The drops of water which filtered through the cracks of the broken
arches and fell upon the stones below with a measured sound like the
ticking of a great clock; the hoots of the owl, screeching from his
refuge beneath the stone nimbus of an image still standing in a niche of
the wall; the stir of the reptiles that, wakened from their lethargy by
the tempest, thrust out their misshapen heads from the holes where they
sleep, or crawled among the wild mustard and the briers that grow at the
foot of the altar, rooted in the crevices between the sepulchral slabs
that form the pavement of the church,--all those strange and mysterious
murmurs of the open country, of solitude and of night, came perceptibly
to the ear of the pilgrim who, seated on the mutilated statue of a tomb,
was anxiously awaiting the hour when the marvellous event should take
place.
arches and fell upon the stones below with a measured sound like the
ticking of a great clock; the hoots of the owl, screeching from his
refuge beneath the stone nimbus of an image still standing in a niche of
the wall; the stir of the reptiles that, wakened from their lethargy by
the tempest, thrust out their misshapen heads from the holes where they
sleep, or crawled among the wild mustard and the briers that grow at the
foot of the altar, rooted in the crevices between the sepulchral slabs
that form the pavement of the church,--all those strange and mysterious
murmurs of the open country, of solitude and of night, came perceptibly
to the ear of the pilgrim who, seated on the mutilated statue of a tomb,
was anxiously awaiting the hour when the marvellous event should take
place.
Gustavo Adolfo Becuqer
One of them finally broke the hush,
and unable to control herself, exclaimed, fascinated with the account of
the fabulous riches which had met the shepherd's view:
"And what then? Did he take away nothing out of all that? "
"Nothing," replied Uncle Gregorio.
"What a silly! " the girls exclaimed in concert.
"Heaven helped him in that moment of peril," continued the old man, "for
at the very instant when avarice, the ruling passion, began to dispel
his fear and, bewitched by the sight of those jewels, one alone of which
would have made him wealthy, the shepherd was about to possess himself
of some small share of that treasure, he says he heard--listen and
marvel--clear and distinct in those profound abodes,--despite the shouts
of laughter and harsh voices of the gnomes, the roar of the subterranean
fire, the murmur of running water and the laments of the imprisoned
air, he heard, I say, as if he had been at the foot of the hill where it
stands, the pealing of the bell in the hermitage of Our Lady of the
Moncayo.
"On hearing the bell, which was ringing the _Ave Maria_, the shepherd
fell to his knees, calling on the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and
instantly, without knowing the means nor the way, he found himself on
the outside of the mountain, near the road which leads to the village,
thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great bewilderment as if
he had just been startled out of a dream.
"Since then everybody has understood why our village fountain sometimes
has in its waters a glint as of very fine gold-dust; and when night
falls, vague words are heard in its murmur, flattering words with which
the gnomes, that defile it from its source, try to entice the foolhardy
who lend them ear, promising them riches and treasures that are bound to
be the destruction of their souls. "
When Uncle Gregorio had reached this point in his relation, night had
fallen and the church bell commenced to call to prayer. The girls
crossed themselves devoutly, repeating in low voices an _Ave Maria_, and
after bidding good-night to Uncle Gregorio, who again counselled them
not to tarry at the fountain, each picked up her water-jar and all went
forth, silent and musing, from the churchyard. They were already far
from the spot where they had found the old man, and had, indeed, reached
the central square of the village whence they were to go their several
ways, before the more resolute and decided of them all broke out with
the question:
"Do you girls believe any of that nonsense Uncle Gregorio has been
telling us? "
"Not I," said one.
"Nor I," exclaimed another.
"Nor I! nor I! " chimed in the rest, laughing at their momentary
credulity.
The group of lasses melted away, each taking her course toward one or
another side of the square. Last of all, when the others had disappeared
down the better streets that led out from this market-place, two girls,
the only ones who had not opened their lips to make fun of Uncle
Gregorio's veracity, but who, still musing on the marvellous tale,
seemed absorbed in their own meditations, went away together, with the
slow step natural to people deep in thought, by a dismal, narrow,
crooked alley.
Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be some twenty years old,
was called Marta; and the younger, who had not yet finished her
sixteenth year, Magdalena.
As long as the walk lasted, both kept complete silence; but when they
reached the threshold of their home and had set down their water-jars on
the stone bench by the door, Marta said to Magdalena: "And do you
believe in the marvels of the Moncayo and the spirits of the fountain? "
"Yes," answered Magdalena simply, "I believe it all. But you, perhaps,
have doubts? " "Oh, no! " Marta hastily interrupted. "I, too, believe
everything, everything--that I wish to believe. "
II.
