CHAPTER II.
THE NOVICE.
It was in one of the cells of a convent renowned for the piety of its
inmates and the wholesome austerity of its laws that a young novice sat
alone. The narrow casement was placed so high in the cold grey wall as
to forbid to the tenant of the cell the solace of sad or the distraction
of pious thoughts, which a view of the world without might afford.
Lovely, indeed, was the landscape that spread below; but it was barred
from those youthful and melancholy eyes: for Nature might tempt to a
thousand thoughts, not of a tenor calculated to reconcile the heart to an
eternal sacrifice of the sweet human ties. But a faint and partial gleam
of sunshine broke through the aperture and made yet more cheerless the
dreary aspect and gloomy appurtenances of the cell. And the young novice
seemed to carry on within herself that struggle of emotions without which
there is no victory in the resolves of virtue: sometimes she wept
bitterly, but with a low, subdued sorrow, which spoke rather of
despondency than passion; sometimes she raised her head from her breast,
and smiled as she looked upward, or as her eyes rested on the crucifix
and the death's head that were placed on the rude table by the pallet on
which she sat. They were emblems of death here, and life hereafter,
which, perhaps, afforded to her the sources of a twofold consolation.
She was yet musing, when a slight tap at the door was heard, and the
abbess of the convent appeared.
"Daughter," said she, "I have brought thee the comfort of a sacred
visitor. The Queen of Spain, whose pious tenderness is maternally
anxious for thy full contentment with thy lot, has sent hither a holy
friar, whom she deems more soothing in his counsels than our brother
Tomas, whose ardent zeal often terrifies those whom his honest spirit
only desires to purify and guide. I will leave him with thee. May the
saints bless his ministry!" So saying the abbess retired from the
threshold, making way for a form in the garb of a monk, with the hood
drawn over the face. The monk bowed his head meekly, advanced into the
cell, closed the door, and seated himself, on a stool--which, save the
table and the pallet, seemed the sole furniture of the dismal chamber.
"Daughter," said he, after a pause, "it is a rugged and a mournful lot
this renunciation of earth and all its fair destinies and soft
affections, to one not wholly prepared and armed for the sacrifice.
Confide in me, my child; I am no dire inquisitor, seeking to distort thy
words to thine own peril. I am no bitter and morose ascetic. Beneath
these robes still beats a human heart that can sympathise with human
sorrows. Confide in me without fear. Dost thou not dread the fate they
would force upon thee? Dost thou not shrink back? Wouldst thou not be
free?"
"No," said the poor novice; but the denial came faint and irresolute from
her lips.
"Pause," said the friar, growing more earnest in his tone: "pause--there
is yet time."
"Nay," said the novice, looking up with some surprise in her countenance;
"nay, even were I so weak, escape now is impossible. What hand could
unbar the gates of the convent?"
"Mine!" cried the monk, with impetuosity. "Yes, I have that power. In
all Spain, but one man can save thee, and I am he."
"You!" faltered the novice, gazing at her strange visitor with mingled
astonishment and alarm. "And who are you that could resist the fiat of
that Tomas de Torquemada, before whom, they tell me, even the crowned
heads of Castile and Arragon veil low?"
The monk half rose, with an impatient and almost haughty start, at this
interrogatory; but, reseating himself, replied, in a deep and half-
whispered voice "Daughter, listen to me! It is true, that Isabel of
Spain (whom the Mother of Mercy bless! for merciful to all is her secret
heart, if not her outward policy)--it is true that Isabel of Spain,
fearful that the path to Heaven might be made rougher to thy feet than it
well need be (there was a slight accent of irony in the monk's voice as
he thus spoke), selected a friar of suasive eloquence and gentle manners
to visit thee. He was charged with letters to yon abbess from the queen.
Soft though the friar, he was yet a hypocrite. Nay, hear me out! he
loved to worship the rising sun; and he did not wish always to remain a
simple friar, while the Church had higher dignities of this earth to
bestow. In the Christian camp, daughter, there was one who burned for
tidings of thee,--whom thine image haunted--who, stern as thou wert to
him, loved thee with a love he knew not of, till thou wert lost to him.
Why dost thou tremble, daughter? listen, yet! To that lover, for he was
one of high birth, came the monk; to that lover the monk sold his
mission. The monk will have a ready tale, that he was waylaid amidst the
mountains by armed men, and robbed of his letters to the abbess. The
lover took his garb, and he took the letters; and he hastened hither.
