XXXIV.
Fray Sebastian's Trouble
"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. Every one 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 arbour 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-humoured 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 ingenious 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 parlour 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. Munebrãga's flatterer and favourite 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 savour, 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 Munebrãga, the Lord Vice-Inquisitor's favourite 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?"
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 Munebrãga, 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 agone 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? 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 beating."
"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,25 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 offence of snatching a reed out of the hand of one of my lord's lackeys so roughly as to make it bleed?"26
"Truly? Now are things come to a strange pass in our free and royal land of Spain! A beggarly upstart, such as this Munebrãga, 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 daughter – 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, rather 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.
XXXV.
The Eve of the Auto
"It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth
He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.
He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope."
Lamentations iii, 27-29.
On the 21st of September 1559, all Seville wore a festive appearance. The shops were closed, and the streets were filled with idle loiterers in their gay holiday apparel. For it was the eve of the great Auto, and the preliminary ceremonies were going forward amidst the admiration of gazing thousands. Two stately scaffolds, in the form of an amphitheatre, had been erected in the great square of the city, then called the Square of St. Francis; and thither, when the work was completed, flags and crosses were borne in solemn procession, with music and singing.
But a still more significant ceremonial was enacted in another place. Outside the walls, on the Prado San Sebastian, stood the ghastly Quemadero – the great altar upon which, for generations, men had offered human sacrifices to the God of peace and love. Thither came long files of barefooted friars, carrying bushes and faggots, which they laid in order on the place of death, while, in sweet yet solemn tones, they chanted the "Miserere" and "De Profundis."
Very close together on those festive days were "strong light and deep shadow." But our way leads us, for the present, into the light. Turning away from the Square of St. Francis, and the Prado San Sebastian, we enter a cool upper room in the stately mansion of Don Garçia Ramirez. There, in the midst of gold and gems, and of silk and lace, Doña Inez is standing, busily engaged in the task of selecting the fairest treasures of her wardrobe to grace the grand festival of the following day. Doña Beatriz de Lavella, and the young waiting-woman who had been employed in the vain though generous effort to save Don Carlos, are both aiding her in the choice.
"Please your ladyship," said the girl, "I should recommend rose colour for the basquina. Then, with those beautiful pearls, my lord's late gift, my lady will be as fine as a duchess; of whom, I hear, many will be there. – But what will Señora Doña Beatriz please to wear?"
"I do not intend to go, Juanita," said Doña Beatriz, with a little embarrassment.
"Not intend to go!" cried the girl, crossing herself in surprise. "Not go to see the grandest sight there has been in Seville for many a year! Worth a hundred bull-feasts! Ay de mi! what a pity!"
"Juanita," interposed her mistress, "I think I hear the señorita's voice in the garden. It is far too hot for her to be out of doors. Oblige me by bringing her in at once."
As soon as the attendant was gone, Doña Inez turned to her cousin. "It is really most unreasonable of Don Juan," she said, "to keep you shut up here, whilst all Seville is making holiday."
"I am glad – I have no heart to go forth," said Doña Beatriz, with a quivering lip.
"Nor have I too much, for that matter. My poor brother is so weak and ill to-day, it grieves me to the heart. Moreover, he is still so thoughtless about his poor soul. That is the worst of all. I never cease praying Our Lady to bring him to a better mind. If he would only consent to see a priest; but he was ever obstinate. And if I urge the point too strongly, he will think I suppose him dying."
"I thought his health had improved since you had him brought over here."
"Certainly he is happier here than he was in his father's house. But of late he seems to me to be sinking, and that quickly. And now, the Auto – "
"What of that?" asked Doña Beatriz, with a quick look, half suspicious and half frightened.
Doña Inez closed the door carefully, and drew nearer to her cousin. "They say she will be amongst the relaxed,"27 she whispered.
"Does he know it?" asked Beatriz.
"I fear he suspects something; and what to tell him, or not to tell him, I know not – Our Lady help me! Ay de mi! 'Tis a horrible business from beginning to end. And the last thing – the arrest of the sister, Doña Juana! A duke's daughter – a noble's bridge. But – best be silent.
'Con el re e la Inquisicion,
Chiton! Chiton!'"28
Thus, only in a few hurried words, spoken with 'bated breath, did Doña Inez venture to allude to the darkest and saddest of the horrible tragedies in that time of horrors. Nor shall we do more.
"Still, you know, amiga mia," she continued, "one must do like one's neighbours. It would be so ridiculous to look gloomy on a festival day. Besides, every one would talk."
"That is why I say I am glad Don Juan made it his prayer to me that I would not go. For not to look sorrowful, when thy father, Don Manuel, and my aunt, Doña Katarina, are both doing their utmost to drive me out of my senses, would be past my power."