Marta and Magdalena were sisters. Orphans from early childhood, they
were living wretchedly under the protection of a kinswoman of their
mother,--a kinswoman who had taken them in for charity and who at every
step made them feel, by her taunting and humiliating words, the weight
of their obligation. Everything would seem to tend toward tightening the
knot of love between those two sister souls,--not merely the bond of
blood, but those of poverty and suffering, and yet there existed between
Marta and Magdalena a mute rivalry, a secret antipathy explicable only
by a study of their characters, as utterly contrasted as were their
physical types.
Marta was overbearing, strong in her passions and of a rough directness
in the expression of her feelings; she did not understand either
laughter or tears, and so had never wept nor laughed. Magdalena, on the
other hand, was gentle, affectionate, kind, and more than once had been
seen to laugh and weep together, as children do.
Marta's eyes were blacker than night and from under her dark lashes
there sometimes seemed to leap fiery sparks as from a burning coal.
The blue eyes of Magdalena appeared to swim in liquid light behind the
golden curve of her blond lashes. And everything in them was in keeping
with the different expression of their eyes. Marta, thin, pale, tall,
stiff of movement, her dark, crisp hair shading her brow and falling
upon her shoulders like a velvet mantle, formed a singular contrast to
Magdalena, white and pink, _petite_, with the rounded face and figure of
babyhood, and with golden tresses encircling her temples like the gilded
halo about the head of an angel.
Despite the inexplicable repulsion which each felt for the other, the
two sisters had lived up to this time on terms of indifference that
might have been mistaken for peace and affection; there had been no
caresses to quarrel over, nor partialities to envy; equal in misfortune
and affliction, Marta, withdrawn into herself, had borne her troubles in
a proud, self-centered silence; and Magdalena, finding no response in
her sister's heart, would weep alone when the tears involuntarily rushed
into her eyes.
They had not a sentiment in common; they never confided to one another
their joys and griefs, and yet the only secret which each had striven to
hide in the depths of her soul had been divined by the other with the
marvelous instinct of love and jealousy. Marta and Magdalena had in fact
set their hearts on one and the same man.
The passion of the one was a stubborn desire, born of a wilful and
indomitable character; in the other, love was manifest in that vague,
spontaneous tenderness of youth, which, needing an object on which to
spend itself, takes the first that comes. Both guarded the secret of
their love, for the man who had inspired it would perchance have made
mock of a devotion which could be interpreted as an absurd ambition in
penniless girls of lowly birth. Both, despite the distance which
separated them from their idol, cherished a faint hope of winning him.
Hard by the village, and above a height which dominated the country
round about, there was an ancient castle abandoned by its owners. The
old women, in their evening gossips, would relate a marvellous story
about its founders. They told how the King of Aragon, finding himself at
war with his enemies, his resources exhausted, forsaken by his allies
and on the point of losing the throne, was sought out one day by a
shepherdess of those parts, who, after revealing to him the existence of
certain subterranean passages by means of which he could go through the
Moncayo without being perceived by his enemies, gave him a treasure in
fine pearls, precious stones of the richest, and bars of gold and
silver; with these the king paid his troops, raised a mighty army and,
marching beneath the earth one whole night long, fell the next day upon
his adversaries and routed them, establishing the crown securely on his
head.
After he had won so distinguished a victory, the story goes that the
king said to the shepherdess: "Ask of me what thou wilt, and even though
it be the half of my kingdom, I swear I will give it thee on the
instant. "
"I wish no more than to go back to the keeping of my flock," replied
the shepherdess. "Thou shalt keep only my frontiers," rejoined the king,
and he gave her lordship over all the boundary, and bade her build a
stronghold in the town nearest the borders of Castile; here dwelt the
shepherdess, married to one of the king's favorites, a husband noble,
gallant, valiant and, as well, lord over many fortresses and many fiefs.
The astonishing account given by Uncle Gregorio of the Moncayo gnomes,
whose secret haunt was in the village fountain, set soaring anew the
wild dreams of the two enamored sisters, for it formed a sequel, so to
speak, to the hitherto unexplained tradition of the treasure found by
the fabled shepherdess--treasure whose remembered gleam had troubled
more than once their wakeful, embittered nights, flashing before their
imaginations like a fragile ray of hope.
The evening following their afternoon meeting with Uncle Gregorio, all
the other girls of the village chatted in their homes about the
wonderful story he had told them. Marta and Magdalena preserved an
unbroken silence, and neither that evening, nor throughout the following
day, did they exchange a single word on this matter, the theme of all
the talk throughout the hamlet and text of all the neighbors'
commentaries.
At the usual hour, Magdalena took her water-jar and said to her sister:
"Shall we go to the fountain? " Marta did not answer, and Magdalena said
again: "Shall we go to the fountain? If we do not hurry, the sun will
have set before we are back. " Marta finally replied shortly and roughly:
"I don't care about going to-day. " "Neither do I," rejoined Magdalena
after an instant of silence during which she kept her eyes fastened on
those of her sister, as if she would read in them the cause of her
resolution.
III.
