He immediately gave out that Don Juan would certainly be
canonized; he appointed a day for the celebration of the
apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he said, should
be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words a
sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the
late Duke.
The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is
so well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the
religious pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated
the translation of the _blessed Don Juan Belvidero_ to the
abbey-church. The tale of the partial resurrection had spread so
quickly from village to village, that a day or two after the
death of the illustrious nobleman the report had reached every
place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good as a
play to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on
all sides, their curiosity whetted still further by the prospect
of a _Te Deum_ sung by torchlight. The old abbey church of
San-Lucar, a marvelous building erected by the Moors, a mosque of
Allah, which for three centuries had heard the name of Christ,
could not hold the throng that poured in to see the ceremony.
Hidalgos in their velvet mantles, with their good swords at their
sides, swarmed like ants, and were so tightly packed in among the
pillars that they had not room to bend the knees, which never
bent save to God.
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