“He has thrust his maul-stick through it.  Believe me, child, you would have condemned it yourself.”

“And yet, yet!  I must see it,” she answered earnestly, “see it with these eyes.  I feel, I know—­he is an artist.  Wait, I’ll get my mantilla.”

Isabella hurried back with flying feet, and when a short time after, wearing the black lace kerchief on her head, she descended the staircase by her father’s side, the private secretary de Soto came towards them, exclaiming: 

“Do you want to hear the latest news, Coello?  Your pupil Navarrete has become faithless to you and the noble art of painting.  Don Juan gave him the enlistment money fifteen minutes ago.  Better be a good trooper, than a mediocre artist!  What is the matter, Senorita?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Isabella murmured gently, and fell fainting on her father’s breast.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Two years had passed.  A beautiful October day was dawning; no cloud dimmed the azure sky, and the sun’s disk rose, glowing crimson, behind the narrow strait, that afforded ingress to the Gulf of Corinth.

The rippling waves of the placid sea, which here washed the sunny shores of Hellas, yonder the shady coasts of the Peloponnesus, glittered like fresh blooming blue-bottles.

Bare, parched rocks rise in naked beauty at the north of the bay, and the rays of the young day-star shot golden threads through the light white mists, that floated around them.

The coast of Morea faces the north; so dense shadows still rested on the stony olive-groves and the dark foliage of the pink laurel and oleander bushes, whose dense clumps followed the course of the stream and filled the ravines.

How still, how pleasant it usually was here in the early morning!

White sea-gulls hovered peacefully over the waves, a fishing-boat or galley glided gently along, making shining furrows in the blue mirror of the water; but today the waves curled under the burden of countless ships, to-day thousands of long oars lashed the sea, till the surges splashed high in the air with a wailing, clashing sound.  To-day there was a loud clanking, rattling, roaring on both sides of the water-gate, which afforded admittance to the Bay of Lepanto.

The roaring and shouting reverberated in mighty echoes from the bare northern cliffs, but were subdued by the densely wooded southern shore.

Two vast bodies of furious foes confronted each other like wrestlers, who stretch their sinewy arms to grasp and hurl their opponents to the ground.

Pope Pius the Fifth had summoned Christianity to resist the land-devouring power of the Ottomans.  Cyprus, Christian Cyprus, the last province Venice possessed in the Levant, had fallen into the hands of the Moslems.  Spain and Venice had formed an alliance with Christ’s vicegerent; Genoese, other Italians, and the Knights of St. John were assembling in Messina to aid the league.