"Save me, Guzman! save me!" he cried; "for thou wert once of the party—Save me!"
"Peace, wolf—"
"Mercy! mercy! noble señor!" he continued, turning to Cortes: "I am but one of many. Guzman is as false as I; I charge him with treason: he has abused your excellency's ear!—Listen, señores, and spare me my life: give me a day—give me but to-night, to pray and confess, and you shall have all. There are cavaliers among us—Mercy, for the love of heaven!—Camarga, the Dominican,—Don Palmerino de Castro,—Muertazo of Toledo, Carabo of Seville,—Artiaga, Santa-Rosa, Bravo, Aljaraz, and an hundred more—"
"Peace, lying villain!" cried the Captain-General—"What ho, the rope! quick, the rope!"
"A moment to repent! a moment to repent!" shrieked the victim, struggling so violently to bring his hands before him, as if to clasp them in prayer, that the silken band crackled behind him, and his hands turned black with congested blood; "a moment to repent! for I am a sinner. What! would you condemn my soul, too? Saints, hear me! angels, plead for me! A priest, for the love of heaven! I killed Artiaga of Cadiz; I scuttled the ship at Alonso, drowned the nuns, and stole the church-plate—Call Magdalena—Where's Magdalena?—You are murdering me! Mercy! mercy! I killed Hilario, too—I poniarded him in the old wounds, inflicted by Juan Lerma—I have much to repent—A priest, for the love of God! A priest, oh, a priest!"
Thus raved the villain, stained with a thousand crimes; and if aught had been wanting to steel the hearts of his executioners, enough was divulged in the unavailing abandonment with which he accused himself of misdeeds, so many and so atrocious. While his neck was yet free from the rope, he struggled violently, but without any attempt to do a mischief to his unrelenting murderers; his resistance was, indeed, like that of a cur, under the chastisement of a cruel and brutal master, which howls and contends, and yet fears to employ its fangs against the tyrant. But when he found, at last, that the cavaliers were actually putting the hasty halter about his neck, his struggles were not greater to escape than to inflict injury. He shook and tossed his head in distraction, and Don Francisco de Guzman, endeavouring to seize him by the beard, he caught the hand of the cavalier betwixt his teeth, and held it with the gripe of a tiger.
"Hell confound thee, wolf!" cried Guzman, groaning with pain, and striking him over the face with the hilt of his sword, but in vain: "Help me, cavaliers, or he will have my hand off!—Villain, unlock thy teeth.—"
"Stand aside—This will unloose thee," said one, thrusting his rapier into the thigh of the vindictive wretch; who no sooner felt the cold steel penetrate his flesh, than he opened his mouth to utter a yell. "Whip him up now.—So much for traitors!"
It was the last scream of the assassin. His lips uttered one more cry to heaven; the name of Magdalena was cut short, as the noose closed upon his throat, and ended in a hoarse, rattling, gulphing whine, that did not itself prevail beyond the space of a second. As he shot up to the top of the window, an intense glare of lightning flashed through the alabaster, and his figure, traced upon that lustrous and ghastly medium, was seen dangling and writhing in the death-agony. The next moment, the huge curtain was drawn over the dreadful spectacle: but those who paused a moment, to look back, could behold the convulsions of the dying miscreant giving motion, and sometimes protrusion, to the dark folds of the drapery.—When all was silent, in the darkness of the night, the watchmen in the vestibule could yet hear the pattering of blood-drops falling from his mangled limb, upon the sonorous wood of the platform.
But there were other scenes now occurring, which, for a time, drove from their thoughts the memory of Villafana.