The indulgence thus ostentatiously proclaimed by the father-inquisitor was not exactly to my taste. Finding that all the energy of mind I could apply to my defence was vain, I determined to have recourse to a different mode of proceeding. I received three admonitions, as they call them, the substance of which I have already recited, in the course of the first ten days of my confinement, and I then for some time heard of the inquisitor no more. I understood that it was frequently the practice, after three admonitions, not to bring up the prisoner for further hearing during a whole year; and it appeared sufficiently probable from the last words addressed to me by my judge, that this policy was intended to be employed in my case. Without further delay therefore I resolved to recur to the expedient in the use of which my power was unbounded, and by a brilliant offer at once to subdue the scruples, and secure the fidelity, of the person or persons upon whom my safe custody might be found to depend. All that was necessary was to convince the party to whom I should propose the assisting me, of the reality of my powers; and then to putcarte blancheinto his hands, or rather to ascertain at once the extent of his hopes and demands, and by a spirited and peremptory conduct to yield them all. In the period which, immediately previous to my present imprisonment, I had devoted to the meditation of my future plans and the review of my past, I had severely accused myself of half measures, and had determined to abjure all hesitation and irresoluteness for the time to come. It is not indeed to be wondered at, that, possessing a power so utterly remote from common ideas and conceptions, and which, speaking from experience, I do not hesitate to affirm no mere effort of imagination is adequate to represent, I should have acted below the prerogatives and demands of my situation. This mistake I would make no more. I would overwhelm opposition by the splendour of my proceedings, and confound scruples by the dignity and princelymagnificence of my appearance. Unshackled as I was with connections, and risking no one’s happiness but my own, I proposed to compel the human species to view me from an awful distance, and to oblige every one that approached me to feel his inferiority. It would be to the last degree disgraceful and contemptible in me, being raised so far above my peers in my privileges, if I were to fall below the ordinary standard of a gallant man in the decision and firmness of my system of conduct. Decision and firmness were the principles to be exercised by me now; dignity and magnificence must await their turn hereafter.
It was not long before I embraced an opportunity of speaking to the man who waited on me with my daily allotment of provisions, and I designed as shortly as possible to proceed to that species of argument, in which I principally confided to engage him in my cause. But he did not suffer me to utter a sentence before with a very expressive gesture he interrupted me. I had remarked already the silence which seemed for ever to pervade this dismal abode; but I had not ascribed importance enough to this circumstance, to suppose that it could materially interfere with the project I had formed. I now perceived the countenance of my attendant to be overspread with terror and alarm. He put his hand upon my mouth, and by his attitude seemed earnestly to insist upon my conforming to the rules of the prison. I was not however to be thus diverted from my purpose. I seized his hands, and began again to pursue the discourse I had meditated. This proceeding on my part induced him to break the silence he had hitherto preserved. He told me that if I did not instantly set him at liberty, he would alarm the prison. I loosed his hands. I then by every gesture I could devise endeavoured to prevail on him to approach me, to suffer me to confer with him in the lowest whisper, and assured him that he should have no reason to repent his compliance. I might as well have addressed myself to the walls that inclosed me. He would not stay an instant; he would yield in nothing. He burst from me abruptly, and, closing the door of my cell, left me in solitude and darkness.
In the evening of the day of this attempt the keeper of the prison entered my apartment. When he appeared, I began to flatter myself that in this man I should find a better subject for my purpose than in the poor turnkey who had given me so unfavourable a prognostic of my success. I lost no time in saying to him that I had something important to communicate; but he peremptorily commanded me to be silent, and listen to what he was about to say to me. He told me that I had already been complained against for speech, and I was now repeating my offence. He advised me to ponder well the consequences of what I was doing. The orders of the inquisition were rigorous and inflexible. The cells were not so substantially separated but that a voice might be heard from one to the other; yet it had happened more than once, that a husband and wife, a father and child, had for years been lodged next to each other, without the smallest suspicion on either part of the proximity of their situation. He was astonished at the pertinacity of my behaviour. There was no government on the face of the earth, he would venture to say, that had subjects more obedient, more dutiful and exemplary than the holy inquisition. Not a murmur was ever heard; not a discontent ever expressed. All was humbleness, thankfulness, and gratitude. He recommended to me to conform myself to my situation, and let him hear no further complaints of me. He had no sooner finished his harangue, than he left me as abruptly as his servant had done. It is not possible to impart any adequate image of the inflexibility of his features, or the stern composure of his demeanour.
I now saw my situation in a different point of view. Bribery was of no use, where all intercourse was denied. Great God! into what position was I got? In the midst of a great and populous city, at this time perhaps the metropolis of the world, I heard occasionally from beyond the limits of my prison the hum of busy throngs, or the shouts of a tumultuous populace. Yet I was myself in the deepest solitude. Like the wretched mariners I have somewhere read of, shipwrecked upon a desert shore, I might remain encaged, till I lost all recollection of European language,and all acquaintance with the sound of my own voice. A jailor from time to time entered my apartment; but to me he was simply a moving and breathing statue, his features never moulded into the expression of a meaning, nor his mouth opened for the utterance of a sound. From the first I had been struck with the extreme and death-like silence that characterised the place of my confinement; but my mind was occupied with other thoughts, and I had not adverted to the cause of the phenomenon. I had then felt little inclination to the converse of a jailor; my natural disposition was somewhat singular for a Frenchman, and inclined to taciturnity: I had resolved to make a fair and ample trial of the power of a just defence, where my innocence was so complete and I was entirely disengaged from those unfavourable appearances which had constituted my misfortune at Constance; and I even rejoiced, that a silence, which I regarded as casual and individual, delivered me from all fear of impertinence in my attendant. With how different a temper do we contemplate an incident which, we persuade ourselves, continues to operate only because we want inclination to remove it; and an incident which is violently imposed, and to which, with the utmost exertion of our strength, we cannot succeed to impart the slightest shock! The external object is the same; its picture in the intellectual sensorium how unlike! What a profound and inconceivable refinement in the art of tyranny is this silence! The jailor might well tell me, that beneath his roofs there was neither complaint nor murmur, that the very soul of its inhabitants was subdued, and that they suffered the most unheard of oppressions without astonishment or indignation. This is the peculiar prerogative of despotism: it produces many symptoms of the same general appearance as those which are derived from liberty and justice. There are no remonstrances; there is no impatience or violence; there is a calm, a fatal and accursed tranquillity that pervades the whole. The spectator enters, and for a time misinterprets every object he sees; he perceives human bodies standing or moving around him; and it is with the utmost surprise, if he has leisure and opportunity to observe a little further, that he finds at last thethings he sees to be the mere shades of men, cold, inert, glaring bodies, which the heaven-born soul has long since deserted. Wonderful, I hesitate not to affirm, is the genuine and direct power of such a situation as that in which I was now placed, upon the human imagination. What was it then to me, to whom speech was not merely one of those things, misnamed indulgences, misnamed luxuries, upon which the desirableness and the health of human existence depend; but who had looked to it as the only and the assured means of my rescue from this scene of horrors! I intreat the reader to pardon me, when I confess, that the operation of the discovery I made was so overwhelming and apparently desperate, that it was some weeks, I might say months, before my mind recovered its wonted bias and activity.
