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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Calderon The Courtier, by Lytton, Complete
+#202 in our series by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+Title: Calderon The Courtier, A Tale, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: January 2006  [EBook #9762]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 9, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CALDERON, BY LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger  [widger@cecomet.net]
+
+
+
+
+
+                       CALDERON, THE COURTIER
+
+                                BY
+
+                       EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+CHAPTER I.    The Antechamber,
+
+CHAPTER II.   The Lover and the Confidant
+
+CHAPTER III.  A Rival
+
+CHAPTER IV.   Civil Ambition, and Ecclesiastical
+
+CHAPTER V.    The true Fate of Morgana
+
+CHAPTER VI.   Web upon Web
+
+CHAPTER VII.  The open Countenance, the concealed Thoughts
+
+CHAPTER VIII. The Escape
+
+CHAPTER IX.  The Counterplot
+
+CHAPTER X.    We reap what we sow
+
+CHAPTER XI.   Howsoever the Rivers wind, the Ocean receives them All
+
+
+
+
+CALDERON, THE COURTIER.
+
+A TALE.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE ANTE-CHAMBER.
+
+The Tragi-Comedy of Court Intrigue, which had ever found its principal
+theatre in Spain since the accession of the House of Austria to the
+throne, was represented with singular complication of incident and
+brilliancy of performance during the reign of Philip the Third.  That
+monarch, weak, indolent, and superstitious, left the reins of government
+in the hands of the Duke of Lerma.  The Duke of Lerma, in his turn, mild,
+easy, ostentatious, and shamefully corrupt, resigned the authority he had
+thus received to Roderigo Calderon, an able and resolute upstart, whom
+nature and fortune seemed equally to favour and endow.  But, not more to
+his talents, which were great, than to the policy of religious
+persecution which he had supported and enforced, Roderigo Calderon owed
+his promotion.  The King and the Inquisition had, some years before our
+story opens, resolved upon the general expulsion of the Moriscos the
+wealthiest, the most active, the most industrious portion of the
+population.
+
+"I would sooner," said the bigoted king--and his words were hallowed by
+the enthusiasm of the Church--"depopulate my kingdom than suffer it to
+harbour a single infidel."  The Duke de Lerma entered into the scheme
+that lost to Spain many of her most valuable subjects, with the zeal of
+a pious Catholic expectant of the Cardinal's hat, which he afterwards
+obtained.  But to this scheme Calderon brought an energy, a decision, a
+vehemence, and sagacity of hatred, that savoured more of personal
+vengeance than religious persecution.  His perseverance in this good work
+established him firmly in the king's favour; and in this he was supported
+by the friendship not only of Lerma, but of Fray Louis de Aliaga, a
+renowned Jesuit, and confessor to the king.  The disasters and distresses
+occasioned by this barbarous crusade, which crippled the royal revenues,
+and seriously injured the estates of the principal barons, from whose
+lands the industrious and intelligent Moriscos were expelled, ultimately
+concentred a deep and general hatred upon Calderon.  But his
+extraordinary address and vigorous energies, his perfect mastery of the
+science of intrigue, not only sustained, but continued to augment, his
+power.  Though the king was yet in the prime of middle age, his health
+was infirm and his life precarious.  Calderon had contrived, while
+preserving the favour of the reigning monarch, to establish himself as
+the friend and companion of the heir apparent.  In this, indeed, he had
+affected to yield to the policy of the king himself; for Philip the Third
+had a wholesome terror of the possible ambition of his son, who early
+evinced talents which might have been formidable, but for passions which
+urged him into the most vicious pleasures and the most extravagant
+excesses.  The craft of the king was satisfied by the device of placing
+about the person of the Infant one devoted to himself; nor did his
+conscience, pious as he was, revolt at the profligacy which his favourite
+was said to participate, and, perhaps, to encourage; since the less
+popular the prince, the more powerful the king.
+
+But all this while there was formed a powerful cabal against both the
+Duke of Lerma and Don Roderigo Calderon in a quarter where it might least
+have been anticipated.  The cardinal-duke, naturally anxious to cement
+and perpetuate his authority, had placed his son, the Duke d'Uzeda, in a
+post that gave him constant access to the monarch.  The prospect of power
+made Uzeda eager to seize at once upon all its advantages; and it became
+the object of his life to supplant his father.  This would have been easy
+enough but for the genius and vigilance of Calderon, whom he hated as a
+rival, disdained as an upstart, and dreaded as a foe.  Philip was soon
+aware of the contest between the two factions, but, in the true spirit of
+Spanish kingcraft he took care to play one against the other.  Nor could
+Calderon, powerful as he was, dare openly to seek the ruin of Uzeda;
+while Uzeda, more rash, and, perhaps, more ingenuous, entered into a
+thousand plots for the downfall of the prime favourite.
+
+The frequent missions, principally into Portugal, in which of late
+Calderon had been employed, had allowed Uzeda to encroach more and more
+upon the royal confidence; while the very means which Don Roderigo had
+adopted to perpetuate his influence, by attaching himself to the prince,
+necessarily distracted his attention from the intrigues of his rival.
+Perhaps, indeed, the greatness of Calderon's abilities made him too
+arrogantly despise the machinations of the duke, who, though not without
+some capacities as a courtier, was wholly incompetent to those duties of
+a minister on which he had set his ambition and his grasp.
+
+Such was the state of parties in the Court of Philip the Third at the
+time in which we commence our narrative in the ante-chamber of Don
+Roderigo Calderon.
+
+"It is not to be endured," said Don Felix de Castro, an old noble, whose
+sharp features and diminutive stature proclaimed the purity of his blood
+and the antiquity of his descent.
+
+"Just three-quarters of an hour and five minutes have I waited for
+audience to a fellow who would once have thought himself honoured if I
+had ordered him to call my coach," said Don Diego Sarmiento de Mendo.
+
+"Then, if it chafe you so much, gentlemen, why come you here at all?  I
+dare say Don Roderigo can dispense with your attendance."
+
+This was said bluntly by a young noble of good mien, whose impetuous and
+irritable temperament betrayed itself by an impatience of gesture and
+motion unusual amongst his countrymen.  Sometimes he walked, with uneven
+strides, to and fro the apartments, unheeding the stately groups whom he
+jostled, or the reproving looks that he attracted; sometimes he paused
+abruptly, raised his eyes, muttered, twitched his cloak, or played with
+his sword-knot; or, turning abruptly round upon his solemn neighbours, as
+some remark on his strange bearing struck his ear, brought the blood to
+many a haughty cheek by his stern gaze of defiance and disdain.  It was
+easy to perceive that this personage belonged to the tribe--rash, vain,
+and young--who are eager to take offence, and to provoke quarrel.
+Nevertheless, the cavalier had noble and great qualities.  A stranger to
+courts, in the camp he was renowned for a chivalrous generosity and an
+extravagant valour, that emulated the ancient heroes of Spanish romaunt
+and song.  His was a dawn that promised a hot noon and a glorious eve.
+The name of this brave soldier was Martin Fonseca.  He was of an ancient
+but impoverished house, and related in a remote degree to the Duke de
+Lerma.  In his earliest youth he had had cause to consider himself the
+heir to a wealthy uncle on his mother's side; and with those
+expectations, while still but a boy, he had been invited to court by
+the cardinal-duke.  Here, however, the rude and blunt sincerity of his
+bearing had so greatly shocked the formal hypocrisies of the court, and
+had more than once so seriously offended the minister, that his powerful
+kinsman gave up all thought of pushing Fonseca's fortunes at Madrid, and
+meditated some plausible excuse for banishing him from court.  At this
+time the rich uncle, hitherto childless, married a second time, and was
+blessed with an heir.  It was no longer necessary to keep terms with Don
+Martin; and he suddenly received an order to join the army on the
+frontiers.  Here his courage soon distinguished him; but his honest
+nature still stood in the way of his promotion.  Several years elapsed,
+and his rise had been infinitely slower than that of men not less
+inferior to him in birth than merit.  Some months since, he had repaired
+to Madrid to enforce his claims upon the government; but instead of
+advancing his suit, he had contrived to effect a serious breach with the
+cardinal, and been abruptly ordered back to the camp.  Once more he
+appeared at Madrid; but this time it was not to plead desert and demand
+honours.
+
+In any country but Spain under the reign of Philip the Third, Martin
+Fonseca would have risen early to high fortunes.  But, as we have said,
+his talents were not those of the flatterer or the hypocrite; and it was
+a matter of astonishment to the calculators round him to see Don Martin
+Fonseca in the ante-room of Roderigo Calderon, Count Oliva, Marquis de
+Siete Iglesias, secretary to the King, and parasite and favourite of the
+Infant of Spain.
+
+"Why come you here at all?" repeated the young soldier.
+
+"Senor," answered Don Felix de Castro, with great gravity, "we have
+business with Don Roderigo.  Men of our station must attend to the
+affairs of the state, no matter by whom transacted."
+
+"That is, you must crawl on your knees to ask for pensions and
+governorships, and transact the affairs of the state by putting your
+hands into its coffers."
+
+"Senor!" growled Don Felix, angrily, as his hand played with his sword-
+belt.
+
+"Tush!" said the young man, scornfully turning on his heel.
+
+The folding-doors were thrown open, and all conversation ceased at the
+entrance of Don Roderigo Calderon.
+
+This remarkable personage had risen from the situation of a confidential
+scribe to the Duke of Lerma to the nominal rank of secretary to the King
+--to the real station of autocrat of Spain.  The birth of the favourite
+of fortune was exceedingly obscure.  He had long affected to conceal it;
+but when he found curiosity had proceeded into serious investigation of
+his origin, he had suddenly appeared to make a virtue of necessity;
+proclaimed of his own accord that his father was a common soldier of
+Valladolid, and even invited to Madrid, and lodged in his own palace, his
+low-born progenitor.  This prudent frankness disarmed malevolence on the
+score of birth.  But when the old soldier died, rumours went abroad that
+he had confessed on his death-bed that he was not in any way related to
+Calderon; that he had submitted to an imposture which secured to his old
+age so respectable and luxurious an asylum; and that he knew not for what
+end Calderon had forced upon him the honours of spurious parentship.
