Your pupil Navarrete has
become faithless to you and the noble art of painting. Don Juan gave him
the enlistment money fifteen minutes ago. Better be a good trooper, than
a mediocre artist! What is the matter, Senorita?"

"Nothing, nothing," Isabella murmured gently, and fell fainting on her
father's breast.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Two years had passed. A beautiful October day was dawning; no cloud
dimmed the azure sky, and the sun's disk rose, glowing crimson, behind
the narrow strait, that afforded ingress to the Gulf of Corinth.

The rippling waves of the placid sea, which here washed the sunny shores
of Hellas, yonder the shady coasts of the Peloponnesus, glittered like
fresh blooming blue-bottles.

Bare, parched rocks rise in naked beauty at the north of the bay, and
the rays of the young day-star shot golden threads through the light
white mists, that floated around them.

The coast of Morea faces the north; so dense shadows still rested on the
stony olive-groves and the dark foliage of the pink laurel and oleander
bushes, whose dense clumps followed the course of the stream and filled
the ravines.

How still, how pleasant it usually was here in the early morning!

White sea-gulls hovered peacefully over the waves, a fishing-boat or
galley glided gently along, making shining furrows in the blue mirror
of the water; but today the waves curled under the burden of countless
ships, to-day thousands of long oars lashed the sea, till the surges
splashed high in the air with a wailing, clashing sound. To-day there
was a loud clanking, rattling, roaring on both sides of the water-gate,
which afforded admittance to the Bay of Lepanto.

The roaring and shouting reverberated in mighty echoes from the bare
northern cliffs, but were subdued by the densely wooded southern shore.

Two vast bodies of furious foes confronted each other like wrestlers,
who stretch their sinewy arms to grasp and hurl their opponents to the
ground.

Pope Pius the Fifth had summoned Christianity to resist the
land-devouring power of the Ottomans. Cyprus, Christian Cyprus, the last
province Venice possessed in the Levant, had fallen into the hands
of the Moslems. Spain and Venice had formed an alliance with Christ's
vicegerent; Genoese, other Italians, and the Knights of St. John were
assembling in Messina to aid the league.

The finest and largest Christian armada, which had left a Christian
port for a long time, put forth to sea from th