The Spanish Cavalier: A Story of Seville. A. L. O. E.

san-benitos,4 and surrounded by curious crowds to whom their pangs were a pastime, and fanatical priests to whom their torments were a triumph – men and tender women endured the most painful of deaths! Yes; this pure balmy air was once polluted with the smoke from human sacrifices – this sunshine darkened with the clouds rising from stakes to which living victims were bound! What deeds of heroism – what unblenching courage – what unshaken faith displayed in the hour of nature's agony, have made this spot holy ground! Here – a spectacle to angels and to men – martyrs showed what the sons of Spain could dare and her daughters endure! Are the idle, self-indulgent inhabitants of Seville in the nineteenth century descendants or representatives of heroes who counted not their lives dear to them, but who, having embraced evangelical truth, grasped it firmly even unto death? Or can it be that martyrs have suffered in vain – that the light which they kindled is quenched for ever in Spain? Is the cry, 'How long, Lord, how long?' never to meet an answer as regards this benighted though beautiful land? I cannot believe it;" and Lucius resumed his rapid walk. "The seed sown amidst tears and blood must spring up one day, and ripen to a harvest of light! Happy – thrice happy – the reapers! Spaniards will show themselves worthy of their martyrs, and no longer appear to the world as a degenerate race, indifferent to their highest interests, or cold in the holiest cause. But what right have I to upbraid them either with indifference or coldness? Here am I, proud of the name of Englishman, thankful for having been brought up in the clearness of gospel light. I have been for a year in Seville, and I have never so much as shown to a Spaniard the New Testament in his own language, which I carry now on my person. Nay, the only man in this country for whom I have a feeling of friendship – the man whom I meet almost every day of my life – he knows nothing of the faith which I hold, save that he probably deems me a heretic, simply because I was reared in England. Of Alcala's inner life, his views, his hopes, I, his friend, am as ignorant as if we had never met till to-day! I cannot tell – I have never inquired – whether De Aguilera be a bigoted son of that Church which is drunken with the blood of the saints, or whether, like many of his countrymen, he has adopted sceptical views, the pendulum swinging from superstition into infidelity – from believing that which is false, into denying that which is true.

      "And the Spaniard may now be on the eve of meeting a violent death – of having the martyr's agonies without the martyr's crown! I have been made uneasy by the bare rumour of the danger to which his person may be exposed. How little have I thought of the perils which surround the soul of one brought up under the dark shadow of Romish error! I must see De Aguilera, and speak to my friend as I have not ventured to speak before. God help me to break through a reserve which I have often suspected to be cowardly, but which I now feel to be criminal!"

      CHAPTER III.

      FADED SPLENDOUR

      Is this a prison or a palace?" was the mental inquiry of Lucius, as, after again asking his way to the house of Don Alcala de Aguilera, he reached the stately building, which was one of the numerous relics which the Moors have left behind them in Seville. The high, dead, fortress-like wall, suggested the former term; a glimpse through the open archway of the dwelling, the latter. From this archway a vestibule led into an inner court, from which it was divided by an ornamental grating; this grating also being open at the time, nothing impeded the view into the marble-paved patio beyond. This patio, or court, was surrounded by clustering columns of the most graceful proportions; while in the centre of it orange-trees and broad-leaved bananas, the oleander and the myrtle, bordered a fountain of exquisite design. The vestibule itself was paved with Moorish tiles, of hue the most brilliant; and the exterior of the archway was gracefully sculptured. The first impression made by a glance through the opening was, that a scene of Oriental beauty and splendour lay beyond it. Had Lucius had time for closer observation, he must have noticed also marks of poverty and decay. Every here and there a bright tile in the passage, and marble square in the patio, had been broken or displaced – the carving on the fountain had in many places been injured, and no water fell into its basin; but the plants in the little central garden looked fresh and green in the softened light, as if tended by a woman's hand. The aspect of the place, so unlike that of any mansion in a northern clime, was calculated to raise admiration and excite curiosity in the mind of a stranger, and waken a desire to explore the interior, and make acquaintance with the dwellers in so picturesque and romantic a home.

      The appearance of the one whom Lucius saw at the entrance, however, contrasted with the stately elegance of the mansion of which she was an inmate. Chaffering with an itinerant vendor of fish stood an old woman, wrinkled and bent. From her coarse dress, arms bare to the elbow, and the strong scent of garlic which hung about her, the dame might rather have been deemed a denizen of one of the low purlieus of Seville, than the servant of an aristocrat. The old crone, who used much gesticulation in speaking, was so eager about her bargaining that she did not notice the approach of Lucius Lepine. The colloquy between her and the hawker had probably lasted for some time, as both parties looked heated and angry.

      "Five cuartos a piece! why, I would not give twenty for the whole lot of them; they're not fresh – not fit to set before the señora!" were the first words heard by Lucius as he came up to the archway.

      "I tell you again, they were alive and swimming this morning," interrupted the man.

      "Don't you think I know good fish when I see them?" cried the shrill-voiced dame. "I who have been for nigh sixty years in the service of the illustrious caballero Don Pedro de Aguilera, his son, and his grandson besides!"

      "It's not the fish, but the price, that don't suit you," retorted the hawker. "Come, you shall have them a bargain, – let's say nine cuartos a pair."

      "I'll give eight, and no more," cried the dame, eying the fish with a hungry look, but clinching hard the coppers which she held in her hand.

      The hawker shook his head, and shouldered his basket.

      "You'll lose the custom of the house," threatened the woman.

      "No great loss," laughed the hawker, as he turned from the arch; "the barber round the corner will buy all this fish, and he earns enough with his razor to pay a fair price for his dinner!"

      The torrent of abuse which the old dame launched after the retreating hawker, was suddenly stopped by the question of Lucius, —

      "Is Don Alcala de Aguilera within?"

      Old Teresa was startled and annoyed at the preceding colloquy having been overheard by a stranger. It was also wounding to her vanity as a woman, and her pride as a retainer of a noble family, that she should be seen in the deshabille in which she had emerged from the kitchen, instead of the black silk dress in which she was wont to attend Donna Inez to mass. In a tone of irritation Teresa replied that the illustrious caballero was not in the house.

      "Is he likely soon to come in?" inquired Lucius Lepine.

      The servant did not know, or chose not to tell. The caballero came in and out at his pleasure: he might be spending the evening at the governor's palace, he might not be home till midnight. Teresa stood in the middle of the archway like a jealous guardian of the place, who would suffer the entrance of no stranger to disturb its dignified seclusion. But the sound of Lepine's question had reached other ears than those of Teresa.

      "Alcala, is it you at last?" exclaimed a sweet, eager voice from within; and Lucius caught a glimpse of a youthful form hurrying across the patio with a rapidity very unusual in the movements of a lady of Spain. It was indeed but a glimpse, for the donna, seeing that he at the entrance was a stranger and not her expected brother, instantly retreated, disappearing behind the foliage of the shrubs that surrounded the fountain.

      The young Englishman would fain have sent in his card, and presented himself to the lady or ladies within, but shyness prevented his thus making an attempt to enter the house without a formal introduction. Lucius had seen little or nothing of society in the higher circles of Seville, and feared to give offence by some unintentional breach of its rules. The manner of Teresa would have shown a less intelligent observer than Lucius, that she at least would have resented and resisted as an intrusion any attempt on his part to venture within the archway. A little disappointed at his failure in procuring an interview with his friend, Lucius placed his card in the soiled, wrinkled hand of Teresa, to be given to her