+This tale, which, ridiculed by most, was yet believed by some, gave rise
+to darker reports concerning one on whom the eyes of all Spain were
+fixed.  It was supposed that he had some motive beyond that of shame at
+their meanness, to conceal his real origin and name.  What could be that
+motive, if not the dread of discovery for some black and criminal offence
+connected with his earlier youth, and for which he feared the prosecution
+of the law?  They who affected most to watch his exterior averred that
+often, in his gayest revels and proudest triumphs, his brow would lower
+--his countenance change--and it was only by a visible and painful effort
+that he could restore his mind to its self-possession.  His career, which
+evinced an utter contempt for the ordinary rules and scruples that curb
+even adventurers into a seeming of honesty and virtue, appeared in some
+way to justify these reports.  But, at times, flashes of sudden and
+brilliant magnanimity broke forth to bewilder the curious, to puzzle the
+examiners of human character, and to contrast the general tenor of his
+ambitions and remorseless ascent to power.  His genius was confessed by
+all; but it was a genius that in no way promoted the interests of his
+country.  It served only to prop, defend, and advance himself--to battle
+difficulties--to defeat foes--to convert every accident, every chance,
+into new stepping stones in his course.  Whatever his birth, it was
+evident that he had received every advantage of education; and scholars
+extolled his learning and boasted of his patronage.  While, more
+recently, if the daring and wild excesses of the profligate prince were,
+on the one hand, popularly imputed to the guidance of Calderon, and
+increased the hatred generally conceived against him, so, on the other
+hand, his influence over the future monarch seemed to promise a new lease
+to his authority, and struck fear into the councils of his foes.  In
+fact, the power of the upstart marquis appeared so firmly rooted, the
+career before him so splendid, that there were not wanted whisperers who,
+in addition to his other crimes, ascribed to Roderigo Calderon the
+assistance of the black art.  But the black art in which that subtle
+courtier was a proficient is one that dispenses with necromancy.  It was
+the art of devoting the highest intellect to the most selfish purposes--
+an art that thrives tolerably well for a time in the great world!
+
+He had been for several weeks absent from Madrid on a secret mission; and
+to this, his first public levee, on his return, thronged all the rank and
+chivalry of Spain.
+
+The crowd gave way, as, with haughty air, in the maturity of manhood, the
+Marquis de Siete Iglesias moved along.  He disdained all accessories of
+dress to enhance the effect of his singularly striking exterior.  His
+mantle and vest of black cloth, made in the simplest fashion, were
+unadorned with the jewels that then constituted the ordinary insignia of
+rank.  His hair, bright and glossy as the raven's plume, curled back from
+the lofty and commanding brow, which, save by one deep wrinkle between
+the eyes, was not only as white but as smooth as marble.  His features
+were aquiline and regular; and the deep olive of his complexion seemed
+pale and clear when contrasted by the rich jet of the moustache and
+pointed beard.  The lightness of his tall and slender but muscular form
+made him appear younger than he was; and had it not been for the
+supercilious and scornful arrogance of air which so seldom characterises
+gentle birth, Calderon might have mingled with the loftiest magnates of
+Europe and seemed to the observer the stateliest of the group.  It was
+one of those rare forms that are made to command the one sex and
+fascinate the other.  But, on a deeper scrutiny, the restlessness of the
+brilliant eye--the quiver of the upper lip--a certain abruptness of
+manner and speech, might have shown that greatness had brought suspicion
+as well as pride.  The spectators beheld the huntsman on the height;--the
+huntsman saw the abyss below, and respired with difficulty the air above.
+
+The courtiers one by one approached the marquis, who received them with
+very unequal courtesy.  To the common herd he was sharp, dry, and bitter;
+to the, great he was obsequious, yet with a certain grace and manliness
+of bearing that elevated even the character of servility; and all the
+while, as he bowed low to a Medina or a Guzman, there was a half
+imperceptible mockery lurking in the corners of his mouth, which seemed
+to imply that while his policy cringed his heart despised.  To two or
+three, whom he either personally liked or honestly esteemed, he was
+familiar, but brief, in his address; to those whom he had cause to detest
+or to dread--his foes, his underminers--he assumed a yet greater
+frankness, mingled with the most caressing insinuation of voice and
+manner.
+
+Apart from the herd, with folded arms, and an expression of countenance
+in which much admiration was blent with some curiosity and a little
+contempt, Don Martin Fonseca gazed upon the favourite.
+
+"I have done this man a favour," thought he; "I have contributed towards
+his first rise--I am now his suppliant.  Faith!  I, who have never found
+sincerity or gratitude in the camp, come to seek those hidden treasures
+at a court!  Well, we are strange puppets, we mortals!"
+
+Don Diego Sarmiento de Mendoza had just received the smiling salutation
+of Calderon, when the eye of the latter fell upon the handsome features
+of Fonseca.  The blood mounted to his brow; he hastily promised Don Diego
+all that he desired, and hurrying back through the crowd, retired to his
+private cabinet.  The levee was broken up.
+
+As Fonseca, who had caught the glance of the secretary, and who drew no
+favourable omen from his sudden evanishment, slowly turned to depart with
+the rest, a young man, plainly dressed, touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"You are Senior Don Martin Fonseca?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Follow me, if it please you, senor, to my master, Lou Roderigo
+Calderon."
+
+Fonseca's face brightened; he obeyed the summons; and in another moment
+he was in the cabinet of the Sejanus of Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE LOVER AND THE CONFIDANT.
+
+Calderon received the young soldier at the door of his chamber with
+marked and almost affectionate respect.  "Don Martin," said he, and there
+seemed a touch of true feeling in the tremor of his rich sweet voice, "I
+owe you the greatest debt one man can incur to another--it was your hand
+that set before my feet their first stepping-stone to power.  I date my
+fortunes from the hour in which I was placed in your father's house as
+your preceptor.  When the cardinal-duke invited you to Madrid, I was your
+companion; and when, afterwards, you joined the army, and required no
+longer the services of the peaceful scholar, you demanded of your
+illustrious kinsman the single favour--to provide for Calderon.  I had
+already been fortunate enough to win the countenance of the duke, and
+from that day my rise was rapid.  Since then we have never met.  Dare I
+hope that it is now in the power of Calderon to prove himself not
+ungrateful?"
+
+"Yes," said Fonseca, eagerly; "it is in your power to save me from the
+most absolute wretchedness that can befall me.  It is in your power, at
+least I think so, to render me the happiest of men!"
+
+"Be seated, I pray you, senor.  And how?  I am your servant."
+
+"Thou knowest," said Fonseca, "that, though the kinsman, I am not the
+favourite, of the Duke of Lerma?"
+
+"Nay, nay," interrupted Calderon, softly, and with a bland smile; "you
+misunderstand my illustrious patron: he loves you, but not your
+indiscretions."
+
+"Yes, honesty is very indiscreet!  I cannot stoop to the life of the
+ante-chamber.  I cannot, like the Duke of Lerma, detest my nearest
+relative if his shadow cross the line of my interests.  I am of the race
+of Pelayo, not Oppas; and my profession, rather that of an ancient
+Persian than a modern Spaniard, is to manage the steed, to wield the
+sword, and to speak the truth."
+
+There was an earnestness and gallantry in the young man's aspect, manner,
+and voice, as he thus spoke, which afforded the strongest contrast to the
+inscrutable brow and artificial softness of Calderon; and which, indeed,
+for the moment, occasioned that crafty and profound adventurer an
+involuntary feeling of self-humiliation.
+
+"But," continued Fonseca, "let this pass: I come to my story and my
+request.  Do you, or do you not know, that I have been for some time
+attached to Beatriz Coello!"
+
+"Beatriz," replied Calderon, abstractedly, with an altered countenance,
+"it is a sweet name--it was my mother's!"
+
+"Your mother's!  I thought to have heard her name was Mary Sandalen?"
+
+"True--Mary Beatriz Sandalen," replied Calderon, indifferently.  "But
+proceed.  I heard, after your last visit to Madrid, when, owing to my own
+absence in Portugal, I was not fortunate enough to see you, that you had
+offended the duke by desiring an alliance unsuitable to your birth.  Who,
+then, is this Beatriz Coello?"
+
+"An orphan of humble origin and calling.  In infancy she was left to the
+care of a woman who, I believe, had been her nurse; they were settled in
+Seville, and the old gouvernante's labours in embroidery maintained them
+both till Beatriz was fourteen.  At that time the poor woman was disabled
+by a stroke of palsy from continuing her labours, and Beatriz, good
+child, yearning to repay the obligation she had received, in her turn
+sought to maintain her protectress.  She possessed the gift of a voice
+wonderful for its sweetness.  This gift came to the knowledge of the
+superintendent of the theatre at Seville: he made her the most
+advantageous proposals to enter upon the stage.  Beatriz; innocent child,
+was unaware of the perils of that profession: she accepted eagerly the
+means that would give comfort to the declining life of her only friend--
+she became an actress.  At that time we were quartered in Seville, to
+keep guard on the suspected Moriscos."
+
+"Ah, the hated infidels!" muttered Calderon, fiercely, through his teeth.
+
+"I saw Beatriz, and loved her at first sight.  I do not say," added
+Fonseca, with a blush, "that my suit, at the outset, was that which alone
+was worthy of her; but her virtue soon won my esteem as well as love.  I
+left Seville to seek my father and obtain his consent to a marriage with
+Beatriz.  You know a hidalgo's prejudices--they are insuperable.
+Meanwhile, the fame of the beauty and voice of the young actress reached
+Madrid, and hither she was removed from Seville by royal command.  To
+Madrid, then, I hastened, on the pretence of demanding promotion.  You,
+as you have stated, were absent in Portugal on some state mission.  I
+sought the Duke de Lerma.  I implored him to give me some post, anywhere
+--I recked not beneath what sky, in the vast empire of Spain--in which,
+removed from the prejudices of birth and of class, and provided with
+other means, less precarious than those that depend on the sword, I might
+make Beatriz my wife.  The polished duke was more inexorable than the
+stern hidalgo.  I flew to Beatriz; I told her I had nothing but my heart
+and right hand to offer.  She wept, and she refused me."
+
+"Because you were not rich?"
+
+"Shame on you, no! but because she would not consent to mar my fortunes,
+and banish me from my native land.  The next day I received a peremptory
+order to rejoin the army, and with that order came a brevet of promotion.
