied his cousin, moreover, and gladly gave himself
to the task of trying in every possible way to console and amuse him.
But Gonsalvo rudely repelled all his efforts. In his eyes the destined
priest was half a woman, with no knowledge of a man's aims or a man's
passions, and consequently no right to speak of them.
"Turn priest!" he said to him one day; "I have as good a mind to turn
Turk. Nay, cousin, I am not pious--you may present my orisons to Our
Lady with your own, if it so please you. Perhaps she may attend to them
better than to those I offered before entering the bull-ring on that
unlucky day of St. Thomas."
Carlos, though not particularly devout, was shocked by this language.
"Take care, cousin," he said; "your words sound rather like blasphemy."
"And yours sound like the words of what you are, half a priest already,"
retorted Gonsalvo. "It is ever the priest's cry, if you displease him,
'Open heresy!' 'Rank blasphemy!' And next, 'the Holy Office, and a
yellow Sanbenito.' I marvel it did not occur to your sanctity to menace
me with that."
The gentle-tempered Carlos did not answer; a forbearance which further
exasperated Gonsalvo, who hated nothing so much as being, on account of
his infirmities, borne with like a woman or a child. "But the saints
help the Churchmen," he went on ironically. "Good simple souls, they do
not know even their own business! Else they would smell heresy close
enough at hand. What doctrine does your Fray Constantino preach in the
great Church every feast-day, since they made him canon-magistral?"
"The most orthodox and Catholic doctrine, and no other," said Carlos,
roused, in his turn, by the attack upon his teacher; though he did not
greatly care for his instructions, which turned principally upon
subjects about which he had learned little or nothing in the schools.
"But to hear thee discuss doctrine is to hear a blind man talking of
colours."
"If I be the blind man talking of colours, thou art the deaf prating of
music," retorted his cousin. "Come and tell me, if thou canst, what are
these doctrines of thy Fray Constantino; and wherein they differ from
the Lutheran heresy? I wager my gold chain and medal against thy new
velvet cloak, that thou wouldst fall thyself into as many heresies by
the way as there are nuts in Barcelona."
Allowing for Gonsalvo's angry exaggeration, there was some truth in his
assertion. Once out of the region of dialectic subtleties, the champion
of the schools would have become weak as another man. And he could not
have expounded Fray Constantino's preaching;--because he did not
understand it.
"What, cousin!" he exclaimed, affronted in his tenderest part, his
reputation as a theological scholar. "Dost thou take me for a
barefooted friar or a village cura? Me, who only two months ago was
crowned victor in a debate upon the doctrines taught by Raymondus
Lullius!"
But whatever chagrin Carlos may have felt at finding himself utterly
unable to influence Gonsalvo, was soon effectually banished by the
delight with which he watched the success of his diplomacy with Dona
Beatriz.
Beatriz was almost a child in years, and entirely a child in mind and
character. Hitherto, she had been studiously kept in the background,
lest her brilliant beauty should throw her cousins into the shade.
Indeed, she would probably have been consigned to a convent, had not her
portion been too small to furnish the donative usually bestowed by the
friends of a novice upon any really aristocratic establishment. "And
pity would it have been," thought Carlos, "that so fair a flower should
wither in a convent garden."
He made the most of the limited opportunities of intercourse which the
ceremonious manners of the time and country afforded, even to inmates of
the same house. He would stand beside her chair, and watch the quick
flush mount to her olive, delicately-rounded cheek, as he talked
eloquently of the absent Juan. He was never tired of relating stories
of Juan's prowess, Juan's generosity. In the last duel he fought, for
instance, the ball had passed through his cap and grazed his head. But
he only smiled, and re-arranged his locks, remarking, while he did so,
that with the addition of a gold chain and medal, the spoiled cap would
be as good, or better than ever. Then he would dilate on his kindness
to the vanquished; rejoicing in the effect produced, as a tribute as
well to his own eloquence as to his brother's merit. The occupation was
too fascinating not to be resorted to once and again, even had he not
persuaded himself that he was fulfilling a sacred duty.
Moreover, he soon discovered that the bright dark eyes which were
beginning to visit him nightly in his dreams, were pining all day for a
sight of that gay world from which their owner was jealously and
selfishly excluded. So he managed to procure for Dona Beatriz many a
pleasure of the kind she most valued. He prevailed upon his aunt and
cousins to bring her with them to places of public resort; and then he
was always at hand, with the reverence of a loyal cavalier, and the
freedom of a destined priest, to render her every quiet unobtrusive
service in his power. At the theatre, at the dance, at the numerous
Church ceremonies, on the promenade, Dona Beatriz was his especial
charge.
Amidst such occupations, pleasant weeks and months glided by almost
unnoticed by him. Never before had he been so happy. "Alcala was well
enough," he thought; "but Seville is a thousand times better. All my
life heretofore seems to me only like a dream, now I am awake."
Alas! he was not awake, but wrapped in a deep sleep, and cradling a
bright delusive vision. As yet he was not even "as those that dream,
and know the while they dream." His slumber was too profound even for
this dim half-consciousness.
No one suspected, any more than he suspected himself, the enchantment
that was stealing over him. But every one remarked his frank, genial
manners, his cheerfulness, his good looks. Naturally, the name of Juan
dropped gradually more and more out of his conversation; as at the same
time the thought of Juan faded from his mind. His studies, too, were
neglected; his attendance upon the lectures of Fray Constantino became
little more than a formality; while "receiving Orders" seemed a remote
if not an uncertain contingency. In fact, he lived in the present, not
caring to look either at the past or the future.
In the very midst of his intoxication, a slight incident affected him
for a moment with such a chill as we feel when, on a warm spring day,
the sun passes suddenly behind a cloud.
His cousin, Dona Inez, had been married more than a year to a wealthy
gentleman of Seville, Don Garcia Ramirez. Carlos, calling one morning
at the lady's house with some unimportant message from Dona Beatriz,
found her in great trouble on account of the sudden illness of her babe.
"Shall I go and fetch a physician?" he asked, knowing well that Spanish
servants can never be depended upon to make haste, however great the
emergency may be.
"You will do a great kindness, amigo mio," said the anxious young
mother.
"But which shall I summon?" asked Carlos. "Our family physician, or Don
Garcia's?"
"Don Garcia's, by all means,--Dr. Cristobal Losada. I would not give a
green fig for any other in Seville. Do you know his dwelling?"
"Yes. But should he be absent or engaged?"
"I must have him. Him, and no other. Once before he saved my darling's
life. And if my poor brother would but consult him, it might fare
better with him. Go quickly, cousin, and fetch him, in Heaven's name."
Carlos lost no time in complying; but on reaching the dwelling of the
physician, found that though the hour was early he had already gone
forth. After leaving a message, he went to visit a friend in the Triana
suburb. He passed close by the Cathedral, with its hundred pinnacles,
and that wonder of beauty, the old Moorish Giralda, soaring far up above
it into the clear southern sky. It occurred to him that a few Aves said
within for the infant's recovery would be both a benefit to the child
and a comfort to the mother. So he entered, and was making his way to a
gaudy tinselled Virgin and Babe, when, happening to glance towards a
different part of the building, his eyes rested on the physician, with
whose person he was well acquainted, as he had often noticed him amongst
Fray Constantino's hearers. Losada was now pacing up and down one of
the side aisles, in company with a gentleman of very distinguished
appearance.
As Carlos drew nearer, it occurred to him that he had never seen this
personage in any place of public resort, and for this reason, as well as
from certain slight indications in his dress of fashions current in the
north of Spain, he gathered that he was a stranger in Seville, who might
be visiting the Cathedral from motives of curiosity. Before he came up
the two men paused in their walk, and turning their backs to him, stood
gazing thoughtfully at the hideous row of red and yellow Sanbenitos, or
penitential garments, that hung above them.
"Surely," thought Carlos, "they might find better objects of attention
than these ugly memorials of sin and shame, which bear witness that
their late miserable wearers--Jews, Moors, blasphemers, or
sorcerers,--have ended their dreary lives of penance, if not of
penitence."
The attention of the stranger seemed to be particularly attracted by one
of them, the largest of all. Indeed, Carlos himself had been struck by
its unusual size; and upon one occasion he had even had the curiosity to
read the inscription, which he remembered because it contained Juan's
favourite name. Rodrigo. It was this: "Rodrigo Valer, a citizen of
Lebrixa and Seville; an apostate and false apostle, who pretended to be
sent from God." And now, as he approached with light though hasty
footsteps, he distinctly heard Dr. Cristobal Losada, still looking at
the Sanbenito, say to his companion, "Yes, senor; and also the Conde de
Nuera, Don Juan Alvarez."
Don Juan Alvarez! What possible tie could link his father's name with
the hideous thing they were gazing at? And what could the physician
know about him of whom his own children knew so little? Carlos stood
amazed, and pale with sudden emotion.
And thus the physician saw him, happening to turn at that moment. Had
he not exerted all his presence of mind (and he possessed a great deal),
he would himself have started visibly. The unexpected appearance of the
person of whom we speak is in itself disconcerting; but it deserves
another name when we are saying that of him or his which, if overheard,
might endanger life, or what is more precious still than life. Losada
was equal to the occasion, however. The usual greetings having been
exchanged, he asked quietly whether Senor Don Carlos had come in search
of him, and hoped that he did not owe the honour to any indisposition in
his worship's noble family.
Carlos felt it rather a relief, under the circumstances, to have to say
that his cousin's babe was alarmingly ill. "You will do us a great
favour," he added, "by coming immediately. Dona Inez is very anxious."
The physician promised compliance; and turning to his companion,
respectfully apologized for leaving him abruptly.
"A sick child's claim must not be postponed," said the stranger in
reply. "Go, senor doctor, and God's blessing rest on your skill."
Carlos was struck by the noble bearing and courteous manner of the
stranger, who, in his turn, was interested by the young man's anxiety
about a sick babe. But with only a passing glance at the other, each
went his different way, not dreaming that once again at least their
paths were destined to cross.
The strange mention of his father's name that he had overheard filled
the heart of Carlos with undefined uneasiness. He knew enough by that
time to feel his childish belief in his father's stainless virtue a
little shaken. What if a dreadful unexplained something, linking his
fate with that of a convicted heretic, were yet to be learned? After
all, the accursed arts of magic and sorcery were not so far removed from
the alchemist's more legitimate labours, that a rash or presumptuous
student might not very easily slide from one into the other. He had
reason to believe that his father had played with alchemy, if he had not
seriously devoted himself to its study. Nay, the thought had sometimes
flashed unbidden across his mind that the "El Dorado" found might after
all have been no other than the philosopher's stone. For he who has
attained the power of producing gold at will may surely be said, without
any stretch of metaphor, to have discovered a golden country. But at
this period of his life the personal feelings of Carlos were so keen and
absorbing that almost everything, consciously or unconsciously, was
referred to them. And thus it was that an intense wish sprang up in his
heart, that his father's secret might have descended to _him_.
Vain wish! The gold he needed or desired must be procured from a less
inaccessible region than El Dorado, and without the aid of the
philosopher's stone.
VI.
Don Carlos forgets Himself still further
"The not so very false, as falsehood goes,--
The spinning out and drawing fine, you know;
Really mere novel-writing, of a sort,
Acting, improvising, make-believe,--
Surely not downright cheatery!"--R. Browning.
It cost Carlos some time and trouble to drive away the haunting thoughts
which Losada's words had awakened. But he succeeded at length; or
perhaps it would be more truthful to say the bright eyes and witching
smiles of Dona Beatrix accomplished the work for him.
Every dream, however, must have a waking. Sometimes a slight sound,
ludicrously trivial in its cause, dispels a slumber fraught with
wondrous visions, in which we have been playing the part of kings and
emperors.
"Nephew Don Carlos," said Don Manuel one day, "is it not time you
thought of shaving your head? You are learned enough for your Orders
long ago, and 'in a plentiful house supper is soon dressed.'"
"True, senor my uncle," murmured Carlos, looking suddenly aghast. "But
I am under the canonical age."
"But you can get a dispensation."
"Why such haste? There is time yet and to spare."
"That is not so sure. I hear the cura of San Lucar has one foot in the
grave. The living is a good one, and I think I know where to go for it.
So take care you lose not a heifer for want of a halter to hold it by."
With these words on his lips, Don Manuel went out. At the same moment
Gonsalvo, who lay listlessly on a sofa at one end of the room, or rather
court, reading "Lazarillo de Tormes," the first Spanish novel, burst
into a loud paroxysm of laughter.
"What may be the theme of your merriment?" asked Carlos, turning his
large dreamy eyes languidly towards him.
"Yourself, amigo mio. You would make the stone saints of the Cathedral
laugh on their pedestals. There you stand, pale as marble, a living
image of despair. Come, rouse yourself! What do you mean to do? Will
you take what you wish, or let your chance slip by, and then sit and
weep because you have it not? Will you be a _priest_ or a _man_? Make
your choice this hour, for one you must be, and both you cannot be."
Carlos answered him not; in truth, he dared not answer him. Every word
was the voice of his own heart; perhaps it was also, though he knew it
not, the voice of the great tempter. He withdrew to his chamber, and
barred and bolted himself in it. This was the first time in his life
that solitude was a necessity to him. His uncle's words had brought
with them a terrible revelation. He knew himself now too well; he knew
what he loved, what he desired, or rather what he hungered and thirsted
for with agonizing intensity. No; never the priest's frock for him. He
must call Dona Beatriz de Lavella his--his before God's altar--or die.
Then came a thought, stinging him with sharp, sudden pain. It was a
thought that should have come to him long ago,--"Juan!" And with the
name, affection, memory, conscience, rose up together within him to
combat the mad resolve of his passion.
Fiery passions slumbered in the heart of Carlos. Such art sometimes
found united with a gentle temper, a weak will, and sensitive nerves.
Woe to their possessor when they are aroused in their strength!
Had Carlos been a plain soldier, like the brother he was tempted to
betray, it is possible he might have come forth from this terrible
conflict still holding fast his honour and his brotherly affection. It
was his priestly training that turned the scale. He had been taught
that simple truth between man and man was a thing of little consequence.
He had been taught the art of making a hundred clever, plausible excuses
for whatever he saw best to do. He had been taught, in short, every
species of sophistry by which, to the eyes of others, and to his own
also, wrong might be made to seem right, and black to appear the purest
white.
His subtle imagination forged in the fire of his kindled passions chains
of reasoning in which no skill could detect a flaw. Juan had never
loved as he did; Juan would not care; probably by this time he had
forgotten Dona Beatriz. "Besides," the tempter whispered furtively
within him, "he might never return at all; he might die in battle." But
Carlos was not yet sunk so low as to give ear for a single instant to
this wicked whisper; though certainly he could not henceforth look for
his brother's return with the joy with which he had been wont to
anticipate that event. But, in any case, Beatriz herself should be the
judge between them. And he told himself that he knew (how did he know
it?) that Beatriz preferred _him_. Then it would be only right and kind
to prepare Juan for an inevitable disappointment. This he could easily
do. Letters, carefully written, might gradually suggest to his brother
that Beatriz had other views; and he knew Juan's pride and his fiery
temper well enough to calculate that if his jealousy were once aroused,
these would soon accomplish the rest.
