The Infidel Volume Ii Part 4

"I will shrive me then, and then let me go, for thy presence persecutes me.--Well, and perhaps it is better; for it is long since I have looked upon a man of G.o.d--long since I have spoken with any just Christian but _one_,--and him I have given up to the murderers. Hear me then, and then absolve or condemn as thou wilt, for I judge myself; and I confess to thee, only that my words may drive thee away, as would the moans of a coming pestilence. Hear me then, friar, and then begone from me."

"Arise," said Camarga, "I seek not thy confession, at least not now: I have that will draw it from thee, at a fitter time and place. In this distant spot, thou art exposed to danger from the infidels."

"If thou fearest them, away! Why dost thou trouble me? If thou stayest, listen to my words; for though they come too late, yet will they cause thee to do justice to the name, and say ma.s.ses for the soul, of Juan Lerma."

"Speak of Juan Lerma," said Camarga, with a trembling voice, "and I will indeed listen to thee. _In nomine Dei Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_, speak and speak truly. Cursed be thou, even by my lips, if thou speakest that which is false, or concealest aught that is true!"

"Truth, though I die,--and let me die when it is spoken," said Magdalena, placing her lips with the instinctive reverence of habit to the cross which Camarga extended. As she kissed it, her heart seemed to soften, and she shed many bitter tears, while pouring forth her broken and melancholy story.

"Know, father," she said, not once doubting that she had a true father of the church before her, "that it was my misfortune never to have known the kindness and care of a parent."

"Let that be pa.s.sed," said Camarga, hurriedly. "Speak not of the sins of thy youth, a thousand times confessed, and a thousand times absolved.

Speak of thy coming to the island,--of thy broken vows,--thy--" But here perceiving that Magdalena started with a sort of affright, at finding how far his knowledge had antic.i.p.ated her divulgements, he continued, with better discretion, "Thus much do I know--_how_ I know, ask not; and yet thou mayst be told, too, that much of thy fate was interwoven with that of Villafana."

"_My_ fate, and that of Villafana!" cried Magdalena, with a withering look of contempt. But instantly changing to a more submissive air, she exclaimed, "My _story_, indeed, father, but not my fate. If he have confessed to you, then do you know enough,--perhaps all. He told you, then, that his avarice, gratified at the expense of a horrible crime,--the destruction of the s.h.i.+p, and the lives of all within it, abbess, nuns, sailors, and all,--was the cause of all my calamities, since it was my hard fate not to perish with the rest. He robbed the s.h.i.+p of the golden and silver church-vessels, when we were near to the port, and made his escape to the sh.o.r.e, leaving us to sink in the midst of a storm then rising. Our pilot having no hope but in running upon the sh.o.r.e, then within sight, ran the vessel among certain rocks, where it was beaten to pieces. Father, it chanced to be my fate, and mine alone, to be plucked out of that roaring sea, by one to whom, when lying in a gulf ten times more hideous, I refused to stretch out my hand. Father!

last night a word from my lips would have saved the life of Juan Lerma, and I did not speak it!"

"Dwell not on this," said Camarga, sternly. "Rather thank heaven that thou wert rendered unable by any exercise of criminal love, to preserve on the earth's surface a wretch, at whose footstep it shuddered."

"Hah!" cried Magdalena, starting up in a transport of indignation, and sending daggers from her eyes, "who art thou, that speakest so falsely and foully of Juan Lerma? Wert thou, instead of a pattering friar, a canonized saint in heaven, still wert thou but a thing of dross and earth, compared with him thou malignest!"

