The Spanish Brothers Part 34

"Impossible, senor--utterly impossible."

"Why? They sometimes send friars to reason with the--the prisoners."

"Always Dominicans or Jesuits--men well-known and trusted by the Board of the Inquisition. However, senor, nothing that a man may do shall be wanting on my part. Will not that content your Excellency?"

"_Content_ me? Well, as far as you are concerned, yes. But, in truth, I am haunted day and night by one horrible dread. What if--if they should _torture_ him? My gentle brother, frail in mind and body, tender and sensitive as a woman! Terror and pain would drive him mad." The last words were a quick broken whisper. But outward expressions of emotion with Don Juan were always speedily repressed. Recovering apparent calmness, he stretched out his hand to Fray Sebastian, saying, with a faint smile, "I have kept you too long from my lord's supper-table--pardon me."

"Your Excellency's condescension in conversing with me deserves my profound grat.i.tude," replied the monk, in true Castilian fas.h.i.+on. His residence at the Inquisitor's Court had certainly improved his manners.

Don Juan gave him his address, and it was agreed that he should call on him in a few days. Fray Sebastian then offered to bring him on his way through the garden and court of that part of the Triana which formed the Inquisitor's residence. But Juan declined the favour. He could not answer for himself when brought face to face with the impious pomp and luxury of the persecutor of the saints. He feared that, by some wild word or deed, he might imperil the cause he had at heart. So he hailed a waterman who was guiding his little boat down the tranquil stream in the waning light. The boat was soon brought to the place where the Inquisitor had landed from his barge; and Juan, after shaking the dust from his feet, both literally and metaphorically, sprang into it.

The popular ideal of a persecutor is very far from the truth. At the word there rises before most minds the vision of a lean, pale-faced, fierce-eyed monk, whose frame is worn with fasting, and his scourge red with his own blood. He is a fanatic--pitiless, pa.s.sionate, narrow-minded, perhaps half insane--but penetrated to the very core of his being with intense zeal for his Church's interest, and prepared in her service both to inflict and to endure all things.

Very unlike this ideal were _most_ of the great persecutors who carried out the behests of Antichrist. They were generally able men. But they were pre-eminently men wise in their generation, men _of_ their generation, men who "loved this present world." They gave the Church the service of strong hand and skilful brain that she needed; and she gave _them_, in return, "gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls; and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all sweet wood; and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of bra.s.s, and of iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment, and frankincense; and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat; and beasts, and sheep, and horses and chariots, and slaves and souls of men." It was for these things, not for abstract ideas, not for high places in heaven, that they tortured and murdered the saints of G.o.d. Whilst the cry of the oppressed reached the ears of the Most High, those who were "wearing them out" lived in unhallowed luxury, in degrading sensuality. Gonzales de Munebrga was a good specimen of the cla.s.s to which he belonged--he was no exceptional case.

Nor was Fray Sebastian anything but an ordinary character. He was amiable, good-natured, free from gross vices--what is usually called "well disposed." But he "loved wine and oil," and to obtain what he loved he was willing to become the servant and the flatterer of worse men than himself, at the terrible risk of sinking to their level.

With all the force of his strong nature, Don Juan Alvarez loathed Munebrga, and scorned Fray Sebastian. Gradually a strange alteration appeared to come over the little book he constantly studied--his brother's Spanish Testament. The words of promise, and hope, and comfort, in which he used to delight, seemed to be blotted from its pages; while ever more and more those pages were filled with fearful threatenings and denunciations of doom--against hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, false teachers and wicked high priests--against great Babylon, the mother of abominations. The peace-breathing, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," grew fainter and more faint, until at last it faded completely from his memory; while there stood out before him night and day, in characters of fire, "Serpents, generation of vipers, how can ye escape the d.a.m.nation of h.e.l.l!"

x.x.x.

The Captive.

"Ay, but for _me_--my name called---drawn Like a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn He has dipped into on the battle dawn.

Bid out of life by a nod, a glance, Stumbling, mute mazed, at Nature's chance With a rapid finger circling round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found, Whose ear but a moment since was free To the wide camp's hum and gossipry-- Summoned, a solitary man, To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear to the awful van."--R. Browning

On the night of his arrest, when Don Carlos Alvarez was left alone in his dungeon, he stood motionless as one in a dream. At length he raised his head, and began to look around him. A lamp had been left with him; and its light illumined a cell ten feet square, with a vaulted roof.

