“ARRAEZ FERRARES.”
Calderon paused ere he turned to the concluding lines of his wife’s letter; and, though he remained motionless and speechless, never were agony and despair stamped more terribly on the face of man.
CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER OF INEZ.
“And what avails to me this testimony of my faith? thou art fled; they cannot track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy love! Can the shadow live without the sun? And wilt thou never place thy hands on my daughter’s head, and bless her for her mother’s sake? Ah, yes—yes! The saints that watch over our human destinies will one day cast her in thy way: and the same hour that gives thee a daughter shall redeem and hallow the memory of a wife.... Leonarda has vowed to be a mother to our child; to tend her, work for her, rear her, though in poverty, to virtue. I consign these letters to Leonarda’s charge, with thy picture—never to be removed from my breast till the heart within has ceased to beat. Not till Beatriz (I have so baptised her—it was thy mother’s name!) has attained to the age when reason can wrestle with the knowledge of sorrow, shall her years be shadowed with the knowledge of our fate. Leonarda has persuaded me that Beatriz shall not take thy name of Nunez. Our tale has excited horror—for it is not understood—and thou art called the murderer of thy wife; and the story of our misfortunes would cling to our daughter’s life, and reach her ears, and perhaps mar her fate. But I know that thou wilt discover her not the less, for Nature has a Providence of its own. When at last you meet her, protect, guard, love her—sacred to you as she is, and shall be—the pure but mournful legacy of love and death. I have done: I die blessing thee!” “INEZ.”
Scarce had he finished those last words, ere the clock struck: it was the hour in which the prince was to arrive. The thought restored Calderon to the sense of the present time—the approaching peril. All the cold calculations he had formed for the stranger-novice vanished now. He kissed the letter passionately, placed it in his breast, and hurried into the chamber where he had left his child. Our tale returns to Fonseca.
Calderon had not long left the young soldier before the governor of the prison entered to pay his respects to a captive of such high birth and military reputation.
Fonseca, always blunt and impatient of mood, was not in a humour to receive and return compliments; but the governor had scarcely seated himself ere he struck a chord in the conversation which immediately arrested the attention and engaged the interest of the prisoner.
“Do not fear, sir,” said he, “that you will be long detained; the power of your enemy is great, but it will not be of duration. The storm is already gathering round him; he must be more than man if he escapes the thunderbolt.”
“Do you speak to me thus of my kinsman, the Cardinal-Duke de Lerma?”
“No, Don Martin, pardon me. I spoke of the Marquis de Siete Iglesias. Are you so great a stranger to Madrid and to the court as to suppose that the Cardinal de Lerma ever signs a paper but at the instance of Don Roderigo? Nay, that he ever looks over the paper to which he sets his hand? Depend upon it, you are here to gratify the avarice or revenge of the Scourge of Spain.”
“Impossible!” cried Fonseca. “Don Roderigo is my friend—my intercessor. He overwhelms me with his kindness.”
“Then you are indeed lost,” said the governor, in accents of compassion; “the tiger always caresses his prey before he devours it. What have you done to provoke his kindness?”
“Senor,” said Fonseca, suspiciously, “you speak with a strange want of caution to a stranger, and against a man whose power you confess.”
“Because I am safe from his revenge; because the Inquisition have already fixed their fatal eyes upon him; because by that Inquisition I am not unknown nor unprotected; because I see with joy and triumph the hour approaching that must render up to justice the pander of the prince, the betrayer of the king, the robber of the people; because I have an interest in thee, Don Martin, of which thou wilt be aware when thou hast learned my name. I am Juan de la Nuza, the father of the young officer whose life you saved in the assault of the Moriscos, in Valentia, and I owe you an everlasting gratitude.”
There was something in the frank and hearty tone of the governor which at once won Fonseca’s confidence. He became agitated and distracted with suspicions of his former tutor and present patron.
