No More Learning

"What has happened? " "What is the matter? " they asked one of another,
and none knew what to reply, and all strove to conjecture, and the
confusion increased, and the excitement began to rise to a height which
threatened to disturb the order and decorum fitting within a church.

"What was it? " asked the great ladies of the prefect who, attended by
his officers, had been one of the first to mount to the loft, and now,
pale and showing signs of deep grief, was making his way to the
archbishop, waiting in anxiety, like all the rest, to know the cause of
that disturbance.

"What has occurred? "

"Master Perez has just died. "

In fact, when the foremost of the faithful, after pressing up the
stairway, had reached the organ-loft, they saw the poor organist fallen
face down upon the keys of his old instrument, which was still faintly
murmuring, while his daughter, kneeling at his feet, was vainly calling
to him amid sighs and sobs.


III.

"Good evening, my dear Dona Baltasara. Are you, too, going to-night to
the Christmas Eve Mass? For my part, I was intending to go to the parish
church to hear it, but after what has happened--'where goes John? With
all the town. ' And the truth, if I must tell it, is that since Master
Perez died, a marble slab seems to fall on my heart whenever I enter
Santa Ines. --Poor dear man! He was a saint. I assure you that I keep a
piece of his doublet as a relic, and he deserves it, for by God and my
soul it is certain that if our Lord Archbishop would stir in the matter,
our grandchildren would see the image of Master Perez upon an altar.
But what hope of it? 'The dead and the gone are let alone. ' We're all
for the latest thing now-a-days; you understand me. No? You haven't an
inkling of what has happened? It's true we are alike in this,--from
house to church, and from church to house, without concerning ourselves
about what is said or isn't said--except that I, as it were, on the
wing, a word here, another there, without the least curiosity whatever,
usually run across any news that may be going. Well, then! It seems to
be settled that the organist of San Roman, that squint-eye, who is
always throwing out slurs against the other organists, that great
sloven, who looks more like a butcher from the slaughter-house than a
professor of music, is going to play this Christmas Eve in place of
Master Perez. Now you must know, for all the world knows and it is a
public matter in Seville, that nobody was willing to attempt it. Not
even his daughter, though she is herself an expert, and after her
father's death entered the convent as a novice. And naturally enough;
accustomed to hear those marvellous performances, any other playing
whatever must seem poor to us, however much we would like to avoid
comparisons. But no sooner had the sisterhood decided that, in honor of
the dead and as a token of respect to his memory, the organ should be
silent to-night, than--look you! --here comes along our modest friend,
saying that he is ready to play it. Nothing is bolder than ignorance. It
is true the fault is not so much his as theirs who have consented to
this profanation, but so goes the world. I say, it's no trifle--this
crowd that is coming. One would think nothing had changed since last
year. The same great people, the same magnificence, the same pushing in
the doorway, the same excitement in the portico, the same throng in the
church. Ah, if the dead should rise, he would die again rather than hear
his organ played by hands like those. The fact is, if what the people of
the neighborhood have told me is true, they are preparing a fine
reception for the intruder. When the moment comes for placing the hand
upon the keys, there is going to break out such a racket of timbrels,
tambourines and rustic drums that nothing else can be heard. But hush!
there's the hero of the occasion just going into the church. Jesus! what
a showy jacket, what a fluted ruff, what a high and mighty air! Come,
come, the archbishop arrived a minute ago, and the mass is going to
begin. Come; it looks as though this night would give us something to
talk about for many a day. "

With these words the worthy woman, whom our readers recognize by her
disconnected loquacity, entered Santa Ines, opening a way through the
press, as usual, by dint of shoving and elbowing.

Already the ceremony had begun.

The church was as brilliant as the year before.

The new organist, after passing through the midst of the faithful who
thronged the nave, on his way to kiss the ring of the prelate, had
mounted to the organ-loft, where he was trying one stop of the organ
after another with a solicitous gravity as affected as it was
ridiculous.

Among the common people clustered at the rear of the church was heard a
murmur, muffled and confused, sure augury of the coming storm which
would not be long in breaking.

"He's a clown, who doesn't know how to do anything, not even to look
straight," said some.

"He's an ignoramus, who after having made the organ in his own parish
church worse than a rattle comes here to profane Master Perez's," said
others.

And while one was throwing off his coat so as to beat his drum to better
advantage, and another was trying his timbrels, and the clatter was
increasing more and more, only here and there could one be found to
defend in lukewarm fashion that alien personage, whose pompous and
pedantic bearing formed so strong a contrast to the modest manner and
kindly courtesy of the dead Master Perez.

At last the looked-for moment came, the solemn moment when the priest,
after bowing low and murmuring the sacred words, took the Host in his
hands. The little bells rang out, their chime like a rain of crystal
notes; the translucent waves of incense rose, and the organ sounded.