Ere we, who have been taught from our cradles to "speak the truth from
the heart," turn with loathing from the wiles of Carlos Alvarez, we
ought to remember that he was a Spaniard--one of a nation whose genius
and passion is for intrigue. He was also a Spaniard of the sixteenth
century; but, above all, he was a Spanish Catholic, educated for the
priesthood.
The ability with which he laid his plans, and the enjoyment which its
exercise gave him, served in itself to blind him to the treachery and
ingratitude upon which those plans were founded.
He sought an interview with Fray Constantino, and implored from him a
letter of recommendation to the imperial recluse at San Yuste, whose
chaplain and personal favourite the canon-magistral had been. But that
eloquent preacher, though warm-hearted and generous to a fault,
hesitated to grant the request. He represented to Carlos that His
Imperial Majesty did not choose his retreat to be invaded by applicants
for favours, and that the journey to San Yuste would therefore be, in
all probability, worse than useless. Carlos answered that he had fully
weighed the difficulties of the case; but that if the line of conduct he
adopted seemed peculiar, his circumstances were so also. He believed
that his father (who died before his birth) had enjoyed the special
regard of His Imperial Majesty, and he hoped that, for his sake, he
might now be willing to show him some kindness. At all events, he was
sure of an introduction to his presence through his mayor-domo, Don Luis
Quixada, lord of Villagarcia, who was a friend of their house. What he
desired to obtain, through the kindness of His Imperial Majesty, was a
Latin secretaryship, or some similar office, at the court of the new
king, where his knowledge of Latin, and the talents he hoped he
possessed, might stand him in good stead, and enable him to support,
though with modesty, the station to which his birth entitled him. For,
although already a licentiate of theology, and with good prospects in
the Church, he did not wish to take orders, as he had thoughts of
marrying.
Fray Constantino felt a sympathy with the young man; and perhaps the
rather because, if report speaks true, he had once been himself in a
somewhat similar position. So he compromised matters by giving him a
general letter of recommendation, in which he spoke of his talents and
his blameless manners as warmly as he could, from the experience of the
nine or ten months during which he had been acquainted with him. And
although the attention paid by Carlos to his instructions had been
slight, and of late almost perfunctory, his great natural intelligence
had enabled him to stand his ground more creditably than many far more
diligent students. The Fray's letter Carlos thankfully added to the
numerous laudatory epistles from the doctors and professors of Alcala
that he already had in his possession.
All these he enclosed in a cedar box, which he carefully locked, and
consigned in its turn to a travelling portmanteau, along with a fair
stock of wearing apparel, sufficiently rich in material to suit his
rank, but modest in colour and fashion. He then informed his uncle that
before he took Orders it would be necessary for him, in his brother's
absence, to take a journey to their little estate, and set its concerns
in order.
His uncle, suspecting nothing, approved his plan, and insisted on
providing him with the attendance of an armed guard to Nuera, whither he
really intended to go in the first instance.
VII.
The Desengano
"And I should evermore be vexed with thee
In vacant robe, or hanging ornament,
Or ghostly foot-fall lingering on the stair."--Tennyson
The journey from the city of oranges to the green slopes of the Sierra
Morena ought to have been a delightful one to Don Carlos Alvarez. It
was certainly bright with hope. He scarcely harboured a doubt of the
ultimate success of his plans, and the consequent attainment of all his
wishes. Already he seemed to feel the soft hand of Dona Beatriz in his,
and to stand by her side before the high altar of the great Cathedral.
And yet, as days passed on, the brightness within grew fainter, and an
acknowledged shadow, ever deepening, began to take its place. At last
he drew near his home, and rode through the little grove of cork-trees
where he and Juan had played as children. When last they were there
together the autumn winds were strewing the leaves, all dim and
discoloured, about their paths. Now he looked through the fresh green
foliage at the deep intense blue of the summer sky. But, though
scarcely more than twenty, he felt at that moment old and worn, and
wished back the time of his boyish sports with his brother. Never again
could he feel quite happy with Juan.
Soon, however, his sorrowful fancies were put to flight by the joyous
greeting of the hounds, who rushed with much clamour from the
castle-yard to welcome him. There they were, all of them--Pedro, Zina,
Pepe, Grullo, Butron--it was Juan who had named them, every one. And
there, at the gate, stood Diego and Dolores, ready to give him joyful
welcome. Throwing himself from his horse, he shook hands with these
faithful old retainers, and answered their kindly but respectful
inquiries both for himself and Senor Don Juan. Then, having caressed
the dogs, inquired for each of the under-servants by name, and given
orders for the due entertainment of his guard, he passed on slowly into
the great deserted hall.
His arrival being unexpected, he merely surrendered his travelling cloak
into the hands of Diego, and sat down to wait patiently while the
servants, always dilatory, prepared for him suitable accommodation.
Dolores soon appeared with a flask of wine and some bread and grapes;
but this was only a _merienda_, or slight afternoon luncheon, which she
laid before her young master until she could make ready a supper fit for
him to partake of. Carlos spent half an hour listening to her tidings
of the household and the village, and felt sorry when she quitted the
room and left him to his own reflections.
Every object on which his eyes rested reminded him of his brother.
There hung the cross-bow with which, in old days, Juan had made such
vigorous war on the rooks and the sparrows. There lay the foils and the
canes with which they had so often fenced and played; Juan, in his
unquestioned superiority, usually so patient with the younger brother's
timidity and awkwardness. And upon that bench he had carved, with a
hunting-knife, his name in full, adding the title that had expired with
his father, "Conde de Nuera."
The memories these things recalled were becoming intrusive: he would
fain shake them off. Gladly would he have had recourse to his favourite
pastime of reading, but there was not a book in the castle, to his
knowledge, except the breviary he had brought with him. For lack of
more congenial occupation, he went out at last to the stable to look at
the horses, and to talk to those who were grooming and feeding them.
Later in the evening Dolores told him that supper was ready, adding that
she had laid it in the small inner room, which she thought Senor Don
Carlos would find more comfortable than the great hall.
That inner room was, even more than the hall, haunted by the shadowy
presence of Juan. But it was usually daylight when the brothers were
there together. Now, a tapestry curtain shaded the window, and a silver
lamp shed its light on the well-spread table with its snowy drapery, and
cover laid for one.
A lonely meal, however luxurious, is always apt to be somewhat dreary;
it seems a provision for the lowest wants of our nature, and nothing
more. Carlos sought to escape from the depressing influence by giving
wings to his imagination, and dreaming of the time when wealth enough to
repair and refurnish that half-ruinous old homestead might be his. He
pleased himself with pictures of the long tables in the great hall,
groaning beneath the weight of a bountiful provision for a merry company
of guests, upon whom the sweet face of Dona Beatriz might beam a
welcome. But how idle such fancies! The castle, after all, was Juan's,
not his. Unless, indeed, more difficulties than one should be solved by
Juan's death upon some French or Flemish battle-field. This thought he
could not bear to entertain. Grown suddenly sick at heart, he pushed
aside his plate of stewed pigeon, and, regardless of the feelings of
Dolores, sent away untasted her dessert of sweet butter-cakes dipped in
honey. He was weary, he said, and he would go to rest at once.
It was long before sleep would visit his eyelids; and when at last it
came, his brother's dark reproachful eyes haunted him still. At
daybreak he awoke with a start from a feverish dream that Juan, all pale
and ghostlike, had come to his bedside, and laying his hand on his arm,
said solemnly, "I claim the jewel I left thee in trust."
Further sleep was impossible. He rose, and wandered out into the fresh
air. As yet no one was astir. Fair and sweet was all that met his
gaze: the faint pearly light, the first blush of dawn in the quiet sky,
the silvery dew that bathed his footsteps. But the storm within raged
more fiercely for the calm without. There was first an agonizing
struggle to repress the rising thought, "Better, after all, _not_ to do
this thing." But, in spite of his passionate efforts, the thought
gained a hearing, it seemed to cry aloud within him, "Better, after all,
not to betray Juan!" "And give up Beatriz forever? _For ever!_" he
repeated over and over again, beating it
"In upon his weary brain,
As though it were the burden of a song."
He had climbed, almost unawares, to the top of a rocky hill; and now he
stood, looking around him at the prospect, just as if he saw it. In
truth, he saw nothing, felt nothing outward, until at last a misty
mountain rain swept in his face, refreshing his burning brow with a
touch as of cool fingers.
Then he descended mechanically. Exchanging salutations (as if nothing
were amiss with him) with the milk-maid and the wood-boy, he crossed the
open courtyard and re-entered the hall. There Dolores, and a girl who
worked under her, were already busy, so he passed by them into the inner
room.
Its darkness seemed to stifle him; with hasty hand he drew aside the
heavy tapestry curtain. As he did so something caught his eye. For the
hundredth time he re-read the mystic inscription on the glass:
"El Dorado
Yo he trovado."
And, as an infant's touch may open a sluice that lets in the mighty
ocean, those simple words broke up the fountains of the great deep
within. He gave full course to the emotions they awakened. Again he
heard Juan's voice repeat them; again he saw Juan's deep earnest eyes
look into his; not now reproachfully, but with full unshaken trust, as
in the old days when first he said, "We will go forth together and find
our father."
"Juan--brother!" he cried aloud, "I will never wrong thee, so help me
God!" At that moment the morning sun, having scattered the mists with
the glory of its rising, sent one of its early beams to kiss the
handwriting on the window-pane. "Old token for good," thought Carlos,
whose imaginative nature could play with fancies even in the hours of
supreme emotion. "And true still even yet. Only the good is all for
Juan; for me--nothing but despair."
And so Don Carlos found his "desengano," or disenchantment, and it was a
very thorough one.
Body and mind were well-nigh exhausted with the violence of the
struggle. Perhaps this was fortunate, in so far that it won for the
decision of his better nature a more rapid and easy acceptance. In a
sense and for a season any decision was welcome to the weary,
tempest-tossed soul.
It was afterwards that he asked himself how were long years to be
dragged on without the face that was the joy of his heart and the life
of his life? How was he to bear the never-ending pain, the aching
loneliness, of such a lot? Better to die at once than to endure this
slow, living death. He knew well that it was not in his nature to point
the pistol or the dagger at his own breast. But he might pine away and
die silently--as many thousands die--of blighted hopes and a ruined
life. Or--and this was more likely, perhaps--as time passed on he might
grow dead and hard in soul; until at last he would become a dry, cold,
mechanical mass-priest, mumbling the Church's Latin with thin, bloodless
lips, a keen eye to his dues, and a heart that might serve for a Church
relic, so much faith would it require to believe that it had been warm
and living once.
Still, laudably anxious to provide against possible future waverings of
the decision so painfully attained, he wrote informing his uncle of his
safe arrival; adding that he had fully made up his mind to take Orders
at Christmas, but that he found it advisable to remain in his present
quarters for a month or two. He at once dispatched two of the
men-at-arms with the letter; and much was the thrifty Don Manuel
surprised that his nephew should spend a handful of silver reals in
order to inform him of what he knew already.
Gloomily the day wore on. The instinctive reserve of a sensitive nature
made Carlos talk to the servants, receive the accounts, inspect the kine
and sheep--do everything, in short, except eat and drink--as he would
have done if a great sorrow had not all the time been crushing his
heart. It is true that Dolores, who loved him as her own son, was not
deceived. It was for no trivial cause that the young master was pale as
a corpse, restless and irritable, talking hurriedly by fitful snatches,
and then relapsing into moody silence. But Dolores was a prudent woman,
as well as a loving and faithful one; therefore she held her peace, and
bided her time.
But Carlos noticed one effort she made to console him. Coming in towards
evening from a consultation with Diego about some cork-trees which a
Morisco merchantman wished to purchase and cut down, he saw upon his
table a carefully sealed wine-flask, with a cup beside it. He knew
whence it came. His father had left in the cellar a small quantity of
choice wine of Xeres; and this relic of more prosperous times being,
like most of their other possessions, in the care of Dolores, was only
produced very sparingly, and on rare occasions. But she evidently
thought "Senor Don Carlos" needed it now. Touched by her watchful,
unobtrusive affection, he would have gratified her by drinking; but he
had a peculiar dislike to drinking alone, while he knew he would only
render his sanity doubtful by inviting either her or Diego to share the
luxurious beverage. So he put it aside for the present, and drew
towards him a sheet of figures, an inkhorn, and a pen. He could not
work, however. With the silence and solitude, his great grief came back
upon him again. But nature all this time had been silently working for
him. His despair was giving way to a more violent but less bitter
sorrow. Tears came now: a long, passionate fit of weeping relieved his
aching heart. Since his early childhood he had not wept thus.
An approaching footstep recalled him to himself. He rose with haste and
shame, and stood beside the window, hoping that his position and the
waning light might together shield him from observation. It was only
Dolores.
"Senor," she said, entering somewhat hastily, "will it please you to see
to those men of Seville that came with your Excellency? They are
insulting a poor little muleteer, and threatening to rob his packages."
Yanguesian carriers and other muleteers, bringing goods across the
Sierra Morena from the towns of La Mancha to those of Andalusia, often
passed by the castle, and sometimes received hospitality there. Carlos
rose at once at the summons, saying to Dolores--
"Where is the boy?"
"He is not a boy, senor, he is a man; a very little man, but with a
greater spirit, if I mistake not, than some twice his size."
It was true enough. On the green plot at the back of the castle, beside
which the mountain pathway led, there were gathered the ten or twelve
rough Seville pikemen, taken from the lowest of the population, and most
of them of Moorish blood. In their midst, beside the foremost of his
three mules, with one arm thrown round her neck and the other raised to
give effect by animated gestures to his eager oratory, stood the
muleteer. He was a very short, spare, active-looking man, clad from
head to foot in chestnut-coloured leather. His mules were well laden;
each with three large alforjas, one at each side and one laid across the
neck. But they were evidently well fed and cared for also; and they
presented a gay appearance, with their adornments of bright-coloured
worsted tassels and tiny bells.
"You know, my friends," the muleteer was saying, as Carlos came within
hearing, "an arriero's alforjas[#] are like a soldier's colours,--it
stands him upon his honour to guard them inviolate. No, no! Ask him for
aught else--his purse, his blood--they are at your service; but never
touch his colours, if you care for a long life."
[#] _Arriero_, muleteer; _alforjas_, bags.
"My honest friend, your colours, as you call them, shall be safe here,"
said Carlos, kindly.
The muleteer turned towards him a good-humoured, intelligent face, and,
bowing low, thanked him heartily.
"What is your name?" asked Carlos; "and whence do you come?"
"I am Juliano; Juliano el Chico (Julian the Little) men generally call
me--since, as your Excellency sees, I am not very great. And I come
last from Toledo."
"Indeed! And what wares do you carry?"
"Some matters, small in bulk, yet costly, which I am bringing for a
Seville merchant--Medel de Espinosa by name, if your worship has heard
of him? I have mirrors, for example, of a new kind; excellent in
workmanship, and true as steel, as well they may be."
"I know the shop of Espinosa well. I have been much in Seville," said
Carlos, with a sudden pang, caused by the recollection of the many
pretty trifles that he had purchased there for Dona Beatrix. "But
follow me, my friend, and a good supper shall make you amends for the
rudeness of these fellows.--Andres, take the best care thou canst of his
mules; 'twill be only fair penance for thy sin in molesting their
owner."
"A hundred thousand thanks, senor. Still, with your worship's good
leave, and no offence to friend Andres, I had rather look to the beasts
myself. We are old companions; they know my ways, and I know theirs."