Before Camarga could rebuke this burst of pa.s.sion, she sank, as before, to the earth, weeping afresh; for she was in that pitiable state of mental feebleness, in which life seems only to continue in impulses,--a chain of convulsions and exhaustions. "Alas, father," she continued, with sobs, "you have been taught, like the rest, to misconceive and belie the best and most unfortunate of men;--for such is Juan Lerma;--and you have perhaps joined with the rest to compa.s.s his destruction. Has he wronged you? no--you have imagined a wrong. Has he wronged Cortes? no--he has wronged no one; but the ear of Cortes was open to his enemies. Hear me, father, and while you condemn me, listen to the refutation of slander. Father, when I opened mine eyes to the light, and in the presence of him who had saved me, I forgot my vows; nay, I thought that heaven had absolved them in the wreck, and ordained that I should be happy in a new existence. Never before had I looked upon the world, and the people of the world,--never before had I looked upon Juan Lerma. When had I seen one smile upon me with affection?

Father, for a second such smile, I would have moaned again on the wreck, seeing my companions swept from me one by one. I grew cunning and deceitful, and when they asked me of the s.h.i.+p and people, I told them falsehoods, lest they should bring me the veil and the priest, and carry me from his presence. Alas! and my deceit availed not; he smiled no more; and when Hilario spoke of affection--affection for me,--Juan Lerma withdrew without a sigh, without a struggle."

"Saints of heaven!" cried Camarga, starting with horror, gasping for breath, and, in the sense of suffocation, forgetting his a.s.sumed character so much as to fling back the cowl that had concealed his features. "Dost thou speak me the truth? On thy life,--on thy hopes of heaven's forgiveness,--on thy love even for this lost, perhaps this dead, youth,--I charge thee speak me the truth. Went there no more than this between you? And Juan Lerma loved you not? and Villafana belied ye both? And you are not--"

He paused in agitation, unable to utter another word; and Magdalena, surprised as much at his extraordinary interest in her story, as well as confounded by the absence of the tonsure, and the glittering of an iron gorget about his throat, seemed for a moment unable to answer his questions. But summoning her spirits at last, she said,

"Thou art not a priest, but a layman, a stranger, and a man of sin! But be who thou wilt, friend or foe, thou knowest now enough of my history to be ent.i.tled to know all. Never did man couple my name with shame, and think of any but him who died under the dagger of Villafana. As for Juan Lerma, not even Cortes, his bitterest enemy, would dare accuse him of a deed of dishonour. Stranger, if thou art interested in the betrayed and murdered Juan, know at least that he died innocent of any wrong to Magdalena."

"Now G.o.d be praised for this good word!" said Camarga, dropping on his knees, and speaking with what seemed a distraction of fervour and delight: "G.o.d be praised that I may not think, at my death-hour, that my sins have caused among my children the crime of incest! G.o.d be praised!

G.o.d be praised!"

"Incest! _Thy_ children!" exclaimed Magdalena, wildly. "What art thou?

What is this thou sayst?"

"What do I say I and why need I say it?" cried Camarga, springing up and wringing his hands--"have we not slain him among us? Oh, wretched Magdalena, if, by thine influence, he was brought to this pa.s.s, know that thou hast slain thine own brother!"

At this strange and exciting revelation, Magdalena, who had, in the ecstacy of expectation, seized upon Camarga's hands with a convulsive grasp, uttered a scream, wild, loud, and thrilling, and yet how unlike to that which rose from her breaking heart in the prison! It was some such cry as might be supposed to come from a despairing Christian, who finds that the gates, which he thinks are conducting him to h.e.l.l, have suddenly ushered him into the walks of paradise. It mingled fear and astonishment with joy, but joy predominant over the others; and though it sounded as if coming from a bursting heart, it was as if from one bursting in the over-bound and expansion of a breast released from a mountain of oppression. It echoed over the lake, and seemed to have called up the spirits thereof; for before its last hysterical echo had vibrated on the ear, there sprang up, as if they had risen from the earth or the waters, six or seven athletic barbarians, flouris.h.i.+ng heavy macanas, who rushed at once upon the pair.

