The answer was a furtive, frightened whisper. "Last night--the Alguazils of the Holy Office." And the door was shut and bolted in his face.

He stood rooted to the spot, speechless and motionless, in a trance of horror. At last he was startled by feeling some one grasp his arm without ceremony, indeed rather roughly.

"Are you moonstruck, Cousin Don Carlos?" asked the voice of Gonsalvo.

"At least you might have had the courtesy to offer me the aid of your arm, without putting me to the shame of requesting it, miserable cripple that I am!" and he gave vent to a torrent of curses upon his own infirmities, using expressions profane and blasphemous enough to make Carlos shiver with pain.

Yet that very pain did him real service. It roused him from his stupor, as sharp anguish sometimes brings back a patient from a swoon. He said, "Pardon me, my cousin, I did not see you; but I hear you now--with sorrow."

Gonsalvo deigned no answer, except his usual short, bitter laugh.

"Whither do you wish to go?"

"Home. I am tired."

They walked along in silence; at last Gonsalvo asked, abruptly,--

"Have you heard the news?"

"What news?"

"The news that is in every one's mouth to-day. Indeed, the city has well nigh run mad with holy horror. And no wonder! Their reverences, the Lords Inquisitors, have just discovered a community of abominable Lutherans, a very viper's nest, in our midst. It is said the wretches have actually dared to carry on their worship somewhere in the town.

Ah, no marvel you look horror-stricken, my pious cousin. You could never have dreamed that such a thing was possible, could you?" After one quick, keen glance, he did not look again in his cousin's face; but he might have felt the beating of his cousin's heart against his arm.

"I am told," he continued, "that nearly two hundred persons have been arrested already."

"_Two hundred!_" gasped Carlos.

"And the arrests are going on still."

"Who is taken?" Carlos forced his trembling lips to ask.

"Losada; more's the pity. A good physician, though a bad Christian."

"A good physician, and a good Christian too," said Carlos in the voice of one who tries to speak calmly in terrible bodily pain.

"An opinion you would do more wisely to keep to yourself, if a reprobate such as I may presume to counsel so learned and pious a personage."

"Who else?"

"One you would never guess. Don Juan Ponce de Leon, of all men. Think of the Count of Baylen's son being thus degraded! Also the master of the College of Doctrine, San Juan; and a number of Jeromite friars from San Isodro. Those are all I know worth a gentleman's taking account of.

There are some beggarly tradesfolk, such as Medel d'Espinosa, the embroiderer; and Luis d'Abrego, from whom your brother bought that beautiful book of the Gospels he gave Dona Beatriz. But if only such cattle were concerned in it, no one would care."

"Some fools there be," Don Gonsalvo continued after a pause, "who have run to the Triana, and informed against themselves, thinking thereby to get off more easily. _Fools_, again I say, for their pains." And he emphasized his words by a pressure of the arm on which he was leaning.

At length they reached the door of Don Manuel's house. "Thanks for your aid," said Gonsalvo. "Now that I remember it, Don Carlos, I hear also that we are to have a grand procession on Tuesday with banners and crosses, in honour of Our Lady, and of our holy patronesses Justina and Rufina, to beg pardon for the sin and scandal so long permitted in the midst of our most Catholic city. You, my pious cousin, licentiate of theology and all but consecrated priest--you will carry a taper, no doubt?"

Carlos would fain have left the question unanswered; but Gonsalvo meant to have an answer. "You will?" he repeated, laying his hand on his arm, and looking him in the face, though with a smile. "It would be very creditable to the family for one of us to appear. Seriously; I advise you to do it."

Then Carlos said quietly, "_No_;" and crossed the patio to the staircase which led to his own apartment.

Gonsalvo stood watching him, and mentally retracting, at his last word, the verdict formerly p.r.o.nounced against him as "a coward," "not half a man."

XXIII.

The Reign of Terror

"Though shining millions around thee stand, For the sake of him at thy right hand Think of the souls he died for here, Thus wandering in darkness, in doubt and fear.