"As you please, my good fellow. Andres will show you the stable, and I
shall tell my mayor-domo to see that you lack nothing."
"Again I render to your Excellency my poor but hearty thanks."
Carlos went in, gave the necessary directions to Diego, and then
returned to his solitary chamber.
VIII.
The Muleteer
"Are ye resigned that they be spent
In such world's help? The spirits bent
Their awful brows, and said, 'Content!'
"Content! It sounded like Amen
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain
"And patience,--ay, of glorying.
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing."--E. B. Browning
When Carlos stood once more face to face with his sorrow--as he did as
soon as he had closed the door--he found that it had somewhat changed
its aspect. A trouble often does this when some interruption from the
outer world makes us part company with it for a little while. We find
on our return that it has developed quite a new phase, and seldom a more
hopeful one.
It now entered the mind of Carlos, for the first time, that he had been
acting very basely towards his brother. Not only had he planned and
intended a treason, but by endeavouring to engage the affections of Dona
Beatriz, he had actually committed one. Heaven grant it might not prove
irreparable! Though the time that had passed since his better self
gained the victory was only measured by hours, it represented to him a
much longer period. Already it enabled him to look upon what had gone
before from the vantage-ground that some degree of distance gives. He
now beheld in true, perhaps even in exaggerated colours, the meanness
and the treachery of his conduct. He, who prided himself upon the
nobility of his nature matching that of his birth--he, Don Carlos
Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya, the gentleman of stainless manners, of
reputation untarnished by a single blot--he, who had never yet been
ashamed of anything,--in his solitude he blushed and covered his face in
shame, as the villany he had planned rose up before his mind. It would
have broken his heart to be scorned by any man; and was it not worse a
thousand-fold to be thus scorned by himself! He thought even more of
the meanness of his plan than of its treachery. Of its sin he did not
think at all. Sin was a theological term which he had been wont to
handle in the schools, and to toss to and fro with the other materials
upon which he showed off his dialectic skill; but it no more occurred to
him to take it out of the scholastic world and to bring it into that in
which he really lived and acted, than it did to talk Latin to Diego, or
softly to whisper quotations from Thomas Aquinas into the ear of Dona
Beatriz between the pauses of the dance.
Scarcely any consideration, however, could have made him more miserable
than he was. Past and future--all alike seemed dreary. Not a happy
memory, not a cheering anticipation could he find to comfort him. He
was as one who goes forth to face the driving storm of a wintry night:
not strong in hope and courage--a warm hearth behind him, and before him
the pleasant starry glimmer that tells of another soon to be
reached--but chilled, weary, forlorn, the wind whistling through thin
garments, and nothing to meet his eye but the bare, bleak, shelterless
moor stretching far out into the distance.
He sat long, too crushed in heart even to finish his slight, unimportant
task. Sometimes he drew towards him the sheet of figures, and for a
moment or two tried to fix his attention upon it; but soon he would push
it away again, or make aimless dots and circles on its margin. While
thus engaged, he heard a cheery and not unmelodious voice chanting a
fragment of song in some foreign tongue. Listening more attentively, he
believed the words were French, and supposed the singer must be his
humble guest, the muleteer, on his way to the stable to take a last look
at the beloved companions of his toils before he lay down to rest. The
man had probably exercised his vocation at some former period in the
passes of the Pyrenees, and had thus acquired some knowledge of French.
Half an hour's talk with any one seemed to Carlos at that moment a most
desirable diversion from the gloom of his own thoughts. He might
converse with this stranger when he dared not summon to his presence
Diego or Dolores, because they knew and loved him well enough to
discover in two minutes that something was seriously wrong with him. He
waited until he heard the voice once more close beneath his window; then
softly opening it, he called the muleteer. Juliano responded with ready
alertness; and Carlos, going round to the door, admitted him, and led
him into his sanctum.
"I believe," he said, "that was a French song I heard you sing. You
have been in France, then?"
"Ay, senor; I have crossed the Pyrenees more than once. I have also been
in Switzerland."
"You must, then, have visited many places worthy of note; and not with
your eyes shut, I think. I wish you would tell me, for pastime, the
story of your travels."
"Willingly, senor," said the muleteer, who, though perfectly respectful,
had an ease and independence of manner that made Carlos suspect it was
not the first time he had conversed with his superiors. "Where shall I
begin?"
"Have you ever crossed the Santillanos, or visited the Asturias?"
"No, senor. A man cannot be everywhere; 'he that rings the bells does
not walk in the procession.' I am only master of the route from Lyons
here; knowing a little also, as I have said, of Switzerland."
"Tell me first of Lyons, then. And be seated, my friend."
The muleteer sat down, and began his story, telling of the places he had
seen with an intelligence that more and more engaged the attention of
Carlos, who failed not to draw out his information by many pertinent
questions. As they conversed, each observed the other with gradually
increasing interest. Carlos admired the muleteer's courage and energy in
the prosecution of his calling, and enjoyed his quaint and shrewd
observations. Moreover, he was struck by certain indications of a
degree of education and even of refinement not usual in his class.
Especially he noticed the small, finely-formed hand, which was sometimes
in the warmth of conversation laid on the table, and which looked as if
it had been accustomed to wield some implement far more delicate than a
riding-whip. Another thing he took note of. Though Juliano's language
abounded in proverbs, in provincialisms, in quaint and racy expressions,
not a single oath escaped his lips. "I never saw an arriero before,"
thought Carlos, "who could get through two sentences without half a
dozen of them."
Juliano, on the other hand, was observing his host, and with a far
shrewder and deeper insight than Carlos could have imagined. During
supper he had gathered from the servants that their young master was
kind-hearted, gentle, easy-tempered, and had never injured any one in
his life; and knowing all this, he was touched with genuine sympathy for
the young noble, whose haggard face and sorrowful looks told but too
plainly that some great grief was pressing on his heart.
"Your Excellency must be weary of my stories," he said at length. "It
is time I left you to your repose."
And so indeed it was, for the hour was late.
"Ere you go," said Carlos kindly, "you shall drink a cup of wine with
me."
He had no wine at hand but the costly beverage Dolores had produced for
his own especial use. Wondering a little what Juliano would think of
such a luxurious beverage, he sought a second cup, for the proud
Castilian gentleman was too "finely courteous" not to drink with his
guest, although that guest was only a muleteer.
Juliano, evidently a temperate man, remonstrated: "But I have already
tasted your Excellency's hospitality."
"That should not hinder your drinking to my good health," said Carlos,
producing a small hunting-cup, forgotten until now, from the pocket of
his doublet.
Then filling the larger cup, he handed it to Juliano. It was a very
little thing, a trifling act of kindness. But to the last hour of his
life, Carlos Alvarez thanked God that he had put it into his heart to
offer that cup of wine.
The muleteer raised it to his lips, saying earnestly, "God grant you
health and happiness, noble senor."
Carlos drank also, glad to relieve a painful feeling of exhaustion. As
he set down the cup, a sudden impulse prompted him to say, with a bitter
smile, "Happiness is not likely to come my way at present."
"Nay, senor, and wherefore not? With your good leave be it spoken, you
are young, noble, amiable, with much learning and excellent parts, as
they tell me."
"All these things may not prevent a man being very miserable," said
Carlos frankly.
"God comfort you, senor."
"Thanks for the good wish," said Carlos, rather lightly, and conscious
of having already said too much. "All men have their troubles, I
suppose, but most men contrive to live through them. So shall I, no
doubt."
"But God can comfort you," Juliano repeated with a kind of wistful
earnestness.
Carlos, surprised at his manner, looked at him dreamily, but with some
curiosity.
"Senor," said Juliano, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone full
of meaning. "Let your worship excuse a plain man's plain
question--Senor, _do you know God_?"
Carlos started visibly. Was the man mad? Certainly not; as all his
previous conversation bore witness. He was evidently a very clever,
half-educated man, who spoke with just the simplicity and
unconsciousness of an intelligent child. And now he had asked a true
child's question; one which it would exhaust a wise man's wisdom to
answer. Thoroughly perplexed, Carlos at last determined to take it in
its easiest sense. He said, "Yes; I have studied theology, and taken out
my licentiate's degree at the University of Alcala."
"If it please your worship, what may that fine word theology mean?"
"You have said so many wise things, that I marvel you know not Science
about God."
"Then, senor, your Excellency knows _about God_. But is it not another
thing _to know God_? I know much about the Emperor Carlos, now at San
Yuste; I could tell you the story of all his campaigns. But I never saw
him, still less spoke with him. And far indeed am I from knowing him to
be my friend; and so trusting him that if my mules died, or the
Alguazils seized me at Cordova for bringing over something contraband,
or other mishap befell me, I should go or send to him, certain that he
would help and save me."
"I begin to understand you," said Carlos; and a suspicion crossed his
mind that the muleteer was a friar in disguise. But that could scarcely
be, since his black abundant hair showed no marks of the tonsure.
"After the manner you speak of, only great saints know God."
"Indeed, senor! Can that be true? For I have heard that our Lord
Christ"--(at the mention of the name Carlos crossed himself, a ceremony
which the muleteer was so engrossed by his argument as to forget)--"that
our Lord Christ came into the world to make men know the Father; and
that, to all that believe on him, he truly reveals him."
"Where did you get this strange learning?"
"It is simple learning; and yet very blessed, senor," returned Juliano,
evading the question. "For those who know God are happy. Whatever
sorrows they have without, within they have joy and peace."
"You are advising me to seek peace in religion?"
It was singular certainly that a muleteer should advise _him_; but then
this was a very uncommon muleteer. "And so I ought," he added, "since I
am destined for the Church."
"No, senor; not to seek peace in religion, but to seek peace from God,
and in Christ who reveals him."
"It is only the words that differ, the things are the same."
"Again I say, with all submission to your Excellency, not so. It is
Christ Jesus himself--Christ Jesus, God and man--who alone can give the
peace and happiness for which the heart aches. Are we oppressed with
sin? He says, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee!' Are we hungry? He is
bread. Thirsty? He is living water. Weary? He says, 'Come unto me,
all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!'"
"Man! who or what are you? You are quoting the Holy Scriptures to me.
Do you then read Latin?"
"No, senor," said the muleteer humbly, casting his eyes down to the
ground.
"_No?_"
"No, senor; in very truth. But--"
"Well? Go on!"
Juliano looked up again, a steady light in his eyes. "Will you promise,
on the faith of a gentleman, not to betray me?" he asked.
"Most assuredly I will not betray you."
"I trust you, senor. I do not believe it would be possible for _you_ to
betray one who trusted you."
Carlos winced, and rather shrank from the muleteer's look of hearty,
honest confidence.
"Though I cannot guess your reason for such precautions," he said, "I am
willing, if you wish it, to swear secrecy upon the holy crucifix."
"It needs not, senor; your word of honour is as much as your oath.
Though I am putting my life in your hands when I tell you that I have
dared to read the words of my Lord Christ in my own tongue."
"Are you then a heretic?" Carlos exclaimed, recoiling involuntarily, as
one who suddenly sees the plague spot on the forehead of a friend whose
hand he has been grasping.
"That depends upon your notion of a heretic, senor. Many a better man
than I has been branded with the name. Even the great preacher Don Fray
Constantino, whom all the fine lords and ladies in Seville flock to
hear, has often been called heretic by his enemies."
"I have resided in Seville, and attended Fray Constantino's theological
lectures," said Carlos.
"Then your worship knows there is not a better Christian in all the
Spains. And yet men say that he narrowly escaped a prosecution for
heresy. But enough of what men say. Let us hear what God says for
once. His words cannot lead us astray."
"No; not the Holy Scriptures, properly expounded by learned and orthodox
doctors. But heretics put their own construction upon the sacred text,
which, moreover, they corrupt and interpolate."
"Senor, you are a scholar; you can consult the original, and judge for
yourself how far that charge is true."
"But I do not want to read heretic writings."
"Nor I, senor. Yet I confess that I have read the words of my Saviour
in my own tongue, which some misinformed or ignorant persons call
heresy; and through them, to my soul's joy, I have learned to know Him
and the Father. I am bold enough to wish the same knowledge yours,
senor, that the same joy may be yours also." The poor man's eye
kindled, and his features, otherwise homely enough, glowed with an
enthusiasm that lent them true spiritual beauty.
Carlos was not unmoved. After a moment's pause he said, "If I could
procure what you style God's Word in my own tongue, I do not say that I
would refuse to read it. Should I discover any heretical mistranslation
or interpolation, I could blot out the passage; or, if necessary, burn
the book."
"I can place in your hands this very hour the New Testament of our
Saviour Christ, lately translated into Castilian by Juan Perez, a
learned man, well acquainted with the Greek."
"What! have you got it with you? In God's name bring it then; and at
least I will look at it."
"Be it truly in God's name, senor," said Juliano, as he left the room.
During his absence Carlos pondered upon this singular adventure.
Throughout his lengthened conversation with him, he had discerned no
marks of heresy in the muleteer, except his possession of the Spanish
New Testament. And being very proud of his dialectic acuteness, he
thought he should certainly have discovered such had they existed. "He
had need to be a clever heretic that would circumvent _me_," he said,
with the vanity of a young and successful scholar. Moreover, his ten
months' attendance on the lectures of Fray Constantino had,
unconsciously to himself, somewhat imbued his mind with liberal ideas.
He could have read the Vulgate at Alcala if he had cared to do so (only
he never had); where then could be the harm of glancing, out of mere
curiosity, at a Spanish translation from the same original?
He regarded the New Testament in the light of some very dangerous,
though effective, weapon of the explosive kind; likely to overwhelm with
terrible destruction the careless or ignorant meddler with its
intricacies, and therefore wisely forbidden by the authorities; though
in able and scientific hands, such as his own, it might be harmless and
even useful.
But it was a very different matter for the poor man who brought it to
him. Was he, after all, a madman? Or was he a heretic? Or was he a
great saint or holy hermit in disguise? But whatever his spiritual peril
might or might not be, it was only too evident that he was incurring
temporal dangers of a very awful kind. And perhaps he was doing so in
the simplicity of ignorance. Carlos could not do less than warn him of
them.
He soon returned; and drawing a small brown volume from beneath his
leathern jerkin, handed it to the young nobleman.
"My friend," said Carlos kindly, as he took it from him, "do you know
what you dare by offering this to me, or even by keeping it yourself?"
"I know it well, senor," was the calm reply; and the muleteer's dark eye
met his undauntedly.
"You are playing a dangerous game. This time you are safe. But take
care. You may try it once too often."
"I shall not, senor. I shall witness for my Lord just so often as he
permits. When he has no more need of me, he will call me home."
"God help you. I fear you are throwing yourself into the fire. And for
what?"
"For the joy of bringing food to the perishing, water to the thirsty,
light to those that sit in darkness, rest to the weary and heavy-laden.
Senor, I have counted the cost, and I shall pay the price right
willingly."
After a moment's silence he continued: "I leave within your hands the
treasure brought at such cost. But God alone, by his Divine Spirit, can
reveal to you its true worth. Senor, seek that Spirit. Nay, be not
offended. You are very noble and very learned; and it is a poor and
ignorant man who speaks to you. But that poor man is risking his life
for your soul's salvation; and thus he proves, at least, how true his
desire to see you one day at the right hand of Christ, his King and
Master. Adios, senor."
