"No man will ever be a duke who changes his mind three times within three months."
"But I only changed my mind once," returned Carlos.
"You have never changed it at all, that I wot of," said Don Manuel. "And I would that thine were turned in the same profitable direction, son Gonsalvo."
"Oh yes! By all means. Offer the blind and the lame in sacrifice. Put Heaven off with the wreck of a man that the world will not condescend to take into her service."
"Hold thy peace, son born to cross me!" said the father, losing his temper at by no means the worst of the many provocations he had recently received. "Is it not enough to look at thee lying there a useless log, and to suffer thy vile temper; but thou must set thyself against me, when I point out to thee the only path in which a cripple such as thou could earn green figs to eat with his bread, not to speak of supporting the rank of Alvarez de Meñaya as he ought."
Here Carlos, out of consideration for the feelings of Gonsalvo, left the room; but the angry altercation between the father and son lasted long after his departure.
The next day Don Carlos rode out, by a lonely path amidst the gray ruins of old Italica, to the stately castellated convent of San Isodro. Amidst all his new interests, the young Castilian noble still remembered with due enthusiasm how the building had been reared, more than two hundred years ago, by the devotion of the heroic Alonzo Guzman the Good, who gave up his own son to death, under the walls of Tarifa, rather than surrender the city to the Moors.
Before he left Seville, he placed a copy of Fray Constantino's "Sum of Christian Doctrine" between two volumes of Gonsalvo's favourite "Lope de Vega." He had previously introduced to the notice of the ladies several of the Fray's little treatises, which contained a large amount of Scripture truth, so cautiously expressed as to have not only escaped the censure, but actually obtained the express approbation of the Holy Office. He had also induced them occasionally to accompany him to the preachings at the Cathedral. Further than this he dared not go; nor did he on other accounts think it advisable, as yet, to permit himself much communication with Doña Beatriz.
The monks of San Isodro welcomed him with that strong, peculiar love which springs up between the disciples of the same Lord, more especially when they are a little flock surrounded by enemies. They knew that he was already one of the initiated, a regular member of Losada's congregation. Both this fact, and the warm recommendations of Fray Cassiodoro, led them to trust him implicitly; and very quickly they made him a sharer in their secrets, their difficulties, and their perplexities.
To his astonishment, he found himself in the midst of a community, Protestant in heart almost to a man, and as far as possible acting out their convictions; while at the same time they retained (how could they discard them?) the outward ceremonies of their Church and their Order.