It was towards the close of the period I have named, that a new incident, concurring with that familiarity which serves in some measure to disarm every mischief of its sting, restored and re-awakened my mind. I had vegetated now for some time, if the metaphor can with propriety be applied to existence in a noxious and empoisoned air, by which all vegetation would have been undermined, and which the vital principle in man is scarcely competent to surmount; and in all this period had encountered nothing from without, nor received any intimation, that could in the slightest degree interrupt the progressive destruction and waste of the soul. One day, at the customary hour of my being attended by my warder, I was surprised to see him bring with him a visiter to my cell. The unknown was a man with grey hairs and a silver beard: though once tall, he now stooped considerably, and supported himself with a staff: his dress was simple and neat, and his whole appearance prepossessing. A sweet serenity was diffused over his countenance; yet there were occasionally a fire, and a contemplative grasp of thought, expressed in his eyes, which sufficiently proved to me that his serenity was not the result of vacancy. All this I discerned by the faint and uncertain light of a small lamp which the warder had brought with him, and placed upon my table. The introduction was performed in silence, and the warder left us alone. Theunknown beckoned me to be seated, for the first emotion of surprise at the entrance of a stranger had caused me to start on my feet; and, opening a folding stool he had received from my attendant, he placed himself beside me.
He then addressed me in a low voice, and told me, that the humanity of the fathers of the inquisition had given him permission to visit me, and that, if I would be so obliging, in conformity to the regulations of the prison, as to lower my voice to the standard of his, we were at liberty to confer together. He hoped the conference would be some relief to my solitude, if not lead to my complete liberation. He then unfolded to me his story. He told me that he, like myself, had been committed to the prisons of the inquisition upon an accusation of sorcery. Having advanced thus far, he stopped. He talked miscellaneously and digressively of wizards and their familiars, of possessions and demons, of charms, spells, talismans and incantations, even of theelixir vitæand the philosopher’s stone. Sometimes in the progress of this discourse I could perceive him observing me with the utmost narrowness, as if he would dive into my soul; and again, particularly when he caught a glance of suspicion in my eye, with infinite address changing his attitude and tone, and assuming a surprising air of ingenuousness and gaiety. In a word he was a consummate actor. It was evident, whether his designs were hostile or friendly, that his purpose was to make himself master of my secret. I asked him whether the accusation of sorcery which had been preferred against him, were well founded or a calumny. He evaded that question, and was only influenced by it to talk more copiously and fluently on other topics, with the apparent design of making me forget the enquiry I had made. He avoided anticipation, lest he should miscalculate and take wrong ground in my affair; and, though superficially he seemed communicative, I found that he scarcely told me respecting himself any one thing definite and clear. He celebrated the clemency of the fathers of the inquisition. He said, they seemed to regard themselves as the adoptive parents of those they held in their custody, and were anxious solely for the restoration of souls. In their exterior they were austere, and had unfortunately contracteda forbidding manner; but he had soon found, upon a closer inspection of their character, that the only way to deal successfully with them was to repose in them a perfect confidence. This panegyric was not resorted to till he had exhausted the various topics by which he had hoped himself to extort my secret from me. I asked him, whether the effect of his reposing confidence had been an abjuration of sorcery, and reconciliation to the church? But this question experienced the fate of every other that I addressed to him. He only told me generally, that he had every reason to be satisfied with, and to speak well of, the treatment he had experienced in the house of the inquisition. He possessed, or rather, as I believed, affected, a character of thoughtless garrulity and loquacity, well adapted to cover the strange deviations and abrupt transitions that marked his discourse. It was certainly singularly contrasted with that close and penetrating air which from time to time I remarked in him.
The reader may deem it surprising and unaccountable; but certain it is I took uncommon delight in this man’s company. I pressed him earnestly to repeat his visits, and would scarcely suffer him to depart, till he had promised to come to me again the next day or the day after. Yet I looked on him as my mortal enemy, and had no doubt that he was one of the infamous wretches, employed by the policy of the inquisition, and well known beneath those hated roofs by the appellation ofmoscas. Various reasons may be assigned for my conduct in this particular. Let it first be remembered that I was alone, and for months had not heard the sound of my own voice. No incident marked my days; no object arrested my attention. A dull, heavy, pestilential, soul-depressing monotony formed the history of my life. If in this situation I had been visited by a mouse or a rat, I should indefatigably have sought to get within reach of it, I should have put it to my bosom, and have felt with exultation the beat of an animal pulse, the warmth of animal life pressing responsively on my heart. With what eager appetite I should have mixed in scenes of calamity and cruelty, intolerable to any other eye, glad for myself that even upon such terms I could escape the frostboundwinter of the soul! How I should have rejoiced, like king Richard of England, to see four grim and death-dealing assassins enter my cell, like him to struggle and wrestle and contend with my murderers, though, as in his case, wounds and a fatal end should be the result! Thus feeling then, it is little wonderful that I should have hailed with pleasure the visit of themosca.
But this was not all. While I conferred with, or rather listened to my visiter, that pride and self complacency, which I suspect to be the main, or at least the indispensable, ingredient of all our pleasures, revived in my heart. I believed that he was set upon me by these insatiable bloodsuckers of the inquisition, that he might ensnare me with his questions, and treacherously inveigle me to the faggot and the stake. I felt a last, lambent intimation of pride within me, when my heart whispered me, “This man shall not attain his ends.” I secretly defied his arts, and amused myself with baffling his most cunning devices. I had now some one with whom to measure myself. The comparison, I own, for a descendant of the counts of St. Leon, was a humble one; but it is not permitted a prisoner in the jails of the inquisition to be fastidious in his pleasures. This man I played with at my ease, and laughed at his stratagems. I therefore felt that I was his superior, and, which was a sensation I had not lately been accustomed to, that I was somebody. These feelings recommended to me his visits.