At that instant a horrible din filled the compass of the church,
drowning the first chord.

Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, all the instruments of the populace
raised their discordant voices at once, but the confusion and the clang
lasted but a few seconds. All at once as the tumult had begun, so all at
once it ceased.

The second chord, full, bold, magnificent, sustained itself, still
pouring from the organ's metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible,
sonorous harmony.

Celestial songs like those that caress the ear in moments of ecstasy,
songs which the spirit perceives but the lip cannot repeat; fugitive
notes of a far-off melody, which reach us at intervals, sounding in the
bugles of the wind; the rustle of leaves kissing one another on the
trees with a murmur like rain; trills of larks which rise warbling from
among the flowers like a flight of arrows to the clouds; nameless
crashes, overwhelming as the thunders of a tempest; a chorus of seraphim
without rhythm or cadence, unknown harmony of heaven which only the
imagination understands; soaring hymns, that seem to mount to the throne
of God like a fountain of light and sound--all this was expressed by the
organ's hundred voices, with more vigor, more mystic poetry, more weird
coloring than had ever been known before.

* * * * *

When the organist came down from the loft, the crowd which pressed up
to the stairway was so great, and their eagerness to see and praise him
so intense, that the prefect, fearing, and not without reason, that he
would be suffocated among them all, commanded some of the police to
open, by their staves, a path for him that he might reach the High Altar
where the prelate waited his arrival.

"You perceive," said the archbishop, when the musician was brought into
his presence, "that I have come all the way from my palace hither only
to hear you. Will you be as cruel as Master Perez, who would never save
me the journey by playing the Midnight Mass in the cathedral? "

"Next year," responded the organist, "I promise to give you that
pleasure, for not all the gold of the earth would induce me to play this
organ again. "

"And why not? " interrupted the prelate.

"Because," replied the organist, striving to repress the agitation
revealed in the pallor of his face,--"because it is old and poor, and
one cannot express on it all that one would. "

The archbishop retired, followed by his attendants. One by one, the
litters of the great folk went filing away, lost to sight in the
windings of the neighboring streets; the groups of the portico melted,
as the faithful dispersed in different directions; and already the
lay-sister who acted as gate-keeper was about to lock the vestibule
doors, when there appeared two women, who, after crossing themselves and
muttering a prayer before the arched shrine of Saint Philip, went their
way, turning into Duenas alley.

"What would you have, my dear Dona Baltasara? " one of them was saying.
"That's the way I'm made. Every fool has his fancy. The barefooted
Capuchins might assure me that it was so and I wouldn't believe it in
the least. That man cannot have played what we have just been hearing. A
thousand times have I heard him in San Bartolome, his parish church,
from which the priest had to send him away for his bad playing,--enough
to make you stop your ears with cotton. Besides, all you need is to look
at his face, which, they say, is the mirror of the soul. I remember,
poor dear man, as if I were seeing him now,--I remember Master Perez's
look when, on a night like this, he would come down from the organ loft,
after having entranced the audience with his marvels. What a gracious
smile, what a happy glow on his face! Old as he was, he seemed like an
angel. But this fellow came plunging down the stairs as if a dog were
barking at him on the landing, his face the color of the dead, and--come
now, my dear Dona Baltasara, believe me, believe me with all your soul.
I suspect a mystery in this. "

With these last words, the two women turned the corner of the street and
disappeared.

We count it needless to inform our readers who one of them was.


IV.

Another year had gone by. The abbess of the convent of Santa Ines and
the daughter of Master Perez, half hidden in the shadows of the church
choir, were talking in low tones. The peremptory voice of the bell was
calling from its tower to the faithful, and occasionally an individual
would cross the portico, silent and deserted now, and after taking the
holy water at the door, would choose a place in a corner of the nave,
where a few residents of the neighborhood were quietly waiting for the
Midnight Mass to begin.

"There, you see," the mother superior was saying, "your fear is
excessively childish. There is nobody in the church. All Seville is
trooping to the cathedral to-night. Play the organ and play it without
the least uneasiness. We are only the sisterhood here. Well? Still you
are silent, still your breaths are like sighs. What is it? What is the
matter? "

"I am--afraid," exclaimed the girl, in a tone of the deepest agitation.

"Afraid? Of what? "

"I don't know--of something supernatural. Last night, see, I had heard
you say that you earnestly wished me to play the organ for the mass and,
pleased with this honor, I thought I would look to the stops and tune
it, so as to give you a surprise to-day. I went into the choir--alone--I
opened the door which leads to the organ-loft. At that moment the clock
of the cathedral struck the hour--what hour, I do not know. The peals
were exceedingly mournful, and many--many. They kept on sounding all the
time that I stood as if nailed to the threshold, and that time seemed to
me a century.