Leila! beloved Leila! behold him at thy feet!"
The monk raised his cowl; and, dropping on his knee beside her, presented
to her gaze the features of the Prince of Spain.
"You!" said Leila, averting her countenance, and vainly endeavouring to
extricate the hand which he had seized. "This is indeed cruel. You, the
author of so many sufferings--such calumny--such reproach!"
"I will repair all," said Don Juan, fervently. "I alone, I repeat it,
have the power to set you free. You are no longer a Jewess; you are one
of our faith; there is now no bar upon our loves. Imperious though my
father,--all dark and dread as is this new POWER which he is rashly
erecting in his dominions, the heir of two monarchies is not so poor in
influence and in friends as to be unable to offer the woman of his love
an inviolable shelter alike from priest and despot. Fly with me!--quit
this dreary sepulchre ere the last stone close over thee for ever! I
have horses, I have guards at hand. This night it can be arranged. This
night--oh, bliss!--thou mayest be rendered up to earth and love!"
"Prince," said Leila, who had drawn herself from Juan's grasp during this
address, and who now stood at a little distance erect and proud, "you
tempt me in vain; or, rather you offer me no temptation. I have made my
choice; I abide by it."
"Oh! bethink thee," said the prince, in a voice of real and imploring
anguish; "bethink thee well of the consequences of thy refusal. Thou
canst not see them yet; thine ardour blinds thee. But, when hour after
hour, day after day, year after year, steals on in the appalling monotony
of this sanctified prison; when thou shalt see thy youth--withering
without love--thine age without honour; when thy heart shall grow as
stone within thee, beneath the looks of you icy spectres; when nothing
shall vary the aching dulness of wasted life save a longer fast or a
severer penance: then, then will thy grief be rendered tenfold by the
despairing and remorseful thought, that thine own lips sealed thine own
sentence. Thou mayest think," continued Juan, with rapid eagerness,
"that my love to thee was at first light and dishonouring. Be it so. I
own that my youth has passed in idle wooings, and the mockeries of
affection. But for the first time in my life I feel that--I love. Thy
dark eyes--thy noble beauty--even thy womanly scorn, have fascinated me.
I--never yet disdained where I have been a suitor--acknowledge, at last,
that there is a triumph in the conquest of a woman's heart. Oh, Leila!
do not--do not reject me. You know not how rare and how deep a love you
cast away."
The novice was touched: the present language of Don Juan was so different
from what it had been before; the earnest love that breathed in his
voice--that looked from his eyes, struck a chord in her breast; it
reminded her of her own unconquered, unconquerable love for the lost
Muza. She was touched, then--touched to tears; but her resolves were not
shaken.
"Oh, Leila!" resumed the prince, fondly, mistaking the nature of her
emotion, and seeking to pursue the advantage he imagined he had gained,
"look at yonder sunbeam, struggling through the loophole of thy cell. Is
it not a messenger from the happy world? does it not plead for me? does
it not whisper to thee of the green fields and the laughing vineyards,
and all the beautiful prodigality of that earth thou art about to
renounce for ever? Dost thou dread my love? Are the forms around thee,
ascetic and lifeless, fairer to thine eyes than mine? Dost thou doubt my
power to protect thee? I tell thee that the proudest nobles of Spain
would flock around my banner, were it necessary to guard thee by force of
arms. Yet, speak the word--be mine--and I will fly hence with thee to
climes where the Church has not cast out its deadly roots, and, forgetful
of crowns and cares, live alone for thee: Ah, speak!"
"My lord," said Leila, calmly, and rousing herself to the necessary
effort, "I am deeply and sincerely grateful for the interest you express
--for the affection you avow. But you deceive yourself. I have pondered
well over the alternative I have taken. I do not regret nor repent--much
less would I retract it. The earth that you speak of, full of affections
and of bliss to others, has no ties, no allurements for me. I desire
only peace, repose, and an early death."
"Can it be possible," said the prince, growing pale, "that thou lovest
another? Then, indeed, and then only, would my wooing be in vain."
The cheek of the novice grew deeply flushed, but the color soon subsided;
she murmured to herself, "Why should I blush to own it now?" and then
spoke aloud: "Prince, I trust I have done with the world; and bitter the
pang I feel when you call me back to it. But you merit my candour; I
have loved another; and in that thought, as in an urn, lie the ashes of
all affection. That other is of a different faith. We may never--never
meet again below, but it is a solace to pray that we may meet above.
That solace, and these cloisters, are dearer to me than all the pomp, all
the pleasures, of the world."