+Lover though I be, I am a Spaniard: to have disobeyed the order would
+have been dishonour.  Hope dawned upon me--I might rise, I might become
+rich.  We exchanged our vows of fidelity.  I returned to the camp.  We
+corresponded.  At last her letters alarmed me.  Through all her reserve,
+I saw that she was revolted by her profession, and terrified at the
+persecutions to which it exposed her: the old woman, her sole guide and
+companion, was dying: she was dejected and unhappy: she despaired of our
+union: she expressed a desire for the refuge of the cloister.  At last
+came this letter, bidding me farewell for ever.  Her relation was dead;
+and, with the little money she had amassed, she had bought her entrance
+into the convent of St. Mary of the White Sword.  Imagine my despair!  I
+obtained leave of absence--I flew to Madrid.  Beatriz is already immured
+in that dreary asylum; she has entered on her novitiate."
+
+"Is that the letter you refer to?" said Calderon, extending his hand.
+
+Fonseca gave him the letter.
+
+Hard and cold as Calderon's character had grown, there was something in
+the tone of this letter--its pure and noble sentiments, its innocence,
+its affection--that touched some mystic chord in his heart.  He sighed as
+he laid it down.
+
+"You are, like all of us, Don Martin," said he, with a bitter smile, "the
+dupe of a woman's faith.  But you must purchase experience for yourself,
+and if, indeed, you ask my services to procure you present bliss and
+future disappointment, those services are yours.  It will not, I think,
+be difficult to interest the queen in your favour: leave me this letter,
+it is one to touch the heart of a woman.  If we succeed with the queen,
+who is the patroness of the convent, we may be sure to obtain an order
+from court for the liberation of the novice: the next step is one more
+arduous.  It is not enough to restore Beatriz to freedom--we must
+reconcile your family to the marriage.  This cannot be done while she is
+not noble; but letters patent (here Calderon smiled) could ennoble a
+mushroom itself--your humble servant is an example.  Such letters may be
+bought or begged; I will undertake to procure them.  Your father, too,
+may find a dowry accompanying the title, in the shape of a high and
+honourable post for yourself.  You deserve much; you are beloved in the
+army; you have won a high name in the world.  I take shame on myself that
+your fortunes have been overlooked.  'Out of sight out of mind;' alas!
+it is a true proverb.  I confess that, when I beheld you in the ante
+room, I blushed for my past forgetfulness.  No matter--I will repair my
+fault.  Men say that my patronage is misapplied--I will prove the
+contrary by your promotion."
+
+"Generous Calderon!" said Fonseca, falteringly; "I ever hated the
+judgments of the vulgar.  They calumniate you; it is from envy."
+
+"No," said Calderon, coldly; "I am bad enough, but I am still human.
+Besides, gratitude is my policy.  I have always found that it is a good
+way to get on in the world to serve those who serve us."
+
+"But the duke?"
+
+"Fear not; I have an oil that will smooth all the billows on that
+surface.  As for the letter, I say, leave it with me; I will show it
+to the queen.  Let me see you again tomorrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A RIVAL.
+
+Calderon's eyes were fixed musingly on the door which closed on Fonseca's
+martial and noble form.
+
+"Great contrasts among men!" said he, half aloud.  "All the classes into
+which naturalists ever divided the animal world contained not the variety
+that exists between man and man.  And yet, we all agree in one object of
+our being--all prey on each other!  Glory, which is but the thirst of
+blood, makes yon soldier the tiger of his kind; other passions have made
+me the serpent: both fierce, relentless, unscrupulous--both! hero and
+courtier, valour and craft!  Hein!  I will serve this young man--he has
+served me.  When all other affection was torn from me, he, then a boy,
+smiled on me and bade me love him.  Why has he been so long forgotten?
+He is not of the race that I abhor; no Moorish blood flows in his veins;
+neither is he of the great and powerful, whom I dread; nor of the
+crouching and the servile, whom I despise: he is one whom I can aid
+without a blush."
+
+While Calderon thus soliloquised, the arras was lifted aside, and a
+cavalier, on whose cheek was the first down of manhood, entered the
+apartment.
+
+"So, Roderigo, alone! welcome back to Madrid.  Nay, seat thyself, man--
+seat thyself."
+
+Calderon bowed with the deepest reverence; and, placing a large fauteuil
+before the stranger, seated himself on stool, at a little distance.
+
+The new comer was of sallow complexion; his gorgeous dress sparkled with
+prodigal jewels.  Boy as he was, there was a yet a careless loftiness, a
+haughty ease, in the gesture--the bend of the neck, the wave of the hand,
+which, coupled with the almost servile homage of the arrogant favourite,
+would have convinced the most superficial observer that he was born of
+the highest rank.  A second glance would have betrayed, in the full
+Austrian lip--the high, but narrow forehead--the dark, voluptuous, but
+crafty and sinister eye, the features of the descendant of Charles V.  It
+was the Infant of Spain that stood in the chamber of his ambitious
+minion.
+
+"This is convenient, this private entrance into thy penetralia, Roderigo.
+It shelters me from the prying eyes of Uzeda, who ever seeks to cozen the
+sire by spying on the Son.  We will pay him off one of these days.  He
+loves you no less than he does his prince."
+
+"I bear no malice to him for that, your highness.  He covets the smiles
+of the rising sun and rails at the humble object which, he thinks,
+obstructs the beam."
+
+"He might be easy on that score: I hate the man, and his cold
+formalities.  He is ever fancying that we princes are intent on the
+affairs of state, and forgets that we are mortal and that youth is the
+age for the bower, not the council.  My precious Calderon, life would be
+dull without thee: how I rejoice at thy return, thou best inventor of
+pleasure that satiety ever prayed for!  Nay, blush not: some men despise
+thee for thy talents: I do thee homage.  By my great grandsire's beard,
+it will be a merry time at court when I am monarch, and thou minister!"
+
+Calderon looked earnestly at the prince, but his scrutiny did not serve
+to dispel a certain suspicion of the royal sincerity that ever and anon
+came across the favourite's most sanguine dreams.  With all Philip's
+gaiety, there was something restrained and latent in his ambiguous smile,
+and his calm, deep, brilliant eye.  Calderon, immeasurably above his lord
+in genius, was scarcely, perhaps, the equal of that beardless boy in
+hypocrisy and craft, in selfish coldness, in matured depravity.
+
+"Well," resumed the prince, "I pay you not these compliments without an
+object.  I have need of you--great need; never did I so require your
+services as at this moment; never was there so great demand on your
+invention, your courage, your skill.  Know, Calderon, I love!"
+
+"My prince," said the marquis, smiling, "it is certainly not first love.
+How often has your highness--"
+
+"No," interrupted the prince, hastily,--"no, I never loved till now.  We
+never can love what we can easily win; but this, Calderon, this heart
+would be a conquest.  Listen.  I was at the convent chapel of St. Mary of
+the White Sword yesterday with the queen.  Thou knowest that the abbess
+once was a lady of the chamber, and the queen loves her."
+
+Both of us were moved and astonished by the voice of one of the choir--
+it was that of a novice.  After the ceremony the queen made inquiries
+touching this new Santa Cecilia; and who dost thou think she is?  No;
+thou wilt never guess!--the once celebrated singer--the beautiful, the
+inimitable Beatriz Coello!  Ah!  you may well look surprised; when
+actresses turn nuns, it is well-nigh time for Calderon and Philip to turn
+monks.  Now, you must know, Roderigo, that I, unworthy though I be, am
+the cause of this conversion.  There is a certain Martin Fonseca, a
+kinsman of Lerma's--thou knowest him well.  I learned, some time since,
+from the duke, that this young Orlando was most madly enamoured of a low-
+born girl--nay, desired to wed her.  The duke's story moved my curiosity.
+I found that it was the young Beatriz Coello, whom I had already admired
+on the stage.  Ah, Calderon, she blazed and set during thy dull mission
+to Lisbon!  I sought an opportunity to visit her.  I was astonished at
+her beauty, that seemed more dazzling in the chamber than on the stage.
+I pressed my suit-in vain.  Calderon, hear you that?--in vain!  Why wert
+thou not by?  Thy arts never fail, my friend!  She was living with an old
+relation, or governante.  The old relation died suddenly--I took
+advantage of her loneliness--I entered her house at night.  By St. Jago,
+her virtue baffled and defeated me.  The next morning she was gone; nor
+could my researches discover her, until, at the convent of St. Mary, I
+recognised the lost actress in the young novice.  She has fled to the
+convent to be true to Fonseca; she must fly from the convent to bless the
+prince.  This is my tale: I want thy aid."
+
+"Prince," said Calderon, gravely, "thou knowest the laws of Spain; the
+rigour of the Church.  I dare not--"
+
+"Pshaw.  No scruples--my rank will bear thee harmless.  Nay, look not so
+demure; why, even thou, see, hast thy Armida.  This billet in a female
+hand--Heaven and earth Calderon!  What name is this?  Beatriz Coello!
+Darest thou have crossed my path?  Speak, sir!--speak!"
+
+"Your highness," said Calderon, with a mixture of respect and dignity in
+his manner--"your highness, hear me.  My first benefactor, my beloved
+pupil, my earliest patron, was the same Don Martin Fonseca who seeks this
+girl with an honest love.  This morning he has visited me, to implore my
+intercession on his behalf.  Oh, prince! turn not away: thou knowest not
+half his merit.  Thou knowest not the value of such subjects--men of the
+old iron race of Spain.  Thou hast a noble and royal heart: be not the
+rival to the defender of thy crown.  Bless this brave soldier--spare this
+poor orphan--and one generous act of self-denial shall give thee
+absolution for a thousand pleasures."
+
+"This from Roderigo Calderon!" said the prince, with bitter sneer.  "Man,
+know thy station and thy profession.  When I want homilies, I seek my
+confessor; when I have resolved on a vice, I come to thee.  A truce with
+this bombast.  For Fonseca, he shall be consoled; and when he shall learn
+who is his rival, he is a traitor if he remain discontented with his lot.
+Thou shalt aid me, Calderon!"
+
+"Your highness will pardon me--no!"
+
+"Do I hear right?  No!  Art thou not my minion--my instrument?  Can I not
+destroy as I have helped to raise thee?  Thy fortunes have turned thy
+brain.  The king already suspects and dislikes thee; thy foe, Uzeda, has
+his ear.  The people execrate thee.  If I abandon thee, thou art lost.