But what was much more material, I looked further, and proposed an ultimate end to this occurrence. Let it be recollected what was my unhappiness, when I found myself, if I may be allowed the expression, suddenly deprived of speech, and then it will easily be understood how sincerely I rejoiced to have this faculty restored to me. Speech, as I have already said, I had regarded as the only and assured means of my deliverance from this scene of horrors. I therefore doubted not that from this miserable tool of my oppressors I would obtain my enlargement. I stood firmly on my guard. I permitted him to run out the whole length of his own project without interruption. By this delay I should better understand his character, andfinally seize it with a more decisive grasp. Thus purposing, I allowed three or four visits to pass before I opened to themoscamy own proposal. I designed unexpectedly to turn the tables upon him, to surprise and finish with him at once. I knew not that all this precaution was necessary, but I played for too deep a stake, not to be anxious to omit nothing, which hereafter in retrospect I might reproach myself that I had omitted.
The time was at length come, at which I judged it convenient to execute what I had planned in my mind. I began with an attempt to mortify and humble my guest in his own eyes, that he might lose the pride to make the smallest resistance to my proposal.
“Do you think, my good sir,” cried I, “that I have not perfectly understood your intentions all this while? You have pretended to be my friend, and to come to me for my good. I know that every secret I reposed in your fidelity, every word that I might unguardedly have dropped, every look and gesture that could have been interpreted to my disadvantage, would have been instantly reported to the fathers of the inquisition. Why, what a poor and miserable fool must you have imagined me to be! How came you into my cell? Had you a secret key by which you found your way hither unknown? Could you ever have come into my apartment, if you had not been employed? You fawn upon me, and are the tame and passive agent of my merciless destroyers! Shame on such base and perfidious proceedings! Is this religion, that you should flatter and cajole and lie to a man, purely that you may have the gratification at last of burning him alive? If you or your masters can make out any thing to my disadvantage, let them make it out in the way of fair and open trial, by the production of direct evidence, and calling on me for my defence. They style themselves the champions of Christendom and ornaments of our holy faith; they pretend to an extraordinary degree of sanctity, and would have all men bow down in mute reverence and astonishment at their godliness; and yet they have recourse to means so base, that the most profligate and abandoned tyrant upon record would have disdained to employ them. But, baseas are the judges and assessors of the court in whose prison I stand, even they scorn the meanness of the perfidious task in which you have engaged.”
The vehemence I put into the suppressed and under-tone with which I delivered these reproaches, seemed to produce no emotion in my guest. He dropped his staff upon his shoulder; he meekly folded his arms upon his bosom, and answered, that he had long since learned to bear every contumely for the cause of God and the Redeemer: they were heaven-directed chastisements, which his manifold sins and iniquities had amply deserved.
“Hypocrite!” replied I, “would you make me believe that a conscientious motive can prompt such conduct as yours, can mould your features into a treacherous expression of kindness, and fill your mouth with lies and deceptions innumerable?”
“No proceedings,” rejoined he, with an unaltered air, “are base, that God and his church prescribe. I take up the cross with cheerfulness, and glory in my shame. The more ignominious in the eyes of an unregenerate world is my conduct, the more entire and implicit does it prove my obedience to be.”
My heart swelled within me as he talked. I could lend no attention to such despicable cant, and was ashamed to see the most profligate conduct assuming to itself the pretensions to an extraordinary degree of sanctity and disinterestedness.
“Come, come,” said I, “dissembler; I know that nothing could buy a man to so loathsome an office but money. You are some galley-slave, some wretch, who by your complicated crimes have forfeited your life to the community, and are now permitted to earn a miserable existence by lying in wait for the unfortunate, and engaging in arts at which humanity shudders. I take you upon your own terms; you are the man I want. Assist me to escape; go with me to some safer and less cruel country; I will reward you to the extent of your wishes. Give me your hand; an estate of six thousand pistoles per annum, without further condition, waits your acceptance. I invoke all the powers, sacred to truth and punishers of deceit, towitness, that I have ability to make good the whole of what I promise.”
While I spoke, I could perceive an extraordinary revolution taking place in my guest. The meekness and tranquillity of his countenance subsided; his eye became animated and alive. I hailed the auspicious omen; I urged my proposal with all the impetuosity I could exert and all the arguments I could devise. At length I paused. I looked again at the countenance of themosca; I was less pleased than before. The expression did not seem to be that of assent and congratulation; it was rather of horror and alarm.
“St. Jago, and all the saints and angels of heaven, protect me!” exclaimed he. “What do I hear? A full confession of guilt! And art thou then the confederate of the prince of the powers of darkness? If we were not here, in the holy house of inquisition, I should die at this moment with fear that the roof would fall and crush us together. I should expect hell to swallow me alive, for being found in thy unhallowed society.” He trembled with every expression of the sincerest terror and aversion.
“‘Thy money perish with thee,’ thou second Elymas, like him ‘full of all subtlety and mischief, child of the devil, enemy of all righteousness!’ Blasted be thy offers! Have I for this devoted myself to the service of God, assiduously sought out the basest and vilest offices of that service, and loaded myself with ignominy here, that I might obtain a crown of glory hereafter? and am I now to be assaulted with the worst of Satan’s temptations? Even so, Lord, if such be thy will! Oh, poor, miserable, deluded victim of the arch-deceiver of mankind, what has the devil done for thee? He has persuaded thee that thou art rich; and thou wantest every joy and every necessary of life. He has promised to be thy friend; and he brings thee to the faggot and flames in this world, as an earnest of thy eternal damnation hereafter.”
My visiter had no sooner thus poured out the tumult and agitation of his soul, than he left me abruptly, and I saw him no more.
Such was the event of my attempt to bribe the officers ofthe inquisition. In my first experiment I could not even obtain a hearing; in what followed, my proposals were rejected with all the transports of religious abhorrence. What I offered indeed, however dazzling in the statement, had not in fact the nature of a temptation. He to whom I addressed it gave no credit to my assertions; he thought that I was the mere drivelling dupe of him he called the arch-deceiver of mankind, or that my money, when possessed, would soon change its figure, and from seeming pieces of solid coin be converted into pieces of horn or of shells. Even if he had not apprehended such a metamorphosis, he would yet have regarded every doubloon he received as the price of his continual adversity here, and damnation hereafter. I gained nothing favourable for my situation by the trial I had made, but I added a new chapter to my knowledge of human nature. I found, that to be a knave, it was not necessary to be an infidel: I corrected the too hasty conclusion which I had adopted with the rest of my contemporaries, that he whose conduct was infamous, must inevitably be destitute of religious impressions and belief; and I became satisfied that a man, while he practised every vice that can disgrace human nature, might imagine he was doing God service.