"The church was empty and dark. Far away, in the hollow depth, there
gleamed, like a single star lost in the sky of night, a feeble light,
the light of the lamp which burns on the High Altar. By its faint rays,
which only served to make more visible all the deep horror of the
darkness, I saw--I saw--mother, do not disbelieve it--I saw a man who,
in silence and with his back turned toward the place where I stood, was
running over the organ-keys with one hand, while he tried the stops with
the other. And the organ sounded, but it sounded in a manner
indescribable. It seemed as if each of its notes were a sob smothered
within the metal tube which vibrated with its burden of compressed air,
and gave forth a muffled tone, almost inaudible, yet exact and true.

"And the cathedral clock kept on striking, and that man kept on running
over the keys. I heard his very breathing.

"The horror of it had frozen the blood in my veins. In my body I felt an
icy chill and in my temples fire. Then I longed to cry out, but could
not. That man had turned his face and looked at me,--no, not looked at
me, for he was blind. It was my father. "

"Bah, sister! Put away these fancies with which the wicked enemy tries
to trouble weak imaginations. Pray a _Pater Noster_ and an _Ave Maria_
to the archangel Saint Michael, captain of the celestial hosts, that he
may aid you to resist the evil spirits. Wear on your neck a scapulary
which has been touched to the relics of Saint Pacomio, our advocate
against temptations, and go, go in power to the organ-loft. The mass is
about to begin, and the faithful are growing impatient. Your father is
in heaven, and thence, instead of giving you a fright, he will descend
to inspire his daughter in this solemn service which he so especially
loved. "

The prioress went to occupy her seat in the choir in the centre of the
sisterhood. The daughter of Master Perez opened the door of the loft
with trembling hand, sat down at the organ, and the mass began.

The mass began, and continued without any unusual occurrence until the
consecration. Then the organ sounded, and at the same time came a scream
from the daughter of Master Perez.

The mother superior, the nuns, and some of the faithful rushed up to the
organ-loft.

"Look at him! look at him! " cried the girl, fixing her eyes, starting
from their sockets, upon the organ-bench, from which she had risen in
terror, clinging with convulsed hands to the railing of the organ-loft.

All eyes were fixed upon the spot to which her gaze was turned. No one
was at the organ, yet it went on sounding--sounding as the archangels
sing in their raptures of mystic ecstasy.

* * * * *

"Didn't I tell you so a thousand times, my dear Dona Baltasara--didn't I
tell you so? There is a mystery here. What? You were not at the
Christmas Eve Mass last night? But, for all that, you must know what
happened. Nothing else is talked about in all Seville. The archbishop is
furious, and with good reason. To have missed going to Santa Ines--to
have missed being present at the miracle! And for what? To hear a
charivari, a rattle-go-bang, for people who heard it tell me that what
the inspired organist of San Bartolome did in the cathedral was just
that. I told you so. The squint-eye could never have played that divine
music of last year, never. There is mystery about all this, a mystery
that is, in truth, the soul of Master Perez. "




THE EMERALD EYES


For a long time I have desired to write something with this title. Now
that the opportunity has come, I have inscribed it in capital letters at
the top of the page and have let my pen run at will.

I believe that I have seen eyes like those I have painted in this
legend. It may have been in my dreams, but I have seen them. Too true it
is that I shall not be able to describe them as they were, luminous,
transparent as drops of rain slipping over the leaves of the trees after
a summer shower. At all events, I count upon the imagination of my
readers to understand me in what we might call a sketch for a picture
which I will paint some day.


I.

"The stag is wounded--he is wounded; no doubt of it. There are traces of
his blood on the mountain shrubs, and in trying to leap one of those
mastic trees his legs failed him. Our young lord begins where others
end. In my forty years as huntsman I have not seen a better shot. But by
Saint Saturio, patron of Soria, cut him off at these hollies, urge on
the dogs, blow the horns till your lungs are empty, and bury your spurs
in the flanks of the horses. Do you not see that he is going toward the
fountain of the Poplars, and if he lives to reach it we must give him up
for lost? "

The glens of the Moncayo flung from echo to echo the braying of the
horns and barking of the unleashed pack of hounds; the shouts of the
pages resounded with new vigor, while the confused throng of men, dogs
and horses rushed toward the point which Inigo, the head huntsman of
the Marquises of Almenar, indicated as the one most favorable for
intercepting the quarry.

But all was of no avail. When the fleetest of the greyhounds reached the
hollies, panting, its jaws covered with foam, already the deer, swift as
an arrow, had cleared them at a single bound, disappearing among the
thickets of a narrow path which led to the fountain.

