“Father! it hurts me to give you pain, but it is impossible. I cannot! I cannot!”
The Cardinal was cold to the soul—his boy, his heart’s idol, a heretic, an infidel; the stripling was strange to him, standing there with a look in his face of iron determination. He would break that will; he must!
“You do not know what you are doing. You are too young. You have been influenced by that old sophisticated fox, Pedro Gonzala. I fought a greater man than he and won; I will fight again—I will save you, as I saved your mother.”
“No! No! They have not influenced me. I have given up dogma, I will not be chained again by ritual, I will not be a mummy wrapped in the superstition of past ages. I am a living, thinking being. I am free! free!”
The priest’s eyes went past him to that shadowy figure, looking down now, as it had so often done in life, at a chess board on the table, fingering the pieces, moving, removing, trying new combinations. Neither had won; it was a drawn game;—stalemate. With a low moan he sank back in his chair.
The boy gave a cry of terror.
“Father, speak to me! Speak to me!”
The priest heard him not. He had renounced this world for the glory of the next. He was going to his reward, where there would be no dogma, no ritual, no religion.
A terrible fear clutched the boy. He looked about despairingly. He was forsaking the shelter of those old walls. He had stripped himself bare. He must go out naked to meet the stones of the Philistines. He threw himself down before the beloved guide of his childhood, sobbing out his love, his loneliness.
“Come back! Come back! Don’t leave me! I am afraid, afraid!”