Enough of the interior of the prison of the inquisition. I remained a tenant of this wretched mansion twelve years. Though the wretch who had been placed upon me as a spy, was, from my proposal to him, satisfied of my guilt, his superiors were not so. They found nothing in what he reported definitive as to the nature of my unlawful practices, and they could extort from me no further confession. They therefore adhered to their favourite maxim, to avoid the precipitate mistakes of other tribunals, and to allow their prisoner full time to develop his guilt, or, as they pretended, to establish his innocence. Perhaps too the temper of the prince who now filled the Spanish throne, contributed to my safety. They could not content themselves with a less punishment for so obstinate and incorrigible a heretic, than that of the flames; but, during the reign of the emperor Charles, this species of punishment for heresy was rarely inflicted, and only one or two contumacious, at intervals, were delivered over to the executioner at a time.The institution whose victim I had become, looked for a richer and more abundant harvest from the well-known piety and zeal of his successor.
I pass over the rest of the years of my tedious imprisonment They had in them a sad and death-like uniformity. What surprising or agreeable adventures can be expected from a man closed up within the four walls of a dungeon? Yet it is not altogether the uniformity of this period that determines me not to dwell upon and expand it. Twelve years cannot pass in the life of man without many memorable incidents and occurrences. He that should be buried alive in the deepest cavern of the earth, if he were not an idiot, or incapable of the task of narration, and could subsist twelve years in that situation, could tell of things that occurred to him, that might fill the busy man of the world with thoughts and speculation almost to bursting. I might unfold the secrets of my prison-house, but that I will not. I refuse the consequences of that story both to my readers and myself. I have no inclination to drive the most delicate or susceptible of my readers mad with horrors. I could convince such, if such there are, who suppose my faculties were altogether benumbed or dead, that it was not so. I did indeed pass days, perhaps weeks, in a condition of that sort. But at other times my mind was roused, and became busy, restless, impatient, and inventive. There was no mode of escape that I did not ruminate upon or attempt; not to mention that, though my body was restrained, my mind occasionally soared to the furthest regions of the empyrean, or plunged into the deepest of the recesses in which nature conceals her operations. All systems of philosophising became familiar to me. I revolved every different fable that has been constructed respecting the invisible powers that superintend the events of the boundless universe; and I fearlessly traced out and developed the boldest conjectures and assertions of demonism or atheism. As the humour of the moment led me, I derived misery or consolation from each of these systems in their turn.—But memory, bitter memory, unperceived by its lord, is seizing my pen, and running away with my narrative. Enough, enough of the interior of the prison of the inquisition!
Philip the Second, king of Spain, succeeded to the throne of that monarchy about the close of the year 1555; but his affairs in England and the Netherlands long withheld him from visiting his beloved country, and he did not reach its shores, after a seven years’ absence, till the twenty-ninth of August, 1559. It may be thought that a public event of this sort could be little interesting to me, a forgotten prisoner, immured in the dungeons of the inquisition. The fact was otherwise. The king was desirous of distinguishing his arrival on his native soil by some splendid exhibition or memorable event, that should at once express his piety to God, and conduce to the felicity of his people: and he could think of nothing that so signally united these characters as anAuto de Fé. The Lutheran heresy, which in the course of forty years had spread its poison so widely in the different countries of Europe, had not failed to scatter a few of its noxious seeds even in this, the purest and most Catholic of all its divisions. But Philip had early proclaimed his hostility against this innovation; and, prostrating himself before the image of his Saviour, had earnestly besought the divine majesty, “that he might never suffer himself to be, or to be called, the lord of those in any corner of the globe, who should deny Him the Lord.” Previously to his arrival in Spain, directions had been given, and arrangements made, respecting the pious and solemn exhibition he demanded. Formerly those who by the fathers of the inquisition had been delivered over to the secular arm, had been executed in the different places where their crimes had been committed, or their trials been held: but now it was proposed that all those throughout the kingdom, who were found properly qualified to satisfy by their deaths the sublime taste of the royal saint, should be divided into two troops, and sent, the one to Seville, long the capital of an illustrious monarchy, and the other to Valladolid, which had the honour to be the birthplace of the present sovereign. The troop destined to feed theflames at Seville was composed of fifty persons, many of them distinguished for their rank, their talents, or their virtues. The troop to be escorted to Valladolid, of which I was a member, amounted only to thirty: but to compensate this deficiency, Philip himself had signified his gracious intention to be present, together with the heir apparent and his whole court, at that exhibition. The Spanish nation, rejoicing in the approach of a monarch who was born among them, whose manners and temper happily accorded with theirs, and whom they believed about to fix his perpetual residence in their land, expected him with all the longings of the most ardent attachment. We, the unhappy victims of pious and inquisitorial tyranny, also expected him. Our hearts did not pant with a less beating quickness; though our anxiety arose from emotions of a different nature.
Valladolid is distant from the metropolis eighty-four miles. We had already been some weeks prepared for this journey, and piously directed to hold ourselves in readiness to take our part in the solemn national sacrifice. We waited however to receive a previous notice of the day on which the monarch would enter the place of his birth, since so great was his royal zeal for the cause of religion and civil society, that he would not consent to be absent from any part of the spectacle; and accordingly it was not allowed us to enter the scene of our final destination, till the king of Spain and the Indies should be already on the spot, and prepared to receive us. Theauto da féperformed at Seville had the precedence of ours: it took place on the twenty-fourth of September; and we were indulged with an accurate account of it, and were present at a public reading of the record of the act, in the chapel of our prison, previously to our removal from the metropolis.
I will not enter into a minute detail of the scene of this reading, though the recollection will never be effaced from my memory. Of the persons present who were destined to suffer capital punishment, eight were women. Four of them were taken from a single family, being a grandmother, a mother, and two daughters of the noble house of Alcala. They had all been beautiful of person, and of a graceful figure; the youngest of the daughters was in the nineteenthyear of her age. Their crime, together with that of the majority of their fellow-sufferers, was obstinate and impenitent Lutheranism. The seats of the women were separated from the rest, and fronted with a close lattice. The men were twenty-two in number, and their appearance was truly impressive. Their persons were neglected, and their figures emaciated; their eyes were sunk and ghastly, and their complexions of a sallow and death-like white. Most of them were crippled by their long confinement and the severities they had endured, and were supported to their seats, upon an elevated scaffolding with benches raised one above another, by two apparators, one on each side of the condemned heretic. God of mercy and benevolence! is it possible that this scene should be regarded as thy triumph, and the execution destined to follow, as a sacrifice acceptable in thy sight? If these papers of mine are ever produced to light, may it not happen that they shall first be read by a distant posterity, who will refuse to believe that their fathers were ever mad enough to subject each other to so horrible a treatment, merely because they were unable to adopt each other’s opinions? Oh, no! human affairs, like the waves of the ocean, are merely in a state of ebb and flow: “there is nothing new under the sun:” two centuries perhaps after Philip the Second shall be gathered to his ancestors [he died in 1598], men shall learn over again to persecute each other for conscience sake; other anabaptists or levellers shall furnish pretexts for new persecutions; other inquisitors shall arise in the most enlightened tracts of Europe; and professors from their chair, sheltering their intolerance under the great names of Aristotle and Cicero, shall instruct their scholars, that a heterodox doctrine is the worst of crimes, and that the philanthropy and purity of heart in which it is maintained, only render its defenders the more worthy to be extirpated.