"Have they been urging the suit of Señor Luis upon thee again? My poor Beatriz, I am truly sorrow for thee," said Doña Inez, with genuine sympathy.
"Urging it again!" Beatriz repeated with flashing eyes. "Nay; but they have never ceased to urge it. And they spare not to say such wicked, cruel words. They tell me Don Juan is dishonoured by his brother's crime. Dishonoured, forsooth! Think of dishonour touching him! After the day of St. Quentin, the Duke of Savoy was not of that mind, nor our Catholic King himself. And they have the audacity to say that I can easily get absolved of my troth to him. Absolved of a solemn promise made in the sight of God and of Our Lady, and all the holy Saints! If that be not heresy, as bad as – "
"Hush!" interrupted Doña Inez. "These are dangerous subjects. Moreover, I hear some one knocking at the door."
It proved to be a page bearing a message.
"If it please Doña Beatriz de Lavella, Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya kisses the señora's feet, and most humbly desires the favour of an audience."
"I go," said Beatriz.
"Request Señor Don Juan to have the goodness to untire himself a little, and bring his Excellency fruit and wine," added Doña Inez. "My cousin," she said, turning to Beatriz as soon as the page left the room, "do you not know your cheeks are all aflame? Don Juan will think we have quarrelled. Rest you here a minute, and let me bathe them for you with this water of orange-flowers."
Beatriz submitted, though reluctantly, to her cousin's good offices. While she performed them she whispered, "And be not so downcast, amiga mia. There is a remedy for most troubles. And as for yours, I see not why Don Juan himself should not save you out of them once for all." She added, in a whisper, two or three words that more than undid all the benefit which the cheeks of Beatriz might otherwise have derived from the application of the fragrant water.
"No use," was the agitated reply. "Even were it possible, they would not permit it."
"You can come to visit me. Then trust me to manage the rest. The truth is, amiga mia," Doña Inez continued hurriedly, as she smoothed her cousin's dark glossy hair, "what between sickness, and quarrelling, and the Faith, and heresy, and prisons, there is so much trouble in the world that no one can help, it seems a pity not to help all one can. So you may tell Don Juan that if Doña Inez can do him a good turn she will not be found wanting. There, I despair of your cheeks. Yet I must allow that their crimson becomes you well. But you would rather hear that from Don Juan's lips than from mine. Go to him, my cousin." And with a parting kiss Beatriz was dismissed.
But if she expected any flattery that day from the lips of Don Juan, she was disappointed. His heart was far too sorrowful. He had merely come to tell his betrothed what he intended to do on the morrow – that dreadful morrow! "I have secured a station," he said, "from whence I can watch the whole procession, as it issues from the gate of the Triana. If he is there, I shall dare everything for a last look and word. And a desperate man is seldom baffled. If even his dust is there, I shall stand beside it till all is over. If not – " Here he broke off, leaving his sentence unfinished, as if in that case it did not matter what he did.
Just then Doña Inez entered. After customary salutations, she said, "I have a request to make of you, my cousin, on the part of my brother, Don Gonsalvo. He desires to see you for a few moments."
"Señora my cousin, I am very much at your service, and at his."
Juan was accordingly conducted to the upper room where Gonsalvo lay. And at the special request of the sick man, they were left alone together.
He stretched out a wasted hand to his cousin, who took it in silence, but with a look of compassion. For it needed only a glance at his face to show that death was there.
"I should be glad to think you forgave me," he said.
"I do forgive you," Juan answered. "You intended no evil."
"Will you, then, do me a great kindness? It is the last I shall ask. Tell me the names of any of the – the victims that have come to your knowledge."
"It is only through rumour one can hear these things. Not yet have I succeeded in discovering whether the name dearest to me is amongst them."
"Tell me – has rumour named in your hearing – Doña Maria de Xeres y Bohorques?"
Juan was still ignorant of the secret which Doña Inez had but recently confided to his betrothed. He therefore answered, without hesitation, though in a low, sad tone, "Yes; they say she is to die to-morrow."
Don Gonsalvo flung his hand across his face, and there was a great silence.
Which the awed and wondering Juan broke at last. Guessing at the truth, he said, "It may be I have done wrong to tell you."
"No; you have done right. I knew it ere you told me. It is well – for her."
"A brave word, bravely spoken."
"Nigh upon eighteen months – long slow months of grief and pain. All ended now. To-morrow night she will see the glory of God."
There was another long pause. At last Juan said, —
"Perhaps, if you could, you would gladly share her fate?"
Gonsalvo half raised himself, and a flush overspread the wan face that already wore the ashy hue of approaching death. "Share that fate?" he cried, with an eagerness contrasting strangely with his former slow and measured utterance. "Change with them? Ask the beggar, who sits all day at the King's gate, waiting for his dole of crumbs, would he gladly change with the King's children, when he sees the golden gate flung open before them, and watches them pass in robed and crowned, to the presence-chamber of the King himself."