“What, I ask, hast thou done to attract his notice? Calderon is not capricious in cruelty. Art thou rich, and does he hope that thou wilt purchase freedom with five thousand pistoles? No! Hast thou crossed the path of his ambition? Hast thou been seen with Uzeda? or art thou in favour with the prince? No, again! Then hast thou some wife, some sister, some mistress, of rare accomplishments and beauty, with whom Calderon would gorge the fancy and retain the esteem of the profligate Infant? Ah, thou changest colour.”
“By Heaven! you madden me with these devilish surmises. Speak plainly.”
“I see thou knowest not Calderon,” said the governor, with a bitter smile. “I do—for my niece was beautiful, and the prince wooed her—. But enough of that: at his scaffold, or at the rack, I shall be avenged on Roderigo Calderon. You said the Cardinal was your kinsman; you are, then, equally related to his son, the Duke d’Uzeda. Apply not to Lerma; he is the tool of Calderon. Apply yourself to Uzeda; he is Calderon’s mortal foe. While Calderon gains ground with the prince, Uzeda advances with the king. Uzeda by a word can procure thy release. The duke knows and trusts me. Shall I be commissioned to acquaint him with thy arrest, and entreat his intercession with Philip?”
“You give me new life! But not an hour is to be lost; this night—this day-oh, Mother of Mercy! what image have you conjured up! fly to Uzeda, if you would save my very reason. I myself have scarcely seen him since my boyhood—Lerma forbade me seek his friendship. But I am of his race—his blood.”
“Be cheered, I shall see the duke to-day. I have business with him where you wot not. We are bringing strange events to a crisis. Hope the best.” With this the governor took his leave.
At the dusk of the evening, Don Juan de la Nuza, wrapped in a dark mantle, stood before a small door deep-set in a massive and gloomy wall, that stretched along one side of a shunned and deserted street. Without sign of living hand, the door opened at his knock, and the governor entered a long and narrow passage that conducted to chambers more associated with images of awe than any in his own prison. Here he suddenly encountered the Jesuit, Fray Louis de Aliaga, confessor to the king.
“How fares the Grand Inquisitor?” asked De la Nuza. “He has just breathed his last,” answered the Jesuit. “His illness—so sudden—defied all aid. Sandoval y Roxas is with the saints.”
The governor, who was, as the reader may suppose, one of the sacred body, crossed himself, and answered.—“With whom will rest the appointment of the successor? Who will be first to gain the ear of the king?”
“I know not,” replied the Jesuit; “but I am at this instant summoned to Uzeda. Pardon my haste.”
So saying, Aliaga glided away.
“With Sandoval y Roxas,” muttered Don Juan, “dies the last protector of Calderon and Lerma: unless, indeed, the wily marquis can persuade the king to make Aliaga, his friend, the late cardinal’s successor. But Aliaga seeks Uzeda—Uzeda his foe and rival. What can this portend?”
Thus soliloquising, the governor silently continued his way till he came to a door by which stood two men, masked, who saluted him with a mute inclination of the head. The door opened and again closed, as the governor entered. Meanwhile, the confessor had gained the palace of the Duke d’ Uzeda. Uzeda was not alone: with him was a man whose sallow complexion, ill-favoured features, and simple dress strangely contrasted the showy person and sumptuous habiliments of the duke. But the instant this personage opened his lips, the comparison was no longer to his prejudice. Something in the sparkle of his deep-set eye-in the singular enchantment of his smile—and above all, in the tone of a very musical and earnest voice, chained attention at once to his words. And, whatever those words, there was about the man, and his mode of thought and expression, the stamp of a mind at once crafty and commanding. This personage was Gaspar de Guzman, then but a gentleman of the Prince’s chamber (which post he owed to Calderon, whose creature he was supposed to be), afterwards so celebrated in the history of Philip IV., as Count of Olivares and prime minister of Spain.
The conversation between Guzman and Uzeda, just before the Jesuit entered, was drawing to a close.
“You see,” said Uzeda, “that if we desire to crush Calderon, it is on the Inquisition that we must depend. Now is the time to elect, in the successor of Sandoval y Roxas, one pledged to the favourite’s ruin. The reason I choose Aliaga is this,—Calderon will never suspect his friendship, and will not, therefore, thwart us with the king. The Jesuit, who would sell all Christendom for the sake of advancement to his order or himself will gladly sell Calderon to obtain the chair of the Inquisition.”