"Draw rein! draw rein, every man! " then cried Inigo. "It was the will of
God that he should escape. "

And the troop halted, the horns fell silent and the hounds, at the call
of the hunters, abandoned, snarling, the trail.

At that moment, the lord of the festival, Fernando de Argensola, the
heir of Almenar, came up with the company.

"What are you doing? " he exclaimed, addressing his huntsman,
astonishment depicted on his features, anger burning in his eyes. "What
are you doing, idiot? Do you see that the creature is wounded, that it
is the first to fall by my hand, and yet you abandon the pursuit and let
it give you the slip to die in the depths of the forest? Do you think
perchance that I have come to kill deer for the banquets of wolves? "

"_Senor_," murmured Inigo between his teeth, "it is impossible to pass
this point. "

"Impossible! And why? "

"Because this path," continued the huntsman, "leads to the fountain of
the Poplars, the fountain of the Poplars in whose waters dwells an evil
spirit. He who dares trouble its flow pays dear for his rashness.
Already the deer will have reached its borders; how will you take it
without drawing on your head some fearful calamity? We hunters are kings
of the Moncayo, but kings that pay a tribute. A quarry which takes
refuge at this mysterious fountain is a quarry lost. "

"Lost! Sooner will I lose the seigniory of my fathers, sooner will I
lose my soul into the hands of Satan than permit this stag to escape me,
the only one my spear has wounded, the first fruits of my hunting. Do
you see him? Do you see him? He can still at intervals be made out from
here. His legs falter, his speed slackens; let me go, let me go! Drop
this bridle or I roll you in the dust! Who knows if I will not run him
down before he reaches the fountain? And if he should reach it, to the
devil with it, its untroubled waters and its inhabitants! On, Lightning!
on, my steed! If you overtake him, I will have the diamonds of my
coronet set in a headstall all of gold for you. "

Horse and rider departed like a hurricane.

Inigo followed them with his eyes till they disappeared in the brush.
Then he looked about him: all like himself remained motionless, in
consternation.

The huntsman exclaimed at last:

"_Senores_, you are my witnesses. I exposed myself to death under his
horse's hoofs to hold him back. I have fulfilled my duty. Against the
devil heroism does not avail.
To this point comes the huntsman with his
crossbow; beyond this, it is for the chaplain with his holy water to
attempt to pass. "


II.

"You are pale; you go about sad and gloomy. What afflicts you? From the
day, which I shall ever hold in hate, on which you went to the fountain
of the Poplars in chase of the wounded deer, I should say an evil
sorceress had bewitched you with her enchantments.

"You do not go to the mountains now preceded by the clamorous pack of
hounds, nor does the blare of your horns awake the echoes. Alone with
these brooding fancies which beset you, every morning you take your
crossbow only to plunge into the thickets and remain there until the
sun goes down. And when night darkens and you return to the castle,
white and weary, in vain I seek in the game-bag the spoils of the chase.
What detains you so long far from those who love you most? "

While Inigo was speaking, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts,
mechanically cut splinters from the ebony bench with his hunting knife.

After a long silence, which was interrupted only by the click of the
blade as it slipped over the polished wood, the young man, addressing
his servant as if he had not heard a single word, exclaimed:

"Inigo, you who are an old man, you who know all the haunts of the
Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes pursuing wild beasts and in your
wandering hunting trips have more than once stood on its summit, tell
me, have you ever by chance met a woman who dwells among its rocks? "

"A woman! " exclaimed the huntsman with astonishment, looking closely at
him.

"Yes," said the youth. "It is a strange thing that has happened to me,
very strange. I thought I could keep this secret always; but it is no
longer possible. It overflows my heart and begins to reveal itself in my
face. Therefore I am going to tell it to you. You will help me solve the
mystery which enfolds this being who seems to exist only for me, since
no one knows her or has seen her, or can give me any account of her. "

The huntsman, without opening his lips, drew forward his stool to place
it near the ebony bench of his lord from whom he did not once remove his
affrighted eyes. The youth, after arranging his thoughts, continued
thus:

"From the day on which, notwithstanding your gloomy predictions, I went
to the fountain of the Poplars, and crossing its waters recovered the
stag which your superstition would have let escape, my soul has been
filled with a desire for solitude.

"You do not know that place. See, the fountain springs from a hidden
source in the cavity of a rock, and falls in trickling drops through the
green, floating leaves of the plants that grow on the border of its
cradle. These drops, which on falling glisten like points of gold and
sound like the notes of a musical instrument, unite on the turf and
murmuring, murmuring with a sound like that of bees humming about the
flowers, glide on through the gravel, and form a rill and contend with
the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and leap and flee and run,
sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a
lake. Into the lake they fall with an indescribable sound. Laments,
words, names, songs, I know not what I have heard in that sound when I
have sat, alone and fevered, upon the huge rock at whose feet the waters
of that mysterious fountain leap to bury themselves in a deep pool whose
still surface is scarcely rippled by the evening wind.

