come plainly discernible. But it is scarcely
possible that any such trace should remain in the mind of the hypocrite
who, during many years, is constantly going through what he considers
as the mummery of preaching, saying mass, baptizing, shriving. When an
ecclesiastic of this sort mixes in the contests of men of the world, he
is indeed much to be dreaded as an enemy, but still more to be dreaded
as an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to
embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he daily
looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate dupes who believe that he
can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily
studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty
consciences, he brings to courts some talents which may move the envy
of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay courtiers; a rare skill in
reading characters and in managing tempers, a rare art of dissimulation,
a rare dexterity in insinuating what it is not safe to affirm or to
propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent
an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and despicable,
domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be softened by
the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought of
doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic
feeling nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any
sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of
human relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation
of the fashionable code of honour.

Such a priest was Portocarrero; and he seems to have been a consummate
master of his craft. To the name of statesman he had no pretensions. The
lofty part of his predecessor Ximenes was out of the range, not more of
his intellectual, than his moral capacity. To reanimate a paralysed
and torpid monarchy, to introduce order and economy into a bankrupt
treasury, to restore the discipline of an army which had become a mob,
to refit a navy which was perishing from mere rottenness, these were
achievements beyond the power, beyond even the ambition, of that ignoble
nature. But there was one task for which the new minister was admirably
qualified, that of establishing, by means of superstitious terror, an
absolute dominion over a feeble mind; and the feeblest of all minds was
that of his unhappy sovereign. Even before the riot whi