Calderon

“ At whatever hazard, save thy power; for with it are bound, as mariners to a plank, the hopes of those who make the mind a sceptre.”
“Thy enthusiasm blinds and misleads thee, Aliaga,” said Calderon, coldly. “For me, I tell thee now, as I have told thee before, that I care not a rush for thy grand objects. Let mankind serve itself—I look to myself alone. But fear not my faith; my interests and my very life are identified with thee and thy fellow-fanatics. If I desert thee, thou art too deep in my secrets not to undo me ”

“ Yet this is not done in the German style. The Germans subtilise, mystify, and cloud the real and distinct: they dissolve flesh and blood into a dream. Calderon, on the contrary, turns a dream into flesh and blood: he gives a pulse to a skeleton; he breathes passion from the lips of ghosts and spectres. Which is the greater power, others must decide. The influence of Calderon is greatest to us; he is master of a spell to which our souls own obedience.
Calderon, as a poet, is diffuse and exaggerated at times, but he is highly imaginative ”

“ Nay, blush not: some men despise thee for thy talents: I do thee homage. By my great grandsire’s beard, it will be a merry time at court when I am monarch, and thou minister!”
Calderon looked earnestly at the prince, but his scrutiny did not serve to dispel a certain suspicion of the royal sincerity that ever and anon came across the favourite’s most sanguine dreams. With all Philip’s gaiety, there was something restrained and latent in his ambiguous smile, and his calm, deep, brilliant eye. ”

“ Calderon paused ere he turned to the concluding lines of his wife’s letter; and, though he remained motionless and speechless, never were agony and despair stamped more terribly on the face of man.
CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER OF INEZ.
“And what avails to me this testimony of my faith? thou art fled; they cannot track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy love! ”

“ I knew that thou wouldest not shrink at the means that could secure to thee a noble end. Yea, when, years ago, in the valley of the Xenil, I saw thee bathe thy hands in the blood of thy foe, and heard thy laugh of exulting scorn;—when I, alone master of thy secret, beheld thee afterwards flying from thy home stained with a second murder, but still calm, stern, and lord of thine own reason, my knowledge of mankind told me, ‘Of such men are high converts and mighty instruments made!’”
The priest paused; for Calderon heard him not. His cheek was livid, his eyes closed, his chest heaved wildly. ”

“ The reason I choose Aliaga is this,—Calderon will never suspect his friendship, and will not, therefore, thwart us with the king. The Jesuit, who would sell all Christendom for the sake of advancement to his order or himself will gladly sell Calderon to obtain the chair of the Inquisition.”
“I believe it,” replied Guzman. “I approve your choice; and you may rely on me to destroy Calderon with the prince. I have found out the way to rule Philip; it is by never giving him a right to despise his favourites—it is to flatter his vanity, but not to share his vices. ”

“ CHAPTER III. A RIVAL.
Calderon’s eyes were fixed musingly on the door which closed on Fonseca’s martial and noble form.
“Great contrasts among men!” said he, half aloud. “All the classes into which naturalists ever divided the animal world contained not the variety that exists between man and man. And yet, we all agree in one object of our being—all prey on each other! Glory, which is but the thirst of blood, makes yon soldier the tiger of his kind; other passions have made me the serpent: both fierce, relentless, unscrupulous—both! hero and courtier, valour and craft! ”

“ He has watched the beaching of the boat, and the debarking of her crew, without saying word. But, soon as recognising Crozier, he clutches Calderon by the arm; more vividly than ever now his crime recalled to him, for now its punishment, as that of them all, seems near. There is no chance to escape it. To resist, will only be to hasten their doom—death.
They do not think of resistance, nor yet flight; but remain upon the hill-top, sullen and speechless.
Calderon is the first to break the silence, frantically exclaiming:
“Santos Dios! the officers of the English frigate! ”