"Everything there is grand. Solitude with its thousand vague murmurs
dwells in those places and transports the mind with a profound
melancholy. In the silvered leaves of the poplars, in the hollows of the
rocks, in the waves of the water it seems that the invisible spirits of
nature talk with us, that they recognize a brother in the immortal soul
of man.

"When at break of dawn you would see me take my crossbow and go toward
the mountain, it was never to lose myself among the thickets in pursuit
of game. No, I went to sit on the rim of the fountain, to seek in its
waves--I know not what--an absurdity! The day I leaped over it on my
Lightning, I believed I saw glittering in its depths a marvel--truly a
marvel--the eyes of a woman!

"Perhaps it may have been a fugitive ray of sunshine that wound,
serpent like, through the foam; perhaps one of those flowers which float
among the weeds of its bosom, flowers whose calyxes seem to be
emeralds--I do not know. I thought I saw a gaze which fixed itself on
mine, a look which kindled in my breast a desire absurd, impossible of
realization, that of meeting a person with eyes like those.

"In my search, I went to that place day after day.

"At last, one afternoon--I thought myself the plaything of a dream--but
no, it is the truth; I have spoken with her many times as I am now
speaking with you--one afternoon I found, sitting where I had sat,
clothed in a robe which reached to the waters and floated on their
surface, a woman beautiful beyond all exaggeration. Her hair was like
gold; her eyelashes shone like threads of light, and between the lashes
flashed the restless eyes that I had seen--yes; for the eyes of that
woman were the eyes which I bore stamped upon my mind, eyes of an
impossible color, the color----"

"Green! " exclaimed Inigo, in accents of profound terror, starting with a
bound from his seat.

Fernando, in turn, looked at him as if astonished that Inigo should
supply what he was about to say, and asked him with mingled anxiety and
joy:

"Do you know her? "

"Oh, no! " said the huntsman. "God save me from knowing her! But my
parents, on forbidding me to go toward those places, told me a thousand
times that the spirit, goblin, demon or woman, who dwells in those
waters, has eyes of that color. I conjure you by that which you love
most on earth not to return to the fountain of the Poplars. One day or
another her vengeance will overtake you, and you will expiate in death
the crime of having stained her waters. "

"By what I love most! " murmured the young man with a sad smile.

"Yes," continued the elder. "By your parents, by your kindred, by the
tears of her whom heaven destines for your wife, by those of a servant
who watched beside your cradle. "

"Do you know what I love most in this world? Do you know for what I
would give the love of my father, the kisses of her who gave me life,
and all the affection which all the women on earth can hold in store?
For one look, for only one look of those eyes! How can I leave off
seeking them? "

Fernando said these words in such a tone that the tear which trembled on
the eyelids of Inigo fell silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed
with a mournful accent: "The will of Heaven be done! "


III.

"Who art thou? What is thy fatherland? Where dost thou dwell? Day after
day I come seeking thee, and see neither the palfrey that brings thee
hither, nor the servants who bear thy litter. Rend once for all the veil
of mystery in which thou dost enfold thyself as in the heart of night. I
love thee and, highborn or lowly, I will be thine, thine forever. "

The sun had crossed the crest of the mountain. The shadows were
descending its slope with giant strides. The breeze sighed amid the
poplars of the fountain. The mist, rising little by little from the
surface of the lake, began to envelop the rocks of its margin.

Upon one of these rocks, on one which seemed ready to topple over into
the depths of the waters on whose surface was pictured its wavering
image, the heir of Almenar, on his knees at the feet of his mysterious
beloved, sought in vain to draw from her the secret of her existence.

She was beautiful, beautiful and pallid as an alabaster statue. One of
her tresses fell over her shoulders, entangling itself in the folds of
her veil like a ray of sunlight passing through clouds; and her eyes,
within the circle of her amber-colored lashes, gleamed like emeralds set
in fretted gold.

When the youth ceased speaking, her lips moved as for utterance, but
only exhaled a sigh, a sigh soft and sorrowful like that of the gentle
wave which a dying breeze drives among the rushes.