"The powers of darkness are all abroad-- They own no Saviour, and they fear no G.o.d; And we are trembling in dumb dismay; Oh, turn not thou thy face away."--Hogg

It was late in the evening when Carlos emerged from his chamber. How the intervening hours had been pa.s.sed he never told any one. But this much is certain,--he contended with and overcame a wild, almost uncontrollable impulse to seek refuge in flight. His reason told him that this would be to rush upon certain destruction: so sedulously guarded were all the ways of egress, and so watchful and complete, in every city and village of the land, was the inquisitorial organization; not to speak of the "Hermandad," or Brotherhood--a kind of civil police, always ready to co-operate with the ecclesiastical authorities.

Still, if he could not be saved, Juan might and should. This thought was growing gradually clearer and stronger in his bewildered brain and aching heart while he knelt in his chamber, finding a relief in the att.i.tude of prayer, though few and broken were the words of prayer that pa.s.sed his trembling lips. Indeed, the burden of his cry was this: "Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Thou that carest for us, forsake us not in our bitter need. For thine is the kingdom; even yet thou reignest."

This was all he could find to plead, either on his own behalf or on that of his imprisoned brethren; though for them his heart was wrung with unutterable anguish. Once and again did he repeat--"_Thine_ is the kingdom and the power. Thine, O Father; thine, O Lord and Saviour.

Thou canst deliver us."

It was well for him that he had Juan to save. He rose at last; and added to the letter previously written to his brother a few lines of most earnest entreaty that he would on no account return to Seville.

But then, recollecting his own position, he marvelled greatly at his simplicity in purposing to send such a letter by the King's post--an inst.i.tution which, strange to say, Spain possessed at an earlier period than any other country in Europe. If he should fall under suspicion, his letter would be liable to detention and examination, and might thus be the means of involving Juan in the very peril from which he sought to deliver him.

A better plan soon occurred to him. That he might carry it out, he descended late in the evening to the cool, marble-paved court, or _patio_, in the centre of which the fountain ever murmured and glistened, surrounded by tropical plants, some of them in gorgeous bloom.

As he had hoped, one solitary lamp burned like a star in a remote corner; and its light illumined the form of a young girl seated on a low chair, before an inlaid ebony table, writing busily. Dona Beatriz had excused herself from accompanying the family on an evening visit, that she might devote herself in undisturbed solitude to the composition of her first love-letter--indeed, her first letter of any kind: for short as he intended his absence to be, Juan had stipulated for this consolation, and induced her to premise it; and she knew that the King's post went northwards the next day, pa.s.sing by Nuera on his way to the towns of La Mancha.

So engrossing was her occupation that she did not hear the step of Carlos. He drew near, and stood behind her. Pearls, golden Agni, and a scarlet flower or two, were twined with her glossy raven hair; and the lamp shed a subdued radiance over her fine features, which glowed through their delicate olive with the rosy light of joy. An exquisite though not very costly perfume, that Carlos in other days always a.s.sociated with her presence, still continued a favourite with her, and filled the place around with fragrance. It brought back his memory to the past--to that wild, vain, yet enchanting dream; the brief romance of his life. But there was no time now even for "a dream within a dream."

There was only time to thank G.o.d, from the depths of his soul, that in all the wide world there was no heart that would break for _him_.

"Dona Beatriz," he said gently.

She started, and half turned, a bright flush mounting to her cheek.

"You are writing to my brother."

"And how know you that, Senor Don Carlos?" asked the young lady, with a little innocent affectation.

But Carlos, standing face to face with terrible realities, pushed aside her pretty arts, as one hastening to succour a dying man might push aside a branch of wild roses that impeded his path.

"I most earnestly request of you, senora, to convey to him a message from me."

"And wherefore can you not write to him yourself, Senor Licentiate?"

"Is it possible, senora, that you know not what has happened?"

"Vaya, vaya, Don Carlos! how you startle one.--Do you mean these horrible arrests?"