“Now, with fainting frame,
With soul just lingering on the flight begun,
To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one,
I bless thee. Peace be on thy noble head,
Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!
I bid this prayer survive me, and retain
Its power again to bless thee, and again.
Thou hast been gathered into my dark fate
Too much; too long for my sake desolate
Hath been thine exiled youth; but now take back
From dying hands thy freedom.”
HEMANS.
IT was late in August. All day long the sky had been molten fire, and the earth brass. Everyone had dozed away the sultry noontide hours in the coolest recesses of dwellings made to exclude heat, as ours to exclude cold. But when at last the sun sank in flame beneath the horizon, people began to creep out languidly to woo the refreshment of the evening breeze.
The beautiful gardens of the Triana were still deserted, save by two persons. One of these, a young lad—we beg pardon, a young gentleman—of fifteen or sixteen, sat, or rather reclined, by the river-side, eating slices from an enormous melon, which he cut with a small silver-hilted dagger. A plumed cap, and a gay velvet jerkin lined with satin, had been thrown aside for coolness' sake, and lay near him on the ground; so that his present dress consisted merely of a mass of the finest white holland, delicately starched and frilled, velvet hosen, long silk stockings, and fashionable square-toed shoes. Curls of scented hair were thrown back from a face beautiful as that of a girl, but bold and insolent in its expression as that of a spoiled and mischievous boy.
The other person was seated in the arbor mentioned once before, with a book in his hand, of which, however, he did not in the course of an hour turn over a single leaf. A look of chronic discontent and dejection had replaced the good-humored smiles of Fray Sebastian Gomez. Everything was wrong with the poor Franciscan now. Even the delicacies of his patron's table ceased to please him; and he, in his turn, was fast ceasing to please his patron. How could it be otherwise, when he had lost not only his happy art of indirect in genius flattery, but his power to be commonly agreeable or amusing? No more poems—not so much as the briefest sonnet—on the suppression of heresy were to be had from him; and he was fast becoming incapable of turning a jest or telling a story.
It is said that idiots often manifest peculiar pain and terror at the sound of music, because it awakens within them faint stirrings of that higher life from which God's mysterious dispensation has shut them out. And it is true that the first stirrings of higher life usually come to all of us with pain and terror.
Moreover, if we do not crush them out, but cherish and foster them, they are very apt to take away the brightness and pleasantness of the old lower life altogether, and to make it seem worthless and distasteful.
A new and higher life had begun for Fray Sebastian. It was not his conscience that was quickened, only his heart. Hitherto he had chiefly cared for himself. He was a good-natured man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; yet no sympathy for others had ever spoiled his appetite or hindered his digestion. But for the past three months he had been feeling as he had not felt since he clung weeping to the mother who left him in the parlor of the Franciscan convent—a child of eight years old. The patient suffering face of the young prisoner in the Triana had laid upon him a spell that he could not break.
To say that he would have done anything in his power to save Don Carlos, is to say little. Willingly would he have lived for a month on black bread and brackish water, if that could have even mitigated his fate. But the very intensity of his desire to help him was fast making him incapable of rendering him the smallest service. Munebraga's flatterer and favorite might possibly, by dint of the utmost self-possession and the most adroit management, have accomplished some little good. But Fray Sebastian was now consciously forfeiting even the miserable fragment of power that had once been his. He thought himself like the salt that had lost its savor, and was fit neither for the land nor yet for the dunghill.
Absorbed in his mournful reflections, he continued unconscious of the presence of such an important personage as Don Alonzo de Munebraga, the Lord Vice-Inquisitor's favorite page. At length, however, he was made aware of the fact by a loud angry shout, "Off with you, varlets, scum of the people! How dare you put your accursed fishing-smack to shore in my lord's garden, and under his very eyes I”
Fray Sebastian looked up, and saw no fishing-boat, but a decent covered barge, from which, in spite of the page's remonstrance, two persons were landing: an elderly female clad in deep mourning, and her attendant, apparently a tradesman's apprentice, or serving-man.