+Look to it!"
+
+Calderon remained mute and erect, with his arms folded on his breast, and
+his cheek flushed with suppressed passions.  Philip gazed at him
+earnestly, and then, muttering to himself, approached the favourite with
+an altered air.
+
+"Come, Calderon--I have been hasty-you maddened me; I meant not to wound
+you.  Thou art honest, I think thou lovest me; and I will own, that in
+ordinary circumstances thy advice would be good, and thy scruples
+laudable.  But I tell thee that I adore this girl; that I have set all my
+hopes upon her; that, at whatever cost, whatever risks, she must be mine.
+Wilt thou desert me?  Wilt thou on whose faith I have ever leaned so
+trustingly, forsake thy friend and thy prince for this brawling soldier?
+No; I wrong thee."
+
+"Oh!" said Calderon, with much semblance of emotion, "I would lay down my
+life in your service, and I have often surrendered my conscience to your
+lightest will.  But this would be so base a perfidy in me!  He has
+confided his life of life to my hands.  How canst even thou count on my
+faith if thou knowest me false to another?"
+
+"False! art thou not false to me?  Have I not confided to thee, and dost
+thou not desert me--nay, perhaps, betray?  How wouldst thou serve this
+Fonseca?  How liberate the novice?"
+
+"By an order of the court.  Your royal mother--"
+
+"Enough!"  said the prince, fiercely; "do so.  Thou shalt have leisure
+for repentance."
+
+As he spoke, Philip strode to the door.  Calderon, alarmed and anxious,
+sought to detain him; but the prince broke disdainfully away, and
+Calderon was again alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CIVIL AMBITION, AND ECCLESIASTICAL.
+
+Scarcely had the prince vanished, before the door that led from the
+anteroom was opened, and an old man, in the ecclesiastical garb, entered
+the secretary's cabinet.
+
+"Do I intrude, my son?" said the churchman.
+
+"No, father, no; I never more desired your presence--your counsel.  It is
+not often that I stand halting and irresolute between the two magnets of
+interest and conscience: this is one of those rare dilemmas."
+
+Here Calderon rapidly narrated the substance of his conversation with
+Fonseca, and of the subsequent communication with the prince.
+
+"You see," he said, in conclusion, "how critical is my position.  On one
+side, my obligations to Fonseca, my promise to a benefactor, a friend to
+the boy I assisted to rear.  Nor is that all: the prince asks me to
+connive at the abstraction of a novice from a consecrated house.  What
+peril--what hazard!  On the other side, if I refuse, the displeasure, the
+vengeance of the prince, for whose favour I have already half forfeited
+that of the king; and who, were he once to frown upon me, would encourage
+all my enemies--in other phrase, the whole court--in one united attempt
+at my ruin."
+
+"It is a stern trial," said the monk, gravely; "and one that may well
+excite your fear."
+
+"Fear, Aliaga!--ha! ha!--fear!" said Calderon, laughing scornfully.  "Did
+true ambition ever know fear?  Have we not the old Castilian proverb,
+that tells us 'He who has climbed the first step to power has left terror
+a thousand leagues behind'?  No, it is not fear that renders me
+irresolute; it is wisdom, and some touch, some remnant of human nature
+--philosophers would call it virtue; you priests, religion."
+
+"Son," said the priest, "when, as one of that sublime calling, which
+enables us to place our unshodden feet upon the necks of kings, I felt
+that I had the power to serve and to exalt you; when as confessor to
+Philip, I backed the patronage of Lerma, recommended you to the royal
+notice, and brought you into the sunshine of the royal favour--it was
+because I had read in your heart and brain those qualities of which the
+spiritual masters of the world ever seek to avail their cause.  I knew
+thee brave, crafty, aspiring, unscrupulous.  I knew that thou wouldest
+not shrink at the means that could secure to thee a noble end.  Yea,
+when, years ago, in the valley of the Xenil, I saw thee bathe thy hands
+in the blood of thy foe, and heard thy laugh of exulting scorn;--when I,
+alone master of thy secret, beheld thee afterwards flying from thy home
+stained with a second murder, but still calm, stern, and lord of thine
+own reason, my knowledge of mankind told me, 'Of such men are high
+converts and mighty instruments made!'"
+
+The priest paused; for Calderon heard him not.  His cheek was livid, his
+eyes closed, his chest heaved wildly.  "Horrible remembrance!" he
+muttered; "fatal love--dread revenge!  Inez--Inez, what hast thou to
+answer for!"
+
+"Be soothed, my son; I meant not to tear the bandage from thy wounds."
+
+"Who speaks?" cried Calderon, starting.  "Ha, priest! priest!  I thought
+I heard the Dead.  Talk on, talk on: talk of the world--the Inquisition--
+thy plots--the torture--the rack!  Talk of aught that will lead me back
+from the past."
+
+"No; let me for a moment lead thee thither, in order to portray the
+future that awaits thee.  When, at night, I found thee--the blood-stained
+fugitive--cowering beneath the shadow of the forest, dost thou remember
+that I laid my hand upon thine arm, and said to thee, 'Thy life is in my
+power'?  From that hour, thy disdain of my threats, of myself, of thine
+own life--all made me view thee as one born to advance our immortal
+cause.  I led thee to safety far away; I won thy friendship and thy
+confidence.  Thou becamest one of us--one of the great Order of Jesus.
+Subsequently, I placed thee as the tutor to young Fonseca, then heir to
+great fortunes.  The second marriage of his uncle, and the heir that by
+that marriage interposed between him and the honour of his house,
+rendered the probable alliance of the youth profitless to us.  But thou
+hadst procured his friendship.  He presented thee to the Duke of Lerma.
+I was just then appointed confessor to the king; I found that years had
+ripened thy genius, and memory had blunted in thee all the affections of
+the flesh.  Above all, hating, as thou didst, the very name of the Moor,
+thou wert the man of men to aid in our great design of expelling the
+accursed race from the land of Spain.  Enough--I served thee, and thou
+didst repay us.  Thou hast washed out thy crime in the blood of the
+infidel--thou art safe from detection.  In Roderigo Calderon, Marquis de
+Siete Iglesias, who will suspect the Roderigo Nunez--the murderous
+student of Salamanca?  Our device of the false father stifled even
+curiosity.  Thou mayest wake to the future, nor tremble at one shadow in
+the past.  The brightest hopes are before us both; but to realise them,
+we must continue the same path.  We must never halt at an obstacle in our
+way.  We must hold that to be no crime which advances our common objects.
+Mesh upon mesh we must entangle the future monarch in our web: thou, by
+the nets of pleasure; I, by those of superstition.  The day that sees
+Philip the Fourth upon the throne, must be a day of jubilee for the
+Brotherhood and the Inquisition.  When thou art prime minister, and I
+grand inquisitor--that time must come--we shall have the power to extend
+the sway of the sect of Loyola to the ends of the Christian world.  The
+Inquisition itself our tool, posterity shall regard us as the apostles of
+intellectual faith.  And thinkest thou, that, for the attainment of these
+great ends, we can have the tender scruples of common men?  Perish a
+thousand Fonsecas--ten thousand novices, ere thou lose, by the strength
+of a hair, thy hold over the senses and soul of the licentious Philip!
+At whatever hazard, save thy power; for with it are bound, as mariners to
+a plank, the hopes of those who make the mind a sceptre."
+
+"Thy enthusiasm blinds and misleads thee, Aliaga," said Calderon,
+coldly. "For me, I tell thee now, as I have told thee before, that I
+care not a rush for thy grand objects.  Let mankind serve itself--I look
+to myself alone.  But fear not my faith; my interests and my very life
+are identified with thee and thy fellow-fanatics.  If I desert thee,
+thou art too deep in my secrets not to undo me; and were I to slay thee,
+in order to silence thy testimony, I know enough of thy fraternity to
+know that I should but raise up a multitude of avengers.  As for this
+matter, you give me wise, if not pious counsel. I will consider well of
+it.  Adieu!  The hour summons me to attend the king."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE TRUE FATA MORGANA.
+
+In the royal chamber, before a table covered with papers, sat the King
+and his secretary.  Grave, sullen, and taciturn, there was little in the
+habitual manner of Philip the Third that could betray to the most
+experienced courtier the outward symptoms of favour or caprice.
+Education had fitted him for the cloister, but the necessities of
+despotism had added acute cunning to slavish superstition.  The business
+for which Calderon had been summoned was despatched, with a silence
+broken but by monosyllables from the king, and brief explanations from
+the secretary; and Philip, rising, gave the signal for Calderon to
+retire.  It was then that the king, turning a dull but steadfast eye upon
+the marquis, said, with a kind of effort, as if speech were painful to
+him,
+
+"The prince left me but a minute before your entrance--have you seen him
+since your return?"
+
+"Your majesty, yes.  He honoured me this morning with his presence."
+
+"On state affairs?"
+
+Your majesty knows, I trust, that your servant treats of state affairs
+only with your August self, or your appointed ministers."
+
+"The prince has favoured you, Don Roderigo."
+
+"Your majesty commanded me to seek that favour."
+
+"It is true.  Happy the monarch whose faithful servant is the confidant
+of the heir to his crown!"
+
+"Could the prince harbour one thought displeasing to your majesty, I
+think I could detect and quell it at its birth.  But your majesty is
+blessed in a grateful son."
+
+"I believe it.  His love of pleasure decoys him from ambition--so it
+should be.  I am not an austere parent.  Keep his favour, Don Roderigo;
+it pleases me.  Hast thou offended him in aught?"
+
+"I trust I have not incurred so great a misfortune."
+
+"He spoke not of thee with his usual praises--I noticed it.  I tell thee
+this that thou mayest rectify what is wrong.  Thou canst not serve me
+more than by guarding him from all friendships save with those whose
+affection to myself I can trust.  I have said enough."
+
+"Such has ever been my object.  Bat I have not the youth of the prince,
+and men speak ill of me, that, in order to gain his confidence, I share
+in his pursuits."
