She drew close to him; she touched his hand to remove it from his face. The next moment a cry of horror rang through the house. It brought the servants and Don Garçia himself to the room.
"He is dead! God and Our Lady have mercy on his soul!" said Don Garçia, after a brief examination.
"If only he had had the Holy Sacrament, I could have borne it!" said Doña Inez; and then, kneeling down beside the couch, she wept bitterly.
So passed the beggar with the King's sons, through the golden gate into the King's own presence-chamber. His wrecked and troublous life over, his passionate heart at rest for ever, the erring, repentant Gonsalvo found entrance into the same heaven as D'Arellano, and Gonsalez, and Losada, with their radiant martyr-crowns. In the many mansions there was a place for him, as for those heroic and triumphant ones. He wore the same robe as they--a robe washed and made white, not in the blood of martyrs, but in the blood of the Lamb.
XXXVIII.
Nuera Again.
"Happy places have grown holy;
If ye went where once ye went,
Only tears would fall down slowly.
As at solemn Sacrament
Household names, that used to flutter
Through your laughter unawares,
God's divine one ye can utter
With less trembling in your prayers."--E. B. Browning
A chill and dreary torpor stole over Juan's fiery spirit after the Auto. The settled conviction that his brother was dead took possession of his mind. Moreover, his soul had lost its hold upon the faith which he once embraced so warmly. He had consciously ceased to be true to his best convictions, and those convictions, in turn, had ceased to support him. His confidence in himself, his trust in his own heart, had been shaken to its foundations. And he was very far from having gained in its stead that strong confidence in God which would have infinitely more than counter-balanced its loss.
Thus two or three slow and melancholy months wore away. Then, fortunately for him, events happened that forced him, in spite of himself, to the exertion that saves from the deadly slumber of despair. It became evident, that if he did not wish to see the last earthly treasure that remained to him swept out of his reach for ever, he must rouse himself from his lethargy so far as to grasp and hold it; for now Don Manuel commanded his ward to bestow her hand upon his rival, Señor Luis Rotelo.
In her anguish and dismay, Beatriz fled for refuge to her kind-hearted cousin, Doña Inez.