What were the ideas and reflections of my fellows, seated on the benches above, below, and on either side of me, I am unable to affirm; my own could not fail to be pungent and distressing. I understood continually more and more of the mysterious and unuttered history, of the stranger who died in the summer-house of the lake of Constance:I found that I was only acting over again what he had experienced before me. His legacies had served to involve me in the bitterest and most unheard of miseries, but were wholly destitute of ability to rescue from the evils themselves created. Unbounded wealth I found to have no power to bribe the dastard slaves of religious bigotry; and the elixir of immortality, though it could cure disease, and put to flight the approaches of age, was impotent to repel the fervour of devouring flames. I might have been happy——I was happy when the stranger found me. I might have lived to a virtuous and venerable old age, and have died in the arms of my posterity. The stranger had given me wealth, and I was now poorer than the peasant who wanders amidst polar snows. The stranger had given me immortality, and in a few days I was to expire in excruciating tortures. He found me tranquil, contented, in the midst of simple, yet inestimable pleasures; he breathed into me the restless sentiment of ambition; and it was that sentiment which at length had placed me on high in the chapel of the prison of the Catholic Inquisition.
Our progress to Valladolid was slow and solemn, and occupied a space of no less than four days. On the evening of the fourth day we approached that city. The king and his court came out to meet us. He saluted the inquisitor general with all the demonstrations of the deepest submission and humility; and then, having yielded him the place of honour, turned round his horse, and accompanied us to Valladolid. The cavalcade that attended the king broke into two files, and received us in the midst of them. The whole city seemed to empty itself on this memorable occasion; and the multitudes that crowded along the road, and were scattered in the neighbouring fields, were innumerable. The day was now closed; and the procession went forward amidst the light of a thousand torches. We, the condemned of the inquisition, had been conducted from the metropolis upon tumbrils; but, as we arrived at the gates of Valladolid, we were commanded, for the greater humiliation, to alight and proceed on foot to the place of our confinement, as many as could not walk without assistance being supported by the attendants. We wereneither chained nor bound; the practice of the inquisition being to deliver the condemned upon such occasions into the hands of two sureties each, who placed their charge in the middle between them; and men of the most respectable characters were accustomed from religious motives to sue for this melancholy office.
Dejected and despairing I entered the streets of the city, no object present to the eyes of my mind but that of my approaching execution. The crowd was vast; the confusion inexpressible. As we passed by the end of a narrow lane, the horse of one of the guards who rode exactly in a line with me, plunged and reared in a violent manner, and at length threw his rider upon the pavement. Others of the horse-guards attempted to catch the bridle of the enraged animal. They rushed against each other. Several of the crowd were thrown down, and trampled under the horses’ feet. The shrieks of these, and the loud cries and exclamations of the bystanders, mingled in confused and discordant chorus. No sound, no object could be distinguished. From the excess of the tumult a sudden thought darted into my mind, where all, an instant before, had been relaxation and despair. Two or three of the horses pushed forward in a particular direction. A moment after they resiled with equal violence, and left a wide, but transitory gap. My project was no sooner conceived than executed. Weak as I had just now felt myself, a supernatural tide of strength seemed to come over me. I sprung away with all imaginable impetuosity, and rushed down the lane I have just mentioned. Every one amidst the confusion was attentive to his personal safety, and several minutes elapsed before I was missed.
In the lane every thing was silent, and the darkness was extreme. Man, woman, and child were gone out to view the procession. For some time I could scarcely distinguish a single object; the doors and windows were all closed. I now chanced to come to an open door; within I saw noone but an old man, who was busy over some metallic work at a chafing-dish of fire. I had no room for choice; I expected every moment to hear the myrmidons of the inquisition at my heels. I rushed in; I impetuously closed the door, and bolted it; I then seized the old man by the collar of his shirt with a determined grasp, and swore vehemently that I would annihilate him that instant, if he did not consent to afford me assistance. Though for some time I had perhaps been feebler than he, the terror that now drove me on, rendered me comparatively a giant. He intreated me to permit him to breathe, and promised to do whatever I should desire. I looked round the apartment, and saw a rapier hanging against the wall, of which I instantly proceeded to make myself master. While I was doing this, my involuntary host, who was extremely terrified at my procedure, nimbly attempted to slip by me and rush into the street. With difficulty I caught hold of his arm, and, pulling him back, put the point of my rapier to his breast, solemnly assuring him that no consideration on earth should save him from my fury, if he attempted to escape a second time. He immediately dropped on his knees, and with the most piteous accents intreated me to spare his life. I told him that I was no robber, that I did not intend him the slightest harm, and that, if he would implicitly yield to my direction, he might assure himself he never should have reason to repent his compliance. By this declaration the terrors of the old man were somewhat appeased. I took the opportunity of this calm to go to the street door, which I instantly locked, and put the key in my bosom.
Nothing but the most fortunate concurrence of circumstances could have thus forwarded my escape. The rearing of the horse of the life-guardsman was purely accidental. The concourse and press of the crowd from all sides could alone have rendered this circumstance of any magnitude. The gap which was made by the pushing forwards and resiling of the horses continued barely long enough for me to spring through, and closed again in an instant. It is astonishing that the thought of escape should have thus suddenly darted into my mind, which, but a moment before,was in a state of dejection, equally incompatible with activity and with hope. That in the lane down which I rushed I should have met no human creature, and that the first open door I saw should lead to the residence of a decrepid old man, who appeared to be its single inhabitant, were occurrences equally extraordinary, yet seem to have been both indispensable to my safety. One point more concurred with this fortunate train, and assisted to still the palpitations of my beating heart: I perceived, by certain indications in the countenance of my host, that he was by parentage a Jew. I presently concluded, that he was what in Spain they denominate a new christian; for that otherwise he would not have been allowed to reside at large in a Spanish city. But, upon that supposition, I did not believe that christianity was very deeply mingled up in him with the vital principle: the converts of the inquisition are not conspicuous for their sincerity. Now, then, for the first time I thought, in the course of twelve years, I had opportunity to communicate with a man, whose soul was not enslaved to the blood-thirsty superstition of this devoted country. All I had seen during the period of my confinement were hyenas, tigers, and crocodiles—they were not men.