At the sight of such unexpected and formidable antagonists, though taken entirely by surprise, Camarga s.n.a.t.c.hed his concealed sword from the scabbard, leaped with great intrepidity betwixt Magdalena and the nearest savage, who seemed the leader of the party, and made a blow at him, while calling to her,

"Fly! fly! and tell Cortes that thy brother--" But his lips finished not the sentence. Whether it was that he was rendered helpless by long continued disease, was embarra.s.sed by the friar's ca.s.sock, or was really unskilful in the use of weapons, it is certain that his blade dropped harmless on the macana of the warrior. Before he could recover his guard, the battle-axe of the Mexican fell upon his head with deadly violence, and he rolled, to all appearance a dying man, on the ground.

At the same instant, another warrior clutched upon Magdalena, who, though pale as death, and agitated by a long succession of pa.s.sions, yet drew the dagger she always carried at her girdle, and aimed it at the breast of the infidel. Before it could do him any harm, it was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of her hand, and she herself caught up as by the grasp of a giant, in the arms of the leader, and hurried to the water. In an instant more, she was placed in a piragua, which her capturers drew from a reed-brake hard by, and secured, though not rudely, beyond the possibility of further resistance, among the infidels. They caught up their paddles, uttered a wild yell, and the next moment dashed from the sh.o.r.e, and were hidden among the mists of the lake.

CHAPTER VII.

Are the refinements and delicate sensibilities of the spirit confined to the highborn and polished? They are undoubtedly the offspring of nature: Education supplies their place only by the subst.i.tutes of affectation.

Though poverty may crush, though wretchedness and evil habits may corrupt and extinguish them, yet they throb in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the lowly, during the days of youth, and are not always banished even by the rigours of manhood. They dwell under the painted lodge of the barbarian, and they burn even in the heart of the benighted heathen.

Let us fancy the moonlight streaming over the lake of Tezcuco. The moon is in her first quarter, and the evening-star, almost her rival in l.u.s.tre and magnitude, precedes her in the blue paths of the west. The golden radiance of sunset trembles no more on the mountain peaks; but the thin vapours floating through the zenith, are yet gleaming faintly with the last expiring glories of day. The birds are at rest in the garden of Mexico,--all save the little madrugadores, that yet chirp merrily in the trees, and the centzontli, who leaves her ravis.h.i.+ng melody, to mock them with their own music, made yet more musical. The breeze sleeps among the boughs, or it stirs only through the poplar leaves, and its rustling sound is mingled with the hum of a thousand nocturnal insects. In such a night, one forgets that man is not an angel. We see not the frown of malevolence in the sky; we hear not the step of the betrayer on the gra.s.s; nor does the dew-drop, falling from the leaf, admonish us of the tears that are streaming, hard by, in sorrow. In such a night, the feelings of the kind are kindest, the thoughts of the pure, purest; youth gathers about it the mantle of hope, and hope whispers in the voice of affection. At such a time, it is good to look into the hearts of the youthful, and forget the excitements of years. A draught from the waters of c.l.i.torius was fabled to extinguish the thirst for wine.[10] He who can creep into the bosoms of the young, and drink of the fountain of innocent affections, will turn with loathing from the impure and maddening currents, that convert the human family into a race of moral Baccha.n.a.ls.

[Footnote 10:

c.l.i.torio quicunque sitim de fonte levarit Vina fugit.

_Metam. Lib._ XV.]

Can we think that among the wors.h.i.+ppers of the ferocious Mexitli, and the fierce invaders of his people, there were none with natures worthy of a better belief, and a n.o.bler cause? Destiny had thrown together two, at least, whose spirits were but little tainted with the evil of their place and their day,--in whom, perhaps, feeling rather than reason, had set a talisman that left them incorruptible. A good heart is to man what the galvanic bar of the philosopher was to the s.h.i.+p's copper-sheathing.

It gives this protection, at least, that, through the whole voyage of life, it preserves the integrity of the vessel. The barnacle and the remora will indeed deaden its course, but the metal remains clean and bright: the billows of the world waste their corrosive powers only on the protector. Morality itself is two-fold; it is of the head, and of the heart. The first belongs to the philosopher, the second to the poet.

