“Salvation, for treachery and murder?”
“Treachery and murder—hard words. Now, to talk sense, was not yours the vilest treachery? You reclaimed your vows—you declared before God and man, that the words you uttered before both were the babble of an infant; then you seduced your brother from his duty to his and your parents—you connived at his intriguing against the peace and sanctity of a monastic institution, and dare you talk of treachery? And did you not, with a callosity of conscience unexampled in one so young, accept, nay, cling to an associate in your escape whom you knew you were seducing from his vows—from all that man reveres as holy, and all that God (if there be a God) must regard as binding on man? You knew my crime, you knew my atrocity, yet you brandished me as your banner of defiance against the Almighty, though its inscription was, in glaring characters—impiety—parricide—irreligion. Torn as the banner was, it still hung near the altar, till you dragged it away, to wrap yourself from detection in its folds—and you talk of treachery?—there is not a more traitorous wretch on earth than yourself. Suppose that I was all that is vile and culpable, was it for you to double-dye the hue of my crime in the crimson of your sacrilege and apostacy? And for murder, I know I am a parricide. I cut my father’s throat, but he never felt the blow—nor did I—I was intoxicated with wine, with passion, with blood—no matter which; but you, with cold deliberate blows, struck at the hearts of father and mother. You killed by inches—I murdered at a blow—which of us is the murderer?—And you prate of treachery and murder? I am as innocent as the child that is born this hour, compared to you. Your father and mother have separated—she is gone into a convent, to hide her despair and shame at your unnatural conduct—your father is plunging successively into the abysses of voluptuousness and penitence, wretched in both; your brother, in his desperate attempt to liberate you, has perished—you have scattered desolation over a whole family—you have stabbed the peace and heart of each of them, with a hand that deliberated and paused on its blow, and then struck it calmly—and you dare to talk of treachery and murder? You are a thousand times more culpable than I am, guilty as you think me. I stand a blasted tree—I am struck to the heart, to the root—I wither alone—but you are the Upas, under whose poisonous droppings all things living have perished—father—mother—brother, and last yourself;—the erosions of the poison, having nothing left to consume, strike inward, and prey on your own heart. Wretch, condemned beyond the sympathy of man, beyond the redemption of the Saviour, what can you say to this?”
I answered only, “Is Juan dead, and were you his murderer—were you indeed? I believe all you say, I must be very guilty, but is Juan dead?” As I spoke, I lifted up to him eyes that no longer seemed to see—a countenance that bore no expression but that of the stupefaction of intense grief. I could neither utter nor feel reproaches—I had suffered beyond the power of complaint. I awaited his answer; he was silent, but his diabolical silence spoke. “And my mother retired to a convent?” he nodded. “And my father?” he smiled, and I closed my eyes. I could bear anything but his smile. I raised my head a few moments after, and saw him, with an habitual motion (it could not have been more), make the sign of the cross, as a clock in some distant passage struck. This sight reminded me of the play so often acted in Madrid, and which I had seen in my few days of liberation—El diablo Predicador. You smile, sir, at such a recollection operating at such a moment, but it is a fact; and had you witnessed that play under the singular circumstances I did, you would not wonder at my being struck with the coincidence. In this performance the infernal spirit is the hero, and in the disguise of a monk he appears in a convent, where he torments and persecutes the community with a mixture of malignity and mirth truly Satanic. One night that I saw it performed, a group of monks were carrying the Host to a dying person; the walls of the theatre were so slight, that we could distinctly hear the sound of the bell which they ring on that occasion. In an instant, actors, audience, and all, were on their knees, and the devil, who happened to be on the stage, knelt among the rest, and crossed himself with visible marks of a devotion equally singular and edifying. You will allow the coincidence to be irresistibly striking.
When he had finished his monstrous profanation of the holy sign, I fixed my eyes on him with an expression not to be mistaken. He saw it. There is not so bitter a reproach on earth as silence, for it always seems to refer the guilty to their own hearts, whose eloquence seldom fails to fill up the pause very little to the satisfaction of the accused. My look threw him into a rage, that I am now convinced not the most bitter upbraidings could have caused. The utmost fury of imprecation would have fallen on his ear like the most lulling harmony;—it would have convinced him that his victim was suffering all he could possibly inflict. He betrayed this in the violence of his exclamations.
“What, wretch!” he cried;—“Do you think it was for your masses and your mummeries, your vigils, and fasts, and mumbling over senseless unconsoling beads, and losing my rest all night watching for the matins, and then quitting my frozen mat to nail my knees to stone till they grew there—till I thought the whole pavement would rise with
