rest of his fortune, it was invested in a life annuity, with a view to
give his wife and children an interest in keeping him alive; but this
Machiavellian piece of foresight was scarcely necessary. His son, young
Felipe Belvidero, grew up as a Spaniard as religiously conscientious
as his father was irreligious, in virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, "A
miser has a spendthrift son." The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by Don
Juan to be the director of the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero
and her son Felipe. The ecclesiastic was a holy man, well shaped, and
admirably well proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like that of
Tiberius, worn with fasting, bleached by an ascetic life, and, like all
dwellers in the wilderness, was daily tempted. The noble lord had hopes,
it may be, of despatching yet another monk before his term of life was
out.

But whether because the Abbot was every whit as clever as Don Juan
himself, or Dona Elvira possessed more discretion or more virtue than
Spanish wives are usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend
his declining years beneath his own roof, with no more scandal under
it than if he had been an ancient country parson. Occasionally he would
take wife and son to task for negligence in the duties of religion,
peremptorily insisting that they should carry out to the letter the
obligations imposed upon the flock by the Court of Rome. Indeed, he was
never so well pleased as when he had set the courtly Abbot discussing
some case of conscience with Dona Elvira and Felipe.

At length, however, despite the prodigious care that the great
magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude
came upon him, and with those days the constant importunity of physical
feebleness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the
wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures of
middle age. The unbeliever who in the height of his cynical humor had
been wont to persuade others to believe in laws and principles at which
he scoffed, must repose nightly upon a _perhaps_. The great Duke, the
pattern of good breeding, the champion of many a carouse, the proud
ornament of Courts, the man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts
that he had wrung as carelessly as a peasant twists an osier withe,
was now the victim of a cough, of a ruthless sciatica, of an unmannerly
gout. His teeth gradually deserted him, as at the end of an evening the
fairest