Here he was interrupted by the inquisitor, who had suffered him to go on thus far, in hopes of gathering something from his unguarded enthusiasm.  “Senor,” said he, “this is all rambling, visionary talk.  You are charged with sorcery, and in defence you give us a rhapsody about alchymy.  Have you nothing better than this to offer in your defence?”

The old man slowly resumed his seat, but did not deign a reply.  The fire that had beamed in his eye gradually expired.  His cheek resumed its wonted paleness; but he did not relapse into inanity.  He sat with a steady, serene, patient look.  Like one prepared not to contend, but to suffer.

His trial continued for a long time, with cruel mockery of justice, for no witnesses were ever in this court confronted with the accused, and the latter had continually to defend himself in the dark.  Some unknown and powerful enemy had alleged charges against the unfortunate alchymist, but who he could not imagine.  Stranger and sojourner as he was in the land, solitary and harmless in his pursuits, how could he have provoked such hostility?  The tide of secret testimony, however, was too strong against him; he was convicted of the crime of magic, and condemned to expiate his sins at the stake, at the approaching auto da fe.

While the unhappy alchymist was undergoing his trial at the inquisition, his daughter was exposed to trials no less severe.  Don Ambrosio, into whose hands she had fallen, was, as has before been intimated, one of the most daring and lawless profligates in all Granada.  He was a man of hot blood and fiery passions, who stopped at nothing in the gratification of his desires; yet with all this he possessed manners, address, and accomplishments, that had made him eminently successful among the sex.  From the palace to the cottage he had extended his amorous enterprises; his serenades harassed the slumbers of half the husbands in Granada; no balcony was too high for his adventurous attempts, nor any cottage too lowly for his perfidious seductions.  Yet he was as fickle as he was ardent; success had made him vain and capricious; he had no sentiment to attach him to the victim of his arts; and many a pale cheek and fading eye, languishing amidst the sparkling of jewels, and many a breaking heart, throbbing under the rustic bodice, bore testimony to his triumphs and his faithlessness.

He was sated, however, by easy conquests, and wearied of a life of continual and prompt gratification.  There had been a degree of difficulty and enterprise in the pursuit of Inez that he had never before experienced.  It had aroused him from the monotony of mere sensual life, and stimulated him with the charm of adventure.  He had become an epicure in pleasure; and now that he had this coy beauty in his power, he was determined to protract his enjoyment, by the gradual conquest of her scruples and downfall of her virtue.  He was vain of his person and address, which he thought no woman could long withstand; and it was a kind of trial of skill to endeavour to gain, by art and fascination, what he was secure of obtaining at any time by violence.