Isid.

When a boy, my lord!

I could have sate whole hours beside that chasm,
Push'd in huge stones and heard them strike and rattle
Against its horrid sides: then hung my head
Low down, and listened till the heavy fragments
Sank with faint crash in that still groaning well,
Which never thirsty pilgrim blest, which never
A living thing came near-unless, perchance,
Some blind-worm battens on the ropy mould
Close at its edge.

Ord.

Art thou more coward now?

Isid. Call him that fears his fellow-man a coward !

I fear not man-but this inhuman cavern,

It were too bad a prison house for goblins.
Beside, (you'll smile, my lord) but true it is,
My last night's sleep was very sorely haunted.
By what had passed between us in the morning.
O sleep of horrors! Now run down and stared at
By forms so hideous that they mock remembrance—
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing,

But only being afraid-stifled with fear!

While

every goodly or familiar form

Had a strange power of breathing terror round me!

I saw you in a thousand fearful shapes;

And I entreat your lordship to believe me,

In my last dream

Ord.

Isid.

Well?

I was in the act

Of falling down that chasm, when Alhadra

Wak'd me she heard my heart beat.

Ord.

Had you been here before?

Isid.

Strange enough!

Never, my lord!

But mine eyes do not see it now more clearly,

Than in my dream I saw-that very chasm.

Ord. (after a pause.) I know not why it should be! yet it is

Ord. Why that's my case; and yet the soul recoils from it'Tis so with me at least. But you, perhaps,

Have sterner feelings?

Isid.

Something troubles you.

How shall I serve you? By the life you gave me,

By all that makes that life of value to me,
My wife, my babes, my honor, I swear to you,
Name it, and I will toil to do the thing,
If it be innocent! But this, my lord!
Is not a place where you could perpetrate,

No, nor propose a wicked thing. The darkness,
When ten strides off we know 'tis cheerful moonlight,
Collects the guilt, and crowds it round the heart.
It must be innocent.

One of our family knew this place well.

Isid. Who? when? my lord?

Ord. What boots it, who or when?

Hang up thy torch-I'll tell his tale to thee.

[They hang up their torches on some ridge in the cavern.

He was a man different from other men,

And he despised them, yet revered himself.

Isid. (aside.) He? He despise? Thou'rt speaking of thyself! I am on my guard however: no surprise.

What, he was mad?

Ord.

[Then to Ordonio.

All men seemed mad to him!

Nature had made him for some other planet,

And pressed his soul into a human shape

By accident or malice. In this world.

He found no fit companion.

Isid.

Of himself he speaks. [aside.

Alas! poor wretch !

He walked alone.

Mad men are mostly proud.

Ord.

And phantom thoughts unsought-for troubled him.
Something within would still be shadowing out
All possibilities; and with these shadows
His mind held dalliance. Once, as so it happened,
A fancy crossed him wilder than the rest :

To this in moody murmur and low voice
He yielded utterance, as some talk in sleep:
The man who heard him.-

Why didst thou look round?
Isid. I have a prattler three years old, my lord!

In truth he is my darling. As I went

From forth my door, he made a moan in sleep-
But I am talking idly-pray proceed!

And what did this man ?

Ord.

With this human hand

He gave a substance and reality

To that wild fancy of a possible thing.-
Well it was done!

Why babblest thou of guilt?

The deed was done, and it passed fairly off.
And he whose tale I tell thee-dost thou listen?
Isid. I would, my lord, you were by my fireside,
I'd listen to you with an eager eye,

Though you began this cloudy tale at midnight.
But I do listen-pray proceed, my lord.

Ord.

Where was I?

Isid. He of whom you tell the tale-

Ord. Surveying all things with a quiet scorn,
Tamed himself down to living purposes,
The occupations and the semblances
Of ordinary men-and such he seemed!
But that same over ready agent-he-
Isid. Ah! what of him, my lord?
Ord.
He proved a traitor,
Betrayed the mystery to a brother traitor,
And they between them hatch'd a damned plot
To hunt him down to infamy and death.
What did the Valdez? I am proud of the name
Since he dared do it.-

[Ordonio grasps his sword, and turns off from Isidore, then

after a pause returns.

Our links burn dimly.

Isid. A dark tale darkly finished! Nay, my lord!

Tell what he did.

Ord. That which his wisdom prompted

VOL. VII.

R

He made the traitor meet him in this cavern,

And here he kill'd the traitor.

Isid.
No! the fool!
He had not wit enough to be a traitor.
Poor thick-eyed beetle! not to have foreseen.
That he who gulled thee with a whimpered lie
To murder his own brother, would not scruple
To murder thee, if e'er his guilt grew jealous,
And he could steal upon thee in the dark!

Ord. Thou wouldst not then have come, if-
Isid. Oh yes, my lord!

I would have met him arm'd, and scar'd the coward.

[Isidore throws off his robe; shows himself armed, and

draws his sword.

Ord. Now this is excellent and warms the blood!

My heart was drawing back, drawing me back

With weak and womanish scruples. Now my vengeance
Beckons me onwards with a warrior's mien,

And claims that life, my pity robbed her of--
Now will I kill thee, thankless slave, and count it
Among my comfortable thoughts hereafter.

Isid. And all my little ones fatherless

Die thou first. [They fight, Ordonio disarms Isidore, and in disarming him throws his sword up that recess opposite to which they were standing. Isidore hurries into the recess with his torch, Ordonio follows him; a loud cry of “Traitor! Monster!" is heard from the cavern, and in a moment Ordonio returns alone.

Ord. I have hurled him down the chasm! treason for treason. He dreamt of it: henceforward let him sleep,

A dreamless sleep, from which no wife can wake him.

His dream too is made out—now for his friend.

[Exit Ordonio.

SCENE II.* The interior Court of a Saracenic or Gothic Castle, with the iron gate of a dungeon visible.

Ter. Heart-chilling superstition! thou canst glaze

Ev'n pity's eye with her own frozen tear.

* See Appendix. p. 403.

In vain I urge the tortures that await him:
Even Selma, reverend guardian of my childhood,
My second mother, shuts her heart against me!
Well, I have won from her what most imports
The present need, the secret of the dungeon
Known only to herself.-A Moor! a Sorcerer!
No, I have faith, that nature ne'er permitted
Baseness to wear a form so noble. True,
I doubt not, that Ordonio had suborned him
To act some part in some unholy fraud;
As little doubt that for some unknown purpose
He hath baffled his suborner, terror-struck him,
And that Ordonio meditates revenge!

But my resolve is fixed! myself will rescue him,
And learn if haply he knew aught of Alvar.

Enter Valdez.

Val. Still sad?—and gazing at the massive door Of that fell dungeon which thou ne'er had'st sight of, Save what, perchance, thy infant fancy shap'd it When the nurse still'd thy cries with unmeant threats. Now by my faith, girl! this same wizard haunts thee! A stately man, and eloquent and tender

Who then need wonder if a lady sighs

Even at the thought of what these stern Dominicans--
Ter. The horror of their ghastly punishments

Doth so o'ertop the height of all compassion,
That I should feel too little for mine enemy,

If it were possible I could feel more,

Even though the dearest inmates of our household

Were doom'd to suffer them. That such things are-Val. Hush, thoughtless woman!

Ter.

More than a woman's spirit.

Val.

Nay, it wakes within me

No more of this

What if Monviedro or his creatures hear us!

I dare not listen to you.

Ter.
My honored lord,
These were my Alvar's lessons, and whene'er
I bend me o'er his portrait, I repeat them,
As if to give a voice to the mute image.