They came on the charitable mission of preparing the poor
convict for death. Catalina, however, watching all things narrowly,
remarked something earnest and significant in the eye of the leader, as
of one who had some secret communication to make. She contrived to
clasp this man's hands, as if in the energy of internal struggles, and
_he_ contrived to slip into hers the very smallest of billets from
poor Juana. It contained, for indeed it _could_ contain, only
these three words--'Do not confess. J.' This one caution, so simple and
so brief, was a talisman. It did not refer to any confession of the
crime; _that_ would have been assuming what Juana was neither
entitled nor disposed to assume, but, in the technical sense of the
Church, to the act of devotional confession. Catalina found a single
moment for a glance at it--understood the whole--resolutely refused to
confess, as a person unsettled in her religious opinions, that needed
spiritual instructions, and the four monks withdrew to make their
report. The principal judge, upon hearing of the prisoner's
impenitence, granted another day. At the end of _that_, no change
having occurred either in the prisoner's mind, or in the circumstances,
he issued his warrant for the execution.
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