+
+"It matters not what they say of thee.  Faithful ministers are rarely
+eulogised by the populace or the court.  Thou knowest my mind: I repeat,
+lose not the prince's favour."  Calderon bowed low, and withdrew.  As he
+passed through the apartments of the palace, he crossed a gallery, in
+which he perceived, stationed by a window, the young prince and his own
+arch-foe, the Duke d'Uzeda.  At the same instant, from an opposite door,
+entered the Cardinal-Duke de Lerma; and the same unwelcome conjunction of
+hostile planets smote the eyes of that intriguing minister.  Precisely
+because Uzeda was the duke's son was he the man in the world whom the
+duke most dreaded and suspected.
+
+Whoever is acquainted with the Spanish comedy will not fail to have
+remarked the prodigality of intrigue and counter-intrigue upon which its
+interest is made to depend.  In this, the Spanish comedy was the faithful
+mirror of the Spanish life, especially in the circles of a court.  Men
+lived in a perfect labyrinth of plot and counter-plot.  The spirit of
+finesse, manoeuvre, subtlety, and double-dealing pervaded every family.
+Not a house that was not divided against itself.
+
+As Lerma turned his eyes from the unwelcome spectacle of such sudden
+familiarity between Uzeda and the heir-apparent--a familiarity which it
+had been his chief care to guard against--his glance fell on Calderon.
+He beckoned to him in silence, and retired, unobserved by the two
+confabulators, through the same door by which he had entered.  Calderon
+took the hint, and followed him.  The duke entered a small room, and
+carefully closed the door.
+
+"How is this, Calderon?" he asked, but in a timid tone, for the weak old
+man stood in awe of his favourite.  "Whence this new and most ill-boding
+league?"
+
+"I know not, your eminence; remember that I am but just returned to
+Madrid: it amazes me no less than it does your eminence."
+
+"Learn the cause of it, my good Calderon: the prince ever professed to
+hate Uzeda.  Restore him to those feelings thou art all in all with his
+highness!  If Uzeda once gain his ear, thou art lost."
+
+"Not so," cried Calderon, proudly.  "My service is to the king; I have a
+right to his royal protection, for I have a claim on his royal
+gratitude."
+
+"Do not deceive thyself," said the duke, in a whisper.  "The king cannot
+live long: I have it from the best authority, his physician; nor is this
+all--a formidable conspiracy against thee exists at court.  But for
+myself and the king's confessor, Philip would consent to thy ruin.  The
+strong hold thou hast over him is in thy influence with the Infanta--
+influence which he knows to be exerted on behalf of his own fearful and
+jealous policy; that influence gone, neither I nor Aliaga could suffice
+to protect thee.  Enough!  Shut every access to Philip's heart against
+Uzeda."  Calderon bowed in silence, and the duke hastened to the royal
+cabinet.
+
+"What a fool was I to think that I could still wear a conscience!"
+muttered Calderon, with a sneering lip; "but, Uzeda, I will baffle thee
+yet."
+
+The next morning, the Marquis de Siete Iglesias presented himself at the
+levee of the prince of Spain.
+
+Around the favourite, as his proud stature towered above the rest,
+flocked the obsequious grandees.  The haughty smile was yet on his lip
+when the door opened and the prince entered.  The crowd, in parting
+suddenly, left Calderon immediately in front of Philip; who, after gazing
+on him sternly for a moment, turned away, with marked discourtesy, from
+the favourite's profound reverence, and began a low and smiling
+conversation with Gonsalez de Leon, one of Calderon's open foes.
+
+The crowd exchanged looks of delight and surprise; and each or the
+nobles, before so wooing in their civilities to the minister, edged
+cautiously away.
+
+His mortification had but begun.  Presently Uzeda, hitherto almost a
+stranger to those apartments, appeared; the prince hastened to him, and
+in a few minutes the duke was seen following the prince into his private
+chamber.  The sun of Calderon's favour seemed set.  So thought the
+courtiers: not so the haughty favourite.  There was even a smile of
+triumph on his lip--a sanguine flush upon his pale cheek, as he turned
+unheeding from the throng, and then entering his carriage, regained his
+home.
+
+He had scarcely re-entered his cabinet, ere, faithful to his appointment,
+Fonseca was announced.
+
+"What tidings, my best of friends?" exclaimed the soldier.
+
+Calderon shook his head mournfully.
+
+"My dear pupil," said he, in accents of well-affected sympathy, "there is
+no hope for thee.  Forget this vain dream--return to the army.  I can
+promise thee promotion, rank, honours; but the hand of Beatriz is beyond
+my power."
+
+"How?" said Fonseca, turning pale and sinking into a seat.  "How is this?
+Why so sudden a change?  Has the queen--"
+
+"I have not seen her majesty; but the king is resolved upon this matter:
+so are the Inquisition.  The Church complains of recent and numerous
+examples of unholy and im politic relaxation of her dread power.  The
+court dare not interfere.  The novice must be left to her own choice."
+
+"And there is no hope?"
+
+"None!  Return to the excitement of thy brave career."
+
+"Never!" cried Fonseca, with great vehemence.  "If, in requital of all my
+services--of life risked, blood spilt, I cannot obtain a boon so easy to
+accord me, I renounce a service in which even fame has lost its charm.
+And hark you, Calderon, I tell you that I will not forego this pursuit.
+So fair, so innocent a victim shall not be condemned to that living tomb.
+Through the walls of the nunnery, through the spies of the Inquisition,
+love will find out its way; and in some distant land I will yet unite
+happiness and honour.  I fear not exile; I fear not reverse; I no longer
+fear poverty itself.  All lands, where the sound of the trumpet is not
+unknown, can afford career to the soldier, who asks from Heaven no other
+boon but his mistress and his sword."
+
+"You will seek to abstract Beatriz, then?" said Calderon, calmly and
+musingly.  "Yes--it may be your best course, if you take the requisite
+precautions.  But can you see her?  can you concert with her?"
+
+"I think so.  I trust I have already paved the way to an interview.
+Yesterday, after I quitted thee, I sought the convent; and, as the chapel
+is one of the public sights of the city, I made my curiosity my excuse.
+Happily, I recognised in the porter of the convent an old servitor of my
+father's; he had known me from a child--he dislikes his calling--he will
+consent to accompany our flight, to share our fortunes: he has promised
+to convey a letter from me to Beatriz, and to transmit to me her answer."
+
+"The stars smile on thee, Don Martin.  When thou hast learned more,
+consult with me again.  Now, I see a way to assist thee."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+WEB UPON WEB.
+
+The next day, to the discomfiture of the courtiers, Calderon and the
+Infant of Spain were seen together, publicly, on the parade; and the
+secretary made one of the favoured few who attended the prince at the
+theatre.  His favour was greater, his power more dazzling than ever it
+had been known before.  No cause for the breach and reconciliation being
+known, some attributed it to caprice, others to the wily design of the
+astute Calderon for the humiliation of Uzeda, who seemed only to have
+been admitted to one smile from the rising sun in order more signally to
+be reconsigned to the shade.
+
+Meanwhile, Fonseca prospered almost beyond his hopes.  Young, ardent,
+sanguine, the poor novice had fled from her quiet home and the indulgence
+of her free thoughts, to the chill solitude of the cloister, little
+dreaming of the extent of the change.  With a heart that overflowed with
+the warm thoughts of love and youth, the ghostlike shapes that flitted
+round her, the icy forms, the rigid ceremonials of that life, which is
+but the mimicry of death, appalled and shocked her.  That she had
+preserved against a royal and most perilous, because unscrupulous suitor,
+her fidelity to the absent Fonseca, was her sole consolation.
+
+Another circumstance had combined with the loss of her protectress and
+the absence of Don Martin to sadden her heart and dispose her to the
+cloister.  On the deathbed of the old woman, who had been to her as a
+mother, she had learned a secret hitherto concealed from her tender
+youth.  Dark and tragic were the influences of the star which had shone
+upon her birth, gloomy the heritage of memories associated with her
+parentage.  A letter, of which she now became the guardian and treasurer
+--a letter, in her mother's hand-woke tears more deep and bitter than she
+had ever shed for herself.  In that letter she read the strength and the
+fidelity, the sorrow and the gloom, of woman's love; and a dreary
+foreboding told her that the shadow of the mother's fate was cast over
+the child's.  Such were the thoughts that made the cloister welcome, till
+the desolation of the shelter was tried and known.  But when, through the
+agency of the porter, Fonseca's letter reached her, all other feelings
+gave way to the burst of natural and passionate emotion.  The absent had
+returned, again wooed, was still faithful.  The awful vow was not spoken
+--she might yet be his.  She answered; she chided; she spoke of doubt, of
+peril, of fear for him, of maiden shame; but her affection coloured every
+word, and the letter was full of hope.  The correspondence continued; the
+energetic remonstrances of Fonseca, the pure and fervent attachment of
+the novice, led more and more rapidly and surely to the inevitable
+result.  Beatriz yielded to the prayer of her lover; she consented to the
+scheme of escape and flight that he proposed.
+
+Late at evening Fonseca sought Calderon.  The marquis was in the gardens
+of his splendid mansion.
+
+The moonlight streamed over many a row of orange-trees and pomegranates--
+many a white and richly sculptured vase, on its marble pedestal--many a
+fountain, that scattered its low music round the breathless air.  Upon a
+terrace that commanded a stately view of the spires and palaces of Madrid
+stood Calderon, alone; beside him, one solitary and gigantic aloe cast
+its deep gloom of shade and his motionless attitude, his folded arms, his
+face partially lifted to the starlit heavens, bespoke the earnestness and
+concentration of his thoughts.
+
+"Why does this shudder come over me?" said, he, half aloud.  "It was thus
+in that dismal hour which preceded the knowledge of my shame--the deed of
+a dark revenge--the revolution of my eventful and wondrous life!  Ah! how
+happy was I once! a contented and tranquil student; a believer in those
+eyes that were to me as the stars to the astrologer.  But the golden age
+passed into that of iron.  And now," added Calderon, with a self-mocking
+sneer, "comes the era which the poets have not chronicled; for fraud, and
+hypocrisy, and vice, know no poets!"
+
+The quick step of Fonseca interrupted the courtier's reverie.  He turned,
+knit his brow, and sighed heavily, as if nerving himself to some effort;
+but his brow was smooth, and his aspect cheerful, ere Fonseca reached his
+side.
+
+"Give me joy--give me joy, dear Calderon! she has consented.  Now, then,
+your promised aid."
+
+"You can depend upon the fidelity of your friendly porter?
+
+"With my life."