Fray Sebastian knew well how many distracted petitioners daily sought access to Munebraga, to plead (alas, how vainly!) for the lives of parents, husbands, sons, or daughters. This was doubtless one of them. He heard her plead, "For the love of Heaven, dear young gentleman, hinder me not. Have you a mother? My only son lies—”
“Out upon thee, woman!" interrupted the page; "and the foul fiend take thee and thy only son together.”
“Hush, Don Alonzo!" Fray Sebastian interposed, coming forward towards the spot; and perhaps for the first time in his life there was something like dignity in his tone and manner. "You must be aware, señora," he said, turning to the woman, "that the right of using this landing-place is restricted to my lord's household. You will be admitted at the gate of the Triana, if you present yourself at a proper hour.”
“Alas! good father, once and again have I sought admission to my lord's presence. I am the unhappy mother of Luis D'Abrego, he who used to paint and illuminate the church missals so beautifully. More than a year agorae they tore him from me, and carried him away to yonder tower, and since then, so help me the good God, never a word of him have I heard. Whether he is living or dead, this day I know not.”
“Oh, a Lutheran dog! Serve him right," cried the page." I hope they have put him on the pulley.”
Fray Sebastian turned suddenly, and dealt the lad a stinging blow on the side of his face. To the latest hour of his life this act of passion remained incomprehensible to himself. He could only ascribe it to the direct agency of the evil one. "I was tempted by the Devil," he would say with a sigh. "Vade retro me, Satana.”
Crimson to the roots of his perfumed hair, the boy sought his dagger. "Vile caitiff! beggarly trencher-scraping Franciscan!" he cried, "you shall repent of this.”
But apparently changing his mind the next moment, he allowed the dagger to drop from his hand, and snatching up his jerkin, ran at full speed towards the house.
Fray Sebastian crossed himself, and gazed after him bewildered; his unwonted passion dying as suddenly as it had flamed up, and giving place to fear.
Meanwhile the mother of Abrego, to whom it did not occur that the buffet bestowed on the page could have any serious consequences, resumed her pleadings. "Your reverence seems to have a heart that can feel for the unhappy," she said. "For Heaven's sake refuse not the prayer of the most unhappy woman in the world. Only let me see his lordship—let me throw myself at his feet and tell him the whole truth. My poor lad had nothing at all to do with the Lutherans; he was a good, true Christian, and an old one, like all his family.”
“Nay, nay, my good woman; I fear I can do nothing to help you. And I entreat of you to leave this place, else some of my lord's household are sure to come and compel you. Ay, there they are.”
It was true enough. Don Alonzo, as he ran through the porch, shouted to the numerous idle attendants who were lounging about, and some of them immediately rushed out into the garden.
In justice to Fray Sebastian, it must be recorded, that before he consulted for his personal safety, he led the poor woman back to the barge, and saw her depart in it. Then he made good his own retreat, going straight to the lodging of Don Juan Alvarez.
He found Juan lying asleep on a settle. The day was hot; he had nothing to do; and, moreover, the fiery energy of his southern blood was dashed by the southern taint of occasional torpor. Starting up suddenly, and seeing Fray Sebastian standing before him with a look of terror, he asked in alarm, "Any tidings, Fray I Speak—tell me quickly.”
“None, Señor Don Juan. But I must leave this place at once." And the friar briefly narrated the scene that had just taken place, adding mournfully, "Ay de mi! I cannot tell what came over me—me, the mildest-tempered man in all the Spains!”
“And what of all that?" asked Juan rather contemptuously "I see nothing to regret, save that you did not give the insolent lad what he deserved, a sound heating.”
“But, Señor Don Juan, you don't understand," gasped the poor friar. "I must fly immediately. If I stay here over to night I shall find myself before the morning—there." And with a significant gesture he pointed to the grim fortress that loomed above them.
“Nonsense. They cannot suspect a man of heresy, even de levi, for boxing the ear of an impudent serving-lad.”
“Ay, and can they not, your worship Do you not know that the gardener of the Triana has lain for many a weary month in one of those dismal cells; and all for the grave offense of snatching a reed out of the hand of one of my lord's lackeys so roughly as to make it bleed?"
