The Señor d’Aguilar smiled a little as he replied.
“You said, I think, that sometimes I travel on my own business. Well, there is your answer. You are right, I have abandoned worldly ambitions—most of them. They are troublesome, and for some people, if they be born too high and yet not altogether rightly, very dangerous. The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.”
“Or into a log upon which men’s heads can be cut off. Señor, I congratulate you. You have the wisdom that grasps the substance and lets the shadows flit. It is really very rare.”
“You asked why I do not change the cut of my garments,” went on d’Aguilar, without noticing the interruption. “Excellency, to be frank, because of my own business. I have failings like other men. For instance, wealth is that substance of which you spoke, rule is the shadow; he who has the wealth has the real rule. Again, bright eyes may draw me, or a hate may seek its slaking, and these things do not suit robes, black or red.”
“Yet many such things have been done by those who wore them,” replied the ambassador with meaning.
“Aye, Excellency, to the discredit of Holy Church, as you, a priest, know better than most men. Let the earth be evil as it must; but let the Church be like heaven above it, pure, unstained, the vault of prayer, the house of mercy and of righteous judgment, wherein walks no sinner such as I,” and again he crossed himself.
There was a ring of earnestness in the speaker’s voice that caused de Ayala, who knew something of his private reputation, to look at him curiously.
“A true fanatic, and therefore to us a useful man,” he thought to himself, “though one who knows how to make the best of two worlds as well as most of them;” but aloud he said, “No wonder that our Church rejoices in such a son, and that her enemies tremble when he lifts her sword. But, Señor, you have not told me what you think of all this ceremony and people.”
“The people I know well, Excellency, for I dwelt among them in past years and speak their language; and that is why I have left Granada to look after itself for a while, and am here to-day, to watch and make report——” He checked himself, then added, “As for the ceremony, were I a king I would have it otherwise. Why, in that house just now those vulgar Commons—for so they call them, do they not?—almost threatened their royal master when he humbly craved a tithe of the country’s wealth to fight the country’s war. Yes, and I saw him turn pale and tremble at the rough voices, as though their echoes shook his throne. I tell you, Excellency, that the time will come in this land when those Commons will be king. Look now at that fellow whom his Grace holds by the hand, calling him ‘sir’ and ‘master,’ and yet whom he knows to be, as I do, a heretic, a Jew in disguise, whose sins, if he had his rights, should be purged by fire. Why, to my knowledge last night, that Israelite said things against the Church——”
“Whereof the Church, or its servant, doubtless made notes to be used when the time comes,” broke in de Ayala. “But the audience is done, and his Highness beckons us forward to the feast, where there will be no heretics to vex us, and, as it is Lent, not much to eat. Come, Señor! for we stop the way.”