Читать книгу Heart of the World онлайн

7 страница из 103

“Pray don’t apologise, señor,” answered Jones; “I have been much interested in watching all your servants at their devotions. What a beautiful chapel this is! May I look at it before you shut the doors?”

“Certainly, señor. Like the rest of the house, it is fine. The old monks who designed it two hundred years ago—for this was a great monastery—knew how to build, and labour was forced in those days and cost nothing. Of course I have repaired it a great deal, for those who lived here before me did not trouble about such things.

“You would scarcely think, señor, that in the old days, twenty years ago, this place was a nest of highway robbers, smugglers, and man-slayers, and that these people whom you see to-night, or their fathers, were slaves with no more rights than a dog.

“But so it was. Many a traveller has lost his life in this house or its neighbourhood. I, myself, was nearly murdered here once. Look at the carving of that altarpiece. It is fine, is it not? Those sapote wood columns date from the time of the old monks. Well, I have known Don Pedro Moreno, my predecessor, tie human beings to them in order to brand them with red-hot irons.”