The prince sank down, and, covering his face with his hands, groaned
aloud--but made no reply.
"Go, then, Prince of Spain," continued the novice; "son of the noble
Isabel, Leila is not unworthy of her cares. Go, and pursue the great
destinies that await you. And if you forgive--if you still cherish a
thought of--the poor Jewish maiden, soften, alleviate, mitigate, the
wretched and desperate doom that awaits the fallen race she has abandoned
for thy creed."
"Alas, alas!" said the prince, mournfully; "thee alone, perchance, of
all thy race, I could have saved from the bigotry that is fast covering
this knightly land like the rising of an irresistible sea--and thou
rejectest me! Take time, at least, to pause--to consider. Let me see
thee again tomorrow."
"No, prince, no--not again! I will keep thy secret only if I see thee no
more. If thou persist in a suit that I feel to be that of sin and shame,
then, indeed, mine honour--"
"Hold!" interrupted Juan, with haughty impatience, "I torment, I harass
you no more. I release you from my importunity. Perhaps already I have
stooped too low." He drew the cowl over his features, and strode
sullenly to the door; but, turning for one last gaze on the form that had
so strangely fascinated a heart capable of generous emotions, the meek
and despondent posture of the novice, her tender youth, her gloomy fate,
melted his momentary pride and resentment. "God bless and reconcile
thee, poor child!" he said, in a voice choked with contending passions--
and the door closed upon his form.
"I thank thee, Heaven, that it was not Muza!" muttered Leila, breaking
from a reverie in which she seemed to be communing with her own soul: "I
feel that I could not have resisted him." With that thought she knelt
down, in humble and penitent self-reproach, and prayed for strength.
Ere she had risen from her supplications, her solitude was again invaded
by Torquemada, the Dominican.
This strange man, though the author of cruelties at which nature recoils,
had some veins of warm and gentle feeling streaking, as it were, the
marble of his hard character; and when he had thoroughly convinced
himself of the pure and earnest zeal of the young convert, he relaxed
from the grim sternness he had at first exhibited towards her. He loved
to exert the eloquence he possessed, in raising her spirit, in
reconciling her doubts. He prayed for her, and he prayed beside her,
with passion and with tears.
He stayed long with the novice; and, when he left her, she was, if not
happy, at least contented. Her warmest wish now was to abridge the
period of her novitiate, which, at her desire, the Church had already
rendered merely a nominal probation. She longed to put irresolution out
of her power, and to enter at once upon the narrow road through the
strait gate.
The gentle and modest piety of the young novice touched the sisterhood;
she was endeared to all of them. Her conversion was an event that broke
the lethargy of their stagnant life. She became an object of general
interest, of avowed pride, of kindly compassion; and their kindness to
her, who from her cradle had seen little of her own sex, had a great
effect towards calming and soothing her mind. But, at night, her dreams
brought before her the dark and menacing countenance of her father.
Sometimes he seemed to pluck her from the gates of heaven, and to sink
with her into the yawning abyss below. Sometimes she saw him with her
beside the altar, but imploring her to forswear the Saviour, before
whose crucifix she knelt. Occasionally her visions were haunted, also,
with Muza--but in less terrible guise She saw his calm and melancholy
eyes fixed upon her; and his voice asked, "Canst thou take a vow that
makes it sinful to remember me?"
The night, that usually brings balm and oblivion to the sad, was thus
made more dreadful to Leila than the day.
Her health grew feebler, and feebler, but her mind still was firm. In
happier time and circumstance that poor novice would have been a great
character; but she was one of the countless victims the world knows not
of, whose virtues are in silent motives, whose struggles are in the
solitary heart.
Of the prince she heard and saw no more. There were times when she
fancied, from oblique and obscure hints, that the Dominican had been
aware of Don Juan's disguise and visit. But, if so, that knowledge
appeared only to increase the gentleness, almost the respect, which
Torquemada manifested towards her. Certainly, since that day, from some
cause or other the priest's manner had been softened when he addressed
her; and he who seldom had recourse to other arts than those of censure
and of menace, often uttered sentiments half of pity and half of praise.
Thus consoled and supported in the day,--thus haunted and terrified by
night, but still not repenting her resolve, Leila saw the time glide on
to that eventful day when her lips were to pronounce that irrevocable vow
which is the epitaph of life. While in this obscure and remote convent
progressed the history of an individual, we are summoned back to witness
the crowning fate of an expiring dynasty.
