rious possibilities! How the prestige of the now
sunken family would soar! Happily he had been aroused to an
appreciation of the boy's really desperate state in time. The case
should go before the Archbishop to-morrow, and the Church should hear
his call to hasten to the rescue of this wandering lamb.

CHAPTER 4

Seville is called the heart of Spain. In a deeper sense it is her
soul. Within it, extremes touch, but only to blend into a harmonious
unit which manifests the Spanish temperament and character more truly
there than in any other part of the world. In its Andalusian
atmosphere the religious instinct of the Spaniard reaches its fullest
embodiment. True, its bull-fights are gory spectacles; but they are
also gorgeous and solemn ceremonies. Its _ferias_ are tremendously
worldly; but they are none the less stupendous religious _fetes_. Its
picturesque Easter processions, when colossal images of the Virgin are
carried among bareheaded and kneeling crowds, smack of paganism; but
we cannot question the genuineness of the religious fervor thus
displayed. Its Cathedral touches the _arena_; and its Archbishop
washes the feet of its old men. Its religion is still the living force
which unites and levels, exalts and debases. And its religion is
Rome.

On the fragrant spring morning following the discovery of the
execrated Voltaire, the little Jose, tightly clutching his father's
hand, threaded the narrow Sierpes and crossed the Prado de San
Sebastian, once the _Quemador_, where the Holy Inquisition was wont to
purge heresy from human souls with fire. The father shuddered, and his
stern face grew dark, as he thought of the revolting scenes once
enacted in that place in the name of Christ; and he inwardly voiced a
prayer of gratitude that the Holy Office had ceased to exist. Yet he
knew that, had he lived in that day, he would have handed his beloved
son over to that awful institution without demurral, rather than see
him develop those heretical views which were already rising from the
soil of his fertile, inquisitive mind.

The tinkling of a bell sounded down the street. Father and son quickly
doffed their hats and knelt on the pavement, while a priest, mounted
on a mule, rode swiftly past on his way to the bedside of a dying
communicant, the flickering lights and jingling bell announcing the
fact that he bore with him the Sacred Host.

"Please God, you will do the same some day, my son," murmured the
father.