He bowed low; and before Carlos had sufficiently recovered from his
astonishment to say a word in answer, he had left the room and closed
the door behind him.
"Strange being!" thought Carlos; "but I shall talk with him again
to-morrow." And ere he was aware, his eyelids were wet; for the courage
and self-sacrifice of the poor muleteer had stirred some answering chord
of emotion in his heart. Probably, in spite of all appearances to the
contrary, he was a madman; or else he was a heretical fanatic. But he
was a man willing to brave numberless sufferings (of which a death of
torture was the last and least), to bring his fellow-men something which
he imagined would make them happy. "The Church has no more orthodox son
than I," said Don Carlos Alvarez; "but I shall read his book for all
that."
Then, the hour being late, he retired to rest, and slept soundly.
He did not rise exactly with the sun, and when he came forth from his
chamber breakfast was already in preparation.
"Where is the muleteer who was here last night?" he asked Dolores.
"He was up and away at sunrise," she answered. "Fortunately, it is not
my custom to stop in bed and see the sunshine; so I just caught him
loading his mules, and gave him a piece of bread and cheese and a
draught of wine. A smart little man he is, and one who knows his
business."
"I wish I had seen him ere he left," said Carlos aloud. "Shall I ever
look upon his face again?" he added mentally.
Carlos Alvarez saw that face again, not by the ray of sun or moon, nor
yet by the gleam of the student's lamp, but clear and distinct in a
lurid awful light more terrible than Egyptian darkness, yet fraught with
strange blessing, since it showed the way to the city of God, where the
sun no more goes down, neither doth the moon withdraw herself.
Juliano el Chico, otherwise Julian Hernandez, is no fancy sketch, no
"character of fiction." It is matter of history that, cunningly stowed
away in his alforjas, amongst the ribbons, laces, and other trifles that
formed their ostensible freight, there was a large supply of Spanish New
Testaments, of the translation of Juan Perez. And that, in spite of all
the difficulties and dangers of his self-imposed task, he succeeded in
conveying his precious charge safely to Seville.
Our cheeks grow pale, our hearts shudder, at the thought of what he and
others dared, that they might bring to the lips of their countrymen that
living water which was truly "the blood of the men that went for it in
jeopardy of their lives." More than jeopardy. Not alone did Juliano
brave danger, he encountered certain death. Sooner or later, it was
impossible that he should not fall into the pitiless grasp of that
hideous engine of royal and priestly tyranny, called the Holy
Inquisition.
We have no words in which to praise such heroism as his. We leave
that--and we may be content to leave it--to Him whose lips shall one day
pronounce the sublime award, "Well done, good and faithful servant;
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." But in the view of such things
done and suffered for his name's sake, there is another thought that
presses on the mind. How real and great, nay, how unutterably precious,
must be that treasure which men were found willing, at such cost, not
only to secure for themselves, but even to impart to others.
IX.
El Dorado found
"So, the All-Great were the all-loving too--
So, through the thunder comes a human voice,
Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine;
But love I gave thee with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"--R. Browning
Three silent months stole away in the old castle of Nuera. No outward
event affecting the fortunes of its inmates marked their progress. And
yet they were by far the most important months Don Carlos had ever seen,
or perhaps would ever see. They witnessed a change in him, mysterious
in its progress but momentous in its results. An influence passed over
him, mighty as the wind in its azure pathway, but, like it, visible only
by its effects; no man could tell "whence it cometh or whither it
goeth."
Again it was early morning, a bright Sunday morning in September.
Already Carlos stood prepared to go forth. He had quite discarded his
student's habit, and was dressed like any other young nobleman, in a
doublet and short cloak of Genoa velvet, with a sword by his side. His
Breviary was in his hand, however, and he was on the point of taking up
his hat when Dolores entered the room, bearing a cup of wine and a
manchet of bread.
Carlos shook his head, saying, "I intend to communicate. And you,
Dolores," he added, "are you not also going to hear mass?"
"Surely, senor; we will all attend our duty. But there is still time to
spare; your worship sets us an example in the matter of early rising."
"It were shame to lose such fair hours as these. Prithee, Dolores, and
lest I forget, hast thou something savoury in the house for dinner!"
"Glad I am to hear you ask, senor. Hitherto it has seemed alike to jour
Excellency whether they served you with a pottage of lentils or a stew
of partridges. But since Diego had the good fortune to kill that buck
on Wednesday, we are better than well provided. Your worship shall dine
on roast venison to-day."
"That will do. And if thou wouldst add some of the batter ware, in
which thou art so skilful, it would be better still; for I intend to
bring home a guest."
"Now, the Saints help me, that is news! Without meaning offence, your
worship might have told me before. Any noble caballero coming to these
parts to visit you must needs have bed as well as board found him. And
how can I, in three hours, more or less--"
"Nay, be not alarmed, Dolores; no stranger is coming here. Only I wish
to bring the cura home to dinner."
Even the self-restrained Dolores could not repress an exclamation of
surprise. For both the brothers had been accustomed to regard the
ignorant vulgar cura of the neighbouring village with unmitigated
dislike and contempt. In old times Dolores herself had sometimes tried
to induce them to show him some trifling courtesies, "for their soul's
health." They were willing enough to send "that beggar"--as Don Juan
used to call him--presents of meat or game when they could, but these
they would not have grudged to their worst enemy. To converse with him,
or to seat him at their table, was a very different matter. He was "no
fit associate for noblemen," said the boys; and Dolores, in her heart,
agreed with them. She looked at her young master to see whether he were
jesting.
"He likes a good dinner," Carlos added quietly. "Let us for once give
him one."
"In good faith, Senor Don Carlos, I cannot tell what has come to you.
You must be about doing penance for your sins, though I will say no
young gentleman of your years has fewer to answer for. Still, to please
your whim, the cura shall eat the best we have, though beans and bacon
would be more fitting fare for him."
"Thank you, mother Dolores," said Carlos kindly. "In truth, neither Don
Juan nor I had ever whim yet you did not strive to gratify."
"And who would not do more than that for so pleasant and kind a young
master?" thought Dolores, as she withdrew to superintend the cooking
operations. "God's blessing and Our Lady's rest on him, and in sooth I
think they do. Three months ago he came here looking like a corpse out
of the grave, and fitter, as it seemed to me, to don his shroud than his
priest's frock. But the free mountain air wherein he was born is
bringing back the red to his cheek and the light to his eye, thank the
holy Saints. Ah, if his lady mother could only see her gallant sons
now!"
Meanwhile Don Carlos leisurely took his way down the hill. Having
abundance of time to spare, he chose a solitary, devious path through
the cork-trees and the pasture land belonging to the castle. His heart
was alive to every pleasant sight and sound that met his eye and ear;
although, or rather because, a low, sweet song of thankfulness was all
the while chanting itself within him.
During his solitary walk he distinctly realized for the first time the
stupendous change that had passed over him. For such changes cannot be
understood or measured until afterwards, perhaps not always then.
Drawing from his pocket Juliano's little book, he clasped it in both
hands. "_This_, God be thanked, has done it all, under him. And yet,
at first, it added to my misery a hundred-fold." Then his mind ran back
to the dreary days of helpless, almost hopeless wretchedness, when he
first began its perusal. Much of it had then been quite unintelligible
to him; but what he understood had only made his darkness darker still.
He who had but just learned from that stern teacher, Life, the meaning
of sorrow, learned from the pages of his book the awful significance of
that other word, Sin. Bitter hours, never to be remembered without a
shudder, were those that followed. Already prostrate on the ground
beneath the weight of his selfish sorrow for the love that might never
be his, cruel blows seemed rained upon him by the very hand to which he
turned to lift him up. "All was his own fault," said conscience. But
had conscience, enlightened by his book, said no more, he could have
borne it. It was a different thing to recognize that all was his own
sin--to feel more keenly every day that the whole current of his
thoughts and affections was set in opposition to the will of God as
revealed in that book, and illustrated in the life of him of whom it
told.
But this sickness of heart, deadly though it seemed, was not unto death.
The Word had indeed proved a mirror, in which he saw his own face
reflected with the lines and colours of truth. But it had a farther use
for him. As he did not fling it away in despair, but still gazed on, at
length he saw in its clear depths another Face--a Face radiant with
divine majesty, yet beaming with tender love and pity. He whom the
mirror thus gave back to him had been "not far" from him all his life;
had been standing over against him, watching and waiting for the moment
in which to reveal himself. At last that moment came. He looked up
from the mirror to the real Face; from the Word to him whom the Word
revealed. He turned himself and said unto him, "Rabboni, which is to
say. My Master." He laid his soul at his feet in love, in trust, in
gratitude. And he knew then, not until then, that this was the "coming"
to him, the "believing" on him, the receiving him, of which He spoke as
the condition of life, of pardon, and of happiness.
From that hour he possessed life, he knew himself forgiven, he was
happy. This was no theory, but a fact--a fact which changed all his
present and was destined to change all his future.
He longed to impart the wonderful secret he had found. This longing
overcame his contempt for the cura, and made him seek to win him by
kindness to listen to words which perhaps might open for him also the
same wonderful fountain of joy.
"Now I am going to worship my Lord, afterwards I shall speak of him," he
said, as he crossed the threshold of the little village church.
In due season the service was over. Its ceremonies did not pain or
offend Carlos in any way; he took part in them with much real devotion,
as acts of homage paid to his Lord. Still, if he had analyzed his
feelings (which he did not), he would have found them like those of a
king's child, who is obliged, on days of courtly ceremonial, to pay his
father the same distant homage as the other peers of the realm, and yet
knows that all this for him is but an idle show, and longs to throw
aside its cumbrous pomp, and to rejoice once more in the free familiar
intercourse which is his habit and his privilege. But that the
ceremonial itself could be otherwise than pleasing to his King, he had
not the most distant suspicion.
He spoke kindly to the priest, and inquired by name after all the sick
folk in the village, though in fact he knew more about them himself by
this time than did Father Tomas.
The cura's heart was glad when the catechism came to a termination so
satisfactory as an invitation to dine at the castle. Whatever the fare
might be--and his expectations were not extravagantly high--it could
scarce fail to be an improvement on the olla of which he had intended to
make his Sunday repast. Moreover, one favour from the castle might be
the earnest of others; and favours from the castle, poor though its
lords might be, were not to be despised. Nor was he ill at ease in the
society of an accomplished gentleman, as a man just a little better bred
would probably have been. A wealthy peasant's son, and with but scanty
education, Father Tomas was so hopelessly vulgar that he never once
imagined he was vulgar at all.
Carlos bore as patiently as he could with his coarse manners, and
conversation something worse than commonplace. Not until the repast was
concluded did he find an opportunity of bringing forward the topic upon
which he longed to speak. Then, with more tact than his guest could
appreciate, he began by inquiring--as one himself intended for the
priesthood might naturally do--whether he could always keep his thoughts
from wandering while he was celebrating the holy mysteries of the faith.
Father Tomas crossed himself, and answered that he was a sinner like
other men, but that he tried to do his duty to our holy Mother Church to
the best of his ability.
Carlos remarked, that unless we ourselves know the love of God by
experience we cannot love him, and that without love there is no
acceptable service.
"Most true, senor," said the priest, turning his eyes upwards. "As the
holy St. Augustine saith. Your worship quotes from him, I believe."
"I have quoted nothing," said Carlos, beginning to feel that he was
speaking to the deaf; "but I know the words of Christ." And then he
spoke, out of a full heart, of Christ's work for us, of his love to us,
and of the pardon and peace which those receive that trust him.
But his listener's stolid face betrayed no interest, only a vague
uneasiness, which increased as Carlos proceeded. The poor parish cura
began to suspect that the clever young collegian meant to astonish and
bewilder him by the exhibition of his learning and his "new ideas."
Indeed, he was not quite sure whether his host was eloquently enlarging
all the time upon Catholic truths, or now and then mischievously
throwing out a few heretical propositions, in order to try whether he
would have skill enough to detect them. Naturally, he did not greatly
relish this style of entertainment. Nothing could be got from him save
a cautious, "That is true, senor," or, "Very good, your worship;" and as
soon as his notions of politeness would permit, he took his leave.
Carlos marvelled greatly at his dulness; but soon dismissed him from his
mind, and took his Testament out to read under the shade of the
cork-trees. Ere long the light began to fade, but he sat there still in
the fast deepening twilight. Thoughts and fancies thronged upon his
mind; and dreams of the past sought, as even yet they often did, to
reassert their supremacy over his heart. One of those apparently
unaccountable freaks of memory, which we all know by experience, brought
back to him suddenly the luscious perfume of the orange-blossoms, called
by the Spaniards the azahar. Such fragrance had filled the air, and
such flowers had been strewed upon his pathway, when last he walked with
Donna Beatrix in the fairy gardens of the Alcazar of Seville.
Keen was the pang that shot through his heart at the remembrance. But
it was conquered soon. As he went in-doors he repeated the words he had
just been reading, "'He that cometh unto me shall never hunger; he that
believeth on me shall never thirst.' And _this_ hunger of the soul, as
well is every other, He can stay. Having him, I have all things.
"El Dorado
Yo he trovado."
Father, dear, unknown father, I have round the golden country. Not in
the sense thou didst fondly seek, and I as fondly dream to find it. Yet
the only true land of gold I have found indeed--the treasure unfailing,
the inheritance incorruptible, undented and that fadeth not away,
reserved in heaven for me."
X.
Dolores
"Oh, hearts that break and give no sign,
Save whitening lip and fading tresses;
Till death pours out his cordial wine,
Slow dropped from misery's crushing presses
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven."--O. W. Holmes
A great modern poet has compared the soul of man to a pilgrim who passes
through the world staff in hand, never resting, ever pressing onwards to
some point as yet unattained, ever sighing wearily, "Alas! that _there_
is never _here_." And with deep significance adds his Christian
commentator, "In Christ _there_ is _here_."
He who has found Christ "is already at the goal." "For he stills our
innermost fears, and fulfils our utmost longings." "In him the dry
land, the mirage of the desert, becomes living water." "He who knows
him knows the reason of all things." Passing all along the ages, we
might gather from the silent lips of the dead such words as these,
bearing emphatic witness to what human hearts have found in him. Yet,
after all, we would come back to his own grand and simple words, as best
expressing the truth: "I am the bread of life;" "I will give you rest;"
"In me ye shall have peace."
With the peace which he gave there came to Carlos a strange new
knowledge also. The Testament, from its first page to its last, became
intelligible to him. From a mere sketch, partly dim and partly blurred
and blotted, it grew into a transparency through which light shone upon
his soul, every word being itself a star.
He often read his book to Dolores, though he allowed her to suppose it
was Latin, and that he was improvising a translation for her benefit.
She would listen attentively, though with a deeper shade of sadness on
her melancholy face. Never did she volunteer an observation, but she
always thanked him at the end in her usual respectful manner.
These readings were, in fact, a trouble to Dolores. They gave her pain,
like the sharp throbs that accompany the first return of consciousness
to a frozen member, for they awakened feelings that had long been
dormant, and that she thought were dead for ever. But, on the other
hand, she was gratified by the condescension of her young master in
reading aloud for her edification. She had gone through the world
giving very largely out of her own large loving heart, and expecting
little or nothing in return. She would most gladly have laid down her
life for Don Juan or Don Carlos; yet she did not imagine that the old
servant of the house could be to them much more than one of the oak
tables or the carved chairs. That "Senor Don Carlos" should take
thought for her, and trouble himself to do her good, thrilled her with a
sensation more like joy than any she had known for years. Little do
those whose cups are so full of human love that they carry them
carelessly, spilling many a precious drop as they pass along, dream how
others cherish the few poor lees and remnants left to them.