I had no sooner soothed my host into a temper to listen to my story, than I told him with all imaginable frankness whence I came, and to what I had been destined. The mention of sorcery however, and preternatural practices, I suppressed; for I suspected that persons of all religions entertained an equal horror against these. I suffered him to imagine that the allegation against me had been the crime of heresy: all sects of the christian superstition might be supposed equally obnoxious or acceptable to a Jew. I emphatically appealed to the persecutions which had been so long directed against the religion of his ancestors, and observed how disgraceful it would be in him to assist the operation of a principle, the effects of which his fathers had so deeply deplored, and so perfectly abhorred. I assured him that I would bring him into no danger, and that all I asked was the protection of a few hours: I would leave him in the course of the following day, and he should hear of me no more. I reminded him, that the danger he had to fear was in betraying, not in protecting me. The inquisitionlooked upon every new christian with an eye of the severest jealousy; and the mere fact, if known, that I had taken refuge in his house, would infallibly subject him to the purgation of a temporary imprisonment in their dungeons. It would be in vain for him to affirm that he had no choice in what had occurred; he was without a witness to confirm his relation, and the assertions of a man born of Jewish parents never obtained credit in the court of the inquisition. I added, with solemn asseverations, that the moment I set foot beyond the territory of Spain, I would remit to him the sum of six hundred pistoles as an acknowledgment for his kindness.
During the whole of my discourse, I watched his countenance with the utmost minuteness. It gradually relaxed from the terror which had at first appeared in it, to expressions of compassion and complacence. I saw nothing that ought to alarm me. When it was his turn to speak, he earnestly assured me that he took a warm interest in my story, and would cheerfully perform every thing I required. He was happy that my favourable stars had led me to his habitation, and would rejoice, to the latest hour of his existence, if they rendered him instrumental in preserving the life of a human being from so deplorable a catastrophe. While I talked to him, I easily perceived that the arguments I used, which produced the most sensible effect upon his features, were those of the dangers arising to him from betraying me, and the reward of six hundred pistoles which I promised him in the event of my success. His motives however were blended together in his mind; and he had no sooner formed a determination, grounded perhaps upon the meanest considerations, than he became eloquent in a panegyric of his own benevolence, by which he was not, I believe, more anxious to impose upon me, than to put the change upon himself. I considered all that he said, his gestures, and the very tones of his voice, with eager anxiety; the terror of the inquisition penetrated to the marrow in my bones; and the fate awarded against me by that court became inexpressibly more horrible to my thoughts, now that I saw the probability of escaping it. Every thing that I observed in the Jew was apparently fair, plausible,and encouraging; but nothing had power to quell the agitations of my apprehensive soul.
We were still engaged in discussing the topics I have mentioned, when I was suddenly alarmed by the noise of some one stirring in the inner apartment. I had looked into this room, and had perceived nothing but the bed upon which the old man nightly reposed himself. I sprung up however at the sound, and, perceiving that the door had a bolt on the outside, I eagerly fastened it. I then turned to Mordecai, such previously to his conversion had been the name of my host: “Wretch,” said I, “did not you assure me that there was no one but yourself in the house?” “Oh,” cried Mordecai, “it is my child! it is my child! she went into the inner apartment, and has fallen asleep on the bed.” “Beware!” I answered; “the slightest falsehood more shall instantly be expiated in your blood.” “I call Abraham to witness,” rejoined the once more terrified Jew, “it is my child! only my child!” “Tell me,” cried I, with severity of accent, “how old is this child?” “Only five years,” said Mordecai: “my dear Leah died when her babe was no more than a year old; and, though we had several children, this single one has survived her.” “Speak to your child; let me hear her voice!” He spoke to her, and she answered, “Father, I want to come out.” I was satisfied it was the voice of a little girl. I turned to the Jew: “Take care,” said I, “how you deceive me now; is there no other person in that room?” He imprecated a curse on himself if there were: I opened the door with caution, and the little girl came forward. As soon as I saw her, I seized her with a rapid motion, and retired back to a chair. “Man,” said I, “you have trifled with me too rashly; you have not considered what I am escaped from, and what I have to fear; from this moment this child shall be the pledge of my safety; I will not part with her an instant as long as I remain in your house; and with this rapier in my hand I will pierce her to the heart, the moment I am led to imagine that I am no longer in safety.” The Jew trembled at my resolution; the emotions of a father worked in his features, and glistened in his eye. “At least let me kiss her!” said he. “Be it so!” repliedI: “one embrace, and then, till the dawn of the coming day, she remains with me.” I released my hold; the child rushed to her father, and he caught her in his arms. “My dear Leah,” cried Mordecai, “now a sainted spirit in the bosom of our father Abraham! I call God to witness between us, that, if all my caution and vigilance can prevent it, not a hair of this child shall be injured! Stranger, you little know by how strong a motive you have now engaged me to your cause. We poor Jews, hunted on the face of the earth, the abhorrence and execration of mankind, have nothing but family affections to support us under our multiplied disgraces; and family affections are entwined with our existence, the fondest and best-loved part of ourselves. The God of Abraham bless you, my child! Now, sir, speak! what is it you require of me?”
I told the Jew that I must have a suit of clothes conformable to the appearance of a Spanish cavalier, and certain medical ingredients that I named to him, together with his chafing-dish of coals to prepare them; and, that done, I would then impose on him no further trouble. Having received his instructions, he immediately set out to procure what I demanded. He took with him the key of the house; and, as soon as he was gone, I retired with the child into the inner apartment, and fastened the door. At first I applied myself to tranquillise the child, who had been somewhat alarmed at what she had heard and seen: this was no very difficult task. She presently left me, to amuse herself with some playthings that lay scattered in a corner of the apartment. My heart was now comparatively at ease; I saw the powerful hold I had on the fidelity of the Jew, and firmly persuaded myself that I had no treachery to fear on his part. Thus circumstanced, the exertion and activity with which I had lately been imbued left me; and I insensibly sunk into a sort of slumber.