“I believe it,” replied Guzman. “I approve your choice; and you may rely on me to destroy Calderon with the prince. I have found out the way to rule Philip; it is by never giving him a right to despise his favourites—it is to flatter his vanity, but not to share his vices. Trust me, you alone—if you follow my suggestions—can be minister to the Fourth Philip.”
Here a page entered to announce Don Fray Louis de Aliaga. Uzeda advanced to the door, and received the holy man with profound respect.
“Be seated, father, and let me at once to business; for time presses, and all must be despatched to-night. Before interest is made by others with the king, we must be prompt in gaining the appointment of Sandoval’s successor.”
“Report says that the cardinal-duke, your father, himself desires the vacant chair of the Inquisition.”
“My poor father, he is old—his sun has set. No, Aliaga; I have thought of one fitter for that high and stern office in a word, that appointment rests with yourself. I can make you Grand Inquisitor of Spain—!”
“Me!” said the Jesuit, and he turned aside his face. “You jest with me, noble son.”
“I am serious—hear me. We have been foes and rivals; why should not our path be the same? Calderon has deprived you of friends more powerful than himself. His hour is come. The Duke de Lerma’s downfall cannot be avoided; if it could, I, his son, would not as, you may suppose, withhold my hand. But business fatigues him—he is old—the affairs of Spain are in a deplorable condition—they need younger and abler hands. My father will not repine at a retirement suited to his years, and which shall be made honourable to his gray hairs. But some victim must glut the rage of the people; that victim must be the upstart Calderon; the means of his punishment, the Inquisition. Now, you understand me. On one condition, you shall be the successor to Sandoval. Know that I do not promise without the power to fulfill. The instant I learned that the late cardinal’s death was certain, I repaired to the king. I have the promise of the appointment; and this night your name shall, if you accept the condition, and Calderon does not, in the interim, see the king and prevent the nomination, receive the royal sanction.”
“Our excellent Aliaga cannot hesitate,” said Don Gaspar de Guzman. “The order of Loyola rests upon shoulders that can well support the load.”
Before that trio separated, the compact was completed. Aliaga practised against his friend the lesson he had preached to him—that the end sanctifies all means. Scarce had Aliaga departed ere Juan de la Nuza entered; for Uzeda, who sought to make the Inquisition his chief instrument of power, courted the friendship of all its officers. He readily promised to obtain the release of Fonseca; and, in effect, it was but little after midnight when an order arrived at the prison for the release of Don Martin de Fonseca, accompanied by a note from the duke to the prisoner, full of affectionate professions, and requesting to see him the next morning.
Late as the hour was, and in spite of the expostulations of the governor, who wished him to remain the night within the prison, in the hope to extract from him his secret, Fonseca no sooner received the order than he claimed and obtained his liberation.
With emotions of joy and triumph, such as had never yet agitated his reckless and abandoned youth, the Infant of Spain bent his way towards the lonely house on the road to Fuencarral. He descended from his carriage when about a hundred yards from the abode, and proceeded on foot to the appointed place.
The Jew opened the door to the prince with a hideous grin on his hollow cheek; and Philip hastened up the stairs, and entering the chamber we have before described, beheld, to his inconceivable consternation and dismay, the form of Beatriz clasped in the arms of Calderon, her head leaning on his bosom; while his voice half choked with passionate sobs called upon her in the most endearing terms.
For a moment the prince stood, spell-bound and speechless, at the threshold; then, striking the hilt of his sword fiercely, he exclaimed, “Traitor! is it thus that thou hast kept thy promise? Dost thou not tremble at my vengeance?”