Moreover Carlos, in the eyes of Dolores, was half a priest already, and
this lent additional weight, and even sacredness, to all that he said
and did.
One evening he had been reading to her, in the inner room, by the light
of the little silver lamp. He had just finished the story of Lazarus,
and he made some remark on the grateful love of Mary, and the costly
sacrifice by which she proved it. Tears gathered in the dark wistful
eyes of Dolores, and she said with sudden and, for her, most unusual
energy, "That was small wonder. Any one would do as much for him that
brought the dear dead back from the grave."
"He has done a greater thing than even that for each of us," said
Carlos.
But Dolores withdrew into her ordinary self again, as some timid
creature might shrink into its shell from a touch. "I thank your
Excellency," she said, rising to withdraw, "and I also make my
acknowledgments to Our Lady, who has inspired you with such true piety,
suitable to your holy calling."
"Stay a little, Dolores," said Carlos, as a sudden thought occurred to
him; "I marvel it has so seldom come into my mind to ask you about my
mother."
"Ay, senor. When you were both children, I used to wonder that you and
Don Juan, while you talked often together of my lord your father, had
scarce a thought at all of your lady mother. Yet if she had lived _you_
would have been her favourite, senor."
"And Juan my father's," said Carlos, not without a slight pang of
jealousy. "Was my noble father, then, more like what my brother is?"
"Yes, senor; he was bold and brave. No offence to your Excellency, for
one you love I warrant me _you_ could be brave enough. But he loved his
sword and his lance and his good steed. Moreover, he loved travel and
adventure greatly, and never could bear to abide long in the same
place."
"Did he not make a voyage to the Indies in his youth?"
"He did; and then he fought under the Emperor, both in Italy, and in
Africa against the Moors. Once His Imperial Majesty sent him on some
errand to Leon, and there he first met my lady. Afterwards he crossed
the mountains to our home, and wooed and won her. He brought her, the
fairest young bride eyes could rest on, to Seville, where he had a
stately palace on the Alameda."
"You must have grieved to leave your mountains for the southern city."
"No, senor, I did not grieve. Wherever your lady mother dwelt was home
to me. Besides, 'a great grief kills all the rest.'"
"Then you had known sorrow before. I thought you lived with our house
from your childhood."
"Not altogether; though my mother nursed yours, and we slept in the same
cradle, and as we grew older shared each other's plays. At seven years
old I went home to my father and mother, who were honest, well-to-do
people, like all my forbears--good 'old Christians,' and noble--they
could wear their caps in the presence of His Catholic Majesty. They had
no girl but me, so they would fain have me ever in their sight. For ten
years and more I was the light of their eyes; and no blither lass ever
led the goats to the mountain in summer, or spun wool and roasted
chestnuts at the winter fire. But, the year of the bad fever, both were
stricken. Christmas morning, with the bells for early mass ringing in
my ears, I closed my father's eyes; and three days afterwards, set the
last kiss on my mother's cold lips. Nigh upon five-and-twenty years
ago,--but it seems like yesterday. Folks say there are many good things
in the world, but I have known none so good as the love of father and
mother. Ay de mi, senor, _you_ never knew either."
"When your parents died, did you return to my mother?"
"For half a year I stayed with my brother. Though no daughter ever shed
truer tears over the grave of better parents, I was not then quite
broken-hearted. There was another love to whisper hope, and to keep me
from desolation. He--Alphonso ('tis years and years since I uttered the
name save in my prayers) had gone to the war, telling me he would come
back and claim me for his bride. So I watched for him hour by hour, and
toiled and spun, and spun and toiled, that I might not go home to him
empty-handed. But at last a lad from our parish, who had been a comrade
of his, returned and told me all. _He_ was lying on the bloody field of
Marignano, with a French bullet in his heart. Senor, the sisters you
read of could 'go to the grave and weep there.' And yet the Lord pitied
them."
"He pities all who weep," said Carlos.
"All good Christians, he may. But though an old Christian, I was not a
good one. For I thought it bitter hard that my candle should be
quenched in a moment, like a wax taper when the procession is done. And
it came often into my mind how the Almighty, or Our Lady, or the Saints,
could have helped me if they would. May they forgive me; it is hard to
be religious."
"I do not think so."
"I suppose it is not hard to learned gentlemen who have been at the
colleges. But how can simple men and women tell whether they are
keeping all the commandments of God and Holy Church? It well may be
that I had done something, or left something undone, whereby Our Lady
was displeased."
"It is not Our Lady, but our Lord himself, who holds the keys of hell
and of death," said Carlos, gaining at the moment a new truth for his
own heart. "None enter the gates of death, as none shall come forth
through them, save at his command. But go on, Dolores, and tell me how
did comfort come to you?"
"Comfort never came to me, senor. But after a time there came a kind of
numbness and hardness that helped me to live my life as if I cared for
it. And your lady mother (God rest her soul!) showed me wondrous
kindness in my sorrow. It was then she took me to be her own maiden.
She had me taught many things, such as reading and various cunning kinds
of embroidery, that I might serve her with them, she said; but I well
knew they were meant to turn my heart away from its own aching. I went
with her to Seville. I could be glad for her, senor, that God had given
her the good thing he had denied to me. At last it came to be almost
like joy to me to see the great deep love there was between your father
and her."
This was a degree of unselfishness beyond the comprehension of Carlos
just then. He felt his own wound throb painfully, and was not sorry to
turn the conversation. "Did my parents reside long in Seville?" he
asked.
"Not long, senor. Their life there was a gay one, as became their rank
and wealth (for, as your worship knows, your father had a noble estate
then). But soon they both grew tired of the gay world. My lady ever
loved the free mountains, and my lord--I scarce can tell what change
passed over him. He lost his care for the tourney and the dance, and
betook himself instead to study. Both were glad to withdraw to this
quiet spot. Here your brother Don Juan was born; and for nigh a year
after wards no lord and lady could have led a happier and, at the same
time, more pious and orderly life, than did your noble parents."
The thoughtful eye of Carlos turned to the inscription on the window,
and kindled with a strange light. "Was not this room my father's
favourite place of study?" he asked.
"It was, senor. Of course, the house was not then as it now is. Though
simple enough, after the Seville palace with its fountains and marble
statues, and doors grated with golden net work, it was still a seemly
dwelling-place for a noble lord and lady. There was glass in all the
windows then, though through neglect and carelessness it has been broken
(even your worship nay remember how Don Juan sent an arrow through a
quarrel pane in the west window one day), so we thought it best to
remove the traces."
"My parents led a pious life, you say?"
"Truly they did, senor. They were good and charitable to the poor; and
they spent much of their time reading holy books, as you do now. Ay de
mi! what was wrong with them I know not, save that perhaps they were
scarce careful enough to give Holy Church all her dues. And I used
sometimes to wish that my lady would show more devotion to the blessed
Mother of God. But she _felt_ it all, no doubt; only it was not her
way, nor my lord's either, to be for ever running about on pilgrimage or
offering wax candles, nor yet to keep the father confessor every instant
with his ear to their lips."
Carlos started, and turned an earnest inquiring gaze upon her. "Did my
mother ever read to you as I have done?" he asked.
"She sometimes read me good words out of the Breviary, senor. All thing
went on thus, until one day when a letter came from the Emperor himself
(as I believe), desiring your father to go to him, to Antwerp. The
matter was to be kept very private, but my lady used to tell me
everything. My lord thought he was to be sent on some secret mission
where skill was needed, and perchance peril was to be met. For it was
well known that he loved such affairs, and was dexterous in the
management of them. So he parted cheerily from my lady, she standing at
the gate yonder, and making little Don Juan kiss hands to him as he rode
down the path. Woe for the poor babe, that never saw his father's face
again! And worse woe for the mother! But death heals all things,
except sin.
"After three weeks or a month, more or less, two monks of St. Dominic
rode to the gates one day. The younger stayed without in the hall with
us; while the elder, a man of stern and stately presence, had private
audience of my lady in this chamber where we sit now--a place of death
it has seemed to me ever since. For the audience had not lasted long
until I heard a cry--such a cry!--it rings in nay ears even now. I
hastened to my lady. She had swooned--and long, long was it before
sense returned again. Do not keep looking at me, senor, with eyes so
like hers, or I cannot tell you more."
"Did she speak? Did she reveal anything to you?"
"_Nothing_, senor. During the days that followed, only things without
meaning or connection, such as those in fever speak, or broken words of
prayer, were on her lips. Until the very last, and then she was worn
and weak, and could but receive the rites of the Church, and whisper a
few directions about the poor babes. She bade us give you the name you
bear, since he had said that his next boy should be called for the great
Emperor. Then she prayed very earnestly, 'Lord, take him Thyself--take
him Thyself!' Doctor Marco, who was present, thought she meant the poor
little new-born babe--supposing, and no wonder, that it would be better
tended in heaven by Our Lady and the angels, than here on earth. But I
know it was not you she thought of."
"My poor mother--God rest her soul! Nay, I doubt not that now she rests
in God," Carlos added, softly.
"And so the curse fell on your house, senor; and in such sorrow were you
born. Yet you grew up merry lads, you and Don Juan."
"Thanks to thy care and kindness, well-beloved and faithful nurse. But,
Dolores, tell me truly--have you never heard anything further of, or
from, my father?"
"From him, never. Of him, that I believed, _never_."
"And what do you believe?" Carlos asked, eagerly.
"I know nothing, senor. I have heard all that your worship has heard,
and no more."
"Do you think it is true--what we have all been told--of his death in
the Indies?"
"I know nothing, senor," Dolores repeated, with the air of a person
determined to _say_ nothing.
But Carlos would not allow her to escape thus. Both had gone too far to
leave the subject without probing it to its depths. And both felt
instinctively that it was not likely again to be discussed between them.
Laying his hand on her arm, and looking steadily in her face, he
asked,--
"Dolores, are you sure my father is dead?"
Seemingly relieved by the form the question had taken, she met his gaze
without flinching, and answered in tones of evident sincerity, "Sure as
that I sit here--so help me God." After a long pause she added, as she
rose to go, "Senor Don Carlos, be not offended if I counsel you this
once, since I held you a babe in my arms, and you will find none that
loves you better--if a poor old woman may say so to a young and noble
caballero."
"Say all you think to me, my dear and kind nurse."
"Then, senor, I say, leave vain thoughts and questions about your
father's fate. 'There are no birds in last year's nests;' and 'Water
that has run by will turn no mill.' And I entreat of you to repeat the
same to your noble brother when you find opportunity. Look before you,
senor, and not behind; and God's best blessings rest on you!"
Dolores turned to go, but turning back again, stood irresolute.
"What is it, Dolores?" Carlos asked; hoping, perhaps, for some further
glimmer of light upon that dark past, from which she implored him to
turn his thoughts.
"If it please you, Senor Don Carlos--" and she paused and hesitated.
"Can I do anything for you?" said Carlos, in a kind, encouraging tone.
"Ay, senor, that you can. With your learning and your good Book, surely
you can tell me whether the soul of my poor Alphonso, dead on the
battle-field without shrift or sacrament, has yet found rest with God?"
Thus the tree woman's heart, though so full of sympathy for others,
still turned back to its own sorrow, which lay deepest of all.
Carlos felt himself unexpectedly involved in a difficulty. "My book
tells me nothing on the subject," he said, after some thought. "But I
am sure you may be comforted, after all these years, during which you
have diligently prayed, and sought the Church's prayers for him."
The long eager gaze of her wistful eyes asked mournfully, "Is this _all_
you can tell me?" But her lips only said, "I thank your Excellency," as
she withdrew.
XI.
The Light Enjoyed.
"Doubt is slow to clear and sorrow is hard to bear,
And each sufferer has his say, his scheme of the weal and the
woe;
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musicians _know_."--R.
Browning
Bewildering were the trains of thought which the conversation just
narrated awakened in the mind of Carlos. On the one hand, a gleam of
light was shed upon his father's career, suggesting a possible
interpretation of the inscription on the window, that thrilled his heart
with joy. On the other, the termination of that career was involved in
even deeper obscurity than before; and he was made to feel, more keenly
than ever, how childish and unreal were the dreams which he and his
brother had been wont to cherish upon the subject.
Moreover, Dolores, just before she left him, had drawn a bow at a
venture, and most unintentionally sent a sharp arrow through a joint in
his harness. Why could he find no answer to a question so simple and
natural as the one she had asked him? Why did the Book, which had
solved so many mysteries for him, shed not a ray of light upon this one?
Whence this ominous silence of the apostles and evangelists upon so many
things that the Church most loudly proclaimed? Where, in his Book, was
purgatory to be found at all? Where was the adoration of the Virgin and
the saints? Where were works of supererogation? But here he started in
horror, as one who suddenly saw himself on the brink of a precipice. Or
rather, as one dwelling secure and contented within a little circle of
light and warmth, to whom such questions came as intimations of a chaos
surrounding it on every side, into which a chance step might at any
moment plunge him.
Most earnestly he entreated that the Lord of his life, the Guide of his
spirit, would not let him go forth to wander there. He prayed, expressly
and repeatedly, that the doubts which began to trouble him might be laid
and silenced. His prayer was answered, as all true prayer is sure to
be, but it was not granted. He whose love is strong and deep enough to
work out its good purpose in us even against the pleadings of our own
hearts, saw that his child must needs pass through "a land of darkness"
to reach the clearer light beyond. Conflicts fierce and terrible must be
his portion, if indeed he were to take his place amongst those "called
and chosen and faithful" ones who, having stood beside the Lamb in his
contest with Antichrist, shall stand beside him on the sea of glass
mingled with fire.
Already Carlos was in training for that contest--though as yet he knew
not that there was any contest before him, save the general "striving
against sin" in which all Christians have to take part. For the joy of
the Lord is the Christian's strength in the day of battle. And he
usually prepares those faithful soldiers whom he means to set in the
forefront of the hottest battle, by previously bestowing that joy upon
them in very full measure. He who is willing to "sell all that he
hath," must first have found a treasure, and what "the joy thereof" is
none else may declare.
In this joy Carlos lived now; and it was as yet too fresh and new to be
greatly disturbed by haunting doubts or perplexing questions. These,
for the present, came and passed like a breath upon a surface of molten
gold, scarcely dimming its lustre for a moment.
It had become his great wish to receive Orders as soon as possible, that
he might consecrate himself more entirely to the service of his Lord,
and spread abroad the knowledge of his love more widely. With this
view, he determined on returning to Seville early in October.
He left Nuera with regret, especially on account of Dolores, who had
taken a new place in his consideration, and even in his affections,
since he had begun to read to her from his Book. And, though usually
very calm and impassive in manner, she could scarcely refrain from tears
at the parting. She entreated him, with almost passionate earnestness,
to be very prudent and careful of himself in the great city.
Carlos, who saw no special danger likely to menace him, save such as
might arise from his own heart, felt tempted to smile at her foreboding
tone, and asked her what she feared for him.
"Oh, Senor Don Carlos," she pleaded, with clasped hands, "for the love
of God, take care; and do not be reading and telling your good words to
every one you meet. For the world is an ill place, your worship, where
good is ofttimes evil-spoken of."