“ We have been foes and rivals; why should not our path be the same? Calderon has deprived you of friends more powerful than himself. His hour is come. The Duke de Lerma’s downfall cannot be avoided; if it could, I, his son, would not as, you may suppose, withhold my hand. But business fatigues him—he is old—the affairs of Spain are in a deplorable condition—they need younger and abler hands. My father will not repine at a retirement suited to his years, and which shall be made honourable to his gray hairs. But some victim must glut the rage of the people ”

“ To form a notion of what manner of man Calderon was, we must imagine a writer hardly inferior to Shakespeare in fertility of invention and dramatic insight, inspired by a religious fervour like that of Doune or Crashaw, and endowed with the wild and ethereal imagination of Shelley. But the religious fervour is Catholic, not Protestant, Southern, not Northern: it is intense, mystical, and ecstatic: like a tongue of upward-darting flame, it burns and trembles with impassioned impulse to mingle with empyrean fire. ”

“ But I care not; my case, my wrongs, shall be laid before the king; I will inquire if it be thus that Philip the Third treats the defenders of his crown. Don Roderigo Calderon, will you place my memorial in the hands of your royal master? Do this, and I will thank you.”
“No, Fonseca, I will not ruin you; the king would pass your memorial to the Duke de Lerma. Tush! this is not the way that men of sense deal with misfortune. Think you I should be what I now am, if, in every reverse, I had raved, and not reflected? Sit down, and let us think of what can now be done.” ”

“ His heart beat aloud, the divine instinct overpowered all things, he pressed a passionate kiss upon her forehead, and his tears fell fast and warm upon her cheek. But again the dark remembrance crossed him, and he shuddered, placed the novice hastily on one of the couches, and shouted aloud.
The Jew appeared and was ordered to summon Jacinta. A young woman of the same persuasion, and of harsh and forbidding exterior, entered, and to her care Calderon briefly consigned the yet insensible Beatriz. ”

“ But, as we have already noticed, Calderon makes every thing bend to his ideas of dramatic effect; so that what he has borrowed from history comes forth upon the stage with the brilliant attributes of a masque, almost as much as what is drawn from the rich resources of his own imagination. If the subject he has chosen falls naturally into the only forms he recognizes, he indeed takes the facts much as he finds them. ”

“ Perhaps,” added Calderon, smiling, “a courtier may manage such an intrigue with even more dexterity than a soldier. I will bear her to the house we spoke of; there I know she can lie hid in safety, till the languid pursuit of uninterested officials shall cease, and thence I can easily find means to transport her, under safe and honourable escort, to any place it may please you to appoint.”
“And think you Beatriz will fly with you, a stranger? Impossible! ”

“ I fear not exile; I fear not reverse; I no longer fear poverty itself. All lands, where the sound of the trumpet is not unknown, can afford career to the soldier, who asks from Heaven no other boon but his mistress and his sword.”
“You will seek to abstract Beatriz, then?” said Calderon, calmly and musingly. “Yes—it may be your best course, if you take the requisite precautions. But can you see her? can you concert with her?”
“I think so. I trust I have already paved the way to an interview. Yesterday, after I quitted thee, I sought the convent ”

“ Bat I have not the youth of the prince, and men speak ill of me, that, in order to gain his confidence, I share in his pursuits.”
“It matters not what they say of thee. Faithful ministers are rarely eulogised by the populace or the court. Thou knowest my mind: I repeat, lose not the prince’s favour.” Calderon bowed low, and withdrew. As he passed through the apartments of the palace, he crossed a gallery, in which he perceived, stationed by a window, the young prince and his own arch-foe, the Duke d’Uzeda. At the same instant, from an opposite door, entered the Cardinal-Duke de Lerma ”

“ You said the Cardinal was your kinsman; you are, then, equally related to his son, the Duke d’Uzeda. Apply not to Lerma; he is the tool of Calderon. Apply yourself to Uzeda; he is Calderon’s mortal foe. While Calderon gains ground with the prince, Uzeda advances with the king. Uzeda by a word can procure thy release. The duke knows and trusts me. Shall I be commissioned to acquaint him with thy arrest, and entreat his intercession with Philip?”
“You give me new life! But not an hour is to be lost ”

