that he added in a terrible voice, "Be
careful not to drop the flask."

Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his son, and his son's
tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard features.

It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero laid his father's body
upon the table. He kissed the sinister brow and the gray hair; then he
put out the lamp.

By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across the country
without, Felipe could dimly see his father's body, a vague white thing
among the shadows. The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the
liquid, and, absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A deep
silence reigned. Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the
breeze in the tree-tops, he thought. But when he had moistened the right
arm, he felt himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him
in a tight grip--it was his father's hand! He shrieked aloud; the flask
dropped from his hand and broke in pieces. The liquid evaporated; the
whole household hurried into the room, holding torches aloft. That
shriek had startled them, and filled them with as much terror as if the
Trumpet of the Angel sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and
sky. The room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the
fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of his father, who clutched
him by the throat. They saw another thing, an unearthly spectacle--Don
Juan's face grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair
and brilliant eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but
could not move the dead, wasted body.

An old servitor cried, "A miracle! a miracle!" and all the Spaniards
echoed, "A miracle! a miracle!"

Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the Abbot of
San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his own eyes, being
a clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues,
determined to turn the occasion to profit. He immediately gave out
that Don Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the
celebration of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he
said, should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words
a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the late
Duke.

The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is so
well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the religious
pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar