The vehemence I put into the suppressed and under-tone with which I delivered these reproaches, seemed to produce no emotion in my guest. He dropped his staff upon his shoulder; he meekly folded his arms upon his bosom, and answered, that he had long since learned to bear every contumely for the cause of God and the Redeemer: they were heaven-directed chastisements, which his manifold sins and iniquities had amply deserved.
“Hypocrite!” replied I, “would you make me believe that a conscientious motive can prompt such conduct as yours, can mould your features into a treacherous expression of kindness, and fill your mouth with lies and deceptions innumerable?”
“No proceedings,” rejoined he, with an unaltered air, “are base, that God and his church prescribe. I take up the cross with cheerfulness, and glory in my shame. The more ignominious in the eyes of an unregenerate world is my conduct, the more entire and implicit does it prove my obedience to be.”
My heart swelled within me as he talked. I could lend no attention to such despicable cant, and was ashamed to see the most profligate conduct assuming to itself the pretensions to an extraordinary degree of sanctity and disinterestedness.
“Come, come,” said I, “dissembler; I know that nothing could buy a man to so loathsome an office but money. You are some galley-slave, some wretch, who by your complicated crimes have forfeited your life to the community, and are now permitted to earn a miserable existence by lying in wait for the unfortunate, and engaging in arts at which humanity shudders. I take you upon your own terms; you are the man I want. Assist me to escape; go with me to some safer and less cruel country; I will reward you to the extent of your wishes. Give me your hand; an estate of six thousand pistoles per annum, without further condition, waits your acceptance. I invoke all the powers, sacred to truth and punishers of deceit, to witness, that I have ability to make good the whole of what I promise.”
While I spoke, I could perceive an extraordinary revolution taking place in my guest. The meekness and tranquillity of his countenance subsided; his eye became animated and alive. I hailed the auspicious omen; I urged my proposal with all the impetuosity I could exert and all the arguments I could devise. At length I paused. I looked again at the countenance of the mosca; I was less pleased than before. The expression did not seem to be that of assent and congratulation; it was rather of horror and alarm.
“St. Jago, and all the saints and angels of heaven, protect me!” exclaimed he. “What do I hear? A full confession of guilt! And art thou then the confederate of the prince of the powers of darkness? If we were not here, in the holy house of inquisition, I should die at this moment with fear that the roof would fall and crush us together. I should expect hell to swallow me alive, for being found in thy unhallowed society.” He trembled with every expression of the sincerest terror and aversion.
“‘Thy money perish with thee,’ thou second Elymas, like him ‘full of all subtlety and mischief, child of the devil, enemy of all righteousness!’ Blasted be thy offers! Have I for this devoted myself to the service of God, assiduously sought out the basest and vilest offices of that service, and loaded myself with ignominy here, that I might obtain a crown of glory hereafter? and am I now to be assaulted with the worst of Satan’s temptations? Even so, Lord, if such be thy will! Oh, poor, miserable, deluded victim of the arch-deceiver of mankind, what has the devil done for thee? He has persuaded thee that thou art rich; and thou wantest every joy and every necessary of life. He has promised to be thy friend; and he brings thee to the faggot and flames in this world, as an earnest of thy eternal damnation hereafter.”
My visiter had no sooner thus poured out the tumult and agitation of his soul, than he left me abruptly, and I saw him no more.
Such was the event of my attempt to bribe the officers of the inquisition. In my first experiment I could not even obtain a hearing; in what followed, my proposals were rejected with all the transports of religious abhorrence. What I offered indeed, however dazzling in the statement, had not in fact the nature of a temptation. He to whom I addressed it gave no credit to my assertions; he thought that I was the mere drivelling dupe of him he called the arch-deceiver of mankind, or that my money, when possessed, would soon change its figure, and from seeming pieces of solid coin be converted into pieces of horn or of shells. Even if he had not apprehended such a metamorphosis, he would yet have regarded every doubloon he received as the price of his continual adversity here, and damnation hereafter. I gained nothing favourable for my situation by the trial I had made, but I added a new chapter to my knowledge of human nature. I found, that to be a knave, it was not necessary to be an infidel: I corrected the too hasty conclusion which I had adopted with the rest of my contemporaries, that he whose conduct was infamous, must inevitably be destitute of religious impressions and belief; and I became satisfied that a man, while he practised every vice that can disgrace human nature, might imagine he was doing God service.