The Aztec Treasure-House | Page 5

as one having the assured right of entry there, Don Rafael
courteously stood aside and motioned to me to enter the sacristy.
From the shadowy church I passed at a step into a small vaulted room
brilliant with the sunlight that poured into it through a broad window
that faced the south. Just where this flood of sunshine fell upon the
flagged floor, rising from a base of stone steps built up in a pyramidal
form, was a large cross of some dark wood, on which was the life-size
figure of the crucified Christ; and there, on the bare stone pavement
before this emblem of his faith, his face, on which the sunlight fell full,

turned upward towards the holy image, and his arms raised in
supplication, clad in his Franciscan habit, of which the hood had fallen
back, knelt Fray Antonio; and upon his pale, holy face, that the rich
sunlight glorified, was an expression so seraphic, so entranced, that it
seemed as though to his fervent gaze the very gates of heaven must be
open, and all the splendors and glories and majesties of paradise
revealed.
It is as I thus first saw Fray Antonio--verily a saint kneeling before the
cross--that I strive to think of him always. Yet even when that other and
darker, but surely more glorious, picture of him rises before my mind I
am not disconsolate; for at such times the thought possesses
me--coming to me clearly and vehemently, as though from a strongly
impelled force without myself--that what he prayed for at the moment
when I beheld him was that which God granted to him in the end.
Some men being thus broken in upon while in the very act of
communing with Heaven would have been distressed and ill at ease--as
I assuredly was because I had so interrupted him. But to Fray Antonio,
as I truly believe, communion with Heaven was so entirely a part of his
daily life that our sudden entry in nowise ruffled him. After a moment,
that he might recall his thoughts within himself and so to earth again,
he arose from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward
to greet us. He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he
was slightly built and thin--not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome
leanness of one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a
machine of which much work was required. His face still had in it the
soft roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its
expression of gracious sweetness; but there was a firmness about the
fine, strong chin, and in the set of the delicate lips, that showed a
reserve of masterful strength. And most of all did this strength shine
forth from his eyes; which, truly, though at this first sight of him I did
not perceive it fully, were the most wonderful eyes that ever I have
seen. As I then beheld them I thought them black; but they really were
a dark blue, and so were in keeping with his fair skin and hair. Yet that
which gave them so strong an individuality was less their changing
color than the marvellous way in which their expression changed with

every change of feeling of the soul that animated them. When I first
saw them, turned up towards heaven, they seemed to speak a heavenly
language full of love; and when I saw them last, stern, but shining with
the exultant light of joy triumphant, they fairly hurled the wrath of
outraged Heaven against the conquered powers of hell. And I can give
no adequate conception of the love that shone forth from them when
pitying sympathy for human sorrow, or even for the pain which brute
beasts suffered, touched that most tender heart for which they spoke in
tones richer and fuller than the tones of words.
Don Rafael, standing without the door that he had opened in order that
I might precede him, did not perceive that we had interrupted Fray
Antonio in his prayers; and began, therefore, in the lively manner
natural to him, when I had been in due form presented as an American
archæologist come to Mexico to pursue my studies of its primitive
inhabitants, to commend the undertaking that I had in hand, and to ask
of Fray Antonio the aid in prosecuting it that he so well could give.
Perhaps it was that Fray Antonio understood how wholly my heart
already had gone out to him--assuredly, later, there was such close
sympathy between us that our thoughts would go and come to each
other without need for words--and so was disposed in some instinctive
way to join his purposes with mine; but, be this as it may, before Don