“Truly? Now are things come to a strange pass in our free and royal land of Spain! A beggarly upstart, such as this Munebraga, who could not, to save himself from the rack, tell you the name of his own great-grandfather, drags the sons and brothers—ay, and God help us! the wives and daughters—of our knights and nobles to the dungeon and the stake before our eyes. And it is not enough for him to set his own heel on our necks. His minions—his very grooms and pages-must lord it over us, and woe to him who dares to chastise their insolence. Nathless, I would feel it a comfort to make every bone in that urchin's body ache soundly. I have a mind—but this is folly. I believe you are right, Fray. You should go.”
“Moreover," said the friar mournfully, "I am doing no good here.”
“No one can do good now," returned Juan, in a tone of deep dejection. "And to-day the last blow has fallen. The poor woman who showed him kindness, and sometimes told us how he fared, is herself a prisoner.”
“What! she has been discovered?”
“Even so: and with those fiends mercy is the greatest of all crimes. The child met me to-day (whether by accident or design, I know not), and told me, weeping bitterly.”
“God help her!”
“Some would gladly endure her punishment if they might commit her crime," said Don Juan. There was a pause; then he resumed, "I had been about to ask you to apply once more to the prior.”
Fray Sebastian shook his head. "That were of no use," he said; "for it is certain that my lord the Vice-Inquisitor and the prior have had a misunderstanding about the matter. And the prior, so far from obtaining permission to deal with him as he desired, is not even allowed to see him now.”
“And yourself?—whither do you mean to go?" asked Juan, lather abruptly.
“In sooth, I know not, señor. I have had no time to think. But go I must.”
“I will tell you what to do. Go to Nuera. There for the present you will be safe. And if any man inquire your business, you have a fair and ready answer. I send you to look after my affairs. Stay; I will write by you to Dolores. Poor, true-hearted Dolores!" Don Juan seemed to fall into a reverie, so long did he sit motionless, his face shaded by his hand. His mournful air, his unwonted listlessness, his attenuated frame—all struck Fray Sebastian painfully. After musing a while in silence, he said at last, very suddenly, "Señor Don Juan!”
Juan looked up.
“Have you ever thought since on the message he sent you by me?”
Don Juan looked as though that question were worse than needless. Was not every word of his brother's message burned into his heart? This it was: "My Ruy, thou hast done all for me that the best of brothers could. Leave me now to God, unto whom I am going quickly, and in peace Quit the country as soon as thou canst; and God's best blessings surround thy path and guard thee evermore.”
One fact Carlos had most earnestly entreated Fray Sebastian to withhold from his brother. Juan must never know that he had endured the horrors of the Question. The monk would have promised almost anything that could bring a glow of pleasure to that pale, patient face. And he had kept his promise, though at the expense of a few falsehoods, that did not greatly embarrass his conscience. He had conveyed the impression to Don Juan that it was merely from the effects of his long and cruel imprisonment that his brother was sinking into the only refuge that remained to him—a quiet grave.
After a pause, he resumed, looking earnestly at Juan—"He wished you to go.”
“Do you not know that next month they say there will be— an Auto?”
"Yes; but it is not likely—”
They gazed at each other in silence, neither saying what was not likely.
“Any horror is possible," said Juan at last." But no more of this. Until after the Auto, with its chances of some termination to this dreadful suspense, I stir not from Seville. Now, we must think for you. I know where to find a boat, the owner of which will take you some miles on your way up the river to-night. Then you can hire a horse.”
Fray Sebastian groaned. Neither the journey itself, its cause, nor its manner were anything but disagreeable to, the poor friar. But there was no help for him. Juan gave him some further directions about his way; then set food and wine before him.
“Eat and drink," he said. "Meanwhile I will secure the boat. When I return, I can write to Dolores.”
All was done as he planned; and ere the morning broke, Fray Sebastian was far on his way to Nuera, with the letter to Dolores stitched into the lining of his doublet.