“Peace! peace!” said Calderon, in an imperious, but sepulchral tone, and waving one hand with a gesture of impatience and rebuke, while with the other he removed the long clustering hair that fell over the pale face of the still insensible novice. “Peace, prince of Spain; thy voice scares back the struggling life—peace! Look up, image and relic of the lost—the murdered—the martyr! Hush! do you hear her breathe, or is she with her mother in that heaven which is closed on me? Live! live! my daughter—my child—live! For thy life in the World Hereafter willnotbe mine!”
“What means this?” said the prince, falteringly. “What delusion do thy wiles practise upon me?”
Calderon made no answer; and at that instant Beatriz sighed heavily, and her eyes opened.
“My child! my child!—thou art my child! Speak—let me hear thy voice—again let it call me ‘father!’”
And Calderon dropped on his knees, and, clasping his hands fervently, looked up imploringly in her face. The novice, now slowly returning to life and consciousness, strove to speak: her voice failed her, but her lips smiled arms fell feebly but endearingly upon Calderon, and her round his neck.
“Bless thee! bless thee!” exclaimed Calderon. “Bless thee in thy sweet mother’s name!”
While he spoke, the eyes of Beatriz caught the form of Philip, who stood by, leaning on his sword; his face working with various passions, and his lip curling with stern and intense disdain. Accustomed to know human life but in its worst shapes, and Calderon only by his vices and his arts, the voice of nature uttered no language intelligible to the prince. He regarded the whole as some well got-up device—some trick of the stage; and waited, with impatience and scorn, the denouement of the imposture.
At the sight of that mocking face, Beatriz shuddered, and fell back; but her very alarm revived her, and, starting to her feet, she exclaimed, “Save me from that bad man—save me! My father, I am safe with thee!”
“Safe!” echoed Calderon;—“ay, safe against the world. But not,” he added, looking round, and in a low and muttered tone, “not in this foul abode; its very air pollutes thee. Let us hence: come—come—my daughter!” and winding his arm round her waist, he hurried her towards the door.
“Back, traitor!” cried Philip, placing himself full in the path of the distracted and half delirious father, “Back! thinkest thou that I, thy master and thy prince, am to be thus duped and thus insulted? Not for thine own pleasures hast thou snatched her whom I have honoured with my love from the sanctuary of the Church. Go, if thou wilt; but Beatriz remains. This roof is sacred to my will. Back! or thy next step is on the point of my sword.”
“Menace not, speak not, Philip—I am desperate. I am beside myself—I cannot parley with thee. Away! by thy hopes of Heaven away! I am no longer thy minion—thy tool. I am a father, and the protector of my child.”
“Brave device—notable tale!” cried Philip, scornfully, and placing his back against the door. “The little actress plays her part well, it must be owned,—it is her trade; but thou art a bungler, my gentle Calderon.”
For a moment the courtier stood, not irresolute, but overcome with the passions that shook to their centre a nature, the stormy and stern elements of which the habit of years had rather mastered than quelled. At last, with a fierce cry, he suddenly grasped the prince by the collar of his vest; and, ere Philip could avail himself of his weapon, swung him aside with such violence that he lost his balance and (his foot slipping on the polished floor) fell to the ground. Calderon then opened the door, lifted Beatriz in both his arms, and fled precipitately down the stairs. He could no longer trust to chance and delay against the dangers of that abode.
Meanwhile Fonseca had reached the convent; had found the porter gone; and, with a mind convulsed with apprehension and doubt, had flown on the wings of love and fear to the house indicated by Calderon. The grim and solitary mansion came just in sight—the moon streaming sadly over its gray and antique walls—when he heard his name pronounced; and the convent porter emerged from the shadow of a wall beside which he had ensconced himself.
“Don Martin! it is thou indeed; blessed be the saints! I began to fear—nay, I fear now, that we were deceived.”
“Speak, man, but stop me not! Speak! what horrors hast thou to utter?”
