"If thou fearest them, away! Why dost thou trouble me? If thou stayest, listen to my words; for though they come too late, yet will they cause thee to do justice to the name, and say masses for the soul, of Juan Lerma."
"Speak of Juan Lerma," said Camarga, with a trembling voice, "and I will indeed listen to thee. In nomine Dei Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, speak and speak truly. Cursed be thou, even by my lips, if thou speakest that which is false, or concealest aught that is true!"
"Truth, though I die,—and let me die when it is spoken," said Magdalena, placing her lips with the instinctive reverence of habit to the cross which Camarga extended. As she kissed it, her heart seemed to soften, and she shed many bitter tears, while pouring forth her broken and melancholy story.
"Know, father," she said, not once doubting that she had a true father of the church before her, "that it was my misfortune never to have known the kindness and care of a parent."
"Let that be passed," said Camarga, hurriedly. "Speak not of the sins of thy youth, a thousand times confessed, and a thousand times absolved. Speak of thy coming to the island,—of thy broken vows,—thy—" But here perceiving that Magdalena started with a sort of affright, at finding how far his knowledge had anticipated her divulgements, he continued, with better discretion, "Thus much do I know—how I know, ask not; and yet thou mayst be told, too, that much of thy fate was interwoven with that of Villafana."
"My fate, and that of Villafana!" cried Magdalena, with a withering look of contempt. But instantly changing to a more submissive air, she exclaimed, "My story, indeed, father, but not my fate. If he have confessed to you, then do you know enough,—perhaps all. He told you, then, that his avarice, gratified at the expense of a horrible crime,—the destruction of the ship, and the lives of all within it, abbess, nuns, sailors, and all,—was the cause of all my calamities, since it was my hard fate not to perish with the rest. He robbed the ship of the golden and silver church-vessels, when we were near to the port, and made his escape to the shore, leaving us to sink in the midst of a storm then rising. Our pilot having no hope but in running upon the shore, then within sight, ran the vessel among certain rocks, where it was beaten to pieces. Father, it chanced to be my fate, and mine alone, to be plucked out of that roaring sea, by one to whom, when lying in a gulf ten times more hideous, I refused to stretch out my hand. Father! last night a word from my lips would have saved the life of Juan Lerma, and I did not speak it!"
"Dwell not on this," said Camarga, sternly. "Rather thank heaven that thou wert rendered unable by any exercise of criminal love, to preserve on the earth's surface a wretch, at whose footstep it shuddered."
"Hah!" cried Magdalena, starting up in a transport of indignation, and sending daggers from her eyes, "who art thou, that speakest so falsely and foully of Juan Lerma? Wert thou, instead of a pattering friar, a canonized saint in heaven, still wert thou but a thing of dross and earth, compared with him thou malignest!"
Before Camarga could rebuke this burst of passion, she sank, as before, to the earth, weeping afresh; for she was in that pitiable state of mental feebleness, in which life seems only to continue in impulses,—a chain of convulsions and exhaustions. "Alas, father," she continued, with sobs, "you have been taught, like the rest, to misconceive and belie the best and most unfortunate of men;—for such is Juan Lerma;—and you have perhaps joined with the rest to compass his destruction. Has he wronged you? no—you have imagined a wrong. Has he wronged Cortes? no—he has wronged no one; but the ear of Cortes was open to his enemies. Hear me, father, and while you condemn me, listen to the refutation of slander. Father, when I opened mine eyes to the light, and in the presence of him who had saved me, I forgot my vows; nay, I thought that heaven had absolved them in the wreck, and ordained that I should be happy in a new existence. Never before had I looked upon the world, and the people of the world,—never before had I looked upon Juan Lerma. When had I seen one smile upon me with affection? Father, for a second such smile, I would have moaned again on the wreck, seeing my companions swept from me one by one. I grew cunning and deceitful, and when they asked me of the ship and people, I told them falsehoods, lest they should bring me the veil and the priest, and carry me from his presence. Alas! and my deceit availed not; he smiled no more; and when Hilario spoke of affection—affection for me,—Juan Lerma withdrew without a sigh, without a struggle."
"Saints of heaven!" cried Camarga, starting with horror, gasping for breath, and, in the sense of suffocation, forgetting his assumed character so much as to fling back the cowl that had concealed his features. "Dost thou speak me the truth? On thy life,—on thy hopes of heaven's forgiveness,—on thy love even for this lost, perhaps this dead, youth,—I charge thee speak me the truth. Went there no more than this between you? And Juan Lerma loved you not? and Villafana belied ye both? And you are not—"