"Thou answerest not," exclaimed Fernando, seeing his hope mocked.
"Wouldst thou have me credit what they have told me of thee? Oh, no!
Speak to me. I long to know if thou lovest me; I long to know if I may
love thee, if thou art a woman----"

--"Or a demon. And if I were? "

The youth hesitated a moment; a cold sweat ran through his limbs; the
pupils of his eyes dilated, fixing themselves with more intensity upon
those of that woman and, fascinated by their phosphoric brilliance, as
though demented he exclaimed in a burst of passion:

"If thou wert, I should love thee. I should love thee as I love thee
now, as it is my destiny to love thee even beyond this life, if there be
any life beyond. "

"Fernando," said the beautiful being then, in a voice like music: "I
love thee even more than thou lovest me; in that I, who am pure spirit,
stoop to a mortal. I am not a woman like those that live on earth. I am
a woman worthy of thee who art superior to the rest of humankind. I
dwell in the depths of these waters, incorporeal like them, fugitive and
transparent; I speak with their murmurs and move with their undulations.
I do not punish him who dares disturb the fountain where I live; rather
I reward him with my love, as a mortal superior to the superstitions of
the common herd, as a lover capable of responding to my strange and
mysterious embrace. "

While she was speaking, the youth, absorbed in the contemplation of her
fantastic beauty, drawn on as by an unknown force, approached nearer and
nearer the edge of the rock. The woman of the emerald eyes continued
thus:

"Dost thou behold, behold the limpid depths of this lake, behold these
plants with large, green leaves which wave in its bosom? They will give
us a couch of emeralds and corals and I--I will give thee a bliss
unnamable, that bliss which thou hast dreamed of in thine hours of
delirium, and which no other can bestow. --Come! the mists of the lake
float over our brows like a pavilion of lawn, the waves call us with
their incomprehensible voices, the wind sings among the poplars hymns of
love; come--come! "

Night began to cast her shadows, the moon shimmered on the surface of
the pool, the mist was driven before the rising breeze, the green eyes
glittered in the dusk like the will-o'-the-wisps that run over the
surface of impure waters. "Come, come! " these words were murmuring in
the ears of Fernando like an incantation,--"Come! " and the mysterious
woman called him to the brink of the abyss where she was poised, and
seemed to offer him a kiss--a kiss----

Fernando took one step toward her--another--and felt arms slender and
flexible twining about his neck and a cold sensation on his burning
lips, a kiss of snow--wavered, lost his footing and fell, striking the
water with a dull and mournful sound.

The waves leaped in sparks of light, and closed over his body, and their
silvery circles went widening, widening until they died away on the
banks.




THE GOLDEN BRACELET


I.

She was beautiful, beautiful with that beauty which turns a man dizzy;
beautiful with that beauty which in no wise resembles our dream of the
angels, and yet is supernatural; a diabolical beauty that the devil
perchance gives to certain beings to make them his instruments on earth.

He loved her--he loved her with that love which knows not check nor
bounds; he loved her with that love which seeks delight and finds but
martyrdom; a love which is akin to bliss, yet which Heaven seems to cast
on mortals for the expiation of their sins.

She was wayward, wayward and unreasonable, like all the women of the
world.

He, superstitious, superstitious and valiant, like all the men of his
time.

Her name was Maria Antunez.

His, Pedro Alfonso de Orellana.

Both were natives of Toledo, and both had their homes in the city which
saw their birth.

The tradition which relates this marvellous event, an event of many
years since, tells nothing more of these two central actors.

I, in my character of scrupulous historian, will not add a single word
of my own invention to describe them further.


II.

One day he found her in tears and asked her:

"Why dost thou weep? "

[Illustration: A CITY SQUARE, TOLEDO]

She dried her eyes, looked at him searchingly, heaved a sigh and began
to weep anew.

Then, drawing close to Maria, he took her hand, leaned his elbow on the
fretted edge of the Arabic parapet whence the beautiful maiden was
watching the river flow beneath, and again he asked her: "Why dost thou
weep? "

The Tajo, moaning at the tower's foot, twisted in and out amid the rocks
on which is seated the imperial city. The sun was sinking behind the
neighboring mountains, the afternoon haze was floating, a veil of azure
gauze, and only the monotonous sound of the water broke the profound
stillness.

Maria exclaimed: "Ask me not why I weep, ask me not; for I would not
know how to answer thee, nor thou how to understand. In the souls of us
women are stifling desires which reveal themselves only in a sigh, mad
ideas that cross the imagination without our daring to form them into
speech, strange phenomena of our mysterious nature which man cannot even
conceive. I implore thee, ask me not the cause of my grief; if I should
reveal it to thee, perchance thou wouldst reply with peals of laughter. "

When these words were faltered out, again she bowed the head and again
he urged his questions.

The radiant damsel, breaking at last her stubborn silence, said to her
lover in a hoarse, unsteady voice:

"Thou wilt have it. It is a folly that will make thee laugh, but be it
so. I will tell thee, since thou dost crave to hear.