“I knew the cavalier whom thou didst send in thy place! Who knows not Roderigo Calderon? I trembled when I saw him lift the novice into the carriage; but I thought I should, as agreed, be companion in the flight. Not so. Don Roderigo briefly told me to hide where I could this night; and that to-morrow he would arrange preparations for my flight from Madrid. My mind misgave me, for Calderon’s name is blackened by many curses. I resolved to follow the carriage. I did so; but my breath and speed nearly failed, when, fortunately, the carriage was stopped and entangled by a crowd in the street. No lackeys were behind; I mounted the footboard unobserved, and descended and hid myself when the carriage stopped. I knew not the house, but I knew the neighbourhood, a brother of mine lives at hand. I sought my relative for a night’s shelter. I learned that dark stories had given to that house an evil name. It was one of those which the Prince of Spain had consecrated to the pursuits that had dishonoured so many families in Madrid. I resolved again to go forth and watch. Scarce had I reached this very spot when I saw a carriage approach rapidly. I secreted myself behind a buttress, and saw the carriage halt; and a man descended, and walked to the house. See there—there, by yon crossing, the carriage still waits. The man was wrapped in a mantle. I know not whom he may be; but—”
“Heavens!” cried Fonseca, as they were now close before the door of the house at which Calderon’s carriage still stood; “I hear a noise, a shriek, within.”
Scarce had he spoken when the door opened. Voices were heard in loud altercation; presently the form of the Jew was thrown on the pavement, and dashing aside another man, who seemed striving to detain him, Calderon appeared,—his drawn sword in his right hand, his left arm clasped round Beatriz.
Fonseca darted forward.
“My lover! my betrothed!” exclaimed the voice of the novice: “thou are come to save us—to save thy Beatriz!”
“Yes; and to chastise the betrayer!” exclaimed Fonseca, in a voice of thunder. “Leave thy victim, villain! Defend thyself!”
He made a desperate lunge at Calderon while he spoke. The marquis feebly parried the stroke.
“Hold!” he cried. “Not on me!”
“No—no!” exclaimed Beatriz, throwing herself on her father’s breast. The words came too late. Blinded and deafened with rage, Fonseca had again, with more sure and deadly aim, directed his weapon against his supposed foe. The blade struck home, but not to the heart of Calderon. It was Beatriz, bathed in her blood, who fell at the feet of her frenzied lover.
“Daughter and mother both!” muttered Calderon; and he fell as if the steel had pierced his own heart, beside his child. “Wretch! what hast thou done?” muttered a voice strange to the ear of Fonseca; a voice half stifled with Horror and, perhaps, remorse. The Prince of Spain stood on the spot, and his feet were dabbled in the blood of the virgin martyr. The moonlight alone lighted that spectacle of crime and death; and the faces of all seemed ghastly beneath its beams. Beatriz turned her eyes upon her lover, with an expression of celestial compassion and divine forgiveness; then sinking upon Calderon’s breast, she muttered, “Pardon him! pardon him, father! I shall tell my mother that thou hast blessed me!”
It was not for several days after that night of terror that Calderon was heard of at the court. His absence was unaccountable; for, though the flight of the novice was of course known, her fate was not suspected; and her rank had been too insignificant to create much interest in her escape or much vigilance in pursuit. But of that absence the courtier’s enemies well availed themselves. The plans of the cabal were ripe; and the aid of the Inquisition by the appointment of Aliaga was added to the machinations of Uzeda’s partisans. The king was deeply incensed at the mysterious absence of Calderon, for which a thousand ingenious conjectures were invented. The Duke of Lerma, infirm and enfeebled by years, was unable to confront his foes. With imbecile despair he called on the name of Calderon; and, when no trace of that powerful ally could be discovered, he forbore even to seek an interview with the king. Suddenly the storm broke. One evening Lerma received the royal order to surrender his posts, and to quit the court by daybreak. It was in this very hour that the door of Lerma’s chamber opened, and Roderigo Calderon stood before him. But how changed—how blasted from his former self! His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and their fire was quenched; his cheeks were hollow, his frame bent, and when he spoke his voice was as that of one calling from the tomb.
“Behold me, Duke de Lerma, I am returned at last!”
