Then the day of death came.  This brilliant and skeptical man, whose intellect only was left unimpaired by the general decay, lived between a doctor and a confessor, his two antipathies.  But he was jovial with them.  Was there not a bright light burning for him behind the veil of the future?  Over this veil, leaden and impenetrable to others, transparent to him, the delicate and bewitching delights of youth played like shadows.

It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan felt the approach of death.  The Spanish sky was gloriously clear, the orange trees perfumed the air and the stars cast a fresh glowing light.  Nature seemed to give pledges of his resurrection.  A pious and obedient son regarded him with love and respect.  About eleven o’clock he signified his wish to be left alone with this sincere being.

“Philippe,” he began, in a voice so tender and affectionate that the young man trembled and wept with happiness, for his father had never said “Philippe” like this before.  “Listen to me, my son,” continued the dying man.  “I have been a great sinner, and all my life I have thought about death.  Formerly I was the friend of the great Pope Julius II.  This illustrious pontiff feared that the excessive excitability of my feelings would cause me to commit some deadly sin at the moment of my death, after I had received the blessed ointment.  He made me a present of a flask of holy water that gushed forth from a rock in the desert.  I kept the secret of the theft of the Church’s treasure, but I am authorized to reveal the mystery to my son ‘in articulo mortis.’  You will find the flask in the drawer of the Gothic table which always stands at my bedside.  The precious crystals may be of service to you also, my dearest Philippe.  Will you swear to me by your eternal salvation that you will carry out my orders faithfully?”

Philippe looked at his father.  Don Juan was too well versed in human expression not to know that he could die peacefully in perfect faith in such a look, as his father had died in despair at his own expression.

“You deserve a different father,” continued Don Juan.  “I must acknowledge that when the estimable Abbot of San Lucas was administering the viaticum’ I was thinking of the incompatibility of two so wide-spreading powers as that of the devil and that of God.”

“Oh, father!”

“And I said to myself that when Satan makes his peace he will be a great idiot if he does not bargain for the pardon of his followers.  This thought haunted me.  So, my child, I shall go to hell if you do not carry out my wishes.”

“Oh, tell them to me at once, father!”

“As soon as I have closed my eyes,” replied Don Juan, “and that may be in a few minutes, you must take my body, still warm, and lay it on a table in the middle of the room.  Then put out the lamp—­the light of the stars will be sufficient.  You must take off my clothes, and while you recite ‘Paters’ and ‘Aves’ and uplift your soul to God, you must moisten my eyes, my lips, all my head first, and then my body, with this holy water.  But, my dear son, the power of God is great.  You must not be astonished at anything.”