"Yesterday I was in the temple. They were celebrating the feast of the
Virgin; her image, placed on a golden pedestal above the High Altar,
glowed like a burning coal; the notes of the organ trembled, spreading
from echo to echo throughout the length and breadth of the church, and
in the choir the priests were chanting the _Salve, Regina_.

"I was praying; I was praying, all absorbed in my religious meditations,
when involuntarily I lifted my head, and my gaze sought the altar. I
know not why my eyes from that instant fixed themselves upon the image,
but I speak amiss--it was not on the image; they fixed themselves upon
an object which until then I had not seen--an object which, I know not
why, thenceforth held all my attention. Do not laugh; that object was
the golden bracelet that the Mother of God wears on one of the arms in
which rests her divine Son. I turned aside my gaze and strove again to
pray. Impossible. Without my will, my eyes moved back to the same point.
The altar lights, reflected in the thousand facets of those diamonds,
were multiplied prodigiously. Millions of living sparks, rosy, azure,
green and golden, were whirling around the jewels like a storm of fiery
atoms, like a dizzy round of those spirits of flame which fascinate with
their brightness and their marvellous unrest.

"I left the church. I came home, but I came with that idea fixed in
imagination. I went to bed; I could not sleep. The night passed, a night
eternal with one thought. At dawn my eyelids closed and--believest
thou? --even in slumber I saw crossing before me, dimming in the distance
and ever returning, a woman, a woman dark and beautiful, who wore the
ornament of gold and jewel work; a woman, yes, for it was no longer the
Virgin, whom I adore and at whose feet I bow; it was a woman, another
woman like myself, who looked upon me and laughed mockingly. 'Dost see
it? ' she appeared to say, showing me the treasure. 'How it glitters! It
seems a circlet of stars snatched from the sky some summer night. Dost
see it? But it is not thine, and it will be thine never, never. Thou
wilt perchance have others that surpass it, others richer, if it be
possible, but this, this which sparkles so piquantly, so bewitchingly,
never, never. ' I awoke, but with the same idea fixed here, then as now,
like a red-hot nail, diabolical, irresistible, inspired beyond a doubt
by Satan himself. --And what then? --Thou art silent, silent, and dost
hang thy head. --Does not my folly make thee laugh? "

Pedro, with a convulsive movement, grasped the hilt of his sword, raised
his head, which he had, indeed, bent low and said with smothered voice:

"Which Virgin has this jewel? "

"The Virgin of the Sagrario," murmured Maria.

"The Virgin of the Sagrario! " repeated the youth, with accent of terror.
"The Virgin of the Sagrario of the cathedral! "

And in his features was portrayed for an instant the state of his mind,
appalled before a thought.

"Ah, why does not some other Virgin own it? " he continued, with a tense,
impassioned tone. "Why does not the archbishop bear it in his mitre, the
king in his crown, or the devil between his claws? I would tear it away
for thee, though its price were death or hell. But from the Virgin of
the Sagrario, our own Holy Patroness,--I--I who was born in Toledo!
Impossible, impossible! "

"Never! " murmured Maria, in a voice that scarcely reached the ear.
"Never! "

And she wept again.

Pedro fixed a stupefied stare on the running waves of the river--on the
running waves, which flowed and flowed unceasingly before his
absent-thoughted eyes, breaking at the foot of the tower amid the rocks
on which is seated the imperial city.


III.

The cathedral of Toledo! Imagine a forest of colossal palm trees of
granite, that by the interlacing of their branches form a gigantic,
magnificent arch, beneath which take refuge and live, with the life
genius has lent them, a whole creation of beings, both fictitious and
real.

Imagine an incomprehensible fall of shadow and light wherein the
colored rays from the ogive windows meet and are merged with the dusk of
the nave; where the gleam of the lamps struggles and is lost in the
gloom of the sanctuary.

Imagine a world of stone, immense as the spirit of our religion, sombre
as its traditions, enigmatic as its parables, and yet you will not have
even a remote idea of this eternal monument of the enthusiasm and faith
of our ancestors--a monument upon which the centuries have emulously
lavished their treasures of knowledge, inspiration and the arts.

In the cathedral-heart dwells silence, majesty, the poetry of mysticism,
and a holy dread which guards those thresholds against worldly thoughts
and the paltry passions of earth.

Consumption of the body is stayed by breathing pure mountain air;
atheism should be cured by breathing this atmosphere of faith.

But great and impressive as the cathedral presents itself to our eyes at
whatsoever hour we enter its mysterious and sacred precinct, never does
it produce an impression so profound as in those days when it arrays
itself in all the splendors of religious pomp, when its shrines are
covered with gold and jewels, its steps with costly carpeting and its
pillars with tapestry.