The one is an abstraction of reason; the other an exhortation of pa.s.sion. The morality of the head is the only one that is just; but it is loveliest and best when the heart enforces its precepts. With good hearts, Juan Lerma and the princess of Mexico, moved among the corruptions of superst.i.tion, uncorrupted; and preserved to themselves, unabated and unsullied, the pure and gentle feelings, which nature had showered upon them at their birth.

The moon, falling aslant upon the garden, lighted the countenances of the young Spanish exile and the orphan child of Montezuma, as they rested upon the summit of a little artificial mound, ornamented with carved stone seats and rude statuary, constructed for the purpose of overlooking the walls. The visage of the Christian was illumined by pensive smiles, and his lips breathed gently and fervently the accents that were sweetest to the ears of the Indian maiden. But did he discourse of worldly affection and pa.s.sion to one so ignorant and artless? A n.o.bler spirit animated the youth. He spoke of the faith of Christians, and laboured with more than the zeal, though not perhaps with the wisdom of the missionary, to impress its divine truths upon the mind of his hearer. If his arguments were somewhat less cogent and logical than might have been spoken, it must be remembered that his religion was like that which will perhaps belong to the majority of Christians to the end of the world,--a faith of the heart, which the head has not been accustomed to canva.s.s.

He directed her eyes to the moon, to the evening star, and to those other celestial wanderers, by which the heart of man was 'secretly enticed,' even before the days of the perfect man of Uz.

"They are the little bright heroes that hang down from the house of Ometeuctli, king of the city of heaven," said the poor infidel,--"all save Meztli," (the moon) "who is the king of night, brother of Tonatricli," (the sun) "G.o.d of the burning day. This is what they say of the two G.o.ds: There were men on the earth, but wicked: the ancient G.o.ds, the sons of Ipalnemoani killed them. Then Ometeuctli sent forth from the city of heaven his sons, who descended to Mictlan,--the dark h.e.l.l,--by the road that leads between the Fighting Mountains, and the Eight Deserts,--and stole the bones of men, that Mictlanteuctli had heaped up in his cavern. The sons of Ometeuctli sprinkled the bones with their blood; and these men lived again, and the sons of Ometeuctli were their rulers and fathers. But the earth was dark,--it was night over the world, and the only light was the fire which they kindled and kept burning in the vale of Teotihuacan. The sons of Ometeuctli pitied the men they had revived; and, to give them light, they burned themselves in the fire. Ometeuctli, their father, then placed them in the sky,--Tonatricli the first born, to be the sun, Meztli to be the moon, and the others to be stars. So they hang in heaven, turned to fire: and men built pyramids to them, on the place of burning, Micoatl, the Field of Death.[11] They are very good G.o.ds, for they s.h.i.+ne upon us."

[Footnote 11: The vale of San Juan de Teotihuacan, where stand the great pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and the smaller mounds erected to the Stars.]

"Forget these idle fables," said Juan, with a gentleness much more judicious than any zeal could have been. "Forget, too, Mexitli, Painalton, Quetzalcoatl, Centeotl, and the thousand vain beings of imagination, with which your priests have peopled the world. Think only of the great _Teotl_, whom you have called Ipalnemoani,--the great G.o.d, the only G.o.d,--for there is no other than He, and the rest are but fables. Yonder moon and stars are not divinities, but great globes like this on which we live; and to wors.h.i.+p them is a sin--it angers Ipalnemoani, who is the only G.o.d,--the Creator,--whom all men wors.h.i.+p, though under different names. Wors.h.i.+p but Ipalnemoani, and in mode as I will tell thee, and thou art already almost a Christian."

"But is not Christ another G.o.d of the Spaniards?" said the maiden, doubtfully.