For nearly an hour the village girls had been back in their homes. The
last glow of sunset had faded on the horizon, and the night was
beginning to close in more and more darkly, when Marta and Magdalena,
each avoiding the other, left the hamlet by different paths in the
direction of the mysterious fountain. The fountain welled up in a hidden
nook among some steep, mossy rocks at the further end of a deep grove.
Now that the sounds of the day had ceased little by little, and no
longer was heard the distant echo of voices from the laborers who return
home in knightly fashion, mounted on their yoked oxen and trolling out
songs to the accompaniment of the beam of the plough they go dragging
over the ground,--now that the monotonous clang of the sheep-bells had
gone beyond hearing, together with the shouts of the shepherds and the
barking of their dogs gathering the flocks together,--now that there had
sounded in the village-tower the last peal of the call to prayers, there
reigned august that double silence of night and solitude, a silence full
of strange, soft murmurs making it yet more perceptible.
Marta and Magdalena slipped through the labyrinth of the trees and,
sheltered by the darkness, arrived without seeing each other at the far
end of the grove. Marta knew no fear; her steps were firm and
unfaltering. Magdalena trembled at the mere rustle made by her feet as
they trod upon the dry leaves carpeting the ground. When the two sisters
were close to the fountain, the night wind began to stir the branches of
the poplars, and to their uneven, sighing whispers the springing water
seemed to make answer with a steady, regular murmur.
Marta and Magdalena lent attention to those soft noises of the
night,--those that flowed beneath their feet like a continuous ripple
of laughter, and those that floated above their heads like a lament
rising and falling only to rise again and spread through the foliage of
the grove. As the hours went on, that unceasing sound of the air and of
the water began to produce in them a strange exaltation, a kind of
dizziness that, clouding the eyes and humming in the ears, seemed to
confuse them utterly. Then as one hears in dreams the far, vague echo of
speech, they seemed to perceive, amid those nameless noises,
inarticulate sounds as of a child who would call his mother and cannot;
then words repeated over and over, always the same; then disconnected,
inconsequent phrases, without order or meaning, and at last--at last the
wind wandering among the trees, and the water leaping from rock to rock,
commenced to speak.
And they spoke thus:
THE WATER.
Woman! --woman! --hear me! --hear me and draw near that thou mayst hear me,
and I will kiss thy feet while I tremble to copy thine image in the
shadowy depth of my waves. Woman! --hear how my murmurs are words.
THE WIND.
Maiden! --Gentle maiden, lift thine head, let me give thy brow the kiss
of peace, while I stir thy tresses. Gentle maiden, listen to me, for I,
too, know how to speak and I will murmur in thine ear phrases of
tenderness.
MARTA.
Oh, speak! Speak, and I will understand, for my mind floats in a dizzy
maze, as float those dim words of thine.
Speak, mysterious stream.
MAGDALENA.
I am afraid. Air of night, air of perfumes, refresh my burning brow!
Tell me what may inspire me with courage, for my spirit wavers.
THE WATER.
I have crossed the dark hollow of the earth, I have surprised the secret
of its marvellous fecundity, and I know the phenomena of its inner
parts, whence springs the life to be.
My murmur lulls to sleep and awakens. Awaken thou that thou mayst
comprehend it.
THE WIND.
I am the air which the angels, as they traverse space, set in motion
with their mighty wings. I mass up in the west the clouds that offer to
the sun a bed of purple, and I shed at dawn, from the mists that vanish
into drops, a pearly dew over the flowers. My sighs are a balm: open
thine heart and I will flood it with bliss.
MARTA.
When for the first time I heard the murmur of a subterranean stream, not
in vain did I bow myself to the earth, lending it ear. With it there
went a mystery which at last it should be mine to understand.
MAGDALENA.
Sighs of the wind, I know you well: you used to caress me, a dreaming
child, when, spent with weeping, I gave myself up to slumber, and your
soft breathings would seem to me the words of a mother who sings her
child to sleep.
* * * * *
The water ceased from speech for a few moments and made no other noise
than that of water breaking on rocks. The wind was voiceless, too, and
its sound was no other than the sound of blowing leaves. So passed some
time, and then they spoke again, and thus they spoke:
THE WATER.
Since I came filtering, drop by drop, through the vein of gold in an
inexhaustible mine; since I came running along a bed of silver and
leaping, as over pebbles, amid innumerable sapphires and amethysts,
bearing on with me, in lieu of sands, diamonds and rubies, I have joined
myself in mystic union to a spirit of the earth. Enriched by his power
and by the occult virtues of the precious stones and metals, saturated
with whose atoms I come, I can offer thee the utmost reach of thine
ambitions. I have the force of an incantation, the power of a talisman,
and the virtue of the seven stones and the seven colors.
THE WIND.
I come from wandering over the plain, and as the bee that returns to the
hive with its booty of sweet honey, I bring with me woman's sighs,
children's prayers, words of chaste love, and aromas of nard and wild
lilies. I have gathered in my journey no more than fragrances and echoes
of harmonies; my treasures are not material, but they give peace of soul
and the vague happiness of pleasant dreams.
