Don Juan felt death so near, that he added in a terrible voice, “Be careful not to drop the flask.”

Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his son, and his son’s tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard features.

It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero laid his father’s body upon the table.  He kissed the sinister brow and the gray hair; then he put out the lamp.

By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across the country without, Felipe could dimly see his father’s body, a vague white thing among the shadows.  The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the liquid, and, absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face.  A deep silence reigned.  Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the breeze in the tree-tops, he thought.  But when he had moistened the right arm, he felt himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him in a tight grip—­it was his father’s hand!  He shrieked aloud; the flask dropped from his hand and broke in pieces.  The liquid evaporated; the whole household hurried into the room, holding torches aloft.  That shriek had startled them, and filled them with as much terror as if the Trumpet of the Angel sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and sky.  The room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of his father, who clutched him by the throat.  They saw another thing, an unearthly spectacle—­Don Juan’s face grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair and brilliant eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but could not move the dead, wasted body.

An old servitor cried, “A miracle! a miracle!” and all the Spaniards echoed, “A miracle! a miracle!”

Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the Abbot of San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his own eyes, being a clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues, determined to turn the occasion to profit.  He immediately gave out that Don Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the celebration of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he said, should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar.  At these words a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the late Duke.

The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is so well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the religious pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated the translation of the blessed Don Juan Belvidero to the abbey-church.  The tale of the partial resurrection had spread so quickly from village to village, that a day or two after the death of the illustrious nobleman the report had reached every place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good as a play to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on all sides, their curiosity whetted still further by the prospect of