"Ay, by heaven," said Cortes, with angry emotion; "may he remember his deeds in torment—Amen! Had not Gregorio been an inquisitor as well as a monk, I should have seen him burn at a stake, as was his due."
"Reserve your curses for the true criminal," said Camarga, drawing the cowl over his visage, as if no longer able to endure the fierce looks of Don Hernan: "Among others who had inflamed his wild and fiery affections, was one whom heaven had seemingly placed beyond his reach,—one whose name I need not pronounce to Hernan Cortes."
"I will tell thee who she was," said the general, laying his hand upon Camarga's shoulder, and speaking with a passionate energy;—"the daughter of a family, ancient and noble as his own, though without its wealth,—a novice about to take the vows, (for to this had the poverty of her house and her own religious fervour destined her;) and thus uplifted both by rank and profession above the aims of a seducer. But what thought the young cub of Castillejo of these impediments, when he feared not God, and saw no one left to punish his villany, save an impoverished old man and a rambling schoolboy? Dwell not on this—Speak not her name neither: let it be forgotten. May her soul rest in peace! for her own act of distraction avenged the dishonour of her fall."
He paused in strong emotion, and Camarga, drawing the mantle closer round his head, continued:
"Know, (and I speak thee a truth never before divulged to mortal man,) that the sin of this act,—the abduction of a devotee, whose novitiate was already accomplished,—belongs not to Juan, the debauchee, but to Gregorio, the Dominican."
"These are the words of a madman," said Cortes, sternly; but he was interrupted by Camarga hastily exclaiming,
"Misunderstand me not. The lover and the convent-robber was indeed Juan; but it was Gregorio who provoked him to the outrage, and gave him the means of success. The sacrilege had not been otherwise attempted, and the fickle-minded Juan would have soon forgotten the object of a passion both criminal and dangerous."
"If you speak the truth," said Cortes, "you have exposed an atrocity, of which, as you said, truly no man ever dreamed. On what improbable ground do you make Gregorio a villain so monstrous?"
"On that of knowledge," replied Camarga, with a voice firmer than he had yet displayed. "Dost thou think ambition lies not as often under a cowl as a corslet? or that guilt can only be meditated by a soldier? When the young monk Gregorio beheld the two sons of his brother, the Count Sebastian, taken up dead from the river, into which an evil accident had plunged them, and knew that the Count was dying—surely dying—of a broken heart, the fiend of darkness put a thought into his brain, which had never before dishonoured it. Yet it slumbered again, until his evil fate showed him his brother Juan, meditating a crime, which, if attempted, must bring him under the ban of the church, and into the dungeons of the Inquisition. Then he said, in his heart, 'If Sebastian die of grief, childless, and if Juan destroy himself by an act of impiety, where shall men look for the Count of Castillejo, except in the cell of Gregorio?' It was this thought of darkness that brought the thunderbolt upon his house, and upon thine."
"Ay! thou sayst it now," said Cortes with a smothered voice. "But this monk, this devil, this Gregorio! Let me know more of the wretch, whose flagitious ambition, not satisfied with destroying his father's house and his brother's soul, must end by bringing to a dishonourable grave a daughter—I speak it now—a daughter of Martin Cortes of Medellin!"