CHAPTER XII.
DARKNESS AND LIGHT.
It is not the tongue of man alone that can speak to the soul of man; God's rod hath often a solemn voice, and the conscience cannot but hear it. Much was passing through the mind of Alcala of which those around him knew nothing, as he lay with closed eyes and silent lips upon his couch of pain. He was often supposed to be sleeping, when thoughts on the deepest subjects were absorbing his mind.
The horror of the bull-fight had been to Alcala what the earthquake was to the jailer of Philippi; it had startled his soul into uttering the cry, "What must I do to be saved?" Not that any dark deed of guilt lay on the young Spaniard's conscience. In a place where the standard of morality is low, De Aguilera had led a life comparatively blameless; the picture of maidenly purity ever before him in the sister whom he tenderly loved, had kept him from many an error. Alcala had little to reproach himself with as regarded man, but he had become conscious that he had offended his Maker, and had never yet made his peace with his God.
Alcala's ideas in regard to the Supreme Being were vague, as might be expected in a man who had never studied the Scriptures. The Spaniard did not know God, and therefore did not love Him. Alcala regarded the Almighty as a Being awful in purity and terrible in justice, who required an unhesitating obedience, an absorbing devotion, which the young man knew had never been rendered by himself. If the horn of the bull had gone a little deeper, if it had sent the sinner to the dread tribunal above, how would the disembodied soul have endured the searching scrutiny of an Omniscient Judge, and what would His awful verdict have been? Such was the question which Alcala asked of his conscience, and conscience gave no answer of peace.
The wounded man rather submitted to than sought the ministrations of Bonifacio; they satisfied neither his heart nor his reason. Alcala heard of the sanctity of the (so-called) Catholic Church, the efficacy of her sacraments, the power of her priests, the intercession of martyrs, the wonders to be wrought by fragment of wood or morsel of bone,—he heard of all these things with weariness and distaste. Alcala was as a man perishing of thirst to whom is held out an elaborately chased cup, within which there is not a single drop of life-giving water.
Bonifacio's rebukes were even more trying to the sufferer than were the priest's exhortations. The confessor tried to probe his penitent's conscience, but never laid his finger on the real wound. Alcala's remorse was not for having read some books that did not increase his reverence for the hierarchy of Rome, nor for not having more frequently laid bare his inmost thoughts to a tonsured fellow-sinner. He could not be argued into believing it to be a crime to have had a Protestant friend. It was not recollection of such transgressions that was troubling the cavalier's soul with the yet unanswered question, "What must I do to be saved?"