"Is this death?" he muttered, "and lie I now in the world of shadows? God be merciful to me a sinner! Pity and pardon me, O Christ, for I have fought for thy faith. Take me from this place of blackness, and let me look on the light of bliss!"
A gentle hand was laid upon his forehead, a low sigh breathed on his cheek; and suddenly a light, flashing up as from some expiring cresset, revealed to his wondering eyes the face and figure of the mysterious prophetess.
"O God! art thou indeed a fiend? and dost thou lead me, from the land of infidels, to the prison-house of devils?" he cried, again starting up, clasping his hands, and gazing wildly on the vision. "Speak to me, thou that livest not; for I know, thou art Leila!"
As he uttered these incoherent words, the figure, bending a little away, and fastening upon his own, eyes of strange meaning, in which pity struggled with terror, seemed, gradually, to fade into the air; until, as suddenly as it had flashed into brightness, the light vanished, and all was left in darkness.
From this moment, the thoughts of the cavalier wandered with tenfold wildness; and he fell into a delirium, which presented, as long as it lasted, a succession of exciting images. Now he struggled, in the hall of his own castle of Alcornoque, or the Cork-tree, with the false Abdalla, the knee of the Almogavar on his breast, and the Arab poniard at his throat—while all the time, the perfidious Jacinto stood by, exhorting his father to strike; now he stood among burning sands, fighting with enraged fiends, over the dead body of his knight, Calavar, to protect the beloved corse from their fiery fingers; now the vanished Leila sat weeping by his side, dropping upon his fevered lips the juice of pleasant fruits, or now she came to him in the likeness of the pagan Sibyl, beckoning him away, with melancholy smiles, to a distant bay; while, ever, when he strove to rise and follow, the page Jacinto, converted into a giant, and brandishing a huge dagger, held him back with a lion's strength and ferocity.
With such chimeras, and a thousand others, equally extravagant, disturbing his brain, he passed through many hours; and then, as a torpor like that of death gradually stole over him, benumbing his deranged faculties, the same gentle hand, the same low suspiration, which had soothed him before, but without the countenance which had maddened, returned to him, and made pleasant the path to annihilation.
CHAPTER XLVII.
From a deep slumber, that seemed, indeed, death, for it was dreamless, the cavalier, at last, awoke, somewhat confused, but no longer delirious; and, though greatly enfeebled, entirely free from fever. A yellow sunbeam,—the first or the last glimmering of day, he knew not which,—played through a narrow casement, faintly illuminating the apartment, and falling especially upon a low table at his side, whereon, among painted and gilded vessels of strange form, he perceived his helmet, and other pieces of armour as well as a lute, of not less remembered workmanship. He raised his eyes to the attendant, who sat musing, hard by, and, with a thrill and exclamation of joy, beheld the Moorish page, Jacinto.
"Is it thou, indeed, my dear knave Jacinto! whom I thought in the maws of infidels?" he cried, starting up. "And how art thou; and how is thy lord, Don Gabriel, to-day? Tell me, where hast thou been, these two troubled days? and how didst thou return? By my faith, this last bout was somewhat hard, and I have slept long!"