“Silence, rash boy,” answered Alonso, roused into unwonted passion by these stinging words, “you presume upon my constant favour to insult me.”
“Never, oh never! All that I know of kindness is from you,” and Bernardo cast himself at Alonso’s feet and seized his hands. “You are my king and master. I forget none of your bounties to a friendless boy” (at this word Alonso started, and laid his hand tenderly on Bernardo’s head, but presently withdrew it with a sigh); “but neither the crown you wear nor your bounties, had they been ten times greater, would make me a traitor to the land.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Bernardo del Carpio’s Vow
S Bernardo knelt upon the steps of the darkened altar, on which the outline of a saint with a dim glory seemed to bless him with outstretched arms, something in the ardent auburn of his hair, relieved from the pressure of his cap of steel, which he had removed before entering, his open manly brow and honest eyes fixed on him with such pleading warmth, touched some subtle chord of tenderness within the King.
His sister Ximena in her youth rose up and gazed at him in Bernardo’s eyes. Deep down in his cold heart a thrill of human affection throbbed as he recalled their games as children and a thousand ties of girlish love she had woven about his heart. Alas! how he had loved her! How he still mourned her, and importuned Heaven with constant prayers, spite of what he considered the deadly sin of her apostasy in forming an adulterous union which shut out her son from the legal pale of kinship! Therefore he had destroyed all record of the marriage, ever, in the consideration of the Church, a sacrilegious act.
That the son of his sister should inherit the crown had ever been to him a horror and a dread. Indeed, in the ramifications of his strangely mixed nature, this fear had mainly influenced him in the choice he had made of Charlemagne.
Now, by a sudden revulsion of feeling, the very boldness of Bernardo, his open-handed valour and the fiery words in which he pleaded, invested him with something sacred as the utterance of the true and rightful defender of his people. From that moment a tardy remorse began to possess him, and doubts of the rightfulness of his act in destroying the proofs of his legitimacy.
“Too late, too late,” he murmured, gazing sorrowfully into the depths of Bernardo’s clear blue eyes, and unconsciously passing his fingers through the beads of an agate rosary suspended at his waist, as if to invoke the assistance of the saints to maintain the steadfastness of his resolve—then shook his head, which sank upon his breast.
All this time the war of the elements was raging without. Thunder, lightning, wind, and rain had burst forth in one of those sudden tempests which sweep down from the mountains even in the midst of summer. The walls of the old palace seemed to rock, and at times the voices of the speakers were barely audible.