The night was now far advanced, and I was still reclined insensible upon Mordecai’s bed, when suddenly a jargon of various sounds seemed from all sides to assail me. My mind was confused; I heard something, but seemed wholly unconscious what I was, and where. I wanted to escape from the disturbance; but it continued, and even increased.At length I was forced to command my attention; and the first thing I perceived was a beating at the door of the chamber. The little girl was come to the bedside, and endeavouring to shake me. “Sir, sir,” she cried in an eager accent, “my father wants to come in, and I cannot slip the bolt of the door.” By slow degrees I began to comprehend my situation, and to recollect what had happened immediately before. I felt greatly alarmed; I feared by the disturbance that Mordecai had not returned alone. I essayed to speak; my organs refused their office. I endeavoured to move; my limbs felt palsied, and absolutely lifeless. I experienced a sinking and sickness of heart that seemed to be the immediate precursor of death. By listening occasionally to the discourse which the father and the daughter began to hold with each other, I became satisfied that Mordecai was without a companion. I endeavoured to make the little girl understand that I was incapable of rising from the bed; and, having at length succeeded, she communicated the information to her father. With considerable trouble he loosened the door at its hinges, and entered the room. I found myself in the extremest degree feeble and languid; the Jew however assiduously administered to me of cordials he had in his possession, and by degrees I felt myself considerably restored.
Now, for the first time, I was at leisure to attend to the state of my strength and my health. My confinement in the inquisition, and the treatment I had experienced, had before rendered me feeble, and almost helpless; but these appeared to be circumstances scarcely worthy of attention, in the situation in which I was then placed. The impulse I felt, in the midst of the confusion in the grand street of Valladolid, produced in me an energy and power of exertion which nothing but the actual experience of the fact could have persuaded me was possible. This energy, once begun, appeared to have the faculty of prolonging itself; and I did not relapse into imbecility, till the occasion seemed to be exhausted which called for my exertion. I examined myself by a mirror with which Mordecai furnished me: I found my hair as white as snow, and my face ploughed with a thousand furrows. I was now fifty-four, an age which,with moderate exercise and a vigorous constitution, often appears like the prime of human existence; but whoever had looked upon me in my present condition, would not have hesitated to affirm that I had reached the eightieth year of my age. I examined with dispassionate remark the state of my intellect: I was persuaded that it had subsided into childishness. My mind had been as much cribbed and immured as my body. I was the mere shadow of a man, of no more power and worth than that which a magic lantern produces upon a wall. These are thy works, Superstition!—this the genuine and proper operation of what is called Christianity! Let the reader judge of what I had passed through and known within those cursed walls by the effects; I have already refused, I continue to refuse, to tell what I suffered, and how those effects were produced. Enough of compassion, enough of complaint: I will confine myself, as far as I am able, to simple history.
Being recovered, as far as the cordials and attention of Mordecai were capable of recovering me, I desired for the remainder of the night to be alone, except that I was still resolved to retain the little Jewess as the pledge of my safety. I was greatly obliged to my host for the punctuality he had already displayed: he had found considerable difficulty in procuring the articles of which I stood in need, owing partly to the lateness of the hour, and partly to the presence of the king, and the general hurry and confusion which had been produced by the solemn entry of the inquisition. His efforts too to recover me from the languor and lethargy into which I had sunk, had a character of generosity; and perhaps I ought now to have trusted him without a hostage. But my heart was too earnestly bent upon accomplishing its present object, to afford harbour to the punctilios of delicacy. The same earnestness caused me to insist upon Mordecai’s repairing the injury which the hinges of the door had sustained; and I was careful to satisfy myself that every thing was restored to a state of perfect security.
I was now once again alone. The little girl, who had been unusually disturbed, and roused at an unseasonable hour, sunk into a profound sleep. I heard the noise whichMordecai made in undressing himself, and composing his limbs upon a mattrass, which he had dragged for the present occasion into the front room, and spread before the hearth. I soon found by the hardness of his breathing that he also was asleep. I unfolded the papers he had brought me; they consisted of various medical ingredients I had directed him to procure; there were also two or three vials, containing syrups and essences. I had near me a pair of scales with which to weigh my ingredients; a vessel of water; the chafing-dish of my host, in which the fire was nearly extinguished; and a small taper, with some charcoal to relight the fire, in case of necessity. While I was occupied in surveying these articles and arranging my materials, a sort of torpor came suddenly over me, so as to allow me no time for resistance. I sunk upon the bed. I remained thus for about half an hour, seemingly without the power of collecting my thoughts. At length I started, felt alarmed, and applied my utmost force of mind to rouse my exertions. While I drove, or attempted to drive, my animal spirits from limb to limb, and from part to part, as if to enquire into the general condition of my frame, I became convinced that I was dying. Let not the reader be surprised at this: twelve years’ imprisonment, in a narrow and unwholesome cell, may well account for so sudden a catastrophe. Strange and paradoxical as it may seem, I believe it will be found in the experiment that the calm and security which succeed to great internal injuries are more dangerous than the pangs and hardships that went before. I was now thoroughly alarmed: I applied myself, with all vigilance and expedition to the compounding my materials. The fire was gone out; the taper was glimmering in the socket: to swallow the julep when I had prepared it, seemed to be the last effort of which my organs and muscles were capable. It was the elixir of immortality, exactly made up according to the prescription of the stranger.
Whether from the potency of the medicine, or the effect of imagination, I felt revived the moment I had swallowed it. I placed myself deliberately in Mordecai’s bed, and drew over me the bed-clothes. I fell asleep almost instantly. I believe my first sleep wasperfectly sound and insensible; but in no long time I was visited with the pleasantest dreams imaginable. Nothing was distinct; nothing was attended with the consciousness of my former identity; but every thing was gay, cheerful, invigorating, and delicious. I wandered amidst verdant lawns, and flower-enamelled gardens. I was saluted with the singing of a thousand birds, and the murmuring of a thousand fountains. Kids, fawns, and lambs frisked and gamboled before me. At a distance, through an opening in the trees, I discerned nymphs and their swains dancing a variety of antic measures. I advanced towards them; they approached towards me. Fifes, oboes, recorders, and instruments of a hundred names, commenced a cheerful and melodious concert. Myself and the dancers now were met; they placed me in the midst of them. They began a choral song; the motion of their limbs conformed to their numbers. I was the theme of the general chaunt; they ascribed to me the beauty of Apollo, the strength of Hercules, the invention of Mercury, and the youth of Bacchus.