Through a narrow grating, too high for him to reach, one or two stars were s.h.i.+ning; but these he saw not. He only saw the inner door sheathed with iron; the mat of rushes on which he was to sleep; the stool that was to be his seat; the two earthen pitchers of water that completed his scanty furniture. From the first moment these things looked strangely familiar to him. He threw himself on the mat to think and pray. He comprehended his situation perfectly. It seemed as if he had been all his life expecting this hour; as if he had been born for it, and led up to it gradually through all his previous experience. As yet he did not think that his fate was terrible; he only thought that it was inevitable--something that was to come upon him, and that in due course had come at last. It was his impression that he should always remain there, and never more see anything beyond that grated window and that iron door.

There was a degree of unreality about this mood. For the past fortnight, or more, his mind had been strained to its utmost tension.

Suspense, more wearing even than sorrow, had held him on the rack.

Sleep had seldom visited his eyes; and when it came, it had been broken and fitful.

Now the worst had befallen him. Suspense was over; certainty had come.

This brought at first a kind of rest to the overtaxed mind and frame.

He was as one who hears a sentence of death, but who is taken off the rack. No dread of the future could quite overpower the present unreasoning sense of relief.

Thus it happened that an hour afterwards he was sleeping the dreamless sleep of exhaustion. Well for him if, instead of "death's twin-brother," the angel of death himself had been sent to open the prison doors and set the captive free! And yet, after all, _would_ it have been well for him?

So utter was his exhaustion, that when food was placed in his cell the next morning, he only awaked for a moment, then slept again as soundly as before. Not till some hours later did he finally shake off his slumber. He lay still for some time, examining with a strange kind of curiosity the little bolted aperture which was near the top of his door, and watching a solitary broken sunbeam which had struggled through the grating that served him for a window, and threw a gleam of light on the opposite wall.

Then, with a start, he asked himself, "_Where am I?_" The answer brought an agony of fear, of horror, of bitter pain. "Lost! lost! G.o.d have mercy on me! I am lost!" As one in intense bodily anguish, he writhed, moaned--ay, even cried aloud.

No wonder. Hope, love, life--alike in its n.o.blest aims and its commonest joys--all were behind him. Before him were the dreary dungeon days and nights--it might be months or years; the death of agony and shame; and, worst of all, the unutterable horrors of the torture-room, from which he shrank as any one of us would shrink to-day.

Slowly and at last came the large burning tears. But very few of them fell; for his anguish was as yet too fierce for many tears. All that day the storm raged on. When the alcayde brought his evening meal, he lay still, his face covered with his cloak. But as night drew on he rose, and paced his narrow cell with hasty, irregular steps, like those of a caged wild animal.

How should he endure the horrible loneliness of the present, the maddening terror of all that was to come? And this life was to _last_.

To last, until it should be succeeded by worse horrors and fiercer anguish. Words of prayer died on his lips. Or, even when he uttered them, it seemed as if G.o.d heard not--as if those thick walls and grated doors shut him out too.

Yet one thing was clear to him from the beginning. Deeper than all other fears within him lay the fear of denying his Lord. Again and again did he repeat, "When called in question, I will at once confess all."

For he knew that, according to a law recently enacted by the Holy Office, and sanctioned by the Pope, no subsequent retractation could save a prisoner who had once confessed--he must die. And he desired finally and for ever to put it out of his own power to save his life and lose it.

As every dreary morning dawned upon him, he thought that ere its sun set he might be called to confess his Master's name before the solemn tribunal. At first he awaited the summons with a trembling heart. But as time pa.s.sed on, the delay became more dreadful than the antic.i.p.ated examination. At last he began to long for _any_ change that might break the monotony of his prison-life.

The only person, with the exception of his gaoler, that ever entered his cell, was a member of the Board of Inquisitors, who was obliged by their rules to make a fortnightly inspection of the prisons. But the Dominican monk to whom this duty was relegated merely asked the prisoner a few formal questions: such as, whether he was well, whether he received his appointed provision, whether his warder used him with civility. To these Carlos always answered prudently that he had no complaint to make. At first he was wont to inquire, in his turn, when his case might be expected to come on. To this it would be answered, that there was no hurry about the matter. The Lords Inquisitors had much business on hand, and many more important cases than his to attend to; he must await their leisure and their pleasure.

