of the banditti. They were close to the road, when they encountered the priest; and the wounded robber, seeing a person in the clerical dress, earnestly entreated that the consolations of religion might be administered to him. At a sign from the priest, he was therefore placed on the bank, facing the road, and the servants retiring, the holy man knelt down by his side, to hear the confession of his sins, before which he could offer none of the satisfactory comforts of absolution; but the detail occupied a considerable time; for his peccadillos were, alas! of no slight magnitude, nor of little interest, it would seem, by the look of earnest attention which overspread the countenance of his listener. The robber threw many a dark imputation on the characters of some of high rank and influence in the realm, by whose instigation he had committed various atrocities, yet unconfessed and unabsolved. “Now, Father,” said the dying man, “absolve me from these sins which press most heavily on me, and I will afterwards make confession of the remainder.”
“Not so, my son,” answered the Priest; “you must make a clear discharge of your conscience; for I may not afford absolution to a heart yet loaded with iniquity.”
“Oh! Father, I am dying, and feel that I am a miserable sinner!” ejaculated the man, with a feeble voice; “but there is a deed I swore not to reveal to any one, and I may not break my oath. Oh! grant me, then, absolution, ere I die.”
“That may not be,” answered the Priest; “oaths made to sinners like ourselves, for a wicked purpose, can be annulled by a minister of religion, as the only way of making retribution for the crime.”
“It was a deed of blood, Father, but I sought not to do it of my own accord; another instigated me to it by bribes which my poverty could not resist, and I swore never to reveal it.”
“I have said such oaths are valueless!” exclaimed the Priest eagerly. “Come, haste, for your last moments are approaching, when you will be consigned to the terrible flames of purgatory, for thousands and thousands of years, without a mass said for the repose of your soul, if you do not go at once to the ever-burning and bottomless pit, among infidels and heretics.”
The hair of the man stood on end with horror, at the picture of torment offered to his imagination; his eyeballs rolled wildly, as with clenched hands he for an instant sat upright on the ground, and seemed as if about to rise altogether.
“I will confess, I will confess!” he cried, “though I break my oath. ’Twas the young Conde de San Vincente who hired me by a large bribe to do the deed. There was a lady whose affections he sought to gain, but her husband was – Oh, Father, where are you? I am cold – very cold!” cried the man.
“Who was the husband? – you slew him?” asked the Priest, stooping down over the dying wretch.
“He was the – ” but ere he could pronounce the name which hung quivering on his lips, he uttered a loud shriek, and, with a convulsive shudder, fell back a lifeless corpse. The priest, however, had heard enough for his purpose; and uttering, or pretending to utter, a prayer over the body, he rose from the ground, and some of the servants coming up, one of them threw a cloak over the distorted features of the dead man.
While the scene of horror we have described was enacting, Don Luis had been actively employed in restoring order to the scattered cavalcade; his first care being to place Donna Clara in her litter, in which her old gouvernante accompanied her. The fidalgo was too much injured and fatigued to remount his horse, and therefore took his seat in his litter; the two wounded men-servants being placed in the third, while the females mounted the mules of the former; one of the mules of the fourth litter having been wounded, they were unable to support a burden.
These various arrangements having been made; the fidalgo, with many expressions of gratitude, would have bid farewell to his deliverer; but Don Luis, fearful that the brigands might again return, insisted on escorting him and his daughter to Leiria, the nearest town on the road to Lisbon, where, if thought advisable, a guard might be procured. “I should be performing but half my devoir as a knight, if I were to quit you in the middle of the forest,” said Don Luis; “a few hours’ delay can be of slight consequence to me, and I may happily be of some further service to you.”
“I cannot refuse your courteous offer, senhor,” answered the Fidalgo, pointing to his daughter. “For my daughter’s sake, it is most acceptable, as I yet tremble for her safety.”
Further delay being unnecessary, the party was again put in motion, Don Luis now riding by the side of the fidalgo’s litter, and ever and anon, notwithstanding his previous intentions to the contrary, approaching that of Donna Clara, to inquire if she had recovered from her alarm, and to assure her that she had no further cause for fear; an assurance in which, proceeding from the lips of so handsome a cavalier, and uttered in a tone of respectful courtesy, she could not fail to put implicit confidence. Notwithstanding his words, however, he kept a constant and watchful glance on every side, having also given private instructions to his own people, and to those of Gonçalo Christovaö to have their arms in readiness for any sudden attack. By insensible degrees he was led to enter more into conversation with his fair companion, and, as he spoke, his words became animated with a new spirit; all thoughts of the past being banished from his mind, while the roses again returned to her cheeks before blanched by fear, her soft eyes beaming with a strange and undefined happiness.
While Don Luis rode on to address the fidalgo, the old Nurse began to comment on his appearance. “What a handsome young cavalier is that,” she said; “so brave too, – why, the servants say he killed ten of the brigands with his own hand! What a noble countenance he has! with such sparkling black eyes! and how many polite inquiries he made after our health! Oh! mine is sore shaken by the fright. – Is he not handsome?”
“Do you think so, good nurse?” answered Donna Clara unconsciously. “I did not look. – He is very brave and very good, I am sure.”
“That he is; and so gallant, too,” said the Nurse. “How few young gentlemen would take the trouble to turn back to protect us. What a pity he is married!”
“Married!” exclaimed Donna Clara; and there was a sinking at her heart, and she felt her cheek again grow pale, she knew not why.
“If he is not married, he soon is to be, to his cousin Donna Theresa d’Alorna. The moment I heard his name I remembered that I had learned all about it from Senhora Anna, his father’s housekeeper, whose birth-place is near Oporto, and who came back to see her kindred some time ago.”
While the old lady was thus running on, the subject of her conversation again rode to the side of the litter; for it was extraordinary how incumbent on him he considered it to make frequent inquiries respecting the young lady’s health. Now, many people will ask if Don Luis had thus suddenly forgotten Donna Theresa and all his griefs; and though we cannot, with perfect certainty, answer that question, yet we have strong reasons to suspect that, for the time, he thought very little about either one or the other; nor had he, indeed, from the moment when he dashed his spurs into his horse’s flanks, as he rode forward to rescue Donna Clara from the power of the brigands, and, as now he rode by her side, gazing on her lovely countenance, and regarding her as one who confided in him for protection, he knew not how it was that all nature seemed suddenly to have assumed a brighter garb, and the weight to have been lifted from his heart. We must, however, beg no one to suppose we mean to insinuate, either that he had fallen in love with the lady, or that she had fallen in love with him, at first sight; because all people of mature judgment agree that, if such is possible, it can occur alone to very silly young people; and that the descriptions of such folly are to be found only in the most absurd and extravagant romances. Of course, therefore, in a grave history, like the present work, we should not venture even to hint at such a thing; and, with regard to his affection for his cousin, it must be remembered that she had treated him with great cruelty and deceit; and that young hearts, however their possessors may fancy them seared and blighted,
