At these words, gasping for breath, my lips involuntarily unclosed; my father imagined this was an attempt to reply, though in fact I was not capable of uttering a syllable, and hastened to prevent it. “My son, all opposition is unavailing, all discussion fruitless. Your destiny is decided, and though your struggles may render it wretched, they cannot reverse it. Be reconciled, my child, to the will of Heaven and your parents, which you may insult, but cannot violate. This reverend person can better explain to you the necessity of your obedience than I can.” And my father, evidently weary of a task which he had reluctantly undertaken, was rising to go away, when the Director detained him.
“Stay, señor, and assure your son before you depart, that, since I last saw him, I have fulfilled my promise, and urged every topic on your mind, and that of the duchess, that I thought might operate for his best interests.”
I was aware of the hypocritical ambiguity of this expression; and, collecting my breath, I said, “Reverend father, as a son I seek not to employ an intercessor with my own parents. I stand before them, and if I have not an intercessor in their hearts, your mediation must be ineffectual altogether. I implored you merely to state to them my invincible reluctance.”
They all interrupted me with exclamations, as they repeated my last words—“Reluctance! invincible! Is it for this you have been admitted to our presence? Is it for this we have borne so long with your contumacy, only to hear it repeated with aggravations?”
“Yes, my father—yes, for this or nothing. If I am not permitted to speak, why am I suffered in your presence?”
“Because we hoped to witness your submission.”
“Allow me to give the proofs of it on my knees;”—and I fell on my knees, hoping that my posture might soften the effect of the words I could not help uttering. I kissed my father’s hand—he did not withdraw it, and I felt it tremble. I kissed the skirt of my mother’s robe—she attempted to withdraw it with one hand, but with the other she hid her face, and I thought I saw tears bursting through her fingers. I knelt to the Director too, and besought his benediction, and struggled, though with revolting lips, to kiss his hand; but he snatched his habit from my hand, elevated his eyes, spread out his fingers, and assumed the attitude of a man who recoils in horror from a being who merits the extreme of malediction and reprobation. Then I felt my only chance was with my parents. I turned to them, but they shrunk from me, and appeared willing to devolve the remainder of the task on the Director. He approached me.
“My child, you have pronounced your reluctance to the life of God invincible, but may there not be things more invincible even to your resolution? The curses of that God, confirmed by those of your parents, and deepened by all the fulminations of the church, whose embraces you have rejected, and whose holiness you have desecrated by that rejection.”
“Father, these are terrible words, but I have no time now but for meanings.”
“Besotted wretch, I do not understand you—you do not understand yourself.”
“Oh! I do—I do!” I exclaimed. And turning to my father, still on my knees, I cried, “My dear father, is life—human life, all shut up from me?”
“It is,” said the Director, answering for my father.
“Have I no resource?”
“None.”
“No profession?”
“Profession! degenerate wretch!”
“Let me embrace the meanest, but do not make me a monk.”
“Profligate as weak.”
“Oh! my father,” still calling on my father, “let not this man answer for you. Give me a sword—send me into the armies of Spain to seek death—death is all I ask, in preference to that life you doom me to.”
“It is impossible,” said my father, gloomily returning from the window against which he had been leaning; “the honour of an illustrious family—the dignity of a Spanish grandee—”
“Oh! my father, of how little value will that be, when I am consuming in my early grave, and you die brokenhearted on it, over the flower your own voice has doomed to wither there.”
My father trembled. “Señor, I entreat—I command you to retire; this scene will unfit you for the devotional duties you must perform this evening.”
“And you leave me then?” I cried as they departed. “Yes—yes,”—repeated the Director; “leave you burdened with the curse of your father.”
“Oh no!” exclaimed my father; but the Director had hold of his hand, and pressed it strongly. “Of your mother,” he repeated. I heard my mother weep aloud, and felt it like a repeal of that curse; but she dared not speak, and I could not.
The Director had now two victims in his hands, and the third at his feet. He could not avoid showing his triumph. He paused, collected the full power of his sonorous voice, and thundered forth, “And of God!” And as he rushed from