“Returned—blessings on thee! Where hast thou been? Why didst thou desert me?—no matter, thou art returned! Fly to the king—tell him I am not old! I do not want repose. Defeat the villany of my unnatural son! They would banish me, Calderon; banish me in the very prime of my years! My son says I am old—old! ha! ha! Fly to the prince; he too has immured himself in his apartment. He would not see me; he will see thee!”
“Ay—the prince! we have cause to love each other!”
“Ye have indeed! Hasten, Calderon; not a moment is to be lost! Banished! Calderon, shall I be banished?” And the old man, bursting into tears, fell at the feet of Calderon, and clasped his knees.
“Go, go, I implore thee! Save me; I loved thee, Calderon, I always loved thee. Shall our foes triumph? Shall the horn of the wicked be exalted?”
For a moment (so great is the mechanical power of habit) there returned to Calderon something of his wonted energy and spirit; a light broke from his sunken eyes; he drew himself up to the full of his stately height: “I thought I had done with courts and with life,” said he; “but I will make one more effort; I will not forsake you in your hour of need. Yes, Uzeda shall be baffled; I will seek the king. Fear not, my lord, fear not; the charm of my power is not yet broken.”
So saying, Calderon raised the cardinal from the ground, and extricating himself from the old man’s grasp strode, with his customary air of majestic self-reliance, to the door. Just ere he reached it, three low, but regular knocks sounded on the panel: the door opened, and the space without was filled with the dark forms of the officers of the Inquisition.
“Stand!” said a deep voice; “stand, Roderigo Calderon, Marquis de Siete Iglesias; in the name of the most Holy Inquisition, we arrest thee!”
“Aliaga!” muttered Calderon, falling back.
“Peace!” interrupted the Jesuit. “Officers, remove your prisoner.”
“Poor old man,” said Calderon, turning towards the cardinal, who stood spell-bound and speechless, “thy life at least is safe. For me, I defy fate! Lead on!”
The Prince of Spain soon recovered from the shock which the death of Beatriz at first occasioned him. New pleasures chased away even remorse. He appeared again in public a few days after the arrest of Calderon; and he made strong intercession on behalf of his former favourite. But even had the Inquisition desired to relax its grasp, or Uzeda to forego his vengeance, so great was the exultation of the people at the fall of the dreaded and obnoxious secretary, and so numerous the charges which party malignity added to those which truth could lay at his door, that it would have required a far bolder monarch than Philip the Third to have braved the voice of a whole nation for the sake of a disgraced minister. The prince himself was soon induced, by new favourites, to consider any further interference on his part equally impolitic and vain; and the Duke d’Uzeda and Don Gaspar de Guzman were minions quite as supple, while they were companions infinitely more respectable.
One day, an officer, attending the levee of the prince, with whom he was a special favourite, presented a memorial requesting the interest of his highness for an appointment in the royal armies, that, he had just learned by an express was vacant.
“And whose death comes so opportunely for thy rise, Don Alvar?” asked the Infant.
“Don Martin Fonseca. He fell in the late skirmish, pierced by a hundred wounds.”
The prince started and turned hastily away. The officer lost all favour from that hour, and never learned his offence.
Meanwhile months passed, and Calderon still languished in his dungeon. At last the Inquisition opened against him its dark register of accusations. First of these charges was that of sorcery, practised on the king; the rest were for the most part equally grotesque and extravagant. These accusations Calderon met with a dignity which confounded his foes, and belied the popular belief in the elements of his character. Submitted to the rack, he bore its tortures without a groan; and all historians have accorded concurrent testimony to the patience and heroism which characterised the close of his wild and meteoric career. At length Philip the Third died: the Infant ascended the throne; that prince, for whom the ambitious courtier had perilled alike life and soul! The people now believed that they should be defrauded of their victim. They were mistaken. The new king, by this time, had forgotten even the existence of the favourite of the prince. But Guzman, who, while affecting to minister to the interests of Uzeda, was secretly aiming at the monopoly of the royal favour, felt himself insecure while Calderon yet lived. The operations of the Inquisition were too slow for the impatience of his fears; and as that dread tribunal affected never to inflict death until the accused had confessed his guilt, the firmness of Calderon baffled the vengeance of the ecclesiastical law. New inquiries were set on foot: a corpse was discovered, buried in Calderon’s garden—the corpse of a female. He was accused of the murder. Upon that charge he was transferred from the Inquisition to the regular courts of justice. No evidence could be produced against him; but, to the astonishment of all, he made no defence, and his silence was held the witness of his crime. He was adjudged to the scaffold—he smiled when he heard the sentence.