"Never fear for me," returned Carlos, with his frank, pleasant smile.
"I have found nothing in my Book but the most Catholic verities, which
will be useful to all and hurtful to none. But of course I shall be
prudent, and take due care of my words, lest by any extraordinary chance
they might be misinterpreted. So that you may keep your mind at peace,
dear Mother Dolores."
b.. The Light Divided from the Darkness:
XII.
The Light Divided from the Darkness.
"I felt and feel, whate'er befalls,
The footsteps of thy life in mine."--Tennyson
In the glorious autumn weather, Don Carlos rode joyfully through cork
and chestnut groves, across bare brown plains, and amidst gardens of
pale olives and golden orange globes shining through dark glossy leaves.
He had long ago sent back to Seville the guard with which his uncle had
furnished him, so that his only companion was a country youth, trained
by Diego to act as his servant. But although he passed through the very
district afterwards immortalized by the adventures of the renowned Don
Quixote, no adventure fell to his lot. Unless it may count for an
adventure that near the termination of his journey the weather suddenly
changed, and torrents of rain, accompanied by unusual cold, drove him to
seek shelter.
"Ride on quickly, Jorge," he said to his attendant, "for I remember
there is a venta[#] by the roadside not far off. A poor place truly,
where we are little likely to find a supper. But we shall find a roof to
shelter us and fire to warm us, and these at present are our most
pressing needs."
[#] An inn.
Arrived at the venta, they were surprised to see the lazy landlord so
far stirred out of his usual apathy as to busy himself in trying to
secure the fastening of the outer door, that it might not swing
backwards and forwards in the wind, to the great discomfort of all
within the house. The proud indifferent Spaniard looked calmly up from
his task, and remarked that he would do all in his power to accommodate
his worship. "But unfortunately, senor and your Excellency, a _very_
great and principal nobleman has just arrived here, with a most
distinguished train of fine caballeros--his lordship's gentlemen and
servants; and kitchen, hall, and chamber are as full of them as a hive
is full of bees."
This was evil news to Carlos. Proud, sensitive, and shy, there could be
nothing more foreign to his character than to throw himself into the
society of a person who, though really only his equal in rank, was so
much his superior in all that lends rank its charm in the eyes of the
vulgar. "We had better push on to Ecija," said he to his reluctant
attendant, bravely turning his face to the storm, and making up his mind
to ten miles more in drenching rain.
At that moment, however, a tall figure emerged from the inner door,
opening into the long room behind the stable and kitchen, that formed
the only tolerable accommodation the one-storied venta afforded.
"Surely, senor, you do not intend to go further in this storm," said the
nobleman, whose fine thoughtful countenance Carlos could not but fancy
that he had seen before.
"It is not far to Ecija, senor," returned Carlos, bowing. "And 'First
come first served,' is an excellent proverb."
"The first-comer has certainly one privilege which I am not disposed to
waive--that of hospitably welcoming the second. Do me the favour to come
in, senor. You will find an excellent fire."
Carlos could not decline an invitation so courteously given. He was soon
seated by the wood fire that blazed on the hearth of the inner room,
exchanging compliments, in true Spanish fashion, with the nobleman who
had welcomed him so kindly.
Though no one could doubt for an instant the stranger's possession of
the pure "sangre azul,"[#] yet his manners were more frank and easy and
less ceremonious than those to which Carlos had been accustomed in the
exclusive and privileged class of Seville society---a fact accounted for
by the discovery, afterwards made, that he was born and educated in
Italy.
[#] "Blue blood"
"I have the pleasure of recognizing Don Carlos Alvarez de Santillanos y
Menaya," said he. "I hope the babe about whom his worship showed such
amiable anxiety recovered from its indisposition?"
This then was the personage whom Carlos had seen in such close
conversation with the physician Losada. The association of ideas
immediately brought back the mysterious remark about his father he had
overheard on that occasion. Putting that aside, however, for the
present, he answered, "Perfectly, I thank your grace. We attribute the
recovery mainly to the skill and care of the excellent Dr. Cristobal
Losada."
"A gentleman whose medical skill cannot be praised too highly, except,
indeed, it were exalted at the expense of his other excellent qualities,
and particularly his charity to the poor."
Carlos heartily acquiesced, and added some instances of the physician's
kindness to those who could not recompense him again. They were new to
his companion, who listened with interest.
During this conversation supper was laid. As the principal guest had
brought his own provisions with him, it was a comfortable and plentiful
repast. Carlos, ere he sat down, left the room to re-arrange his dress,
and found opportunity to ask the innkeeper if he knew the noble
stranger's name.
"His Excellency is a great noble from Castile," returned mine host, with
an air of much importance. "His name, as I am informed, is Don Carlos
de Seso; and his illustrious lady, Dona Isabella, is of the blood
royal."
"Where does he reside?"
"His gentlemen tell me, principally at one of his fine estates in the
north, Villamediana they call it. He is also corregidor[#] of Toro. He
has been visiting Seville upon business of importance, and is now
returning home."
[#] Mayor
Pleased to be the guest of such a man (for in fact he was his guest),
Carlos took his seat at the table, and thoroughly enjoyed the meal. An
hour's intercourse with a man who had read and travelled much, but had
thought much more, was a rare treat to him. Moreover, De Seso showed
him all that fine courtesy which a youth so highly appreciates from a
senior, giving careful attention to every observation he hazarded, and
manifestly bringing the best of his powers to bear on his own share of
the conversation.
He spoke of Fray Constantino's preaching, with an enthusiasm that made
Carlos regret that he had been hitherto such an inattentive hearer.
"Have you seen a little treatise by the Fray, entitled 'The Confession
of a Sinner'?" he asked.
Carlos having answered in the negative, his new friend drew a tract from
the pocket of his doublet, and gave it to him to read while he wrote a
letter.
Carlos, after the manner of eager, rapid readers, plunged at once into
the heart of the matter, disdaining beginnings.
Almost the first words upon which his eyes fell arrested his attention
and drew him irresistibly onwards. "Such has been the pride of man," he
read, "that he aimed at being God; but so great was thy compassion
towards him in his fallen state, that thou abasedst thyself to become
not only of the rank of men, but a true man, and the least of men,
taking upon thee the form of a servant, that thou mightest set me at
liberty, and that by means of thy grace, wisdom, and righteousness, man
might obtain more than he had lost by his ignorance and pride.... Wast
thou not chastised for the iniquity of others? Has not thy blood
sufficient virtue to wash out the sins of all the human race? Are not
thy treasures more able to enrich me than all the debt of Adam to
impoverish me? Lord, although I had been the only person alive, or the
only sinner in the world, thou wouldst not have failed to die for me. O
my Saviour, I would say, and say it with truth, that I individually
stand in need of those blessings which thou hast given to all. What
though the guilt of all had been mine? thy death is all mine. Even
though I had committed all the sins of all, yet would I continue to
trust thee, and to assure myself that thy sacrifice and pardon is all
mine, though it belong to all."
So far he read in silence, then the tract fell from his hand, and an
involuntary exclamation broke from his lips--"Passing strange!"
De Seso paused, pen in hand, and looked up surprised. "What find you
'passing strange,' senor?" he asked.
"That he--that Fray Constantino should have felt precisely what--what he
describes here."
"That such a holy man should feel so deeply his own utter sinfulness?
But you are doubtless aware that the holiest saints in all ages have
shared this experience. St. Augustine, for instance, with whose
writings so ripe a theological scholar is doubtless well acquainted."
"Such," returned Carlos, "are not worse than others; but they know what
they are as others do not."
"True. Tried by the standard of God's perfect law, the purest life must
appear a miserable failure. We may call the marble of our churches and
dwellings white, until we see God's snow, pure and fresh from heaven,
upon it."
"Ay, senor," said Carlos, wild joyful eagerness; "but the Hand that
points out the stains can cleanse them. No snow is half so pure as the
linen clean and white which is the righteousness of saints."
It was De Seso's turn to be astonished now. In the look that, half
leaning over the table, he bent upon the eager face of Carlos, surprise
and emotion blended. For a moment their eyes met with a flash, like
that which flint strikes from steel, of mutual intelligence and
sympathy. But it passed again as quickly. De Seso said, "I suspect
that I see in you, Senor Don Carlos, one of those admirable scholars who
have devoted their talents to the study of that sacred language in which
the words of the holy apostles are handed down to us. You are a
Grecian?"
Carlos shook his head. "Greek is but little studied at Complutum now,"
he said, "and I confined myself to the usual theological course."
"In which, I have heard, your success has been brilliant. But it is a
sore disgrace to us, and a heavy loss to the youth of our nation, that
the language of St. John and St. Paul should be deemed unworthy of their
attention."
"Your Excellency is aware that it was otherwise in former years,"
returned Carlos. "Perhaps the present neglect is owing to the suspicion
of heresy which, truly or falsely, has attached itself to most of the
accomplished Greek scholars of our time."
"A miserable misapprehension; the growth of monkish ignorance and envy,
and popular superstition. Heresy is a convenient stigma with which men
ofttimes brand as evil the good they are incapable of comprehending."
"Most true, senor. Even Fray Constantino has not escaped."
"His crime has been, that he has sought to turn the minds of men from
outward acts and ceremonies to the great spiritual truths of which these
are the symbols. To the vulgar, Religion is nothing but a series of
shows and postures."
"Yes," answered Carlos; "but the heart that loves God, and truly
believes in our Lord and Saviour, is taught to put such in their proper
place. 'These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other
undone.'"
"Senor Don Carlos," said De Seso, with surprise he could no longer
suppress, "you are evidently a devout and earnest student of the
Scriptures."
"I search the Scriptures; in them I think I have eternal life. And they
testify of Christ," promptly responded the less cautious youth.
"I perceive that you do not quote the Vulgate."
Carlos smiled. "No, senor. To a man of your enlightened views I am not
afraid to acknowledge the truth. I have seen--nay, why should I
hesitate?--I possess a rare treasure--the New Testament of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ in our own noble Castilian tongue."
Even through the calm and dignified deportment of his companion Carlos
could perceive the thrill that this communication caused. There was a
pause; then he said softly, "And your treasure is also mine." The low
quiet words came from even greater depths of feeling than the eager
tremulous tones of Carlos. For _his_ convictions, slowly reached and
dearly purchased, were "built below" the region of the soul that
passions agitate,--
"Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity."
The heart of Carlos glowed with sudden ardent love towards the man who
shared his treasure, and, he doubted not, his faith also. He could
joyfully have embraced him on the spot. But the force of habit and the
sensitive reserve of his character checked this impetuous
demonstrativeness. He only said, with a look that was worth an embrace,
"I knew it. Your Excellency spoke as one who held our Lord and his
truth in honour."
"_Ella es pues honor a vosotros que creeis._"[#]
[#] "Unto you who believes he is precious," or "an honour."
It would have been hard to begin a verse that Carlos could not at this
time have instantly completed. He went on: "_Mas para los que no creen,
la piedra que los edificatores reprobaron_."[#]
[#] "But unto them that believe not, the stone that the builders
reject."
"A sorrowful truth," said De Seso, "which my young friend must needs
bear in mind. His Word, like himself, is rejected by the many. Its
very mention may expose to obloquy and danger."
"Only another instance, senor, of those lamentable prejudices about
heresy about which we spoke anon. I am aware that there are those that
would brand me (_me_, a scholar too!) with the odious name of heretic,
merely for reading God's Word in my own tongue. But how utterly absurd
the charge! The blessed Book has but confirmed my faith in all the
doctrines of our holy Mother Church."
"Has it?" said De Seso, quietly, perhaps a little drily.
"Most assuredly, senor," Carlos rejoined, with warmth. "In fact I never
understood, or, I may say, truly believed those holy verities until now.
Beginning with the Credo itself, and the orthodox Catholic faith in our
Lord's divinity and atonement."
Here their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the
attendants, who removed supper, replenished the lamp, and heaped fresh
chestnut logs on the fire. But as soon as the room was cleared they
returned eagerly to subjects so interesting to both.
"Our salvation rests," said De Seso, "upon the great cardinal truths you
have named. By the faith which receives into your heart the atonement
of Christ as a work done for you, you are justified."
"I am forgiven, and I shall be justified."
"Pardon me, senor; Scripture teaches that your justification is already
complete. Therefore, _being justified by faith_, we have peace with
God."
"But that cannot surely be the apostle's meaning," said Carlos. "Ay de
mi! I know too well that I am not yet completely justified. Far from
it; evil thoughts throng my heart; and not with heart alone, but with
lips, eyes, hands, I transgress daily."
"Yet, you see, peace can only be consequent on justification. And peace
you have."
Carlos looked perplexed. Misled by the teaching of his Church, he
confused justification with sanctification; consequently he could not
legitimately enjoy the peace that ought to flow from the one as a
complete and finished work, because the other necessarily remained
imperfect.
De Seso explained that the word justify is never used in Scripture in
its derivative sense, to _make_ righteous; but always in its common and
universally accepted sense, to _account_ or _declare_ righteous. Quite
easily and naturally he glided into the teacher's place, whilst Carlos
gladly took that of the learner; not, indeed, without astonishment at
the layman's skill in divinity, but with too intense an interest in what
he said to waste much thought upon his manner of saying it.
Hitherto he had been like an unlearned man, who, without guide or
companion, explores the trackless shores of a newly-discovered land.
Should such an one meet in his course a scientific explorer, who has
mapped and named every mountain, rock, and bay, who has traced out the
coast-line, and can tell what lies beyond the white hills in the
distance, it is easy to understand the eagerness with which he would
listen to his narrative, and the intentness with which he would bend
over the chart in which the scene of his own journeyings lies portrayed.
Thus De Seso not only taught Carlos the true meaning of Scripture terms,
and the connection of Scripture truths with each other; he also made
clear to him the facts of his own experience, and gave names to them for
him.
"I think I understand now," said Carlos after a lengthened conversation,
in which, moving from point to point, he had suggested many doubts and
not a few objections, and these in turn had been taken up and answered
by his friend. "God be thanked, there is no more condemnation, no more
punishment for us. Nothing, either in act or suffering, can be added to
the work of Christ, which is complete."
"Ay, now you have grasped the truth which is the source of our joy and
strength."
"It must then be our sanctification which suffering promotes, both in
this life and in purgatory."
"All God's dealings with us in this life are meant to promote our
sanctification. Joy may do it, by his grace, as well as sorrow. It is
written, not alone, 'He humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger,' but
also, 'He fed thee with manna, to teach the secret of life in him, from
him, and by him.'"
"But suffering is purifying--like fire."
"Not in itself. Criminals released from the galleys usually come forth
hardened in their crimes by the lash and the oar."
Having said this, De Seso rose and extinguished the expiring lamp, while
Carlos remained thoughtfully gazing into the fire. "Senor," he said,
after a long pause, during which the stream of thought ran continuously
underground, to reappear consequently in an unexpected place--"Senor, do
you think God's Word, which solves so many mysteries, can answer every
question for us?"
"Scarcely. Some questions we may ask, of which the answers, in our
present state, would be beyond our comprehension. And others may indeed
be answered there, but we may miss the answers, because through weakness
of faith we are not yet able to receive them."
"For instance?"
"I had rather not name an instance--at present," said De Seso, and
Carlos thought his face had a sorrowful look as he gazed at it in the
firelight.
