Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/107

Rh saying thus: "At the least, Sire, as you have given pardon to this child's murderer, I do beseech you grant the same to him now at this moment, for the time when he shall be grown up and shall have taken his vengeance and slain that wretch." And from that time onward, by what I have heard said, the mother would come every morning to awake her child; and showing him the bloody shirt his father had on when he was killed, would repeat to him three times over: "Mark this token, well, and bear well in mind, when you be grown up, to avenge this wrong; else do I disinherit you." A bitter spirit of revenge truly!

Myself when I was in Spain, did hear the tale how Antonio Roques, one of the most brave and valiant, cunning, cautious and skilful, famous and withal most courteous, bandits ever was in all Spain ('tis a matter of common knowledge), did in his early years desire to enter religion and be ordained priest. But the day being now come when he was to sing his first mass, just as he was coming forth from the vestry and was stepping with great ceremony toward the High Altar of his parish Church duly robed and accoutred to do his office, and chalice in hand, he did hear his mother saying to him as he passed her: ''Ah! vellaco, vellaco, mejor seria de vengar la muerte de tu padre, que de cantar misa'',—"Ah! wretch and miscreant that you are! 'twere better far to avenge your father's death than to be singing Mass." This word did so touch him at heart, as that he doth coldly turn him about in mid progress, and back to the vestry, where he doth unrobe him, pretending his heart had failed him from indisposition, and that it should be for another time. Then off to the mountains to join the brigands,