"Your faith is greater than mine," said Juan in surprise.
"In one way, yes," replied Gonsalvo, sinking back, and resuming his low, quiet tone. "For the beggar dares to hope that the King has looked with pity even on him."
"You do well to hope in the mercy of God."
"Cousin, do you know what my life has been?"
"I think I do."
"I am past disguise now. Standing on the brink of the grave, I dare speak the truth, though it be to my own shame. There was no evil, no sin – stay, I will sum up all in one word. One pure, blameless life – a man's life, too – I have watched from day to day, from childhood to manhood. All that your brother Don Carlos was, I was not; all he was not, I was."
"Yet you once thought that life incomplete, unmanly," said Juan, remembering the taunts that in past days had so often aroused his wrath.
"I was a fool. It is just retribution that I – I who called him coward – should see him march in there triumphant, with the palm of victory in his hand. But let me end; for I think it is the last time I shall speak of myself in any human ear. I sowed to the flesh, and of the flesh I have reaped —corruption. It is an awful word, Don Juan. All the life in me turned to death; all the good in me (what God meant for good, such as force, fire, passion) turned to evil. What availed it me that I loved a star in heaven – a bright, lonely, distant star – while I was earthy, of the earth? Because I could not (and thank God for that!) pluck down my star from the sky and hold it in my hand, even that love became corruption too. I fulfilled my course, the earthly grew sensual, the sensual grew devilish. And then God smote me, though not then for the first time. The stroke of his hand was heavy. My heart was crushed, my frame left powerless." He paused for a while, then slowly resumed. "The stroke of his hand, your brother's words, your brother's book – by these he taught me. There is deliverance even from the bondage of corruption, through him who came to call not the righteous, but sinners. One day – and that soon – I, even I, shall kneel at his feet, and thank him for saving the lost. And then I shall see my star, shining far above me in his glorious heaven, and be content and glad."
"God has been very gracious to you, my cousin," said Juan in a tone of emotion. "And what he has cleansed I dare not call common. Were my brother here to-day, I think he would stretch out to you the right hand, not of forgiveness, but of fellowship. I have told you how he longed for your soul."
"God can fulfil more desires of his than that, Don Juan, and I doubt not he will. What know we of his dealings? we who all these dreary months have been mourning for and pitying his prisoners, to-morrow to be his crowned and sainted martyrs? It were a small thing with him to flood the dungeon's gloom with light, and give – even here, even now – all their hearts long for to those who suffer for him."
Juan was silent. Truly the last was first, and the first last now. Gonsalvo had reached some truths which were still far beyond his ken. He did not know how their seed had been sown in his heart by his own brother's hand. At length he answered, in a low and faltering voice, "There is much in what you say. Fray Sebastian told me – "
"Ay," cried Gonsalvo eagerly, "what did Fray Sebastian tell you of him?"
"That he found him in perfect peace, though ill and weak in body. It is my hope that God himself has delivered him ere now out of their cruel hands. And I ought to tell you that he spoke of all his relatives with affection, and made special inquiry after your health."
Gonsalvo said quietly, "It is likely I shall see him before you."
Juan sighed. "To-morrow will reveal something," he said.
"Many things, perhaps," Gonsalvo returned. "Well – Doña Beatriz waits you now. There is no poison in that wine, though it be of an earthly vintage; and God himself puts the cup in your hand; so take it, and be comforted. Yet stay; have you patience for one word more?"
"For a thousand, if you will, my cousin."
"I know that in heart you share his —our faith."
Juan shrank a little from his gaze.
"Of course," he replied, "I have been obliged to conceal my opinions; and, indeed, of late all things have seemed to grow dim and uncertain with me. Sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I cannot tell what truth is."
"'He came not to call the righteous, but sinners,'" said Gonsalvo. "And the sinner who has heard his call must believe, let others doubt as they may. Thank God, the sinner may not only believe, but love. Yes; in that the beggar at the gate may take his stand beside the king's children unreproved. Even I dare to say, 'Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.' Only to them it is given to prove it; while I – ay, there was the bitter thought. Long it haunted me. At last I prayed that if indeed he deigned to accept me, all sinful as I was, he would give me for a sign something to do, to suffer, or to give up, whereby I might prove my love."
"And did he hear you?"
"Yes. He showed me one thing harder to give up than life; one thing harder to do than to brave the torture and the death of fire."
"What is that?"
Once more Gonsalvo veiled his face. Then he murmured – "Harder to give up – vengeance, hatred; harder to do – to pray for their murderers."
"I could never do it," said Juan, starting.
"And if at last – at last —I can, – I, whose anger was fierce, and whose wrath was cruel, even unto death, – is not that His own work in me?"