"I would not willingly miss anything my Lord meant to teach. I desire
to know all his will, and to follow it," Carlos rejoined earnestly.
"It may be that you know not what you desire. Still, name any question
you wish; and I will tell you freely whether in my judgment God's Word
contains an answer."
Carlos stated the difficulty suggested by the inquiry of Dolores. Who
can tell the exact moment when his bark leaves the gently-flowing river
for the great deep ocean? That of Carlos, on the instant when he put
this question, was met by the first wave of the mighty sea upon which he
was to be tossed by many a storm. But he did not know it.
"I agree with you as to the silence of God's Word about purgatory,"
returned his friend; and for some time both gazed into the fire without
speaking.
"This and similar discoveries have sometimes given me, I own, a feeling
of blank disappointment, and even of terror," said Carlos at length.
For with him it was one of those rare hours in which a man can bear to
translate into words the "dark misgivings" of the soul, usually
unacknowledged even to himself.
"I cannot say," was the answer, "that the thought of passing through the
gate of death into the immediate presence of my glorified Lord affects
me with 'blank disappointment' or 'terror.'"
"How?--What do you say?" cried Carlos, starting visibly.
"'Absent from the body, present with the Lord.' 'To depart and to be
with Christ is far better.'"
"But it was San Pablo, the great apostle and martyr, who said that. For
us,--we have the Church's teaching," Carlos rejoined in quick, anxious
tones.
"Nevertheless, I venture to think that, in the face of all you have
learned from God's Word, you will find it a task somewhat of the hardest
to prove purgatory."
"Not at all," said Carlos; and immediately he bounded into the arena of
controversy, laid his lance in rest, and began an animated tilting-match
with his new friend, who was willing (of course, thought Carlos, for
argument's sake alone, and as an intellectual exercise) to personate a
Lutheran antagonist.
But not a few doughty champions have met the stern reality of a bloody
death in the mimic warfare of the tilting-field. At every turn Carlos
found himself answered, baffled, confounded. Yet, how could he, how
dared he, acknowledge defeat, even to himself, when with the imperilled
doctrine so much else must fall? What would become of private masses,
indulgences, prayers for the dead? Nay, what would become of the
infallibility of Mother Church herself?
So he fought desperately. Fear, ever increasing, quickened his
preceptions, baptized his lips with eloquence, made his sense acute and
his memory retentive. Driven at last from the ground of Scripture and
reason, he took his stand upon that of scholastic divinity. Using the
weapons with which he had been taught to play so deftly for once in
terrible earnest, he spun clever syllogisms, in which he hoped to
entangle his adversary. But De Seso caught the flimsy webs in the naked
hand of his strong sense, and crushed them to atoms.
Then Carlos knew that the battle was lost. "I can say no more," he
acknowledged, sorrowfully bowing his head.
"And what I have said--is it not in accordance with the Word of God?"
With a cry of dismay on his lips, Carlos turned and looked at him--"God
help us! Are we then Lutherans?"
"It may be Christ is asking another question--Are we amongst those who
follow him _whithersoever_ he goeth?"
"Oh, not _there_--not to _that_!" cried Carlos, rising in his agitation
and beginning to pace the room. "I abhor heresy--I eschew the thought.
From my cradle I have done so. Anywhere but that!"
Pausing at last in his walk before the place where De Seso sat, he
asked, "And you, senor, have you considered whither this would lead?"
"I have. I do not ask thee to follow. But this I say: if Christ bids
any man leave the ship and come to him upon these dark and stormy
waters, he will stretch out his own right hand to uphold and sustain
him."
"To leave the ship--his Church? That would be leaving him. And leaving
him, I am lost, soul and body--lost--lost!"
"Fear not. At his feet, clinging to him, soul of man was never lost
yet."
"I will cleave to him, and to the Church too."
"Still, if one must be forsaken, let not that one be Christ."
"Never, never--so help me God!" After a pause he added, as if speaking
to himself, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life."
He stood motionless, wrapt in thought; while De Seso rose softly, and
going to the window, put aside the rude shutter that had been fastened
across it.
"The night is bright," said Carlos dreamily. "The moon must have
risen."
"That is daylight you see," returned his companion with a smile. "Time
for wayfarers to seek rest in sleep."
"Prayer is better than sleep."
"True, and we who own the same precious faith can well unite in prayer."
With the willing consent of Carlos, his new friend laid their common
desires and perplexities before God. The prayer was in itself a
revelation to him; he forgot even to wonder that it came from the lips
of a layman. For De Seso spoke as one accustomed to converse with the
Unseen, and to enter by faith to the inner sanctuary, the very presence
of God himself. And Carlos found that it was good thus to draw nigh to
God. He felt his troubled soul returning to its rest, to its quiet
confidence in Him who, he knew, would guide him by his counsel, and
afterwards receive him into glory.
When they rose, instinctively their right hands sought each other, and
were locked in that strong grasp which is sometimes worth more than an
embrace.
"We have confidence each in the other," said De Seso, "so that we need
exchange no pledge of faithfulness or secrecy."
Carlos bowed his head. "Pray for me, senor," he said. "Pray that God,
who sent you here to teach me, may in his own time complete the work he
has begun."
Then both lay down in their cloaks; one to sleep, the other to ponder
and pray.
In the morning each went his several way. And never was it given to
Carlos, in this world, to look upon that face or to grasp that hand
again.
He who had thus crossed his path, as it were for a moment, was perhaps
the noblest of all the heroic band of Spanish martyrs, that forlorn hope
of Christ's army, who fought and fell "where Satan's seat was." His
high birth and lofty station, his distinguished abilities, even those
more superficial graces of person and manner which are not without their
strong fascination, were all--like the precious ointment with the odour
of which the house was filled--consecrated to the service of the Lord
for whom he lived and died. The eye of imagination lingers with special
and reverential love upon that grand calm figure. But our simple story
leads us far away amongst other scenes and other characters. We must
now turn to a different part of the wide missionary harvest-field, in
which the lowly muleteer Juliano Hernandez, and the great noble Don
Carlos de Seso, were both labouring. Was their labour in vain?
XIII.
Seville
"There is a multitude around,
Responsive to my prayer;
I hear the voice of my desire
Resounding everywhere."--A. L. Waring
Don Carlos felt surprised, on returning to Seville, to find the circle
in which he had been wont to move exactly as he left it. His absence
appeared to him a great deal longer than it really was. Moreover, there
lurked in his mind an undefined idea that a period so fraught with
momentous change to him could not have passed without change over the
heads of others. But the worldly only seemed more worldly, the
frivolous more frivolous, the vain more vain than ever.
Around the presence of Dona Beatriz there still hung a sweet dangerous
fascination, against which he struggled, and, in the strength of his new
and mighty principle of action, struggled successfully. Still, for the
sake of his own peace, he longed to find some fair pretext for making
his home elsewhere than beneath his uncle's roof.
One great pleasure awaited his return--a letter from Juan. It was the
second he had received; the first having merely told of his brother's
safe arrival at the headquarters of the royal army at Cambray. Don Juan
had obtained his commission just in time for active service in the brief
war between France and Spain that immediately followed the accession of
Philip II. And now, though he said not much of his own exploits, it was
evident that he had already begun to distinguish himself by the prompt
and energetic courage which was a part of his character. Moreover, a
signal piece of good fortune had fallen to his lot. The Spaniards were
then engaged in the siege of St. Quentin. Before the works were quite
completed, the French General--the celebrated Admiral Coligny--managed
to throw himself into the town by a brilliant and desperate
_coup-de-main_. Many of his heroic band were killed or taken prisoners,
however; and amongst the latter was a gentleman of rank and fortune, a
member of the admiral's suite, who surrendered his sword into the hands
of young Don Juan Alvarez.
Juan was delighted with his prize, as he well might be. Not only was
the distinction an honourable one for so young a soldier; but the ransom
he might hope to receive would serve very materially to smooth his
pathway to the attainment of his dearest wishes.
Carlos was now able to share his brother's joy with unselfish sympathy.
With a peculiar kind of pleasure, not quite unmixed with superstition,
he recalled Juan's boyish words, more than once repeated, "When I go to
the wars, I shall make some great prince or duke my prisoner." They had
found a fair, if not exactly literal, fulfilment, and that so early in
his career. And a belief that had grown up with him from childhood was
strengthened thereby. Juan would surely accomplish everything upon
which his heart was set. Certainly he would find his father--if that
father should prove to be after all in the land of the living.
Carlos was warmly welcomed back by his relatives--at least by all of
them save one. To a mild temper and amiable disposition he united the
great advantage of rivalling no man, and interfering with no man's
career. At the same time, he had a well-defined and honourable career
of his own, in which he bid fair to be successful; so that he was not
despised, but regarded as a credit to the family. The solitary
exception to the favourable sentiments he inspired was found in the
bitter disdain which Gonsalvo, with scarcely any attempt at disguise,
exhibited towards him.
This was painful to him, both because he was sensitively alive to the
opinions of others; and also because he actually preferred Gonsalvo,
notwithstanding his great and glaring faults, to his more calculating
and worldly-minded brothers. Force of any kind possesses a real
fascination for an intellectual and sympathetic, but rather weak
character; and this fascination grows in intensity when the weaker has a
reason to pity and a desire to help the stronger.
It was not altogether grace, therefore, which checked the proud words
that often rose to the lips of Carlos in answer to his cousin's sneers
or sarcasms. He was not ignorant of the cause of Gonsalvo's contempt
for him. It was Gonsalvo's creed that a man who deserved the name
always got what he wanted, or died in the attempt; unless, of course,
absolutely insuperable physical obstacles interfered, as they did in his
own case. As he knew well enough what Carlos wanted before his
departure from Seville, the fact of his quietly resigning the prize,
without even an effort to secure it, was final with him.
One day, when Carlos had returned a forbearing answer to some taunt,
Dona Inez, who was present, took occasion to apologize for her brother,
as soon as he had quitted the room. Carlos liked Dona Inez much better
than her still unmarried sister, because she was more generous and
considerate to Beatriz. "You are very good, amigo mio," she said, "to
show so great forbearance to my poor brother. And I cannot think
wherefore he should treat you so uncourteously. But he is often rude to
his brothers, sometimes even to his father."
"I fear it is because he suffers. Though rather less helpless than he
was six months ago, he seems really more frail and sickly."
"Ay de mi, that is too true. And have you heard his last whim? He
tells us he has given up physicians for ever. He has almost as ill an
opinion of them as--forgive me, cousin--of priests."
"Could you not persuade him to consult your friend, Doctor Cristobal?"
"I have tried, but in vain. To speak the truth, cousin," she added,
drawing nearer to Carlos, and lowering her voice, "there is another
cause that has helped to make him what he is. No one knows or even
guesses aught of it but myself; I was ever his favourite sister. If I
tell you, will you promise the strictest secrecy?"
Carlos did so; wondering a little what his cousin would think could she
surmise the weightier secrets which were burdening his own heart.
"You have heard of the marriage of Dona Juana de Xeres y Bohorques with
Don Francisco de Vargas?"
"Yes; and I account Don Francisco a very fortunate man."
"Are you acquainted with the young lady's sister Dona Maria de
Bohorques?"
"I have met her. A fair, pale, queenly girl. She is not fond of
gaiety, but very learned and very pious, as I have been told."
"You will scarce believe me, Don Carlos, when I tell you that pale,
quiet girl is Gonsalvo's choice, his dream, his idol. How she contrived
to gain that fierce, eager young heart, I know not--but hers it is, and
hers alone. Of course, he had passing fancies before; but she was his
first serious passion, and she will be his last."
Carlos smiled. "Red fire and white marble," he said. "But, after all,
the fiercest fire could not feed on marble. It must die out, in time."
"From the first, Gonsalvo had not the shadow of a chance," Dona Inez
replied, with an expressive flutter of her fan. "I have not the least
idea whether the young lady even knows he loves her. But it matters
not. We are Alvarez de Menaya; still we could not expect a grandee of
the first order to give his daughter to a younger son of our house.
Even before that unlucky bull-feast. Now, of course, he himself would
be the first to say, 'Pine-apple kernels are not for monkeys,' nor fair
ladies for crippled caballeros. And yet--you understand?"
"I do," said Carlos; and in truth he _did_ understand, far better than
Dona Inez imagined.
She turned to leave the room, but turned back again to say kindly, "I
trust, my cousin, your own health has not suffered from your residence
among those bleak inhospitable mountains? Don Garcia tells me he has
seen you twice, since your return, coming forth late in the evening from
the dwelling of our good Senor Doctor."
There was a sufficient reason for these visits. Before they parted, De
Seso had asked Carlos if he would like an introduction to a person in
Seville who could give him further instruction upon the subjects they
had discussed together. The offer having been thankfully accepted, he
was furnished with a note addressed, much to his surprise, to the
physician Losada; and the connection thus begun was already proving a
priceless boon to Carlos.
But nature had not designed him for a keeper of secrets. The colour
mounted rapidly to his cheek, as he answered,--
"I am flattered by my lady cousin's solicitude for me. But, I thank
God, my health is as good as ever. In truth, Doctor Cristobal is a man
of learning and a pleasant companion, and I enjoy an hour's conversation
with him. Moreover, he has some rare and valuable books, which he is
kind enough to lend me."
"He is certainly very well-bred, for a man of his station," said Dona
Inez, condescendingly.
Carlos did not resume his attendance upon the lectures of Fray
Constantino at the College of Doctrine; but when the voice of the
eloquent preacher was heard in the cathedral, he was never absent. He
had no difficulty now in recognizing the truths that he loved so well,
covered with a thin veil of conventional phraseology. All mention, not
absolutely necessary, of dogmas peculiarly Romish was avoided, unless
when the congregation were warned earnestly, though in terms
well-studied and jealously guarded, against "risking their salvation"
upon indulgences or ecclesiastical pardons. The vanity of trusting to
their own works was shown also; and in every sermon Christ was
faithfully held up before the sinner as the one all-sufficient Saviour.
Carlos listened always with rapt attention, usually with keen delight.
Often would he look around him upon the sea of earnest upturned faces,
saying within himself, "Many of these my brethren and sisters have found
Christ--many more are seeking him;" and at the thought his heart would
thrill with thankfulness. But even at that moment some word from the
preacher's lips might change his joy into a chill of apprehension. It
frequently happened that Fray Constantino, borne onward by the torrent
of his own eloquence, was betrayed into uttering some sentiment so very
nearly heretical as to make his hearer tingle with the peculiar sense of
pain that is caused by seeing one rush heedlessly to the verge of a
precipice.
"I often thank God for the stupidity of evil men and the simplicity of
good ones," Carlos said to his new friend Losada, after one of these
dangerous discourses.
For by this time, what De Seso had first led him to suspect, had become
a certainty with him. He knew himself _a heretic_--a terrible
consciousness to sink into the heart of any man in those days,
especially in Catholic Spain. Fortunately the revelation had come to
him gradually; and still more gradually came the knowledge of all that
it involved. Yet those were sorrowful hours in which he first felt
himself cut off from every hallowed association of his childhood and
youth; from the long chain of revered tradition, which was all he knew
of the past; from the vast brotherhood of the Church visible--that
mighty organization, pervading all society, leavening all thought,
controlling all custom, ruling everything in this world, even if not in
the next. His own past life was shattered: the ambitions he had
cherished were gone--the studies he had excelled and delighted in were
proved for the most part worse than vain. It is true that he believed,
even still, that he might accept priestly ordination from the hands of
Rome (for the idolatry of the mass was amongst the things not yet
revealed to him); but he could no longer hope for honour or preferment,
or what men call a career, in the Church. Joy enough would it be if he
were permitted, in some obscure corner of the land, to tell his
countrymen of a Saviour's love; and perpetual watchfulness, extreme
caution, and the most judicious management would be necessary to
preserve him--as hitherto they had preserved Fray Constantino--from the
grasp of the Holy Inquisition.