* * * * *
While her sister, drawn on and on as by a spell, was leaning over the
margin of the fountain to hear better, Magdalena was instinctively
moving away, withdrawing from the steep rocks in whose midst bubbled the
spring.
Both had their eyes fixed, the one on the depth of the waters, the other
on the depth of the sky.
And Magdalena exclaimed, seeing the astral splendors overhead: "These
are the halos of the invisible angels who have us in their keeping. "
At the same instant Marta was saying, seeing the reflection of the stars
tremble in the clear waters of the fountain: "These are the particles of
gold which the stream gathers in its mysterious course. "
The fountain and the wind, after a second brief period of silence, spoke
again and said:
THE WATER.
Trust thyself to my current, cast from thee fear as a coarse garment,
and dare to cross the threshold of the unknown. I have divined that thy
soul is of the essence of the higher spirits.
Envy perchance hath thrust thee out of heaven to plunge thee into the
mire of mortal misery. Yet I see in thy darkened brow a seal of pride
that renders thee worthy of us, spirits strong and free. --Come; I am
going to teach thee magic words of such virtue that as thou speakest
them the rocks will open and allure thee with the diamonds that are in
their hearts, as pearls are in the shells which fishermen bring up from
the bottom of the sea. Come! I will give thee treasures that thou mayst
live in joy, and later, when the cell that imprisons thee is shattered,
thy spirit shall be made like unto our own, which are human spirits, and
all in one we shall be the motive force, the vital ray of the universe,
circulating like a fluid through its subterranean arteries.
THE WIND.
Water licks the earth and lives in the mud; I roam the ether and fly in
limitless space. Follow the impulses of thy heart; let thy soul rise
like flame and the azure spirals of smoke. Wretched is he who, having
wings, descends to the depths to seek for gold, while he might mount to
the heights for love and sympathy.
Live hidden as the violet, and I will give thee in a fruitful kiss the
living seed of another, sister flower, and I will rend the clouds that
there may not be lacking a sunbeam to illume thy joy. Live obscure, live
unheeded, and when thy spirit is set free, I will lift it on a rosy
cloud up to the world of light.
* * * * *
Wind and wave were hushed, and there appeared the gnome.
The gnome was like a transparent pigmy, a sort of dwarf all made of
light, as a Will-o-the-wisp; it laughed hugely, but without noise, and
leapt from rock to rock, making one dizzy with its giddy antics.
Sometimes it plunged into the water and kept on shining in the depths
like a precious stone of myriad colors; again it leapt to the surface,
and tossed its feet and its hands, and swung its head from one side to
the other with a rapidity that was little short of prodigious.
Marta had seen the gnome and was following him with a bewildered gaze in
all his extravagant evolutions; and when the diabolical spirit darted
away at last into the craggy wilds of the Moncayo, like a running flame,
shaking out sparks from its hair, she felt an irresistible attraction
and rushed after it in frantic chase.
_Magdalena! _ at the same instant called the breeze, slowly withdrawing;
and Magdalena, moving step by step like a sleep-walker guided in slumber
by a friendly voice, followed the zephyr, which was softly blowing over
the plain.
When all was done, again there was silence in the dusky grove, and the
wind and the water kept on, as ever, with sounds as of murmuring and
sighing.
IV.
Magdalena returned to the hamlet pale and full of amazement. They waited
in vain for Marta all that night.
On the afternoon of the following day, the village girls found a broken
water-jar at the margin of the fountain in the grove. It was Marta's
water-jar; nothing more was ever known of her. Since then the girls go
for water so early that they rise with the sun. A few have assured me
that by night there has been heard, more than once, the weeping of
Marta, whose spirit lives imprisoned in the fountain. I do not know what
credit to give to this last part of the story, for the truth is that
since that night nobody has dared penetrate into the grove to hear it
after the ringing of the _Ave Maria_.
THE MISERERE
Some months since, while visiting the celebrated abbey of Fitero and
entertaining myself by turning over a few volumes in its neglected
library, I discovered, stowed away in a dark corner, two or three old
books of manuscript music, covered with dust and gnawed at the edges by
rats.
It was a _Miserere_.
I do not read music, but it attracts me so that, even though I do not
understand it, I sometimes take up the score of an opera and pore over
its pages for hours, looking at the groups of notes more or less crowded
together, the dashes, the semi-circles, the triangles and that sort of
_et cetera_ called keys, and all this without comprehending an iota or
deriving the slightest profit.
After this foolish habit of mine, I turned over the leaves of the
music-books, and the first thing which attracted my attention was the
fact that, although on the last page stood that Latin word so common in
all compositions, _finis_, the _Miserere_ was not concluded, for the
music did not go beyond the tenth verse of the psalm.
