elsewhere; yet, one glance on the stern, motionless
figure, designated as the Grand Inquisitor, sufficed
to bid every drop of blood recede from the prisoner’s
heart with human terror, at the very same moment that
it endowed the
woman with such supernatural
fortitude that her very form seemed to dilate, and
her large eye and lovely mouth expressed—if
it could be, in such a scene and such an hour—unutterable
scorn. Antipathy, even as love, will pierce disguise;
and that one glance, lit up with almost bewildering
light, in the prisoner’s mind, link after link
of what had before been impenetrable mystery.
Her husband’s discovery of her former love for
Arthur; his murder; the suspicion thrown on Stanley;
her own summons as witness against him; her present
danger; all, all were traced to one individual, one
still working and most guilty passion, which she,
in her gentle purity and holy strength, had scorned.
She could not be deceived—the mystery that
surrounded him was solved—antipathy explained;
and Marie’s earthly fate lay in Don Luis Garcia’s
hands! The Grand Inquisitor read in that glance
that he was known; and for a brief minute a strange,
an incomprehensible sensation, thrilled through him.
It could scarcely have been fear, when one gesture
of his hand would destine that frail being to torture,
imprisonment, and death; and yet never before in his
whole life of wickedness, had he experienced such
a feeling as he did at that moment beneath a woman’s
holy gaze. Anger at himself for the sensation,
momentary as it was, increased the virulence of other
passions; but then was not the hour for their betrayal.
In low, deep tones, he commenced the mockery of a
trial. That her avowal of her faith would elude
torture, by at once condemning her to the flames,
was disregarded. She was formally accused of
blasphemy and heresy, and threatened with the severest
vengeance of the church which she had reviled; but
that this case of personal guilt would be mercifully
laid aside for the present, for still more important
considerations. Was her late husband, they demanded,
of the same blaspheming creed as herself? And
a list of names, comprising some of the highest families
of Spain, was read out and laid before her, with the
stern command to affix a mark against all who, like
herself, had relapsed into the foul heresy of their
ancestors—to do this, or the torture should
wring it from her.
But the weakness of humanity had passed; and so calm,
so collected, so firm, was the prisoner’s resolute
refusal to answer either question, that the familiar
to whom she had clung for mercy looked at her with
wonder. Again and again she was questioned; instruments
of torture were brought before her—one
of the first and slightest used—more to
terrify than actually to torture, for that was not
yet the Grand Inquisitor’s design; and still
she was firm, calm, unalterable in her resolution
to refuse reply. And then Don Luis spoke of mercy,
which was to consist of imprisonment in solitude and
darkness, to allow time for reflection on her final
answer—a concession, he said, in a tone
far more terrifying to Marie than even the horrors
around her, only granted in consideration of her age
and sex. None opposed the sentence; and she was
conducted to a close and narrow cell, in which no
light could penetrate save through a narrow chink in
the roof.