My sleep was not long; in a few hours I awakened. With difficulty I recognised the objects about me, and recollected where I had been. It seemed to me that my heart had never beat so vigorously, nor my spirits flowed so gay. I was all elasticity and life; I could scarcely hold myself quiet; I felt impelled to bound and leap like a kid upon the mountains. I perceived that my little Jewess was still asleep; she had been unusually fatigued the night before. I know not whether Mordecai’s hour of rising were come; if it were, he was careful not to disturb his guest. I put on the garments he had prepared; I gazed upon the mirror he had left in my apartment. I can recollect no sensation in the course of my life, so unexpected and surprising as what I felt at that moment. The evening before, I had seen my hair white, and my face ploughed with furrows; I looked fourscore. What I beheld now was totally different, yet altogether familiar; it was myself, myself as I had appeared on the day of my marriage with Marguerite de Damville; the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the complexion, every circumstance, point by point, the same. I leaped a gulf of thirty-two years. Iwaked from a dream, troublesome and distressful beyond all description; but it vanished, like the shades of night upon the burst of a glorious morning in July, and left not a trace behind. I knew not how to take away my eyes from the mirror before me.
I soon began to consider that, if it were astonishing to me that, through all the regions of my countenance, I could discover no trace of what I had been the night before, it would be still more astonishing to my host. This sort of sensation I had not the smallest ambition to produce: one of the advantages of the metamorphosis I had sustained, consisted in its tendency, in the eyes of all that saw me, to cut off every species of connection between my present and my former self. It fortunately happened that the room in which I slept, being constructed upon the model of many others in Spain, had a stair at the further end, with a trap-door in the ceiling, for the purpose of enabling the inhabitant to ascend on the roof in the cool of the day. The roofs were flat, and so constructed, that there was little difficulty in passing along them from house to house, from one end of the street to the other. I availed myself of the opportunity, and took leave of the residence of my land host in a way perfectly unceremonious, determined however speedily to transmit to him the reward I had promised. It may easily be believed that Mordecai was not less rejoiced at the absence of a guest whom the vigilance of the inquisition rendered an uncommonly dangerous one, than I was to quit his habitation. I closed the trap after me, and clambered from roof to roof to a considerable distance. At length I encountered the occasion of an open window, and fortunately descended, unseen by any human being, into the street. Having with difficulty succeeded, on this occasion of public solemnity, in engaging an apartment in one of the hotels of Valladolid, I sent into it, as soon as I was able, a chest, containing every necessary of apparel, and particularly a suit of clothes. I then changed my dress, and threw the clothes which Mordecai had provided into the chest I had purchased. As long as they continued safely locked up, and the key in my possession, no faculty possessed by any human creature could detect my identity, and expose me afresh to my former jailors. The onlyperil under which I had before laboured, was from Mordecai, who, if he had seen me in the garments he had procured, might have recognised them; and, though a peril from this source came barely within the limits of possibility, it was easily avoided, and I therefore chose to avoid it.
I passed the whole of this day in a species of enjoyment, which, as it has no parallel in the ordinary transactions of mankind, so are there no terms in the received languages of the world that are adequate to the description of it. It has often been a subject of melancholy and complaint among mortals, that, while the whole vegetable system contains in it a principle of perpetual renewal, man alone,—the ornament and lord of the universe, man,—knows no return to youth. When the sun declines in the west, the flowers droop, and fold up their frail and delicate leaves; but soon the eyelids of the morn are again opened, and again they rejoice in his invigorating beams. Upon the approach of winter, the beech, the ash, and the monarch-oak, scatter their withered foliage over the plains; but spring reappears, and nakedness is no longer their reproach, and they clothe themselves anew in their leafy honours. With what a melancholy sensation does the old man survey his decaying limbs! To me, he cries, there is no second morning, and no returning spring. My head, pressed down with years, shall never again erect itself in conscious manhood. These hoary locks shall no more be adorned with the auburn of glossy youth. My weather-beaten trunk shall at no time clothe itself with a smoother rind. A recruited marrow shall never fill these bones, nor a more vigorous sap circulate through my unstrung limbs. I recollect what I was in the prime of manhood, with vain regrets; the memory answers no other end than to torment and upbraid me.
The useless wish of the old man, the object of his hopeless sigh, was mine. Common and every-day blessings have little value in the eye of their possessor. The young man squanders the endowments of youth, and knows not to prize them. If the young man had once been old, if the old man could again be young, then, and then only, they would justly estimate their wealth. The springy limb, the bounding frame, the vigour that sets fatigue at defiance, andrevels in pleasures unexhausted, would then by the near and conscious comparison, of feebleness and lassitude, the drooping limb, the aching head, and the frame decayed in all its senses, be well understood. Such was my situation. Yesterday I was fourscore; to-day I was twenty. Yesterday I was a prisoner, crippled in every articulation; to-day I was a citizen of the world, capable of all its delights. To-morrow I was destined to have been dragged to the stake with ignominy, and to suffer intolerable anguish amidst the shouts and huzzas of an unfeeling populace; to-morrow I was at liberty to employ as I pleased, to choose the theatre upon which it should be spent, and the gratifications that should be crowded into it. What was most material, my mind was grown young with my body. Weary of eternal struggle, I had lately resigned the contest, and sunk under the ill-fortune that relentlessly pursued me. Now I felt within me a superfluity of vigour; I panted for something to contend with, and something to conquer. My senses unfolded themselves to all the curiosity of remark; my thoughts seemed capable of industry unwearied, and investigation the most constant and invincible. Ambition revived in my bosom; I longed for new engagements and new relations; I desired to perform something, that I might myself regard with complacence, and that I might see the world start at and applaud.
I determined, for reasons that I shall presently have occasion to unfold, that my first visit should be to my daughters at my paternal estate of St. Leon. I proposed to spend two or three days in preparations for this journey. By mere accident, by a most censurable heedlessness, I became in some degree a spectator of theauto da féin which I was destined to have been a victim. Unawares I had become entangled in the crowd, and could with difficulty escape, or even prevent my being carried nearer the centre of the scene. I saw the galleries and accommodations that had been erected for the spectators: I saw the windows and roofs of the houses crowded with beholders. The shrieks of the sufferers I could not hear; they were drowned in the infernal exultations of the multitude. But what was worst of all, I discerned some of the condemned, fixed as theywere upon small boards, near the top of stakes about four yards high, and therefore greatly above the heads of the assembly, while the flames, abundantly fed with faggots and dry fuel, climbed aloft, and seemed eager to embrace their victims. As I have already said, there were thirty of these death-devoted frames; and, if my eye did not count them all, my fancy well supplied what sense was unable to discover. The impression I felt at that moment was horrible beyond all conception. I exerted my new-found strength, and pushed out of the press with irresistible vigour. If at that instant I could have felt exultation, even in the consciousness of my own safety, I should regard myself as the most execrable of monsters.