Then Carlos told him, not indeed for the first time, but more fully than ever before, the story of the Reformed Church in Spain. Almost every name that he mentioned has come down to us surrounded by the mournful halo of martyr glory. With special reverential love, he told of Don Carlos de Seso, of Losada, of D'Arellano, and of the heroic Juliano Hernandez, who, as he believed, was still waiting for his crown. "For him," he said, "I pray even yet; for the others I can only thank God, Surely," he added, after a pause, "God will remember the land for which these, his faithful martyrs, prayed and toiled and suffered! Surely he will hear their voices, that cry under the altar, not for vengeance, but for forgiveness and mercy; and one day he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him?"
"I know not," said the dying man despondingly. "The Spains have had their offer of God's truth, and have rejected it. What is there that is said, somewhere in the Scriptures, about Noah, Daniel, and Job?"
Carlos repeated the solemn words, "'Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.' Do you fear that such a terrible doom has gone forth over our land, my father? I dare to hope otherwise. For it is not the Spains that have rejected the truth. It is the Inquisition that is crushing it out."
"But the Spains must answer for its deeds, since they consent to them. They heed not. There are brave men enough, with weapons in their hands," said the soldier of former days, with a momentary return to old habits of thought and feeling.
"Yet God may give our land another trial," Carlos continued. "His truth is sometimes offered twice to individuals, why not to nations?"
"True; it was offered twice to me, praised be his name." After an interval of silence, he resumed, "My son always speaks of others, never of himself. Not yet have I learned how it was that you came to receive the Word of God so readily from Juliano."
Then in the dark, with his father's hand in his, Carlos told, for the first and last time, the true story of his life.
Before he had gone far, Don Juan started, half-raised him self, and exclaimed in surprise, "What, and you!--you too--once loved?"
"Ay, and bitter as the pain has been, I am glad now of all except the sin. I am glad that I have tasted earth's very best and sweetest; that I know how the wine is red and gives its colour in the cup of life he honours me to put aside for him." His voice was low and full of feeling as he said this. Presently he resumed. "But the sin, my father! Especially my treachery in heart to Juan; that rankled long and stung deeply. Juan, my brave, generous brother, who would have struck down any man who dared to hint that I could do, or think, aught dishonourable! He never knew it; and had he known it, he would have forgiven me; but I could not forgive myself. I do not think the self-scorn passed away until--that which happened after I had been nigh a year in prison. O my father, if God had not interposed to save me by withholding me from that crime, I shudder to think what my life might have been. I am persuaded I should have sunk lower, lower, and ever lower. Perhaps, even, I might have ended in the purple and fine linen, and the awful pomp and luxury of the oppressors and persecutors of the saints."
"Nay," said Don Juan, "that would never have been possible to thee, Carlos. But there is a question I have often longed to ask thee. Does Juan, my Juan Rodrigo, know and love the Word of God?"