The real character of Don Luis, and the office he held, our future
pages will disclose; suffice it here to state, that there was no
lack of personal attractions or mental graces, to account for the
universal, yet unspoken and unacknowledged dislike which he inspired.
Apparently in the prime of life, he yet seemed to have relinquished
all the pleasures and even the passions of life. Austere, even rigid,
in those acts of piety and personal mortifications enjoined by his
religion--voluntary fasts, privations, nights supposed to be past in
vigil and in penance; occasional rich gifts to patron saints, and
their human followers; an absence of all worldly feeling, even
ambition; some extraordinary deeds of benevolence--all rendered him an
object of actual veneration to the priests and monks with which the
goodly city of Segovia abounded; and even the populace declared him
faultless, as a catholic and a man, even while their inward shuddering
belied the words.
Don Ferdinand Morales alone was untroubled with these contradictory
emotions. Incapable of hypocrisy himself, he could not imagine it
in others: his nature seemed actually too frank and true for the
admission even of a prejudice. Little did he dream that his name,
his wealth, his very favor with the Queen, his influence with her
subjects, had already stamped him, in the breast of the man to whom
his house and heart alike were open, as an object of suspicion and
espial; and that ere a year had passed over his wedded life, these
feelings were ripened, cherished--changed from the mere thought of
persecution, to palpable resolve, by personal and ungovernable hate.
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