"Guard him, then," said the captain. Two of the men approached Perico.
"Off with your hats, for you are in God's house,"' he cried.
"Gag him," commanded the captain, Resistance was useless. They instantly stopped his mouth with a handkerchief.
But notwithstanding the handkerchief, which suffocated him, when Perico saw that Leon and the gipsy were breaking open the sacrarium he made one desperate effort, and falling on his knees shouted, "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!!!" Terrible was the voice that resounded in the chapels, that echoed like thunder along the vaults, that awakened the grand and sonorous instrument which on other occasions accompanies the imposing De profundis and the glorious Te Deum, and died away in its metal tubes like a doleful wail. It caused a moment of cold terror to those miserable wretches. Even Diego trembled!
"Have mercy, Lord, have mercy!" moaned the unhappy Perico.
"Make haste," said Diego, "the night is becoming clearer, and we may be seen going out from here."
In fact, the clouds were breaking away, and a ray of the moon falling at this moment through a lofty skylight kissed the feet of an image of our Blessed Lady.
"Curse the moon!" exclaimed the gipsy; and frightened at seeing each other by the clear and sudden illumination, they hastened the work of spoliation. At last they left the church, and the gipsy, when she had seen them ride away loaded with riches, turned and again hid herself in the earth.
Before the sun brightened the Giralda the robbers reached the outskirts of Seville with their booty, They left their horses in an olive grove in charge of the convict, and each entered the city by a different gate, reuniting in an out-of-the-way place which the gipsy had indicated, where a silver-smith, who was in the secret, received, weighed, and paid for the valuables. But when they returned to the place where they had left the convict with the horses, they found it deserted.
"That dog has sold us," said one.