proof of my innocence in my hands. Behold it enclosed within. If this
letter ever reach thee, thou wilt learn how thy wife was true to thee in
life, and has therefore the right to bless thee in death."


At this passage, Calderon dropped the letter, and was seized with a kind
of paralysis, which for some moments seemed to deprive him of life
itself. When he recovered he eagerly grasped a scroll that was enclosed
in the letter, but which, hitherto, he had disregarded. Even then, so
strong were his emotions, that sight itself was obscured and dimmed, and
it was long before he could read the characters, which were already
discoloured by time.



"TO INEZ.

"I have but a few hours to live,--let me spend them in atonement and in
prayer, less for myself than thee. Thou knowest not how madly I adored
thee; and how thy hatred or indifference stung every passion into
torture. Let this pass. When I saw thee again--the forsaker of thy
faith--poor, obscure, and doomed to a peasant's lot--daring hopes shaped
themselves into fierce resolves. Finding that thou wert inexorable, I
turned my arts upon thy husband. I knew his poverty and his ambition: we
Moors have had ample knowledge of the avarice of the Christians'. I bade
one whom I could trust to seek him out at Madrid. Wealth--lavish wealth
--wealth that could open to a Spaniard all the gates of power was offered
to him if he would renounce thee forever. Nay, in order to crush out all
love from his breast, it was told him that mine was the prior right--that
thou hadst yielded to my suit ere thou didst fly with him--that thou