Meanwhile, the devil established himself in the very cave on the top of the cone above the monastery still known as the Ermita del Diablo, and soon after the two hermits met as if by accident.

They looked at each other, but without at first breaking the holy silence that set its seal on their contemplative life. At length the Diablo addressed Fray Juan, saying he was a great sinner who had come to the mountain three years previously to seek pardon of God for his innumerable offences in solitude and mortification, and expressing surprise that they had never met before. Garin at first repulsed his advances, as if by instinct, but the Diablo continued to speak with so much unction on the redoubled fervor that would result from a holy union of prayer and penitential exercises that Garin at length yielded, and finally let no day pass without meeting him and unveiling the innermost recesses of his heart.

We will not enter into the details of the tragedy which ended in the murder of the beautiful Riquilda. But when Fray Juan awoke to a sense of his crime, he was seized with so terrible a remorse that he once more set off for Rome to throw himself at the feet of him to whom are given the keys of earth and heaven, and confess his heinous sin. But the bells no longer rang out as he drew near. He was now

“A wretch at whose approach abhorr’d,

Recoils each holy thing.”

Even the pope, with the power to him given to wash men’s sins away, had no ghostly word of peace for him. But he sent him not away in utter despair. He imposed on him by way of expiation to go forth from his presence like a beast of the earth, to live on the herbs of the field, and keep an unbroken silence till a sinless child a few months old—O power of innocence!—should assure him God had remitted his sin.

And Fray Juan submissively went forth from the Holy City on his hands and feet, and directed his weary course once more to Montserrat. Meanwhile, the Virgin, as Mr. Ticknor says, “appearing on that wild mountain where the unhappy man had committed his crime, consecrates its deep solitudes by founding there the magnificent sanctuary which has ever since made Montserrat holy ground to all devout Catholics.”[[28]]

In the course of time Fray Juan’s garments were worn out; exposed to the blazing sun of Spain, he grew swarthy of hue, and his body became covered with hair that made him look like a wild beast, for which, in fact, he was taken by the royal foresters, who fastened a rope around his neck and led him to Barcelona, where he was put in the stables of the count’s palace of Valdauris, and became at once the wonder and terror of the people.

Not long after the lord of Catalonia made a great feast to celebrate the birth of his son, now four or five months old, and one of the guests expressing a wish to see the curious beast from Montserrat, Fray Juan was led into the hall. As soon as he appeared the infant prince, speaking for the first time in his life, said: “Rise up, Fray Juan Garin; thou hast fulfilled thy penance. God hath pardoned thee.” And the penitent rose up and resumed his original form as a man.[[29]] He then threw himself at the count’s feet and confessed his crime. Wifredo could not refuse a pardon God had granted through his child. He ordered Fray Juan to conduct him to his daughter’s grave, and, followed by all the lords and knights of his court, he went to the mountain, and there, beside the newly-erected chapel of the Virgin, he found the tomb of the princess. When it was unsealed, to their amazement Riquilda opened her eyes and came forth from the grave. Around her neck was a slight mark, like a thread of crimson silk. As Faust says of Margaret:

“How strangely does a single blood-red line,