So ends the first act. In the second and third we have the perpetual contrast between the two men. Paulo has become a brigand, but is still in trouble about his soul. He has a warning by an angel, who appears in the shape of a shepherd-boy, and tells him a parable of the lost sheep. Paulo understands, but still his doubts haunt him. Meanwhile we learn, with some surprise, that Enrico has one virtue amid his thousand crimes--a tender affection for his old father. He refuses to kill an aged man, though he has taken pay to kill him. The old man’s resemblance to his father disarms Enrico. When reproached by his employer he kills _him_. He has now to fly Naples, and in order to escape pursuit has to take to the water. Before plunging in he prays for God’s mercy, for though a sinner Enrico has never doubted. Considerations of time and space troubled the Spanish dramatist but little. Enrico swims from Naples to the place where Paulo is camped with his band. He falls into the hands of the ex-hermit. Paulo now conceives a hope. If he can find that Enrico is repentant there will be a chance for his salvation. He causes his prisoner to be tied to a tree blindfold, in order that he may be shot to death, and then resuming his hermit’s dress, exhorts him to prepare for death. But Enrico will not go beyond a general acknowledgment that the divine mercy can save him if God so pleases. Of confession and repentance he will not hear a word, but is in all respects a hardened sinner. Paulo is again plunged into despair, and repeats his determination to exceed the crimes of Enrico, “since it is to be all one in the end.” The words are trivial, but they contain blasphemy in the real sense. The close of the play finds Paulo still revolving his weary doubt, and Enrico in a dungeon waiting for execution. Here we have another very arbitrary and pointless scene of temptation. The fiend shows Enrico a means of escape, but he hears voices warning him to stay, and he stays. The scene has no purpose, for the devil makes no attack on the prisoner’s faith, and Enrico remains still an unbending sinner. At last he yields to the prayers of his old father, confesses, and makes an edifying end. In the last scene, while Paulo soliloquises, the soul of Enrico is borne to heaven by two angels. But Paulo will not believe that so great a sinner can have been saved. He does not, it is true, see the vision, and has only the word of Pedrisco for Enrico’s pious end. Then Paulo is killed by soldiers who are hunting him down. Flames are seen round his dead body, and his voice is heard announcing that he is lost for ever, “por desconfiado,” as one who did not trust God’s mercy.