Chapter IV: Thinking of Exile

As Montoro de Diego entered the deep portico of his palace entrance, he stumbled against some obstruction in the way. He stooped, and found there was a man dead, or in a deep swoon, lying at his feet.

Before he could ascertain more, or summon his servants, a third person stepped out of the obscurity and muttered rapidly:

"Remember, the gold is to be mine. It is not my fault that he has thus suffered before release."

Then the whisperer of those significant words was gone, and the young man was alone with the prostrate form of his father-in-law. Relinquishing his intention to call for aid, he lifted the inanimate body in his own strong arms, and bore his burden into a small inner apartment, reserved for his own devotion to such learned studies as were then flourishing in Aragon under the fostering care of royal encouragement. Something of medicine and surgery he had also acquired, but he soon discovered with bitter sorrow that in the present case his skill was useless. The old man was dying. Every limb had been dislocated on the rack.

"They tortured me to try to extort the secret of my child's hiding-place," murmured the old man quietly. "But thanks be to the Lord, He gave me strength. This day I shall be with Him. They have but hastened my coming home, my children."

And so, with forgiveness and love in his heart, and the light of coming glory on his face, this rescued victim of the Inquisition died in his daughter's arms, just as the sun's first golden rays were brightening the streets of Saragossa. Those rays that were glowing on the walls of the dungeons, within which slept, for the last time on earth, those innocent ones who were that day to be burnt in one of the awful Autos da Fé; those rays that were glowing on the walls and windows of the palace where Arbues the Inquisitor still slumbered.

"For so He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good."

The morning was still young when Don Diego received two visitors. The first, Jerome Tivoli, was quickly dismissed with the curt but satisfying speech:

"A noble of Aragon ever keeps his word. The miserable treasure you crave is yours."

His interview with Don Alonso was far longer.

"Surely now you must join us," urged that fiery spirit with impatient indignation. "You cannot refuse to aid in avenging the wrongs of your father-in-law."

"His mode," murmured the other, "of avenging his own wrongs, was to pray for light for his murderers."

But Don Alonso was marching with hasty strides up and down the apartment, and did not hear the words. His own conscience was ill at ease, as the head of conspirators having assassination for their object, and he had an unacknowledged feeling that he would be more comfortable in his mind if the upright Montoro would throw in his lot with them. But Don Diego was firm in his refusal. That recent death-bed scene had given him back his faith in the wisdom and love of God, in spite of the darkness now around him, and he ended the discussion at last, by saying:

"No, Alonso, I will keep my honour whatever else I may be forced to lose. But, although I will not join you, I will tell you whom I would join, were my Rachel a man, or, being a woman, had she but been inured to hardships as a mountain peasant. I would suffer exile thankfully, so embittered to me has my native land become."

"Embittered indeed to us all," almost groaned the other, adding, "But whom then is it you would join in your exile? Any of our friends, or one I know not?"

"One you know not, nor I either, personally," was the reply; "but one whom we both know well by reputation. That Christopher Colon, the Genoese, who, for the past six months almost, has been wearying our Queen Isabella of Castile to provide him means to find some strange new world; some vision of wonder that has risen in his imagination, brilliant with lands of gold and pearl, and perfumed with sweeter spices than the Indies."

Don Alonso uttered a short laugh of contempt.

"Ah, ha! And you mean to tell me that you would be willing to throw in your lot with that beggarly, visionary adventurer! Our King Ferdinand knows better than to waste his maravedis on such moon-struck projects, or to let his consort do so either."

"And yet," said Montoro, somewhat doubtfully, "and yet, although of course new worlds are foolishness to dream of, some islands might perchance fall to our share, if we adventured somewhat to find them, as such good and profitable prizes have been falling, during the past fifty years, pretty plentifully, to our clever neighbours, the Portuguese."

"Ay, and even they won't listen to this Genoese, you may recollect. Besides, the Pope has given everything in the seas and on it, I have heard, to those lucky neighbours of ours, so of what use for Spaniards to jeopardize lives and treasure to benefit the Portuguese?"

"Nay," answered Don Diego, "the Pope's grant to them is only for the countries from Cape Horn to India. Why should not we obtain a grant for lands in the other hemisphere?"

And so the poor young nobleman tried to stifle grief and apprehension in dreams of other lands, of whose discovery he would not live to hear, although his son would one day help others to found new homes on their far-off soil.