ejaculation of impatience, Tomas Castro caught at my hand, and whirled
me round.

The great doors had swung noiselessly open, and the black night,
bespangled with little flames, was framed in front of me. He suddenly
unsheathed his portentous sword, and, hanging his great hat upon his
maimed arm, stalked, a pathetic and sinister figure of grief, down the
great steps. I followed him in the vivid and extraordinary compulsion of
the sinister body that, like one fabulous and enormous monster, swayed
impenetrably after me.

My heart beat till my head was in a tumultuous whirl, when thus, at
last, I stepped out of that house--but I suppose my grim robes cloaked
my emotions--though, seeing very clearly through the eyeholes, it was
almost incredible to me that I was not myself seen. But these Brothers
of Pity were a secret society, known to no man except their spiritual
head, who chose them in turn, and not knowing even each other. Their
good deeds of charity were, in that way, done by pure stealth. And it
happened that their spiritual director was the Father Antonio himself.
At that foot of the palace steps, drawn back out of our way, stood the
great glass coach of state, containing, even then, the woman who was
all the world to me, invisible to me, unattainable to me, not to be
comforted by me, even as her great griefs were to me invisible and
unassuageable. And there between us, in the great coffin, held on
high by the grim, shadowy beings, was all that she loved, invisible,
unattainable, too, and beyond all human comfort. Standing there, in the
midst of the whispering, bare-headed, kneeling, and villainous crowd, I
had a vivid vision of her pale, dim, pitiful face. Ah, poor thing! she
was going away for good from all that state, from all that seclusion,
from all that peace, mutely, and with a noble pride of quietness, into
a world of dangers, with no head but mine to think for her, no arm but
mine to ward off all the great terrors, the immense and dangerous weight
of a new world.

In the twinkle of innumerable candles, the priceless harness of the
white mules, waiting to draw the great coach after us, shone like
streaks of ore in an infinitely rich silver mine. A double line of
tapers kept the road to the cathedral, and a crowd of our negroes, the
bell muzzles of their guns suggested in the twinkling light, massed
themselves round the coach. Outside the lines were the crowd of
rapscallions in red jackets, their women an