“ Calderón dealt with his abstruse theme more than seventy times—not always with equal success, but never quite unsuccessfully, and never repeating himself unduly. This is surely one of the most dexterous exploits in literature, and Calderón appears to have done it with consummate ease. His reflective genius, steeped in dogma, was far more interested in the mysteries of faith than in the passions of humanity, far more interested in devout symbolism than in realistic characterisation. ”

“ Treat this cavalier with all the respect and worship due to his birth and merits. Go, Don Martin, go,” he added, in a lower voice; “go, unless you desire to lose Beatriz for ever. Nothing but obedience can save you from the imprisonment of half a life!”
Awed and subdued by this threat, Fonseca, in gloomy silence, placed his sword in its sheath, and sullenly followed the alguazils. Calderon watched them depart with a thoughtful and absent look; then, starting from his reverie, he bade his torchbearers proceed, and resumed his way to the Prince of Spain. ”

“ But we are not to measure Calderon as his contemporaries did. We stand at a distance too remote and impartial for such indulgence; and must neither pass over his failures nor exaggerate his merits. We must look on the whole mass of his efforts for the theatre, and inquire what he really effected for its advancement,—or rather what changes it underwent in his hands, both in its more gay and in its more serious portions. ”

“ Calderon had not long left the young soldier before the governor of the prison entered to pay his respects to a captive of such high birth and military reputation.
Fonseca, always blunt and impatient of mood, was not in a humour to receive and return compliments; but the governor had scarcely seated himself ere he struck a chord in the conversation which immediately arrested the attention and engaged the interest of the prisoner.
“Do not fear, sir,” said he, “that you will be long detained; the power of your enemy is great, but it will not be of duration. ”

“ I confess that, when I beheld you in the ante room, I blushed for my past forgetfulness. No matter—I will repair my fault. Men say that my patronage is misapplied—I will prove the contrary by your promotion.”
“Generous Calderon!” said Fonseca, falteringly; “I ever hated the judgments of the vulgar. They calumniate you; it is from envy.”
“No,” said Calderon, coldly; “I am bad enough, but I am still human. Besides, gratitude is my policy. I have always found that it is a good way to get on in the world to serve those who serve us.”
“But the duke?” ”

“ The craft of the king was satisfied by the device of placing about the person of the Infant one devoted to himself; nor did his conscience, pious as he was, revolt at the profligacy which his favourite was said to participate, and, perhaps, to encourage; since the less popular the prince, the more powerful the king.
But all this while there was formed a powerful cabal against both the Duke of Lerma and Don Roderigo Calderon in a quarter where it might least have been anticipated. ”

“ As may be gathered, perhaps, from what has been said concerning the few dramas we have examined, the plots of Calderon are almost always marked with great ingenuity. Extraordinary adventures and unexpected turns of fortune, disguises, duels, and mistakes of all kinds, are put in constant requisition, and keep up an eager interest in the concerns of the personages whom he brings to the foreground of the scene. ”

“ Above all, hating, as thou didst, the very name of the Moor, thou wert the man of men to aid in our great design of expelling the accursed race from the land of Spain. Enough—I served thee, and thou didst repay us. Thou hast washed out thy crime in the blood of the infidel—thou art safe from detection. In Roderigo Calderon, Marquis de Siete Iglesias, who will suspect the Roderigo Nunez—the murderous student of Salamanca? Our device of the false father stifled even curiosity. Thou mayest wake to the future, nor tremble at one shadow in the past. The brightest hopes are before us both ”

“ This beautiful volume before us—like virtue's self, fair within and without—is Mr. Mac-Carthy's second contribution to the Herculean task which Longfellow cheers him on to continue—the translation into English of the complete works of Calderon. Two experimental volumes, containing six dramas of the same author, appeared in 1853, winning the well-merited encomium of every person of true taste into whose hands they happened to fall. ”