heard in that spacious and crowded hall was the rustling of his habit as he attempted to lift the cup to his lips once more—­in vain.  The guests sat in astonished silence.  Father Olavida alone remained standing; but at that moment the Englishman rose, and appeared determined to fix Olavida’s regards by a gaze like that of fascination.  Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that unearthly glare (the Englishman’s eyes were observed by all the guests, from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and preternatural luster), exclaimed, “Who is among us?—­Who?—­I cannot utter a blessing while he is here.  I cannot feel one.  Where he treads, the earth is parched!—­Where he breathes, the air is fire!—­Where he feeds, the food is poison!—­ Where he turns his glance is lightning!—­Who is among us?—­Who?” repeated the priest in the agony of adjuration, while his cowl fallen back, his few thin hairs around the scalp instinct and alive with terrible emotion, his outspread arms protruded from the sleeves of his habit, and extended toward the awful stranger, suggested the idea of an inspired being in the dreadful rapture of prophetic denunciation.  He stood—­still stood, and the Englishman stood calmly opposite to him.  There was an agitated irregularity in the attitudes of those around them, which contrasted strongly the fixed and stern postures of those two, who remained gazing silently at each other.  “Who knows him?” exclaimed Olavida, starting apparently from a trance; “who knows him? who brought him here?”

The guests severally disclaimed all knowledge of the Englishman, and each asked the other in whispers, “who had brought him there?” Father Olavida then pointed his arm to each of the company, and asked each individually, “Do you know him?” No! no! no!” was uttered with vehement emphasis by every individual.  “But I know him,” said Olavida, “by these cold drops!” and he wiped them off;—­ “by these convulsed joints!” and he attempted to sign the cross, but could not.  He raised his voice, and evidently speaking with increased difficulty,—­“By this bread and wine, which the faithful receive as the body and blood of Christ, but which his presence converts into matter as viperous as the suicide foam of the dying Judas,—­by all these—­I know him, and command him to be gone!—­He is—­he is—­” and he bent forward as he spoke, and gazed on the Englishman with an expression which the mixture of rage, hatred, and fear rendered terrible.  All the guests rose at these words,—­ the whole company now presented two singular groups, that of the amazed guests all collected together, and repeating, “Who, what is he?” and that of the Englishman, who stood unmoved, and Olavida, who dropped dead in the attitude of pointing to him.

. . . . .