At length a kind of lethargy stole over him; though it was broken frequently by sharp bursts of anguish. He ceased to take note of time, ceased to make fruitless inquiries of his gaoler, who would never tell him anything. Upon one occasion he asked this man for a Breviary, since he sometimes found it difficult to recall even the gospel words that he knew so well. But he was answered in the set terms the Inquisitors taught their officials, that the book he ought now to study was the book of his own heart, which he should examine diligently, in order to the confession and repentance of his sins.

During the morning hours the outer door of his cell (there were two) was usually left open, in order to admit a little fresh air. At such times he often heard footsteps in the corridors, and doors opening and shutting. With a kind of sick yearning, not unmixed with hope, he longed that some visitant would enter his cell. But none ever came.

Some of the Inquisitors were keen observers and good students of character. They had watched Carlos narrowly before his arrest, and they had arrived at the conclusion that utter and prolonged solitude was the best remedy for his disease.

Such solitude has driven many a weary tortured soul to insanity. But that divine compa.s.sion which no dungeon walls or prison bars avail to shut out, saved Carlos from such a fate.

One morning he knew from the stir outside that some of his fellow-captives had received a visit. But the deep stillness that followed the dying away of footsteps in the corridor was broken by a most unwonted sound. A loud, clear, and even cheerful voice sang out,--

"Vencidos van los frailes; vencidos van!

Corridas van los lobos; corridos van!"

[There go the friars; there they run!

There go the wolves, the wolves are done!][#]

[#] Everything related of Juliano Hernandez is strictly true.

Every nerve and fibre of the lonely captive's heart thrilled responsive to that strain. Evidently the song was one of triumph. But from whose lips? Who could dare to triumph in the abode of misery, the very seat of Satan?

Carlos Alvarez had heard that voice before. A striking peculiarity in the dialect rivetted this fact upon his mind. The words were neither the pure sonorous Castilian that he spoke himself, nor the soft gliding sibilant Andaluz that he heard in Seville, nor yet the patois of the Manchegan peasants around his mountain home. In such accents one, and one alone, had ever spoken in his hearing. And that was the man who said, "For the joy of bringing food to the peris.h.i.+ng, water to the thirsty, light to those that sit in darkness, rest to the weary and heavy-laden, I have counted the cost, and I shall pay the price right willingly."

Whatever men had done to the body, it was evident that Juliano Hernandez was still unbroken in heart, strong in hope and courage. A fettered, tortured captive, he was yet enabled, not only to hold his own faith fast, but actually to minister to that of others. His rough rhyme intimated to his fellow-captives that "the wolves" of Rome were leaving his cell, vanquished by the sword of the Spirit. And that, as he overcame, so might they also.

Carlos heard, understood, and felt from that hour that he was not alone.

Moreover, the grace and strength so richly given to his fellow-sufferer seemed to bring Christ nearer to himself. "Surely G.o.d is in this place--even here," he said, "and I knew it not." And then, bowing his head, he wept--wept such tears as bring help and healing with them.

Up to this time he had held Christ's hand indeed, else had he "utterly fainted." But he held it in the dark. He clung to him desperately, as if for mere life and reason. Now the light began to dawn upon him. He began to see the face of Him to whom he had been clinging. His good and gracious words--such words as, "Let not your heart be troubled," "My peace I give unto you"--became again, as in old times, full of meaning, instinct with life. He "remembered the years of the right hand of the Most High;" he thought of those days that now seemed so long ago, when, with such thrilling joy, he received the truth from Juliano's book. And he knew that the same joy might be his even in that dreary prison, because the same G.o.d was above him, and the same Lord was "rich unto all that call upon him."

On the next occasion when Juliano raised his brave song of victory, Carlos had the courage to respond, by chanting in the vulgar tongue, "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the G.o.d of Jacob defend thee. Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion."

But this brought him a visit from the alcayde, who commanded him to "forbear that noise."

"I only chanted a versicle from one of the Psalms," he explained.

"No matter. Prisoners are not permitted to disturb the Santa Casa,"