This it was, undoubtedly, that arrested my attention first; but as soon
as I scanned the pages closely, I was still more surprised to observe
that instead of the Italian words commonly used, such as _maestoso_,
_allegro_, _ritardando_, _piu vivo_, _a piacere_, there were lines of
very small German script written in, some of which called for things as
difficult to do as this: "_They crack--crack the bones, and from their
marrow must the cries seem to come forth_;" or this other: "_The chord
shrieketh, yet in unison; the tone thundereth, yet without deafening;
for all that hath sound soundeth, and there is no confusion, and all is
humanity that sobbeth and groaneth_;" or what was certainly the most
original of all, enjoined just under the last verse: "_The notes are
bones covered with flesh; light inextinguishable, the heavens and their
harmony--force! --force and sweetness. _"
"Do you know what this is? " I asked of the old friar who accompanied me,
after I had half translated these lines, which seemed like phrases
scribbled by a lunatic.
My aged guide then told me the legend which I now pass on to you.
I.
Many years ago, on a dark and rainy night, a pilgrim arrived at the
cloister door of this abbey and begged for a little fire to dry his
clothes, a morsel of bread to appease his hunger, and a shelter, however
humble, till the morning, when he would resume his journey at dawn.
The lay-brother of whom this request was made placed his own meagre
repast, his own poor bed and his glowing hearth at the service of the
traveller, to whom, after he had recovered from his exhaustion, were put
the usual questions as to the purpose of his pilgrimage and the goal to
which his steps were bent.
"I am a musician," replied the stranger. "I was born far from here, and
in my own country I enjoyed a day of great renown. In my youth I made of
my art a powerful weapon of seduction and I enkindled with it passions
which drew me on to crime. In my old age I would use for good the
talents which I have employed for evil, redeeming my soul by the very
means that have brought it into danger of the judgment. "
As the enigmatic words of the unknown guest did not seem at all clear
to the lay-brother, whose curiosity was now becoming aroused, he was
moved to press his questions further, obtaining the following response:
"I was ever weeping in the depths of my soul for the sin that I had
committed; but when I tried to pray to God for mercy, I could find no
adequate words to utter my repentance, until one day my eyes chanced to
fall upon a holy book. I opened that book and on one of its pages I met
with a giant cry of true contrition, a psalm of David, commencing:
_Miserere mei, Domine! _ From the instant in which I read those verses my
one thought has been to find a musical expression so magnificent, so
sublime, that it would suffice as a setting for the Royal Psalmist's
mighty hymn of anguish. As yet I have not found it; but if I ever attain
to the point of expressing what I feel in my heart, what I hear
confusedly in my brain, I am sure of writing a _Miserere_ so marvellous
in beauty that the sons of men will have heard no other like unto it, so
desperate in grief that, as its first strains rise to heaven, the
archangels, their eyes flooded with tears, will with me cry out unto the
Lord, beseeching _Mercy_; and the Lord will be merciful to his unhappy
creature. "
The pilgrim, on reaching this point in his narrative, paused for an
instant, and then, heaving a sigh, took up again the thread of his
story. The lay-brother, a few dependents of the abbey, and two or three
shepherds from the friars' farm--these who formed the circle about the
hearth--listened to him in the deepest silence.
"After travelling over all Germany," he continued, "all Italy and the
greater part of this country whose sacred music is classic, I have not
yet heard a _Miserere_ that can give me my inspiration, not one,--not
one, and I have heard so many that I may say I have heard them all. "
"All? " broke in one of the upper shepherds. "But you have not heard,
have you, the _Miserere_ of the Mountain? "
[Illustration: A MONASTERY COURT]
"The _Miserere_ of the Mountain! " exclaimed the musician with an air of
amazement. "What _Miserere_ is that? "
"Didn't I say so? " muttered the peasant under his breath, and then went
on in a mysterious tone: "This _Miserere_, which is only heard, as
chance may fall, by those who, like myself, wander day and night
following the sheep through the thickets and over the rocky hills, is,
in fact, a tradition, a very old tradition; yet incredible as it seems,
it is no less true.
"The case is that, in the most rugged part of yonder mountain chains
which bound the horizon of this valley in whose bosom the abbey stands,
there used to be, many years ago--why do I say many years! --many
centuries, rather, a famous monastery. This monastery, it seems, was
built at his own cost by a lord with the wealth that he would naturally
have left to his son, whom on his death-bed he disinherited, as a
punishment for the young profligate's evil deeds.
"So far, all had gone well; but the trouble is that this son, who, from
what will be seen further on, must have been the skin of the Devil, if
not the Devil himself, learning that his goods were in the possession of
the monks, and that his castle had been transformed into a church,
gathered together a crew of banditti, comrades of his in the ruffian
life he had taken up on forsaking his father's house, and one Holy
Thursday night, when the monks would be in the choir, and at the very
hour and minute when they would be just beginning or would have just
begun the _Miserere_, these outlaws set fire to the monastery, sacked
the church, and willy-nilly, left not a single monk alive.
