“Can it be imagined that a being whom all Madrid, whom all Spain, is on the watch for, can elude their detection? Reflect, dear Juan, that I am staked against a community, a priesthood, a nation. The escape of a monk is almost impossible—but his concealment afterwards is downright impossible. Every bell in every convent in Spain would ring out untouched in pursuit of the fugitive. The military, civil, and ecclesiastical powers, would all be on the qui vive. Hunted, panting, and despairing, I might fly from place to place—no place affording me shelter. The incensed powers of the church—the fierce and vigorous grip of the law—the execration and hatred of society—the suspicions of the lowest order among whom I must lurk, to shun and curse their penetration; think of encountering all this, while the fiery cross of the Inquisition blazes in the van, followed by the whole pack, shouting, cheering, hallooing on to the prey. Oh Juan! if you knew the terrors under which I live—under which I would rather die than encounter them again, even on the condition of liberation! Liberation! Great God! what chance of liberation for a monk in Spain? There is not a cottage where I could rest one night in security—there is not a cavern whose echoes would not resound to the cry of my apostacy. If I was hid in the bowels of the earth, they would discover me, and tear me from its entrails. My beloved Juan, when I consider the omnipotence of the ecclesiastical power in Spain, may I not address it in the language applied to Omnipotence itself: ‘If I climb up to heaven, thou art there;—if I go down to hell, thou art there also;—if I take the wings of the morning, and flee unto the uttermost parts of the sea, even there—’ And suppose my liberation was accomplished—suppose the convent plunged in a profound torpor, and the unsleeping eye of the Inquisition winked at my apostacy—where am I to reside? how am I to procure subsistence? The luxurious indolence of my early years unfit me for active employment. The horrible conflict of apathy the deepest, with hostility the most deadly, in monastic life, disqualifies me for society. Throw the doors of every convent in Spain open, and for what will their inmates be fit? For nothing that will either embellish or improve it. What could I do to serve myself?—what could I do that would not betray me? I should be a persecuted, breathless fugitive—a branded Cain. Alas!—perhaps expiring in flames, I might see Abel not my victim, but that of the Inquisition.”
When I had written these lines, with an impulse for which all can account but the writer, I tore them to atoms, burnt them deliberately by the assistance of the lamp in my cell, and went to watch again at the door in the passage—the door of hope. In passing through the gallery, I encountered, for a moment, a person of a most forbidding aspect. I drew on one side—for I had made it a point not to mix, in the slightest degree, with the community, beyond what the discipline of the house compelled me to. As he passed, however, he touched my habit, and gave a most significant look. I immediately comprehended this was the person Juan alluded to in his letter. And in a few moments after, on descending to the garden, I found a note that confirmed my conjectures. It contained these words:
“I have procured the money—I have secured our agent. He is an incarnate devil, but his resolution and intrepidity are unquestionable. Walk in the cloister tomorrow evening—someone will touch your habit—grasp his left wrist, that will be the signal. If he hesitates, whisper to him—‘Juan,’ he will answer—‘Alonzo.’ That is your man, consult with him. Every step that I have taken will be communicated to you by him.”
After reading these lines, I appeared to myself like a piece of mechanism wound up to perform certain functions, in which its cooperation was irresistible. The precipitate vigour of Juan’s movements seemed to impel mine without my own concurrence; and as the shortness of the time left me no opportunity for deliberation, it left me also none for choice. I was like a clock whose hands are pushed forward, and I struck the hours I was impelled to strike. When a powerful agency is thus exercised on us—when another undertakes to think, feel, and act for us, we are delighted to transfer to him, not only our physical, but our moral responsibility. We say, with selfish cowardice, and self-flattering passiveness, “Be it so—you have decided for me,”—without reflecting that at the bar of God there is no bail. So I walked the next evening in the cloister. I composed my habit—my looks; anyone would have imagined me plunged in profound meditation—and so I was, but not on the subjects with which they conceived I was occupied. As I walked, someone touched my habit. I started, and, to my consternation, one of the monks asked my pardon for the sleeve of his tunic having touched mine. Two minutes after another touched my habit. I felt the difference—there was an intelligential and communicative force in his grasp. He seized it as one who did not fear to be known, and who had no need to apologise. How is it that crime thus seizes us in life with a fearless grasp, while the touch of conscience trembles on the verge of our garment. One would almost parody the words of the well known Italian proverb, and say that guilt is masculine, and innocence feminine. I grasped his wrist with a trembling hand, and whispered—“Juan,” in the same breath. He answered—“Alonzo,” and passed me onward in a moment. I had then a few moments leisure to