To us, who read that word in the lurid light that martyr fires kindled
after this period have flung upon it, it may seem strange that Carlos
was not more a prey to fear of the perils entailed by his heresy. But
so slowly did he pass out of the stage in which he believed himself
still a sincere Catholic into that in which he shudderingly acknowledged
that he was in very truth a Lutheran, that the shock of the discovery
was wonderfully broken to him. Nor did he think the danger that menaced
him either near or pressing, so long as he conducted himself with
reserve and prudence.
It is true that this reserve involved a degree of secrecy, if not of
dissimulation, that was fast becoming very irksome. Formerly the kind of
fencing, feinting, and doubling into which he was often forced, would
rather have pleased him, as affording for the exercise of ingenuity.
But his moral nature was growing so much more sensitive, that he began
to recoil from slight departures from truth, in which heretofore he
would only have seen a proper exercise of the advantage which a keen and
quick intellect possesses over dull ones. Moreover, he longed to be
able to speak freely to others of the things which he himself found so
precious.
Though quite sufficiently afraid of pain and danger, the thought of
disgrace was still more intolerable to him. Keener than any suffering
he had yet known--except the pang of renouncing Beatrix--was the
consciousness that all those amongst whom he lived, and who now
respected and loved him, would, if they guessed the truth, turn away
from him with unutterable scorn and loathing.
One day, when walking in the city with his aunt and Dona Sancha, they
turned down a side-street to avoid meeting the death procession of a
murderer on his way to the scaffold. The crime for which he suffered
had been notorious; and with the voluble exclamations of horror and
congratulations at getting safely out of the way to which the ladies
gave expression, were mingled prayers for the soul of the miserable man.
"If they knew all," thought Carlos, as the slight, closely-veiled forms
clung trustingly to him for protection, "they would think _me_ worse,
more degraded, than yon wretched being. They pity _him_, they pray for
_him_; _me_ they would only loathe and execrate. And Juan, my beloved,
my honoured brother--what will he think?" This last thought was the one
that haunted him most frequently and troubled him most deeply.
But had he nothing to counterbalance these pangs of fear and shame,
these manifold dark misgivings? He had much. First and best, he had the
peace that passeth all understanding shed abroad in his heart. Its
light did not grow pale and faint with time; on the other hand, it
increased in brightness and steadiness, as new truths arose like stars
upon his soul, every new truth being in itself "a new joy" to him.
Moreover, he found keen enjoyment in the communion of saints. Great was
his surprise when, after sufficiently instructing him in private, and
satisfactorily testing his sincerity, Losada cautiously revealed to him
the existence of a regularly-organized Lutheran Church in Seville, of
which he himself was actually the pastor. He invited Carlos to attend
its meetings, which were held, with due precaution, and usually after
nightfall, in the house of a lady of rank--Dona Isabella de Baena.
Carlos readily accepted the perilous invitation, and with deep emotion
took his place amongst the band of "called, chosen, and faithful" men
and women, every one of whom, as he believed, shared the same joys and
hopes that he did. They were not at all such a "little band" as he
expected to find them. Nor were they, with very few exceptions, of the
poor of this world. If that bright southern land, so rich in all that
kindles the imagination, eventually to her own ruin rejected the truth
of God, at least she offered upon his altar some of her choicest and
fairest flowers. Many of those who met in Dona Isabella's upper room
were "chief men" and "devout and honourable women." Talent, learning,
excellence of every kind was largely represented there; so also was the
_sangre azul_, the boast of the proud Spanish grandees. One of the
first faces that Carlos recognized was the sweet, thoughtful one of the
young Dona Maria de Bohorques, whose precocious learning and
accomplishments had often been praised in his hearing, and in whom he
had now a new and peculiar interest.
There were two noblemen of the first order--Don Domingo de Guzman, son
of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and Don Juan Ponce de Leon, son of the
Count of Baylen. Carlos had often heard of the munificent charities of
the latter, who had actually embarrassed his estates by his unbounded
liberality to the poor. But while Ponce de Leon was thus labouring to
relieve the sorrows of others, a deep sadness brooded over his own
spirit. He was wont to go forth by night, and pace up and down the
great stone platform in the Prado San Sebastian, that bore the ghastly
name of the Quemadero, or _Burning-place_, while in his heart the shadow
of death--the darkest shadow of the dreadest death--was struggling with
the light of immortality.
Did the rest of that devoted band share the agony of apprehension that
filled those lonely midnight hours with passionate prayer? Some amongst
them did, no doubt. But with most, the circumstances and occupations of
daily life wove, with their multitudinous slender threads, a veil dense
enough to hide, or at least to soften, the perils of their situation.
The Protestants of Seville contrived to pass their lives and to do their
work side by side with other men; they moved amongst their
fellow-citizens and were not recognized; they even married and were
given in marriage; though all the time there fell upon their daily paths
the shadow of the grim old fortress where the Holy Inquisition held its
awful secret court.
But then, at this period the Holy Inquisition was by no means exhibiting
its usual terrible activity. The Inquisitor-General, Fernando de
Valdez, Archbishop of Seville, was an old man of seventy-four,
relentless when roused, but not particularly enterprising. Moreover, he
was chiefly occupied in amassing enormous wealth from his rich and
numerous Church preferments. Hitherto, the fires of St. Dominic had
been kindled for Jews and Moors; only one Protestant had suffered death
in Spain, and Valladolid, not Seville, had been the scene of his
martyrdom. Seville, indeed, had witnessed two notable prosecutions for
Lutheranism--that of Rodrigo de Valer and that of Juan Gil, commonly
called Dr. Egidius. But Valer had been only sent to a monastery to die,
while, by a disgraceful artifice, retractation had been obtained from
Egidius.
During the years that had passed since then, the Holy Office had
appeared to slumber. Victims who refused to eat pork, or kept Sabbath
on Saturday, were growing scarce for obvious reasons. And not yet had
the wild beast "exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron and his
nails of brass," begun to devour a nobler prey. Did the monster, gorged
with human blood, really slumber in his den; or did he only assume the
attitude and appearance of slumber, as some wild beasts are said to do,
to lure his unwary victims within the reach of his terrible crouch and
spring?
No one can certainly tell; but however it may have been, we doubt not
the Master used the breathing-time thus afforded his Church to prepare
and polish many a precious gem, destined to shine through all ages in
his crown of glory.
XIV.
The Monks of San Isodro
"The earnest of eternal joy
In every prayer I trace;
I see the likeness of the Lord
In every patient face.
How oft, in still communion known,
Those spirits have been sent
To share the travail of my soul,
Or show me what it meant."--A. L. Waring
It is amongst the perplexing conditions of our earthly life, that we
cannot first reflect, then act; first form our opinions, then, and not
till then, begin to carry them out into practice. Thought and action
have usually to run beside each other in parallel lines; a terrible
necessity, and never more terrible than during the progress of momentous
inward changes.
A man becomes convinced that the star by which he has hitherto been
steering is not the true pole-star, and that if he perseveres in his
present course his barque will inevitably be lost. At his peril, he
must find out the one unerring guide; yet, while he seeks it, his hand
must not for an instant quit his hold on the helm, for the winds of
circumstance fill his sails, and he cannot choose whether he will go, he
can only choose where. This lies at the root of much of the apparent
inconsistency which has often been made a reproach to reformers.
Though Carlos did not feel this difficulty as keenly as some of his
brethren in the faith, he yet felt it. His uncle was continually
pressing him to take Orders, and to seek for this or that tempting
preferment; whilst every day he had stronger doubts as to the
possibility of his accepting any preferment in the Church, and was even
beginning to entertain scruples about taking Orders at all.
During this period of deliberation and uncertainty, one of his new
friends, Fray Cassiodoro, an eloquent Jeromite friar, who assisted
Losada in his ministrations, said to him, "If you intend embracing a
religious life, Senor Don Carlos, you will find the white tunic and
brown mantle of St. Jerome more to your taste than any other habit."
Carlos pondered the hint; and shortly afterwards announced to his
relatives that he intended to "go into retreat" for a season, at the
Jeromite Convent of San Isodro del Campo, which was about two miles from
Seville.
His uncle approved this resolution; and none the less, because he
thought it was probably intended as a preparation for taking the cowl.
"After all, nephew, it may turn out that you have the longest head
amongst us," he said. "In the race for wealth and honours, no man can
doubt that the Regulars beat the Seculars now-a-days. And there is not
a saint in all the Spains so popular as St. Jerome. You know the
proverb,--
"'He who is a count, and to be a duke aspires.
Let him straight to Guadaloupe, and sing among the friars.'"
Gonsalvo, who was present, here looked up from his book and observed
sharply,--
"No man will ever be a duke who changes his mind three times within
three months."
"But I only changed my mind once," returned Carlos.
"You have never changed it at all, that I wot of," said Don Manuel.
"And I would that thine were turned in the same profitable direction,
son Gonsalvo."
"Oh yes! By all means. Offer the blind and the lame in sacrifice. Put
Heaven off with the wreck of a man that the world will not condescend to
take into her service."
"Hold thy peace, son born to cross me!" said the father, losing his
temper at by no means the worst of the many provocations he had recently
received. "Is it not enough to look at thee lying there a useless log,
and to suffer thy vile temper; but thou must set thyself against me,
when I point out to thee the only path in which a cripple such as thou
could earn green figs to eat with his bread, not to speak of supporting
the rank of Alvarez de Menaya as he ought."
Here Carlos, out of consideration for the feelings of Gonsalvo, left the
room; but the angry altercation between the father and son lasted long
after his departure.
The next day Don Carlos rode out, by a lonely path amidst the gray ruins
of old Italica, to the stately castellated convent of San Isodro.
Amidst all his new interests, the young Castilian noble still remembered
with due enthusiasm how the building had been reared, more than two
hundred years ago, by the devotion of the heroic Alonzo Guzman the Good,
who gave up his own son to death, under the walls of Tarifa, rather than
surrender the city to the Moors.
Before he left Seville, he placed a copy of Fray Constantino's "Sum of
Christian Doctrine" between two volumes of Gonsalvo's favourite "Lope de
Vega." He had previously introduced to the notice of the ladies several
of the Fray's little treatises, which contained a large amount of
Scripture truth, so cautiously expressed as to have not only escaped the
censure, but actually obtained the express approbation of the Holy
Office. He had also induced them occasionally to accompany him to the
preachings at the Cathedral. Further than this he dared not go; nor did
he on other accounts think it advisable, as yet, to permit himself much
communication with Dona Beatriz.
The monks of San Isodro welcomed him with that strong, peculiar love
which springs up between the disciples of the same Lord, more especially
when they are a little flock surrounded by enemies. They knew that he
was already one of the initiated, a regular member of Losada's
congregation. Both this fact, and the warm recommendations of Fray
Cassiodoro, led them to trust him implicitly; and very quickly they made
him a sharer in their secrets, their difficulties, and their
perplexities.
To his astonishment, he found himself in the midst of a community,
Protestant in heart almost to a man, and as far as possible acting out
their convictions; while at the same time they retained (how could they
discard them?) the outward ceremonies of their Church and their Order.
He soon fraternized with a gentle, pious young monk named Fray Fernando,
and asked him to explain this extraordinary state of things.
"I am but just out of my novitiate, having been here little more than a
year," said the young man, who was about his own age; "and already, when
I came, the fathers carefully instructed the novices out of the
Scriptures, exhorting us to lay no stress upon outward ceremonies,
penances, crosses, holy water, and the like. But I have often heard
them speak of the manner in which they were led to adopt these views."
"Who was their teacher? Fray Cassiodoro?"
"Latterly; not at first. It was Dr. Blanco who sowed the first seed of
truth here."
"Whom do you mean? We in the city give the name of Dr. Blanco (the
white doctor), from his silver hairs, to a man of your holy order,
certainly, but one most zealous for the old faith. He is a friend and
confidant of the Inquisitors, if indeed he is not himself a Qualificator
of Heresy:[#] I speak of Dr. Garcias Arias."
[#] One of the learned men who were appointed to assist the Inquisition,
and whose duty it was to decide whether doubtful propositions were, or
were not, heretical.
"The same man. You are astonished, senor; nevertheless it is true. The
elder brethren say that when he came to the convent all were sunk in
ignorance and superstition. The monks cared for nothing but vain
repetitions of unfelt prayers, and showy mummeries of idle ceremonial
But the white doctor told them all these would avail them nothing,
unless their hearts were given to God, and they worshipped him in spirit
and in truth. They listened, were convinced, began to study the Holy
Scriptures as he recommended them, and truly to seek Him who is revealed
therein."
"'Out of the eater came forth meat,'" said Carlos. "I am truly amazed
to hear of such teaching from the lips of Garcias Arias."
"Not more amazed than the brethren were by his after conduct," returned
Fray Fernando. "Just when they had received the truth with joy, and
were beginning heartily to follow it, their teacher suddenly changed his
tone, and addressed himself diligently to the task of building up the
things that he once destroyed. When Lent came round, the burden of his
preaching was nothing but penance and mortification of the flesh. No
less would content him than that the poor brethren should sleep on the
bare ground, or standing; and wear sackcloth and iron girdles. They
could not tell what to make of these bewildering instructions. Some
followed them, others clung to the simpler faith they had learned to
love, many tried to unite both. In fact, the convent was filled with
confusion, and several of the brethren were driven half distracted. But
at last God put it into their hearts to consult Dr. Egidius. Your
Excellency is well acquainted with his history, doubtless!"
"Not so well as I should like to be. Still, for the present, let us
keep to the brethren. Did Dr. Egidius confirm their faith?"
"That he did, senor; and in many ways he led them into a further
acquaintance with the truth."
"And that enigma, Dr. Blanco?"
Fray Fernando shook his head. "Whether his mind was really changed, or
whether he concealed his true opinions through fear, or through love of
the present world, I know not I should not judge him."
"No," said Carlos, softly. "It is not for us, who have never been
tried, to judge those who have failed in the day of trial. But it must
be a terrible thing to fail, Fray Fernando."
"As good Dr. Egidius did himself. Ah, senor, if you had but seen him
when he came forth from his prison! His head was bowed, his hair was
white; they who spoke with him say his heart was well-nigh broken.
Still he was comforted, and thanked God, when he saw the progress the
truth had made during his imprisonment, both in Valladolid and in
Seville, especially amongst the brethren here. His visit was of great
use to us. But the most precious boon we ever received was a supply of
God's Word in our own tongue, which was brought to us some months ago."
Carlos looked at him eagerly. "I think I know whose hand brought it,"
he said.
"You cannot fail to know, senor. You have doubtless heard of Juliano El
Chico?"
The colour rose to the cheek of Carlos as he answered, "I shall thank
God all my life, and beyond it, that I have not heard of him alone, but
met him. He it was who put this book into my hand," and he drew out his
own Tes
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