"After this atrocity, the banditti and their leader went away, whither
no one knows, perhaps to hell.
"The flames reduced the monastery to ashes; of the church there still
remain standing the ruins upon the hollow crag whence springs the
cascade that after leaping down from rock to rock, forms the rill which
comes to bathe the walls of this abbey. "
"But,"--interrupted the musician impatiently, "the _Miserere_? "
"Wait a while," said the shepherd with great deliberation, "and all will
be told in proper order. " Vouchsafing no further reply, he continued his
story:
"The people of all the country round about were shocked at the crime; it
was related with horror in the long winter evenings, handed down from
father to son, and from son to grandson; but what tends most of all to
keep it fresh in memory is that every year, on the anniversary of that
night when the church was burned, lights are seen shining out through
its shattered windows, and there is heard a sort of strange music, with
mournful, terrible chants that are borne at intervals upon the gusts of
wind.
"The singers are the monks, who, slain perchance before they were ready
to present themselves pure of all sin at the Judgment Seat of God, still
come from Purgatory to implore His mercy, chanting the _Miserere_. "
The group about the fire exchanged glances of incredulity; but the
pilgrim, who had seemed to be vitally interested in the recital of the
tradition, inquired eagerly of the narrator:
"And do you say that this marvel still takes place? "
"It will begin without fail in less than three hours, for the precise
reason that this is Holy Thursday night, and the abbey clock has just
struck eight. "
"How far is the monastery from here? "
"Barely a league and a half,--but what are you doing? " "Whither would
you go on a night like this? " "Have you fallen from the shelter of God's
hand? " exclaimed one and another as they saw the pilgrim, rising from
his bench and taking his staff, leave the fireplace and move toward the
door.
"Whither am I going? To hear this miraculous music, to hear the great,
the true _Miserere_, the _Miserere_ of those who return to the world
after death, those who know what it is to die in sin. "
And so saying, he disappeared from the sight of the amazed lay-brother
and the no less astonished shepherds.
The wind shrilled without and shook the doors as if a powerful hand were
striving to tear them from their hinges; the rain fell in torrents,
beating against the window-panes, and from time to time a
lightning-flash lit up for an instant all the horizon that could be seen
from there.
After the first moment of bewilderment had passed the lay-brother
exclaimed:
"He is mad. "
"He is mad," repeated the shepherds and, replenishing the fire, they
gathered closely around the hearth.
II.
After walking for an hour or two, the mysterious personage, to whom they
had given the degree of madman in the abbey, by following upstream the
course of the rill which the story-telling shepherd had pointed out to
him, reached the spot where rose the blackened, impressive ruins of the
monastery.
The rain had ceased; the clouds were drifting in long, dark masses, from
between whose shifting shapes there glided from time to time a furtive
ray of doubtful, pallid light; and one would say that the wind, as it
lashed the strong buttresses and swept with widening wings through the
deserted cloisters, was groaning in its flight. Yet nothing
supernatural, nothing extraordinary occurred to strike the imagination.
To him who had slept more nights than one without other shelter than
the ruins of an abandoned tower or a lonely castle,--to him who in his
far pilgrimage had encountered hundreds on hundreds of storms, all those
noises were familiar.
The drops of water which filtered through the cracks of the broken
arches and fell upon the stones below with a measured sound like the
ticking of a great clock; the hoots of the owl, screeching from his
refuge beneath the stone nimbus of an image still standing in a niche of
the wall; the stir of the reptiles that, wakened from their lethargy by
the tempest, thrust out their misshapen heads from the holes where they
sleep, or crawled among the wild mustard and the briers that grow at the
foot of the altar, rooted in the crevices between the sepulchral slabs
that form the pavement of the church,--all those strange and mysterious
murmurs of the open country, of solitude and of night, came perceptibly
to the ear of the pilgrim who, seated on the mutilated statue of a tomb,
was anxiously awaiting the hour when the marvellous event should take
place.
But still the time went by and nothing more was heard; those myriad
confused noises kept on sounding and combining with one another in a
thousand different ways, but themselves always the same.
"Ah, they have played a joke on me! " thought the musician; but at that
moment he heard a new sound, a sound inexplicable in such a place, like
that made by a clock a few seconds before striking the hour, a sound of
whirring wheels, of stretching cords, of machinery secretly setting to
work and making ready to use its mysterious mechanic vitality, and a
bell rang out the hour--one, two, three, up to eleven.
In the ruined church there was no bell nor clock, not even a bell-tower.
The last peal, lessening from echo to echo, had not yet died away; the
vibration was still perceptible, trembling in the air, when the granite
canopies which overhung the sculptures, the marble steps of the altars,
the hewn stones of the ogee arches, the fretted screens of the choir,
the festoons of trefoil on the cornices, the black buttresses of the
walls, the pavements, the vaulted ceiling, the entire church, began to
be lighted by no visible agency, nor was there in sight torch or lamp or
candle to shed abroad that unwonted radiance.
