The monk laid paper before him, but held the pen in his own hand.
"Dictate, and I will write, what, I trust will bring peace to your soul."
"No," replied Louis, "my own hand alone must record what is on my soul. And no eye, Lorenzo,"—he looked for that faithful servant, and finding him absent, requested the monk to call him in. "He must be a witness, with you Father, that the probably altered characters are mine."
Lorenzo was summoned, and the monk briefly told him the cause. He was transfixed, till the gentle voice of his master addressed him.
"Lorenzo," said he, "your fidelity to me has been more that of a brother than of a servant. I trust you with the charge of my last testament, for I know you will execute it, as if my eye were then looking upon you."
Lorenzo did not speak, but put to his lips the trembling hand that took the pen from the friar.
Louis passed an hour in writing. Both witnesses sat at a distance; Lorenzo, with his face bent down on his knees; and the priest, marvelling within himself, at the firmness with which the dying Marquis pursued his task. His eyes receded not once from the paper, nor did his fingers relax, while, with determined truth, he related all that had passed in the Hambra between him and his father; yet in the dreadful confession, he pleaded his almost belief, that calamity had disordered the senses of his unhappy parent. On these grounds, he implored the Marquis Santa Cruz, (to whom the paper was addressed,) not only to conceal this tale of shame from every hostile eye; but by the friendship he once felt for both father and son, and by his vows of Christian charity, to leave no means unexerted to re-call Ripperda from his apostacy.
"If I deceive myself," continued this pious son, "in believing the existence of that mental derangement, which would once have been my most fearful deprecation, but since this direful crime is now my fervent hope, many would tell me I must despair of his salvation. My trust is in an higher judgement. In him who blessed me with such zeal as your's, to be his minister to my erring parent; in him who promises pardon to the penitent; and to whom all that seems impossible to man, is as already done.
"In this faith I shall lay down my head in the grave, with perfect confidence that a way is open by which the unhappy abjurer of his Saviour's name, may yet be received to mercy. In the world to come, I may hope to embrace my father, reconciled to his God and washed from every worldly stain! Meanwhile, in this my last act, I recommend him to your sacred exhortations:—To the prayers of my saint-like uncle of Lindisfarne."
Here Louis paused, and a tear fell upon the paper. It was the first that had moistened the burning surface of his eye, since the calamity which had stretched him on that bed of death. It mingled with the ink in writing the dear and honoured name.—He resumed.