“Whatever evil your much hated Greek was guilty of, there is one question to ask:––in monk’s cell, or in the battles for the wrong––left he the record of a coward?”
“No,” acknowledged Don Diego––“but his zeal was damnable in all things.”
“I ask because various things which he endured could scarcely be understood if you put him in the list of the weak or the incapable.”
“Often the strength of the Evil One is a stupendous force for his chosen people,” agreed Don Diego. “That is widely known in Europe to-day when Paracelsus with infernal magic of the mind makes cures which belong by every right to the saints alone!”
“And the people are truly cured of their ills––truly healed?”
“Their bodies are truly healed for the life that is temporal, but each soul is doomed for the life that is eternal. No Christian doubts that the mental magic of the physician is donated by Beelzebub whose tool he is.”
“He was a student of exceeding depth,”––agreed Padre Vicente––“and it may be he has found magic forbidden to man. But the Greek laid claim to no such power as that, however much it is said that the devil loved him! He had only a strong body, and the dislike to see it cut to pieces for a heathen holiday.”
“De Soto, it is said, found a dirk of his when he crossed the land of Apalache years later, seeking empire. But the tribes could or would tell nothing of the lost Greek and the negro slave. The latter was killed by the people called Natchez, and the Greek, who had been among many things:––a sailor, escaped by the water, leaving no trail––not even the trail made by a white skin in a land of dusk people.
“From the Turks he had learned a trick of using stain of barks and herbs. His hair was of brown, but the eyebrows and lashes were heavy and dark. After using such concoction, a mirror of clear water 90 showed him no trace of himself except the eyes––they were blue beyond hope, but the heavy lashes were a help and a shadow.