There was a short pause. "Have you anything else to say?" asked the prior rather more gently.
"Only one word, señor." He turned and looked at the dead. "I know you loved him well. You will deal gently with his dust, will you not? A grave is not much to ask for him. You will give it; I trust you."
The stern set face relaxed a little before that pleading look. "It is you who have sought to rob him of a grave," said the prior--"you who have defamed him of heresy. But your testimony is invalid; and, as I have said, I believe you not."
With this declaration of purely official disbelief, he left the room.
His colleague lingered a moment. "You plead for the senseless dust that can neither feel nor suffer," he said; "you can pity that. How is it you cannot pity yourself?"
"That which you destroy to-morrow is not myself. It is only my garment, my tent. Yet even over that Christ watches. He can raise it glorious from the ashes of the Quemadero as easily as from the church where the bones of my fathers sleep. For I am his, soul and body--the purchase of his blood. And why should it be a marvel in your eyes that I rejoice to give my life for him who gave his own for me?"
"God grant thee even yet to die in his grace!" answered the Inquisitor, somewhat moved. "I do not despair of thee. I will pray for thee, and visit thee again to-night." So saying, he hastened after the prior.
For a season Carlos sat motionless, his soul filled to overflowing with a calm, deep tide of awed and wondering joy. No room was there for any thought save one--"I shall see His face; I shall be with Him for ever." Over the Thing that lay between he could spring as joyously as a child might leap across a brook to reach his father's outstretched hand.
At length his eye fell, perhaps by accident, on the little writing-book which lay near. He drew it towards him, and having found out the place where the last entry was made, wrote rapidly beneath it,--
"To depart and to be with Christ is far better. My beloved father is gone to him in peace to-day. I too go in peace, though by a rougher path, to-morrow. Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.