“Forbear, my liege!” replied the Sub-Prior sternly.  “The blaspheming words were all too calmly and collectively spoken for the ravings of madness.  Let not the false unbeliever pass hence till at least she has done reverence to the sacred symbol, she has, by daring denial, insulted.  As thou wouldst save thine own soul from hell-fire, my liege, interfere not in this!”

As he spoke, several soldiers had endeavored rudely to drag Arthur from Marie:  he strove fiercely for freedom, for but one hour’s power to protect her, but in vain.  And the look she fixed upon him, as he was torn from her, from its contrast with her previous profound calm, did indeed seem almost of madness.  The excitement which had enabled her to make this dread avowal—­an avowal comprising such variety, and terrible danger, that the magnitude of the sacrifice comprised in the confession can now scarcely be understood; danger, not merely from the vengeance of the church for long years of fraud, nor from the secret and awful tribunal of whose existence she was conscious (though not of its close vicinity); not merely these, but danger from the wrath, and terrors of the secret members of her own faith, who might naturally imagine their own safety endangered in the suspicion, engendered by her rash confession.  Of all this she had thought; had believed herself strengthened to brave and bear every possible suffering, rather than breathe those words which must seal Stanley’s fate; but now that she had spoken, though she would not have recalled them if she could—­such an overpowering, crushing sense of all she had drawn upon herself, such fearful, spectral shapes of indefinable horror came upon her, that, as the Sub-Prior stood again before her with the uplifted cross, bidding her kneel and acknowledge him whose fate it imaged—­she burst into a wild hysteric laugh, and fell prone upon the floor.

“Said I not she was mad?  And what need was there for this unmanly violence?” angrily exclaimed the Monarch; and, starting from his seat, he authoritatively waved back the denouncing monks, and himself bent over Marie.  The Duke of Murcia, Don Felix d’Estaban, the Lord of Aguilar, and several other nobles following the Sovereign’s example, hastened to her assistance.  But to restore animation was not in their power, and on the King’s whispered commands, Don Felix gently, even tenderly raised her, and bore her in his arms from the hall.  Even in that moment of excitement Ferdinand could not forbear glancing at the prisoner, whose passionate struggles to escape from the guard, when Marie fell, had been noticed by all, and unhappily, combined with, his previous irritation, but confirmed the unspoken suspicions of many as to the real cause of his enmity against Don Ferdinand.  The expression of his countenance was of such contending, terrible suffering, that the King hastily withdrew his gaze, vainly endeavoring to disbelieve, as he had done, the truth of Garcia’s charge.