And then he read, in another, well-known hand, a few calm words, breathing peace and joy, "quietness and assurance for ever."
He pressed the loved handwriting to his lips, to his heart. He sobbed over it and wept; blistering it with such burning tears as scarcely come from a strong man's eyes more than once in a lifetime. Then, flinging himself on his knees, he thanked God--God whom he had doubted, murmured against, almost blasphemed, and who yet had been true to his promise--true to his tried and suffering servant in the hour of need.
When he rose, he took up the book again, and read and reread those precious words. All but the first he thought he could comprehend. "My beloved father is gone to Him in peace." Would the preceding entries throw any light upon that saying!
Once more, with changed feelings and quickened perceptions, he turned back to the records of the penitent's long captivity. Slowly and gradually the secret they revealed unfolded itself before him. The history of the last nine months of his brother's life lay clearly traced; and the light it shed illumined another life also, longer, sadder, less glorious than his.
One entry, almost the last, and traced with a trembling hand, he read over and over, till his eyes grew too dim to see the words.
"He entreats of me to pray for my absent Juan, and to bless him. My son, my first-born, whose face I know not, but whom he has taught me to love, I do bless thee. All blessings rest upon thee--blessings of heaven above, blessings of the earth beneath, blessings of the deep that lieth under! But for thee, Carlos, what shall I say? I have no blessing fit for thee--no word of love deep and strong enough to join with that name of thine. Doth not He say, of whose tenderness thou tellest me ours is but the shadow, 'He will be silent in his love'? But may he read my heart in its silence, and bless thee, and repay thee when thou comest to thy home, where already thy heart is."
It might have been two hours afterwards, when the same friendly monk who had narrated to Don Juan the circumstances of the Auto-da-fé, came to apprise him that his servant had fulfilled his errand, and was waiting with the horses.
Don Juan rose and met him. His face was sad; it would be a sad face always; but there was in it a look as of one who saw the end, and who knew that, however dark the way might be, the end was light everlasting. "Look here, my friend," he said, for no concealment was necessary there; truth could hurt no one. "See how wondrously God has dealt with me and mine. Here is the record of the life and death of my honoured father. For three-and-twenty years he lay in the Dominican monastery, a prisoner for Christ's sake. And to my heroic martyr brother God has given the honour and the joy of unravelling the mystery of his fate, and thus fulfilling our youthful dream. Carlos has found our father!"
He went forth into the hall, and bade the other monks a grateful farewell. Old Fray Bernardo embraced and blessed him with tears, moved by the likeness, now discerned for the first time, between the stately soldier and the noble and gentle youth, whose kindness to him, during his residence at the monastery three years before, he well remembered.
Then Don Juan set his face towards Nuera, with patient endurance, rather sad than stern, upon his brow, and in his heart "a grief as deep as life or thought," but no rebellion, and no despair. Something like resignation had come to him; already he could say, or at least try to say, "Thy will be done." And he foresaw, as in the distance, far off and faintly, a time when he might even be able to share in spirit the joy of the crowned and victorious one, to whom, in the dark prison, face to face with death, God had so wondrously given the desire of his heart, and not denied him the request of his lips.