Then, when its thousand silver lamps, aglow, shed forth a flood of
light, when a cloud of incense floats in air, and the voices of the
choir, the harmonious pealing of the organs, and the bells of the tower
make the building tremble from its deepest foundations to its highest
crown of spires, then it is we comprehend, because we feel, the
ineffable majesty of God who dwells within, gives it life with His
breath and fills it with the reflection of His glory.

The same day on which occurred the scene we have just described, the
last rites of the magnificent eight-day feast of the Virgin were held in
the cathedral.

The holy festival had attracted an immense multitude of the faithful;
but already they had dispersed in all directions; already the lights of
the chapels and of the High Altar had been extinguished, and the mighty
doors of the temple had groaned upon their hinges as they closed behind
the last departing worshipper, when forth from the depth of shadow, and
pale, pale as the statue of the tomb on which he leant for an instant,
while he conquered his emotion, there advanced a man, who came slipping
with the utmost stealthiness toward the screen of the central chapel.
There the gleam of a lamp made it possible to distinguish his features.

It was Pedro.

What had passed between the two lovers to bring him to the point of
putting into execution an idea whose mere conception had lifted his hair
with horror? That could never be learned.

But there he was, and he was there to carry out his criminal intent. In
his restless glances, in the trembling of his knees, in the sweat which
ran in great drops down his face, his thought stood written.

The cathedral was alone, utterly alone, and drowned in deepest hush.

Nevertheless, there were perceptible from time to time suggestions of
dim disturbance, creakings of wood maybe or murmurs of the wind, or--who
knows? --perchance illusion of the fancy, which in its excited moments
hears and sees and feels what is not; but in very truth there sounded,
now here, now there, now behind him, now even at his side, something
like sobs suppressed, something like the rustle of trailing robes, and a
muffled stir as of steps that go and come unceasingly.

Pedro forced himself to hold his course; he reached the grating and
mounted the first step of the chancel. All along the inner wall of this
chapel are ranged the tombs of kings, whose images of stone, with hand
upon the sword-hilt, seem to keep watch night and day over the sanctuary
in whose shade they take their everlasting rest.

"Onward! " he murmured under his breath, and he strove to move and could
not. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the pavement. He lowered
his eyes, and his hair stood on end with horror. The floor of the chapel
was made of wide, dark burial slabs.

For a moment he believed that a cold and fleshless hand was holding him
there with strength invincible. The dying lamps, which sparkled in the
hollow aisles and transepts like lost stars in the dark, wavered before
his vision, the statues of the sepulchres wavered and the images of the
altar, all the cathedral wavered, with its granite arcades and
buttresses of solid stone.

"Onward! " Pedro exclaimed again, as if beside himself; he approached the
altar and climbing upon it, he reached the pedestal of the image. All
the space about clothed itself in weird and frightful shapes, all was
shadow and flickering light, more awful even than total darkness. Only
the Queen of Heaven, softly illuminated by a golden lamp, seemed to
smile, tranquil, gracious and serene, in the midst of all that horror.

Nevertheless, that silent, changeless smile, which calmed him for an
instant, in the end filled him with fear, a fear stranger and more
profound than what he had suffered hitherto.

Yet he regained his self-control, shut his eyes so as not to see her,
extended his hand with a spasmodic movement and snatched off the golden
bracelet, pious offering of a sainted archbishop, the golden bracelet
whose value equalled a fortune.

Now the jewel was in his possession; his convulsed fingers clutched it
with superhuman force; there was nothing left save to flee--to flee
with it; but for this it was necessary to open his eyes, and Pedro was
afraid to see, to see the image, to see the kings of the sepulchres, the
demons of the cornices, the griffins of the capitals, the blotches of
shadow and flashes of light which, like ghostly, gigantic phantoms, were
moving slowly in the depths of the nave, now filled with confused
noises, unearthly and appalling.

At last he opened his eyes, cast one glance about him, and from his lips
escaped a piercing cry.

The cathedral was full of statues, statues which, clothed in strange,
flowing raiment, had descended from their niches and were thronging all
the vast compass of the church, staring at him with their hollow eyes.

Saints, nuns, angels, devils, warriors, great ladies, pages, hermits,
peasants surrounded him on every side and were massed confusedly in the
open spaces and about the altar. Before it there officiated, in presence
of the kings who were kneeling upon their tombs, the marble archbishops
whom he had seen heretofore stretched motionless upon their beds of
death, while a whole world of granite beasts and creeping things,
writhing over the paving-stones, twisting along the buttresses, curled
up in the canopies, swinging from the vaulted roof, quivered into life
like worms in a giant corpse, fantastic, distorted, hideous.

He could resist no longer. His brows throbbed with terrible violence; a
cloud of blood darkened his vision; he uttered a second scream, a scream
heart-rending, inhuman, and fell swooning across the altar.