It suggested a skeleton over whose yellow bones spreads that phosphoric
gas which burns and puts forth fumes in the darkness like a blue light,
restless and terrible.
Everything seemed to be in motion, but with that galvanic movement which
lends to death contractions that parody life, instantaneous movement
more horrible even than the inertia of the corpse which stirs with that
unknown force. Stones reunited themselves to stones; the altar, whose
broken fragments had before been scattered about in disorder, rose
intact, as if the artificer had just given it the last blow of the
chisel, and simultaneously with the altar rose the ruined chapels, the
shattered capitals and the great, crumbled series of arches which,
crossing and interlacing at caprice, formed with their columns a
labyrinth of porphyry.
As soon as the church was rebuilt there grew upon the hearing a distant
harmony which might have been taken for the wailing of the wind, but
which was a chorus of far-off, solemn voices, that seemed to come from
the depths of the earth and rise to the surface little by little,
continually growing more distinct.
The daring pilgrim began to fear, but with his fear still battled his
passion for the bygone and the marvellous, and made valiant by the
strength of his desire, he left the tomb on which he was resting, leaned
over the brink of the abyss, amid whose rocks leapt the torrent, rushing
over the precipice with an incessant and terrifying thunder, and his
hair rose with horror.
Ill wrapped in the tatters of their habits, their cowls, beneath whose
folds the dark eye-cavities of the skulls contrasted with the fleshless
jaws and the white teeth, drawn forward over their heads, he saw the
skeletons of the monks who had been thrown from the battlements of the
church down that headlong steep, emerging from the depth of the waters
and, clutching with the long fingers of their bony hands at the fissures
in the rocks, clamber over them up to the brink, chanting in low,
sepulchral voice, but with a heartrending intonation of anguish, the
first verse of David's Psalm:
_Miserere mei, Domine, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam! _
When the monks reached the peristyle of the church they arranged
themselves in two rows and, entering, went in procession to the choir
where they knelt in their places, while with voices louder and yet more
solemn they continued to intone the verses of the psalm. The music
sounded in accompaniment to their voices; that music was the distant
roll of the thunder which sank into murmurs as the tempest subsided; it
was the blowing of the wind which groaned in the hollow of the mountain;
it was the monotonous splash of the cascade falling down the crag; and
the drip of the filtered waterdrops, and the hoot of the hidden owl,
and the gliding sound of the uneasy reptiles. All this was in the
music, and something more that cannot be expressed nor scarcely
conceived,--something more that seemed like the echo of an organ
accompanying the verses of the Royal Psalmist's giant hymn of
contrition, with notes and chords as tremendous as the awful words.
The service proceeded; the musician who witnessed it, absorbed and
terrified as he was, believed himself to be outside the actual world,
living in that fantastic region of dreams where all things reclothe
themselves in phenomenal and alien forms.
A terrible shock came to rouse him from that stupor which was clogging
all the faculties of his mind. His nerves sprang to the thrill of a
mighty emotion, his teeth chattered, shaking with a tremor he could in
no wise repress, and the chill penetrated to the marrow of his bones.
At that instant the monks were intoning those dread words of the
_Miserere_:
_In iniquitatibus conceptus sum; et in peccatis concepit me mater mea. _
As the thunder of this verse went rolling in sonorous echo from vault to
vault, there arose a terrible outcry which seemed a wail of agony
breaking from all humanity for its sense of sin, a horrible wail made up
of all the laments of the unfortunate, all the shrieks of despair, all
the blasphemies of the impious, a monstrous consonance, fit interpreter
of those who live in sin and were conceived in iniquity.
The chant went on, now sad and deep, now like a sunbeam which breaks
through the dark storm cloud, succeeding the lightning-flash of terror
by another flash of joy, until by grace of a sudden transformation the
church stood resplendent, bathed in celestial light; the skeletons of
the monks were again clothed in their flesh, about their brows shone
lustrous aureoles, the roof vanished and above was seen heaven like a
sea of light open to the gaze of the righteous.
Seraphim, archangels, angels and all the heavenly hierarchy accompanied
with a hymn of glory this verse, which then rose sublime to the throne
of the Lord like the rhythmical notes of a trumpet, like a colossal
spiral of sonorous incense:
_Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam, et exultabunt ossa humiliata. _
At this point the dazzling brightness blinded the pilgrim's eyes, his
temples throbbed violently, there was a roaring in his ears, he fell
senseless to the ground and heard no more.
III.
On the following day, the peaceful monks of the Abbey of Fitero, to whom
the lay-brother had given an account of the strange visit of the night
before, saw the unknown pilgrim, pallid and like a man beside himself,
entering their doors.
"Did you hear the _Miserere_ at last? " the lay-brother asked him with a
certain tinge of irony, slyly casting a glance of intelligence at his
superiors.