+
+"A master key to the back-door of the chapel has been made?"
+
+"See, I have it."
+
+"And Beatriz can contrive to secrete herself in the confessional at the
+hour of the night prayers?"
+
+"There is no doubt of her doing so with safety.  The number of the
+novices is so great, that one of them cannot well be missed."
+
+"So much, then, for your part of the enterprise.  Now for mine.  You know
+that solitary house in the suburbs, on the high road to Fuencarral, which
+I pointed out to you yesterday?  Well, the owner is a creature of mine.
+There, horses shall be in waiting; there, disguises shall be prepared.
+Beatriz must necessarily divest herself of the professional dress; you
+had better choose meaner garments for yourself.  Drop those hidalgo
+titles of which your father is so proud, and pass off yourself and the
+novice as a notary and his wife, about to visit France on a lawsuit of
+inheritance.  One of my secretaries shall provide you with a pass.
+Meanwhile, to-morrow, I shall be the first officially to hear of the
+flight of the novice, and I will set the pursuers on a wrong scent.  Have
+I not arranged all things properly, my Fonseca?"
+
+"You are our guardian angel!" cried Don Martin, fervently.  "The prayers
+of Beatriz will be registered in your behalf above--prayers that will
+reach the Great Throne as easily from the open valleys of France as in
+the gloomy cloisters of Madrid.  At midnight, to-morrow, then, we seek
+the house you have described to us."
+
+"Ay, at midnight, all shall be prepared."
+
+With a light step and exulting heart, Fonseca turned from the, palace of
+Calderon.  Naturally sanguine and high-spirited, visions of hope and joy
+floated before his eyes, and the future seemed to him a land owning but
+the twin deities of Glory and Love.
+
+He had reached about the centre of the streets in which Calderon's abode
+was placed, when six men, who for some moments had been watching him from
+a little distance, approached.
+
+"I believe," said the one who appeared the chief of the band, "that I
+have the honor to address Senior Don Martin Fonseca?"
+
+"Such is my name."
+
+"In the name of the king we arrest you.  Follow us."
+
+"Arrest! on what plea?  What is my offence?"
+
+"It is stated on this writ, signed by his Eminence the Cardinal-Duke de
+Lerma.  You are charged with the crime of desertion."
+
+"Thou liest, knave!  I had the general's free permission to quit the
+camp."
+
+"We have said all--follow!"
+
+Fonseca, naturally of the most impetuous and passionate character, was
+not, in that moment, in a mood to calculate coldly all the consequences
+of resistance.  Arrest--imprisoninent--on the eve before that which was
+to see him the deliverer of Beatriz, constituted a sentence of such
+despair, that all other considerations vanished before it.  He set his
+teeth firmly, drew his sword, dashed aside the alguazil who attempted to
+obstruct his path, and strode grimly on, shaking one clenched hand in
+defiance, while, with the other, he waved the good Toledo that had often
+blazed in the van of battle, at the war-cry of "St. Iago and Spain!"
+
+The alguazils closed round the soldier, and the clash of swords was
+already heard; when suddenly torches borne on high threw their glare
+across the moonlit street, and two running footmen called out, "Make way
+for the most noble the Marquis de Siete Iglesias!" At that name, Fonseca
+dropped the point of his weapon; the alguazils themselves drew aside; and
+the tall figure and pale countenance of Calderon were visible amongst the
+group.
+
+"What means this brawl in the open streets at this late hour?" said the
+minister, sternly.
+
+"Calderon!" exclaimed Fonseca; "this is indeed fortunate.  These caitiffs
+have dared to lay hands on a soldier of Spain, and to forge for their
+villany the name of his own kinsman, the Duke de Lerma."
+
+"Your charge against this gentleman?" asked Calderon, calmly, turning to
+the principal alguazil, who placed the writ of arrest in the secretary's
+hand.  Calderon read it leisurely, and raised his hat as he returned it
+to the alguazil: he then drew aside Fonseca.
+
+"Are you mad?" said he, in a whisper.  "Do you think you can resist the
+law?  Had I not arrived so opportunely you would have converted a slight
+accusation into a capital offence.  Go with these men: do not fear; I
+will see the duke, and obtain your immediate release.  To-morrow I will
+visit and accompany you home."
+
+Fonseca, still half beside himself with rage, would have replied, but
+Calderon significantly placed his finger on his lip and turned to the
+alguazils.
+
+"There is a mistake here: it will be rectified to-morrow.  Treat this
+cavalier with all the respect and worship due to his birth and merits.
+Go, Don Martin, go," he added, in a lower voice; "go, unless you desire
+to lose Beatriz for ever.  Nothing but obedience can save you from the
+imprisonment of half a life!"
+
+Awed and sudbued by this threat, Fonseca, in gloomy silence, placed his
+sword in its sheath, and sullenly followed the alguazils.  Calderon
+watched them depart with a thoughtful and absent look; then, starting
+from his reverie, he bade his torchbearers proceed, and resumed his way
+to the Prince of Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OPEN COUNTENANCE, THE CONCEALED THOUGHTS
+
+The next day, at noon, Calderon visited Fonseca in his place of
+confinement.  The young man was seated by a window that overlooked a
+large dull court-yard, with a neglected and broken fountain in the
+centre, leaning his cheek upon his hand.  His long hair was dishevelled,
+his dress disordered, and a gloomy frown darkened features naturally open
+and ingenuous.  He started to his feet as Calderon approached.  "My
+release--you have brought my release--let us forth!"
+
+"My dear pupil, be ruled, be calm.  I have seen the duke: the cause of
+your imprisonment is as I suspected.  Some imprudent words, overheard,
+perhaps, but by your valet, have escaped you; words intimating your
+resolution not to abandon Beatriz.  You know your kinsman, a mail of
+doubts and fears,--of forms, ceremonies, and scruples.  From very
+affection for his kindred and yourself he has contrived your arrest;
+all my expostulations have been in vain.  I fear your imprisonment may
+continue, either until you give a solemn promise to renounce all endeavor
+to dissuade Beatriz from the final vows, or until she herself has
+pronounced them."
+
+Fonseca, as if stupefied, stared a moment at Calderon, and then burst
+into a wild laugh.  Calderon continued:
+
+"Nevertheless, do not despair.  Be patient; I am ever about the duke;
+nay, I have the courage, in your cause, to appeal even to the king
+himself."
+
+"And to-night she expects me--to-night she was to be free!"
+
+"We can convey the intelligence of your mischance to her: the porter will
+befriend you."
+
+"Away, false friend, or powerless protector, that you are!  Are your
+promises of aid come to this?  But I care not; my case, my wrongs, shall
+be laid before the king; I will inquire if it be thus that Philip the
+Third treats the defenders of his crown.  Don Roderigo Calderon, will you
+place my memorial in the hands of your royal master?  Do this, and I will
+thank you."
+
+"No, Fonseca, I will not ruin you; the king would pass your memorial to
+the Duke de Lerma.  Tush! this is not the way that men of sense deal with
+misfortune.  Think you I should be what I now am, if, in every reverse, I
+had raved, and not reflected?  Sit down, and let us think of what can now
+be done."
+
+"Nothing, unless the prison door open by sunset!"
+
+"Stay, a thought strikes me.  The term of your imprisonment ceases when
+you relinquish the hope of Beatriz.  But what if the duke could believe
+that Beatriz relinquished you?  What, for instance, if she fled from the
+convent, as you proposed, and we could persuade the duke that it was with
+another?"
+
+"Ah! be silent!"
+
+"Nay, what advantages in this scheme--what safety!  If she fly alone,
+or, as supposed, with another lover, the duke will have no interest in
+pursuit, in punishment.  She is not of that birth that the state will
+take the trouble, very actively, to interfere: she may reach France in
+safety; ay, a thousand times more safely than if she fled with you, a
+hidalgo and a man of rank, whom the state would have an interest to
+reclaim, and to whom the Inquisition, hating the nobles, would impute the
+crime of sacrilege.  It is an excellent thought!  Your imprisonment may
+be the salvation of you both: your plan may succeed still better without
+your intervention; and, after a few days, the duke, believing that your
+resentment must necessarily replace your love, will order your release;
+you can join Beatriz on the frontier, and escape with her to France."
+
+"But," said Fonseca, struck, but not convinced, by the suggestion of
+Calderon, "who will take my place with Beatriz? who penetrate into the
+gardens? who bear her from the convent?"
+
+"That, for your sake, will I do.  Perhaps," added Calderon, smiling, "a
+courtier may manage such an intrigue with even more dexterity than a
+soldier.  I will bear her to the house we spoke of; there I know she can
+lie hid in safety, till the languid pursuit of uninterested officials
+shall cease, and thence I can easily find means to transport her, under
+safe and honourable escort, to any place it may please you to appoint."
+
+"And think you Beatriz will fly with you, a stranger?  Impossible!  Your
+plan pleases me not."
+
+"Nor does it please me," said Calderon, coldly; "the risks I proposed to
+run are too imminent to be contemplated complacently: I thank you for
+releasing me from my offer; nor should I have made it, Fonseca, but from
+this fear, what if to-morrow the duke himself (he is a churchman,
+remember) see the novice? what if he terrify her with threats against
+yourself? what if he induce the abbess and the Church to abridge the
+novitiate? what if Beatriz be compelled or awed into taking the veil?
+what if you be released even next week and find her lost to you for
+ever?"
+
+"They cannot--they dare not!"
+
+"The duke dares all things for ambition; your alliance with Beatriz he
+would hold a disgrace to his house.  Think not my warnings are without
+foundation--I speak from authority; such is the course the Duke de Lerma
+has resolved upon.  Nothing else could have induced me to offer to brave
+for your sake all the hazard of outraging the law and braving the terrors
+of the Inquisition.  But let us think of some other plan.  Is your escape
+possible?  I fear not.  No; you must trust to my chance of persuading the
+duke into prosecuting the matter no further; trust to some mightier
+scheme engrossing all his thoughts; to a fit of good-humour after his
+siesta; or, perhaps, an attack of the gout, or a stroke of apoplexy.
+Such, after all, are the chances of human felicity, the pivots on which
+turns the solemn wheel of human life."
+
+Fonseca made no reply for some moments; he traversed the room with hasty
+and disordered strides, and at last stopped abruptly.
