"I trust you, Fray. If under cover of seeking his conversion, of anything, you could but see him."
"Impossible, señor--utterly impossible."
"Why? They sometimes send friars to reason with the--the prisoners."
"Always Dominicans or Jesuits--men well-known and trusted by the Board of the Inquisition. However, señor, nothing that a man may do shall be wanting on my part. Will not that content your Excellency?"
"Content me? Well, as far as you are concerned, yes. But, in truth, I am haunted day and night by one horrible dread. What if--if they should torture him? My gentle brother, frail in mind and body, tender and sensitive as a woman! Terror and pain would drive him mad." The last words were a quick broken whisper. But outward expressions of emotion with Don Juan were always speedily repressed. Recovering apparent calmness, he stretched out his hand to Fray Sebastian, saying, with a faint smile, "I have kept you too long from my lord's supper-table--pardon me."
"Your Excellency's condescension in conversing with me deserves my profound gratitude," replied the monk, in true Castilian fashion. His residence at the Inquisitor's Court had certainly improved his manners.
Don Juan gave him his address, and it was agreed that he should call on him in a few days. Fray Sebastian then offered to bring him on his way through the garden and court of that part of the Triana which formed the Inquisitor's residence. But Juan declined the favour. He could not answer for himself when brought face to face with the impious pomp and luxury of the persecutor of the saints. He feared that, by some wild word or deed, he might imperil the cause he had at heart. So he hailed a waterman who was guiding his little boat down the tranquil stream in the waning light. The boat was soon brought to the place where the Inquisitor had landed from his barge; and Juan, after shaking the dust from his feet, both literally and metaphorically, sprang into it.
The popular ideal of a persecutor is very far from the truth. At the word there rises before most minds the vision of a lean, pale-faced, fierce-eyed monk, whose frame is worn with fasting, and his scourge red with his own blood. He is a fanatic--pitiless, passionate, narrow-minded, perhaps half insane--but penetrated to the very core of his being with intense zeal for his Church's interest, and prepared in her service both to inflict and to endure all things.
Very unlike this ideal were most of the great persecutors who carried out the behests of Antichrist. They were generally able men. But they were pre-eminently men wise in their generation, men of their generation, men who "loved this present world." They gave the Church the service of strong hand and skilful brain that she needed; and she gave them, in return, "gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls; and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all sweet wood; and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment, and frankincense; and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat; and beasts, and sheep, and horses and chariots, and slaves and souls of men." It was for these things, not for abstract ideas, not for high places in heaven, that they tortured and murdered the saints of God. Whilst the cry of the oppressed reached the ears of the Most High, those who were "wearing them out" lived in unhallowed luxury, in degrading sensuality. Gonzales de Munebrãga was a good specimen of the class to which he belonged--he was no exceptional case.
Nor was Fray Sebastian anything but an ordinary character. He was amiable, good-natured, free from gross vices--what is usually called "well disposed." But he "loved wine and oil," and to obtain what he loved he was willing to become the servant and the flatterer of worse men than himself, at the terrible risk of sinking to their level.