"The Son of G.o.d, a portion of G.o.d, and G.o.d himself," replied the Christian, launching at once into all the theological metaphysics with which he was acquainted, and succeeding in confounding the mind of the poor barbarian, without being very sensible of the confusion of his own.

But if he could not teach her how to distinguish between categories, not reducible to order and consistency by the poor aids of human language, he was able to interest her in the fate and character of the divine Redeemer, by no other means than that of relating his history. And it is this, to which men must chiefly look for instruction, belief, and renovation, without reference to dogmas and creeds; for here all find the unanimity of belief and feeling, which ent.i.tles them to the claims of fraternity.

When Juan had excited her sympathy in the character of the Messiah, he began to discourse upon the object and the ends of his mission. But unfortunately the doctrine of original sin, with which he set out, had in it something extremely repugnant to the rude ideas of the child of nature. It inferred a native wickedness in all, to be banished only by belief; and it seemed at once to place _her_ in an humble and degraded light, in the eyes of the young Christian.

"What has Zelahualla done," she said, with maidenly pride, "that the king's brother should make her out wicked?"

At this application of the doctrine, Juan was somewhat staggered in his own belief. He looked at the mild eyes of the catechumen, beaming as from a spirit without stain and without guile, and he said to himself, 'How can this be? for she has known no sin?' His imagination wandered among the moral and religious precepts stored in his memory, and settled at last with the triumph of a controversialist, as well as the satisfaction of a Christian, upon the first rules of the decalogue,--broken in ignorance, and therefore he doubted not, easily atoned. He told her that the wors.h.i.+p of false G.o.ds was a sin, and homage shown to idols of wood and stone a deep iniquity; and these being common to all benighted people, he satisfied himself, and perhaps her, that they were unanswerable proofs of the existence of natural depravity. But a stronger light was thrown upon the maiden's mind, when he showed its effects in the scene of bloodshed, commenced long since in the days of her sire, and now about to be terminated in a war of ma.s.sacre.

"He of whom I speak," he said, "came into the world, in order that these things should cease. He offers men peace and good-will; and when men acknowledge him and follow his commands, peace and good-will will reign over the whole world. Think not, because my countrymen are sometimes unjust, and often cruel, that our divine Leader is the less divine.

These are the wickednesses of their nature, not yet removed by full or just belief; for the belief of some is insufficient, of others perverted, and some, though they profess it, have no belief at all.

Know, then, that our religion, justly considered, and with a pure mind not selfish, has its great element in _affection_. It teaches love of heaven, and, equally love of man. It denounces the wrong-doer, who is as a fire, burning away the cords that bind men together in happiness; and it exalts the good man, who unites his fellows in affection. It punishes vicious deeds and forbids evil thoughts; for with these, there can be no happiness and peace. This it does upon earth; and it prepares for the world beyond the grave, in which no human pa.s.sion or infirmity can disturb the perfect purity and enjoyment, of which the immortal spirit is capable."

Thus he conversed, and thus, guided by the native bias of his mind, dwelt upon that feature of our heavenly faith, of which it requires no aid of enthusiasm to perceive the amiableness and beauty. "_Peace and good-will to all!_"[12] There is a charm in the holy sentence, at once the watchword and synopsis of religion, that thrills to the hearts even of those, who, to obtain the base immortality of renown, are willing to exchange it for the war-cry of the barbarian, the _Vae victis!_ of a hero.

[Footnote 12: According to the Vulgate, the good tidings of great joy offered peace only 'to men of good-will,'--_pax hominibus bonae voluntatis_,--which, whether the translation be right or wrong, undoubtedly destroys the sublimity of the conception, by narrowing down the benevolence of the deity, and deprives of the blessing of peace that majority of men, who, _not_ being men of good-will, have the greatest need of it.]

Thus far, then, the heart of the Indian maiden was softened, and tears,--not of penitence, for it never entered her mind that she had anything to repent,--tears of gentle and pleasurable emotion stole into her eyes, as she listened to tenets explained by one so revered and beloved.