An immense crowd, one bright day in summer, were assembled in the place of execution. A shout of savage exultation rent the air as Roderigo Calderon, Marquis de Siete Iglesias, appeared upon the scaffold But, when the eyes of the multitude rested—not upon that lofty and stately form, in all the pride of manhood, which they had been accustomed to associate with their fears of the stern genius and iron power of the favourite—but upon a bent and spectral figure, that seemed already on the verge of a natural grave, with a face ploughed deep with traces of unutterable woe, and hollow eyes that looked with dim and scarce conscious light over the human sea that murmured and swayed below, the tide of the popular emotion changed; to rage and triumph succeeded shame and pity. Not a hand was lifted up in accusation—not a voice was raised in rebuke or joy. Beside Calderon stood the appointed priest, whispering cheer and consolation.
“Fear not, my son,” said the holy man. “The pang of the body strikes years of purgatory from thy doom. Think of this, and bless even the agony of this hour.”
“Yes,” muttered Calderon; “I do bless this hour. Inez, thy daughter has avenged thy murder! May Heaven accept the sacrifice! and may my eyes, even athwart the fiery gulf, awaken upon thee!”
With that a serene and contented smile passed over the face on which the crowd gazed with breathless awe. A minute more, and a groan, a cry, broke from that countless multitude; and a gory and ghastly head, severed from its trunk, was raised on high.
Two spectators of that execution were in one of the balconies that commanded a full view of its terrors.
“So perishes my worst foe!” said Uzeda.
“We must sacrifice all things, friends as foes, in the ruthless march of the Great Cause,” rejoined the Grand Inquisitor; but he sighed as he spoke.
“Guzman is now with the king,” said Uzeda, turning into the chamber. “I expect every instant a summons into the royal presence.”
“I cannot share thy sanguine hopes, my son,” said Aliaga, shaking his head. “My profession has made me a deep reader of human character. Gaspar de Guzman will remove every rival from his path.”
While he spoke, there entered a gentleman of the royal chamber. He presented to the Grand Inquisitor and the expectant duke two letters signed by the royal hand. They were the mandates of banishment and disgrace. Not even the ghostly rank of the Grand Inquisitor, not even the profound manoeuvres of the son of Lerma, availed them against the vigilance and vigour of the new favourite. Simultaneously, a shout from the changeable crowd below proclaimed that the king’s choice of his new minister was published and approved.
And Aliaga and Uzeda exchanged glances that bespoke all the passions that make defeated ambition the worst fiend, as they heard the mighty cry, “LONG LIVE OLIVAREZ THE REFORMER!”
That cry came, faint and muffled, to the ears of Philip the Fourth, as he sate in his palace with his new minister. “Whence that shout?” said the king, hastily.
“It rises, doubtless, from the honest hearts of your loyal people at the execution of Calderon.”
Philip shaded his face with his hand, and mused a moment: then, turning to Olivarez with a sarcastic smile, he said: “Behold the moral of the life of a courtier, count! What do they say of the new opera?”
At the close of his life, in disgrace and banishment, the count-duke, for the first time since they had been uttered, called to his recollection those words of his royal master.
‘The fate of Calderon has given rise to many tales and legends. Amongst those who have best availed themselves of so fruitful a subject may be ranked the late versatile and ingenious Telesforo de Trueba, in his work on “The Romances of Spain.” In a few of the incidents, and in some of the names, his sketch, called “The Fortunes of Calderon,” has a resemblance to the story just concluded. The plot, characters, and principal events, are, however, widely distinct in our several adaptations of an ambiguous and unsatisfactory portion of Spanish history.