+
+"Calderon, there is no option; I must throw myself on your generosity,
+your faith, your friendship.  I will write to Beatriz; I will tell her,
+for my sake, to confide in you."
+
+As he spoke, Don Martin turned to the table, and wrote a hasty and
+impassioned note, in which he implored the novice to trust herself to the
+directions of Don Roderigo Calderon, his best, his only friend; and, as
+he placed this letter in the hands of the courtier he turned aside to
+conceal his emotions.  Calderon himself was deeply moved: his cheek was
+flushed, and his hand seemed tremulous as it took the letter.
+
+"Remember," said Fonseca, "that I trust to you my life of life.  As you
+are true to me, may Heaven be merciful to you!"
+
+Calderon made no answer, but turned to the door.  "Stay," said Fonseca;
+"I had forgot this--here is the master key."
+
+"True; how dull I was!  And the porter--will he attend to thy proxy?"
+
+"Doubt it not.  Accost him with the word, 'Grenada.'  But he expects to
+share the flight."
+
+"That can be arranged.  To-morrow you will hear of my success.
+Farewell!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+It was midnight in the chapel of the convent.
+
+The moonlight shone with exceeding lustre through the tall casements, and
+lit into a ghastly semblance of life the marble images of saint and
+martyr, that threw their long shadows over the consecrated floor.
+Nothing could well be conceived more dreary, solemn, and sepulchral than
+that holy place: its distained and time-hallowed walls; the impenetrable
+mass of darkness that gathered into those recesses which the moonlight
+failed to reach; its antique and massive tombs, above which reclined the
+sculptured effigies of some departed patroness or abbess, who had
+exchanged a living grave for the Mansions of the Blest.  But there--oh,
+wonderful human heart!--even there, in that spot, the very homily and
+warning against earthly affections and mortal hopes--even there, couldst
+thou beat with as wild, as bright, and as pure a passion as ever heaved
+the breast and shone in the eyes of Beauty, in the free air that ripples
+the Guadiana, or amidst the twilight dance of Castilian maids.
+
+A tall figure, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak, passed slowly up the
+aisle.  But light and cautious though the footstep, it woke a low,
+hollow, ominous echo, that seemed more than the step itself to disturb
+the sanctity of the place.  It paused opposite to a confessional, which
+was but dimly visible through the shadows around it.  And then there
+emerged timidly a female form; and a soft voice whispered "It is thou,
+Fonseca!"
+
+"Hist!" was the answer; "he waits without.  Be quick; speak not--come."
+
+Beatriz recoiled in surprise and alarm at the voice of a stranger; but
+the man, seizing her by the hand, drew her hastily from the chapel, and
+hurried her across the garden, through a small postern door, which stood
+ajar, into an obscure street bordering the convent wall.  Here stood the
+expectant porter, with a bundle in his hand, which he opened, and took
+thence a long cloak, such as the women of middling rank in Madrid wore in
+the winter season, with the customary mantilla or veil.  With these,
+still without speaking, the stranger hastily shrouded the form of the
+novice, and once more hurried her on till about a hundred yards from the
+garden gate be came to a carriage, into which he lifted Beatriz,
+whispered a few words to the porter, seated himself by the side of the
+novice, and the vehicle drove rapidly away.
+
+It was some moments before Beatriz could sufficiently recover from her
+first agitation and terror, to feel alive to all the strangeness of her
+situation.  She was alone with a stranger; where was Fonseca?  She turned
+towards her companion.
+
+"Who art thou?" she said, "whither art thou leading me-and why--"
+
+"Why is not Don Martin by thy side?  Pardon me, senora: I have a billet
+for thee from Fonseca; in a few minutes thou wilt know all."
+
+At this time the vehicle came suddenly in the midst of a train of footmen
+and equipages that choked up the way.  There was a brilliant
+entertainment at the French embassy; and thither flocked, all the rank
+and chivalry of Madrid.  Calderon drew down the blind and hastily
+enjoined silence on Beatriz.  It was some minutes before the driver
+extricated himself from the throng; and then, as if to make amends for
+the delay, he put his horses to their full speed, and carefully selected
+the most obscure and solitary thoroughfares.  At length, the carriage
+entered the range of suburbs which still at this day the traveller passes
+on his road from Madrid to France.  The horses stopped before a lonely
+house that stood a little apart from the road, and which from the fashion
+of its architecture appeared of considerable antiquity.  The stranger
+descended and knocked twice at the door: it was opened by an old man,
+whose exaggerated features, bended frame, and long beard, proclaimed him
+of the race of Israel.  After a short and whispered parley, the stranger
+returned to Beatriz, gravely assisted her from the carriage, and, leading
+her across the threshold, and up a flight of rude stairs, dimly lighted,
+entered a chamber richly furnished.  The walls were hung with stuffs of
+gorgeous colouring and elaborate design.  Pedestals of the whitest marble
+placed at each corner of the room supported candelabra of silver.  The
+sofas and couches were of the heavy but sumptuous fashion which then
+prevailed in the palaces of France and Spain; and of which Venice (the
+true model of the barbaric decorations with which Louis the Fourteenth
+corrupted the taste of Paris) was probably the original inventor.  In an
+alcove, beneath a silken canopy, was prepared a table, laden with wines,
+fruits, and viands; and altogether the elegance and luxury that
+characterised the apartment were in strong and strange contrast with the
+half-ruined exterior of the abode, the gloomy and rude approach to the
+chamber, and the mean and servile aspect of the Jew, who stood, or rather
+cowered by the door, as if waiting for further orders.  With a wave of
+the hand the stranger dismissed the Israelite; and then, approaching
+Beatriz, presented to her Fonseca's letter.
+
+As with an enchanting mixture of modesty and eagerness Beatriz, half
+averting her face, bent over the well-known characters, Calderon gazed
+upon her with a scrutinising and curious eye.
+
+The courtier was not, in this instance, altogether the villain that from
+outward appearances the reader may have deemed him.  His plan was this:
+he had resolved on compliance with the wishes of the prince--his safety
+rested on that compliance.  But Fonseca was not to be sacrificed without
+reserve.  Profoundly despising womankind, and firmly persuaded of their
+constitutional treachery and deceit, Calderon could not believe the
+actress that angel of light and purity which she seemed to the enamoured
+Fonseca.  He had resolved to subject her to the ordeal of the prince's
+addresses.  If she fell, should he not save his friend from being the
+dupe of an artful _intriguante_?--should he not deserve the thanks of Don
+Martin for the very temptation to which Beatriz was now to be submitted?
+If he could convince Fonseca of her falsehood, he should stand acquitted
+to his friend, while he should have secured his interest with the prince.
+But if, on the other hand, Beatriz came spotless through the trial; if
+the prince, stung by her obstinate virtue, should menace to sink
+courtship into violence, Calderon knew that it would not be in the first
+or second interview that the novice would have any real danger to
+apprehend; and he should have leisure to concert her escape by such means
+as would completely conceal from the prince his own connivance at her
+flight.  Such was the compromise that Calderon had effected between his
+conscience and his ambition.  But while he gazed upon the novice, though
+her features were turned from him, and half veiled by the headdress she
+had assumed, strange feelings, ominous and startling, like those
+remembrances of the Past which sometimes come in the guise of prophecies
+of the Future, thronged, indistinct and dim, upon his breast.  The
+unconscious and exquisite grace of her form, its touching youth, an air
+of innocence diffused around it, a something helpless, and pleading to
+man's protection, in the very slightness of her beautiful but fairy-like
+proportions, seemed to reproach his treachery, and to awaken whatever of
+pity or human softness remained in his heart.
+
+The novice had read the letter; and turning, in the impulse of surprise
+and alarm, to Calderon for explanation, for the first time she remarked
+his features and his aspect; for he had then laid aside his cloak, and
+the broad Spanish hat with its heavy plume.  It was thus that their eyes
+met, and, as they did so, Beatriz, starting from her seat, uttered a wild
+cry--
+
+"And thy name is Calderon--Don Roderigo Calderon?--is it possible?  Hadst
+thou never another name?" she exclaimed; and, as she spoke, she
+approached him slowly and fearfully.
+
+"Lady, Calderon is my name," replied the marquis: but his voice faltered.
+"But thine--thine--is it, in truth, Beatriz Coello?"
+
+Beatriz made no reply, but continued to advance, till her very breath
+came upon his cheek; she then laid her hand upon his arm, and looked up
+into his face with a gaze so earnest, so intent, so prolonged, that
+Calderon, but for a strange and terrible thought--half of wonder, half of
+suspicion, which had gradually crept into his soul, and now usurped it--
+might have doubted whether the reason of the poor novice was not
+unsettled.
+
+Slowly Beatriz withdrew her eyes, and they fell upon a large mirror
+opposite, which reflected in full light the features of Calderon and
+herself.  It was then--her natural bloom having faded into a paleness
+scarcely less statue-like than that which characterised the cheek of
+Calderon himself, and all the sweet play and mobility of feature that
+belong to first youth being replaced by a rigid and marble stillness of
+expression--it was then that a remarkable resemblance between these two
+persons became visible and startling.  That resemblance struck alike, and
+in the same instant, both Beatriz and Calderon; and both, gazing on the
+mirror, uttered an involuntary and simultaneous exclamation.
+
+With a trembling and hasty hand the novice searched amidst the folds of
+her robe, and drew forth a small leathern case, closed with clasps of
+silver.  She touched the spring, and took out a miniature, upon which she
+cast a rapid and wild glance; then, lifting her eyes to Calderon, she
+cried, "It must be so--it is, it is my father!" and fell motionless at
+his feet.
+
+Calderon did not for some moments heed the condition of the novice: that
+chamber, the meditated victim, the present time, the coming evil--all
+were swept away from his soul; he was transported back into the past,
+with the two dread Spirits, Memory and Conscience!  His knees knocked
+together, his aspect was livid, the cold drops stood upon his brow; he
+muttered incoherently and then bent down, and took up the picture.  It
+was the face of a man in the plain garb of a Salamanca student, and in
+the first flush of youth; the noble brow, serene and calm, and stamped
+alike with candour and courage; the smooth cheek, rich with the hues of
+health; the lips, parting in a happy smile, and eloquent of joy and hope;
+it was the face of that wily, grasping, ambitious, unscrupulous man, when
+life had yet brought no sin; it was, as if the ghost of youth were come
+back to accuse the crimes of manhood!  The miniature fell from his hand--
+he groaned aloud.  Then gazing on the prostrate form of the novice, he
+said--"Poor wretch! can I believe that thou art indeed of mine own race
+and blood; or rather, does not nature, that stamped these lineaments on
+thy countenance, deceive and mock me?  If she, thy mother, lied, why not
+nature herself?"
