The keen eyes of the Spaniard flashed, and he looked at Jack as if he would have pierced him through.
"I fear neither Don Fabrique nor any other man," said he gruffly; "a woman on a burro—oh—it must be poor Sister Santa Veronica, of Estrelo, a town about a league distant."
"How is she named so?" I asked.
"After the blessed Santa Veronica who wiped the pale face of our Lord, when dying upon his cross," replied the Spaniard, lowering his head; "and as she did so, on her kerchief there became impressed the most wondrous of religious miracles—the Santa Faz—the holy countenance of Jaen, where it is still preserved in our cathedral, and from which the portraits of our Saviour are all taken; hence it is that his sad and upturned face, with its crown of bloody thorns and curling heard, and the long yellow hair parted over the smooth pale brow, are so well known over all the Christian world."
As he spoke, an elderly woman, habited like a nun, in a coarse and well-patched dress of black serge, with a hood of spotless white linen folded across her brow and chin, and having its long ends drooping lappetwise down her withered cheeks, rode up to us on a donkey, which displayed—what one seldom sees in a Spanish ass—evident signs of being ill-fed and ill-groomed. The nun, who had a careworn, grave, and, though stern, not unpleasing expression of face, carried a covered basket on her arm. Our companion sprang to his feet, and, doffing his sombrero, hastened to meet her and to hold the bridle of her animal.
She was abroad, as she told us, begging alms and food for the sisters of her convent—ten ladies—all of whom were of noble rank, but the most of whose kinsmen had fallen in battle under Don Ramon de Cabrera, and thus left them friendless. They were now, by the confiscation of the ecclesiastical revenues, and the seizure of those sums which they had paid as a dowry into the convent treasury, reduced to extreme penury in their old age, and were driven from their pleasant convent in the beautiful vega of Jaen; since then they had endeavoured to perform the duties of their order, and to serve God, in a poor and half-ruined house, which belonged to a noble, charitable. and religious lady, Donna Dominga de Lucena, y Colmenar de Orieja, at Estrelo; and now would not the noble Caballeros give something to the poor ladies of Santa Theresa, however small, for the love of God and of blessed charity?
All this, which she prettily told, was addressed to us, rather than to the stranger, at whom she glanced uneasily from time to time, although he stood bare-headed, with the deepest respect, and holding her burro by the bridle.
The circumstance of the sisterhood being befriended by the mother of Donna Paulina would have sufficed to interest us, if the wrong done them by the present Government of Spain had failed to do so. Our purses were at once produced, and we respectfully raised our caps on presenting the poor nun with a few pillared dollars, which no doubt she little expected from two heretical Brittanicos.
They had been robbed of everything, she continued—at least, all save their cases of reliques and the bones of Santa Theresa, which they had borne on their shoulders in sad procession from Jaen to Estrelo; and, moreover, they had lost the wonderful portrait of their patroness, which had been seized and sold by those hijos de Luiz Philipe, the men of the new administration; but it was no fault of the present Queen of Spain, for poor Isabella la Catolica had wept her eyes out in the cause of the poor monks and nuns. The señores had, no doubt, heard of the wonderful portrait of the blessed Theresa?
In great sorrow we professed our ignorance thereof.