Caldron

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ He would not see me; he will see thee!”
“Ay—the prince! we have cause to love each other!”
“Ye have indeed! Hasten, Calderon; not a moment is to be lost! Banished! Calderon, shall I be banished?” And the old man, bursting into tears, fell at the feet of Calderon, and clasped his knees.
“Go, go, I implore thee! Save me; I loved thee, Calderon, I always loved thee. Shall our foes triumph? Shall the horn of the wicked be exalted?” ”

“ The horse, also, with a high head scanned the circling willows, alert; but the man for whom the stallion and the wolf watched gave no heed to either. There was a vacant and dreamy expression in his eye as if he was searching his own inner heart and found there the greatest enemy of all. All night they sat in this manner, silent, moveless; the animals watching against the world, the man watching against himself. Before dawn he roused himself suddenly, crossed to the sleeping marshal, and touched him on the arm.
"It's time we hit the trail," he said, as Calder sat up in the blanket. ”

“ Calderon's talent was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially his Soldier of Liberty, are characterized by a personal fire and animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in The Tourney:
And this is life. ”

“ Carlton, pointing to this moisture.
"What is it?"
"Paraffin! Look at the lamps; he's simply emptied them——"
"Who, sir—who?"
"God knows, and may God forgive him! I have enemies enough this morning, though not more than I deserve. If only they will be my friends for one hour, for the sake of the church! Are they never coming with that water? Run and tell them a bucketful would make a difference now, but cartloads will make none in ten more minutes! And tell them what I said just now: bid them for God's sake think of nothing but the fire till we get it under." ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Uzeda once gain his ear, thou art lost.”
“Not so,” cried Calderon, proudly. “My service is to the king; I have a right to his royal protection, for I have a claim on his royal gratitude.”
“Do not deceive thyself,” said the duke, in a whisper. “The king cannot live long: I have it from the best authority, his physician; nor is this all—a formidable conspiracy against thee exists at court. But for myself and the king’s confessor, Philip would consent to thy ruin. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Biologist turned pale.
‘That reminds me,’ said the American; ‘I mustn’t leave those papers litterin’ about. I forgot to lock them up.’
‘Goot-bye,’ said the Baron. ‘I haf beesness encagement.’ He followed the American out at the door.
[222] ‘Of course!’ said the Biologist, brightening. ‘“Memoirs of a Statesman”—anecdotes of the great people you have met. Who is the American-looking man?’
‘Oh! that’s Mr. Bone, one of my collaborators. Mr. Cato and Lady Wyse are the others; between us, you see, we cover the whole ground. I met Mr. Bone in Borneo. ”

“ They duel for their pleasure.” Then with an inflection of warning. “This Catron will ask for swords!”
“Swords should do exceeding well,” remarked Noah. “It should go through sharply, this affair, for the best moral effect on others of his ill-tongued clan. With swords we might fight in a room, since they make no noise. Let us meet at once. In an hour this Catron's eyes will cease to burn, and he'll see the better for it.”
“But, mind you, Catron is a master of the sword,” said Kendall. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were no one knows how many military and civil officers, with other people of consequence, among whom Calderona was dividing his attentions. His different reception of different people was curious. A slight inclination of the head was enough for some; others he honored with a profusion of courtly grimace, and bowed them out of the closet. The proportions of civility were weighed to a scruple. On the other hand, there were some suitors, who, shocked at his cold indifference, cursed in their secret soul the necessity for their cringing before such a monkey of an idol. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This he had known and felt in the American, in the Soochings, in Mr. Cato, in the housemaid—it was the basis of his respect and obedience; but it was wanting in Pendred Lillico.
It was fortunate that he was disabused of error so early in his career. He could afford to laugh at his foolishness later—he saw what mistakes of behaviour it would have led him into; for when he came to know London better, he found that the mass of people, both in drawing-rooms and slums, indubitably men, altogether lacked the ‘eye’ which he had thought essential. ”