+
+He raised the novice in his arms, and gazed long and wistfully upon her
+lifeless, but almost lovely features.  She moved not--she scarcely seemed
+to breathe; yet he fancied he felt her embrace tightening round him--he
+fancied he heard again the voice that had hailed him "FATHER!"  His heart
+beat aloud, the divine instinct overpowered all things, he pressed a
+passionate kiss upon her forehead, and his tears fell fast and warm upon
+her cheek.  But again the dark remembrance crossed him, and he shuddered,
+placed the novice hastily on one of the couches, and shouted aloud.
+
+The Jew appeared and was ordered to summon Jacinta.  A young woman of the
+same persuasion, and of harsh and forbidding exterior, entered, and to
+her care Calderon briefly consigned the yet insensible Beatriz.
+
+While Jacinta unlaced the dress, and chafed the temples, of the novice,
+Calderon seemed buried in gloomy thought.  At last he strode slowly away,
+as if to quit the chamber, when his foot struck against the case of the
+picture, and his eye rested upon a paper which lay therein, folded and
+embedded.  He took it up, and, lifting aside the hangings, hurried into a
+small cabinet lighted by a single lamp.  Here, alone and unseen, Calderon
+read the following letter:
+
+
+"TO RODERIGO NUNEZ.
+
+"Will this letter ever meet thine eyes?  I know not; but it is comfort to
+write to thee on the bed of death; and were it not for that horrible and
+haunting thought that thou believest me--me whose very life was in thy
+love--faithless and dishonoured, even death itself would be the sweeter
+because it comes from the loss of thee.  Yes, something tells me that
+these lines will not be written in vain; that thou wilt read them yet,
+when this hand is still and this brain at rest, and that then thou wilt
+feel that I could not have dared to write to thee if I were not innocent;
+that in every word thou wilt recognise the evidence that is strong as the
+voice of thousands,--the simple but solemn evidence of faith and truth.
+What! when for thee I deserted all--home, and a father's love, wealth,
+and the name I had inherited from Moors who had been monarchs in their
+day--couldst thou think that I had not made the love of thee the core,
+and life, and principle of my very being!  And one short year, could that
+suffice to shake my faith?--one year of marriage, but two months of
+absence?  You left me, left that dear home, by the silver Xenil.  For
+love did not suffice to you; ambition began to stir within you, and you
+called it 'love.'  You said, 'It grieved you that I was poor; that you
+could not restore to me the luxury and wealth I had lost.'  (Alas!  why
+did you turn so incredulously from my assurance, that in you, and you
+alone, were centred my ambition and pride?)  You declared that the vain
+readers of the stars had foretold at your cradle that you were
+predestined to lofty honours and dazzling power, and that the prophecy
+would work out its own fulfilment.  You left me to seek in Madrid your
+relation who had risen into the favour of a minister, and from whose love
+you expected to gain an opening to your career.  Do you remember how we
+parted? how you kissed away my tears, and how they gushed forth again?
+how again and again you said, 'Farewell!' and again and again returned as
+if we could never part?  And I took my babe, but a few weeks born, from
+her cradle, and placed her in thy arms, and bade thee see that she had
+already learned thy smile; and were these the signs of falsehood?  Oh,
+how I pined for the sound of thy footstep when thou wert gone! how all
+the summer had vanished from the landscape; and how, turning to thy
+child, I fancied I again beheld thee!  The day after thou hadst left me
+there was a knock at the cottage; the nurse opened it, and there entered
+your former rival, whom my father had sought to force upon me, the
+richest of the descendants of the Moor, Arraez Ferrares.  Why linger on
+this hateful subject?  He had tracked us to our home, he had learned thy
+absence, he came to insult me with his vows.  By the Blessed Mother, whom
+thou hast taught me to adore, by the terror and pang of death, by my
+hopes of Heaven, I am innocent, Roderigo, I am innocent!  Oh, how couldst
+thou be so deceived?  He quitted the cottage, discomfited and enraged;
+again he sought me, and again and again; and when the door was closed
+upon him, he waylaid my steps.  Lone and defenceless as we were, thy wife
+and child, with but one attendant I feared him not; but I trembled at thy
+return, for I knew that thou went a Spaniard, a Castilian, and that
+beneath thy calm and gentle seeming lurked pride, and jealousy, and
+revenge.  Thy letter came, the only letter since thy absence, the last
+letter from thee I may ever weep over, and lay upon my heart.  Thy
+relation was dead, and his wealth enriched a nearer heir.  Thou wert to
+return.  The day in which I might expect thee approached--it arrived.
+During the last week I had seen and heard no more of Ferrares.  I trusted
+that he had at length discovered the vanity of his pursuit.  I walked
+into the valley, thy child in my arms, to meet thee; but thou didst not
+come.  The sun set, and the light of thine eyes replaced not the
+declining day.  I returned home, and watched for thee all night, but in
+vain.  The next morning again I went forth into the valley, and again,
+with a sick heart, returned to my desolate home.  It was then noon.  As I
+approached the door I perceived Ferrares.  He forced his entrance.  I
+told him of thy expected return, and threatened him with thy resentment.
+He left me; and, terrified with a thousand vague forebodings, I sat down
+to weep.  The nurse, Leonarda, was watching by the cradle of our child in
+the inner room.
+
+"I was alone.  Suddenly the door opened.  I heard thy step; I knew it; I
+knew its music.  I started up.  Saints of Heaven! what a meeting--what a
+return!  Pale, haggard, thine hands and garments dripping blood, thine
+eyes blazing with insane fire, a terrible smile of mockery on thy lip,
+thou stoodst before me.  I would have thrown myself on thy breast; thou
+didst cast me from thee; I fell on my knees, and thy blade was pointed at
+my heart--the heart so full of thee!  'He is dead,' didst thou say, in a
+hollow voice; 'he is dead--thy paramour--take thy bed beside him!'  I
+know not what I said, but it seemed to move thee; thy hand trembled, and
+the point of thy weapon dropped.  It was then that, hearing thy voice,
+Leonarda hastened into the room, and bore in her arms thy child.  'See,'
+I exclaimed, 'see thy daughter; see, she stretches her hands to thee--she
+pleads for her mother!'  At that sight thy brow became dark, the demon
+seized upon thee again.  'Mine!' were thy cruel words--they ring in my
+ear still--'no! she was born before the time--ha! ha!--thou didst betray
+me from the first!'  With that thou didst raise thy sword; but, even then
+(ah, blessed thought! even then) remorse and love palsied thy hand, and
+averted thy gaze: the blow was not that of death.  I fell senseless to
+the ground, and when I recovered thou wert gone.  Delirium succeeded; and
+when once more my senses and reason returned to me, I found by my side a
+holy priest, and from him, gradually, I learned all that till then was
+dare.  Ferrares had been found in the valley, weltering in his blood.
+Borne to a neighbouring monastery, be lingered a few days, to confess the
+treachery he had practised on thee; to adopt, in his last hours, the
+Christian faith; and to attest his crime with his own signature.  He
+enjoined the monk, who had converted and confessed him, to place this
+proof of my innocence in my hands.  Behold it enclosed within.  If this
+letter ever reach thee, thou wilt learn how thy wife was true to thee in
+life, and has therefore the right to bless thee in death."
+
+
+At this passage, Calderon dropped the letter, and was seized with a kind
+of paralysis, which for some moments seemed to deprive him of life
+itself.  When he recovered he eagerly grasped a scroll that was enclosed
+in the letter, but which, hitherto, he had disregarded.  Even then, so
+strong were his emotions, that sight itself was obscured and dimmed, and
+it was long before he could read the characters, which were already
+discoloured by time.
+
+
+
+"TO INEZ.
+
+"I have but a few hours to live,--let me spend them in atonement and in
+prayer, less for myself than thee.  Thou knowest not how madly I adored
+thee; and how thy hatred or indifference stung every passion into
+torture.  Let this pass.  When I saw thee again--the forsaker of thy
+faith--poor, obscure, and doomed to a peasant's lot--daring hopes shaped
+themselves into fierce resolves.  Finding that thou wert inexorable, I
+turned my arts upon thy husband.  I knew his poverty and his ambition: we
+Moors have had ample knowledge of the avarice of the Christians'.  I bade
+one whom I could trust to seek him out at Madrid.  Wealth--lavish wealth
+--wealth that could open to a Spaniard all the gates of power was offered
+to him if he would renounce thee forever.  Nay, in order to crush out all
+love from his breast, it was told him that mine was the prior right--that
+thou hadst yielded to my suit ere thou didst fly with him--that thou
+didst use his love as an escape from thine own dishonour--that thy very
+child owned another father.  I had learned, and I availed myself of the
+knowledge, that it was born before its time.  We had miscalculated the
+effect of this representation, backed and supported by forged letters:
+instead of abandoning thee, he thought only of revenge for his shame.
+As I left thy house, the last time I gazed upon thine indignant eyes, I
+found the avenger, on my path!  He had seen me quit thy roof--he needed
+no other confirmation of the tale.  I fell into the pit which I had
+digged for thee.  Conscience unnerved my hand and blunted my sword: our
+blades scarcely crossed before his weapon stretched me on the ground.
+They tell me he has fled from the anger of the law; let him return
+without a fear  Solemnly, and from the bed of death, and in the sight of
+the last tribunal, I proclaim to justice and the world that we fought
+fairly, and I perish justly.  I have adopted thy faith, though I cannot
+comprehend its mysteries.  It is enough that it holds out to me the only
+hope that we shall meet again.  I direct these lines to be transmitted to
+thee--an eternal proof of thy innocence and my guilt.  Ah, canst thou
+forgive me?  I knew no sin till I knew thee.
+
+                                          "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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE COUNTERPLOT.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.
+
+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 will _not_
+be 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HOWSOEVER THE RIVERS WIND, THE OCEAN RECEIVES THEM ALL.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CALDERON BY LYTTON ***
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+** This file should be named b202w10.txt or b202w10.zip ***
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