joice that I am permitted to see thee, within these dread walls of the Holy Office; for knowing, as I do, the sanctity of thy character, I cannot doubt that thou hast the inclination, as I trust thou hast the power, to procure my deliverance from the ignominious bonds, wherein thou findest the Prince of Spain.'

'Something, perchance, I may aid thee in this crisis,' answered the Prior, and it is for that purpose I have gained admission to thy prison.'

'I ask not,' said Carlos, 'how it is that its doors are unbarred to thee alone; seeing that so it is, I cannot but infer thou hast influence and authority with the Holy Office, if thou art not indeed, as I the rather suppose, one of its officials thyself; and I beseech thee, in either case, to acquaint me with the offence whereof I stand charged; for my conscience does not accuse me of any crime, which merits attention from the functionaries of the Holy Office.'

'Is it no crime, Don Carlos, to deride the church, to revile her servants, to speak scornfully of her ordinances, to countenance the outrages of the iconoclacts in Flanders and Brabant by expressions of sympathy for the guilty wretches? Is it no crime to favor the heresies of the perjured monk of Saxony, which thy grandsire of blessed memory so anxiously labored to suppress?'

'Pardon me, Lord Prior, and suffer me to say that I have been basely belied, if such are the imputations which attach to my name. I abhor the

doctrines of Luther and Calvin alike; I am a true and faithful son of Holy Mother Church, and I condemn all schismatics as deadly enemies to salvation. This, and this only I avow:-I have not been able to contemplate calınly the destructive war waged by the Inquisition against my father's subjects in the Netherlands; because I perceive that it serves only to foster faction, and thus give the means of mischief to discontented men, who, I fear me, will gather strength from persecution to sever one of the fairest possessions of Spain from her empire.'

'Speak not of war waged by the Inquisition against thy father's subjects. It is the hand of the law, which descends upon their persons, in mercy of their guilty souls. And admitting, what I willingly believe to be true, that thou art in good faith a Catholic, how much soever thy words may have thrown doubt on the fact, yet the unworthy sympathy avowed by thee for incorrigible heretics, and the free speech, which thou hast too often permitted thyself on this topic, demand, and must receive, punishment.'

'Alas!—and is every thoughtless expression we utter, every syllable not duly weighed in the balance of strict and orthodox belief, to be thus harshly visited? And in me, too, the descendant of so many royal lines, and the heir of Spain? If Carlos have incurred the guilt of imperfect duty in religion, surely something may be pardoned me, in behalf

of the Catholic King, my father, who sees in me the sole inheritor of his name.'

'Flatter not thyself that Philip can, if he would, or will, if he might, seek to rescue thee from the judgment of the Holy Office. Knowest thou so little of the narrow, jealous, vengeful spirit of the King, as to deem that he feels any disposition to throw the mantle of his power over thy frailties? I tell thee, no. The nobles and people hate Philip, and love Carlos, and Philip feels it to the heart's core. He feels that Spain groans under his sceptre, and would gladly exchange it for the more generous rule, which is anticipated from his open-souled son; and he dreads lest you should one day become as impatient to sieze upon his succession, as he was to grasp that of the Emperor.'

Carlos turned pale at these words of the Prior, and gazed upon him with profound astonishment pictured in every feature, and yet with an expression, as if the monk was exposing to him a view of his father's character and purposes, which he had already held before his eyes, but had not dared to contemplate in the nakedness of its actual deformity. There are feelings, facts, opinions, which we ponder in the mind, perhaps, or which, at any rate, flit through it repeatedly in moments of reverie, until they become familiar to our thoughts; and yet when they are fixed in words, and spoken audibly in our ears, we start back from the sound, full of consciousness, and with clear perception of their fa

miliarity, and yet affrighted, as if we beheld some fearful phantom of our own diseased imagination. Thus it was in this case with Don Carlos.

"The terms of obloquy,' he at length said, 'which you apply to the King, are new and strange to my ears. I cannot, I will not listen to such language; I will not harbor the horrid idea they are intended to suggest.'

'Unhappy youth,' replied the Prior, 'thou dreamest not of all that Philip charges against thee, or thou art a more apt dissembler that I can readily believe. Elizabeth of France,-thou startest, and well thou mayest-what has Don Carlos to say in respect of the young Queen? Might she not better fill the arms of the Prince than of the King? What father would brook a rival in his son? Certainly not

Philip of Spain.'

'It is false, false as hell,' cried Carlos: 'thy shameless insinuations are as abominable as they are destitute of foundation in truth; and I repent me that, misled by thy garb, and by something of praise which fame spoke in thy behalf, I have suffered thee to look into my heart. Whether as a base instrument of the King, or as a spy of the Holy Office, thou seekest to entrap me by thine arts, which, thank heaven, are so abhorrent to my temper that I could not anticipate their exercise in others,-whatever thou art, I scorn thy malice and I defy thy power. After presuming to blacken the purity of an angel by thy whispers of wickedness, with me thou canst hold no further converse.'

Carlos retired back in his cell so far as he might, in act of shrinking from the proximity of what, it would seem, contaminated by its mere presence. Some powerful emotion appeared also to agitate the bosom of the Prior. He drew his cowl more closely over his face, and kept silence for awhile, as if endeavoring to subdue his feelings, or debating within himself some question of doubt, difficulty, or danger. At length, he approached the Prince, and speaking, not in the sneering tone of his last remarks, but in a suppressed and withal compassionate and paternal manner, he resumed :—

'Don Carlos of Spain, time wears, and I must perform the functions appointed for me to discharge on earth. Neither to extort from thee unwilling confessions, nor to excite thy indignation by irritating charges, nor to punish insulting speech addressed to myself,-for none of these things do I stand here in a condemned cell of the Holy Office. Thy doom is pronounced. I would, when I witness thy gallant bearing, it might have been otherwise; but it cannot be: we are creatures of circumstance, and instruments in the hand of a power above human control; and thou must bear thy lot in all manhood, as becomes a child of Spain. Don Carlos, thou art adjudged to die; and albeit the dignity of mine office devolves not such duties upon me, yet I will not see thee die unshrived, and ere thy peace be made with heaven. I come, as a minister of the cross, to prepare thee for thy death.'