The tinkling of a bell sounded down the street. Father and son quickly doffed their hats and knelt on the pavement, while a priest, mounted on a mule, rode swiftly past on his way to the bedside of a dying communicant, the flickering lights and jingling bell announcing the fact that he bore with him the Sacred Host.
“Please God, you will do the same some day, my son,” murmured the father. But the little Josè kept his eyes to the pavement, and would make no reply.
Meanwhile, at a splendidly carved table in the library of his palatial residence, surrounded by every luxury that wealth and ecclesiastical influence could command, the Archbishop, pious shepherd of a restless flock, sat with clouded brow and heavy heart. The festive ceremonials of Easter were at hand, and the Church was again preparing to display her chief splendors. But on the preceding Easter disturbances had interrupted the processions of the Virgin; and already rumors had reached the ears of the Archbishop of further trouble to be incited during the approaching Holy Week by the growing body of skeptics and anticlericals. To what extent these liberals had assumed the proportions of a propaganda, and how active they would now show themselves, were questions causing the holy man deep concern. Heavy sighs escaped him as he voiced his fears to his sympathetic secretary and associate, Rafaél de Rincón, the gaunt, ascetic uncle of the little Josè.
“Alas!” he murmured gloomily. “Since the day that our Isabella yielded to her heretic ministers and thrust aside the good Sister Patrocinio, Spain has been in a perilous state. After that unholy act the dethronement and exile of the Queen were inevitable.”
“True, Your Eminence,” replied the secretary. “But is there no cause for hope in the elevation of her son, Alfonso, to the throne?”
“He is but seventeen––and absent from Spain six years. He lacks the force of his talented mother. And there is no longer a Sister Patrocinio to command the royal ear.”
“Unfortunate, I admit, Your Eminence. She bore the stigmata, the very marks of our Saviour’s wounds, imprinted on her flesh, and worked his miracles. But, in Alfonso––”
“No, no,” interrupted the Archbishop impatiently; “he has styled himself the first Republican in Europe. He will make Catholicism the state religion; but he will extend religious toleration to all. He is consumptive in mind as well as in body. And the army––alas! what may we look for from it when soldiers like this Polo Hernandez refuse to kneel during the Mass?”
“The man has been arrested, Your Eminence,” the secretary offered in consolation.