"Yes," replied the musician.
"And how did you like it? "
"I am going to write it. Give me a refuge in your house," he continued,
addressing the abbot, "a refuge and bread for a few months, and I will
leave you an immortal work of art, a _Miserere_ which shall blot out my
sins from the sight of God, eternize my memory, and with it the memory
of this abbey. "
The monks, out of curiosity, counselled the abbot to grant his request;
the abbot, for charity, though he believed the man a lunatic, finally
consented; and the musician, thus installed in the monastery, began his
work.
Night and day he labored with unremitting zeal. In the midst of his task
he would pause and appear to be listening to something which sounded in
his imagination; his pupils would dilate and he would spring from his
seat exclaiming: "That is it; so; so; no doubt about it--so! " And he
would go on writing notes with a feverish haste which more than once
made those who kept him under secret observation wonder.
He wrote the first verses, and those following to about the middle of
the Psalm; but when he had written the last verse that he had heard upon
the mountain, it was impossible for him to proceed.
He made one, two, one hundred, two hundred rough drafts; all in vain.
His music was not like the music already written. Sleep fled from his
eyelids, he lost his appetite, fever seized upon his brain, he went mad,
and died, at last, without being able to finish the _Miserere_, which,
as a curiosity, the monks treasured till his death, and even yet
preserve in the archives of the abbey.
* * * * *
When the old man had made an end of telling me this story, I could not
refrain from turning my eyes again to the dusty, ancient manuscript of
the _Miserere_, which still lay upon one of the tables.
_In peccatis concepit me mater mea. _
These were the words on the page before me, seeming to mock me with
their notes, their keys and their scrawls unintelligible to lay-brothers
in music.
I would have given a world to be able to read them.
Who knows if they may not be mere nonsense?
STRANGE
I.
We were taking tea in the house of a lady who is a friend of mine, and
the talk turned upon the social dramas which develop from act to act,
unheeded of the world,--dramas with whose leading characters we have
been acquainted, if indeed we have not ourselves played a part in one or
another of their scenes.
Among numerous other persons whom I do not remember, there was a girl of
the blonde type, fair and slender, who, if she had had a lapful of
flowers in place of the blear-eyed little dog that growled half hidden
in the wide folds of her skirt, might have been compared without
exaggeration to Shakespeare's Ophelia.
So pure was the white of her forehead, the azure of her eyes.
Conversing with the fair girl was a young man, who stood with one hand
resting on the _causeuse_ of blue velvet where she sat and the other
caressing the precious trinkets of his gold chain. In his affected
pronunciation a slight foreign accent was noticeable, despite the fact
that his look and bearing were as Spanish as those of the Cid or
Bernardo del Carpio.
A gentleman of mature years, tall, thin, of distinguished and courteous
manners, who seemed seriously preoccupied with the operation of
sweetening to the exact point his cup of tea, completed the group
nearest the fireplace, in whose warmth I sat down to tell this human
history. It seems like a fable, but it is not; one could make a book of
it; I have done so several times in imagination. Nevertheless, I will
tell it in few words, since for him to whom it is given to comprehend
it, these few will be more than enough.
Andres, for so the hero of my tale was called, was one of those men
whose hearts abound with feeling for which they have found no outlet,
and with love that has no object on which to spend itself.
An orphan almost from his birth, he was left in the care of relatives. I
do not know the details of his childhood; I can only say that whenever
it was mentioned, his face would cloud and he would exclaim, with a
sigh: "That is over now. "
We all say the same, sadly recalling bygone joys. But was this the
explanation of his words? I repeat that I do not know; but I suspect
not.
As soon as he was grown, he launched out into the world. Though I would
not calumniate it, the fact remains that the world for the poor, and
especially for a certain class of the poor, is not a Paradise nor
anything like it. Andres was, as the saying goes, one of those people
who rise, most days, with nothing to look forward to but twenty-four
hours more. Judge then, my readers, what would be the state of a spirit
all idealism, all love, put to the no less difficult than prosaic task
of seeking our daily bread.
Yet sometimes, sitting on the edge of his lonely bed, his elbows on his
knees and his head between his hands, he would exclaim:
"If I only had something to love with all my heart! A wife, a horse,
even a dog! "
As he had not a copper to spare, it was not possible for him to get
anything,--not any object on which to satisfy his hunger to love. This
waxed to such a point that in its acute attacks he came to feel an
affection for the wretched closet where he slept, the scanty furniture
that met his needs, his very landlady, that patron saint who was his
evil genius.
This is not at all surprising; Josephus relates that during the siege of
Jerusalem hunger reached such a point that mothers devoured their
children.
There came a day when he was able to secure a very small living wage.
The evening of that day, when he was returning to his boarding-house, on
crossing a narrow street he heard a sort of wail, like the crying of a
new-born child. He had taken but a few steps further after hearing those
doleful sounds, when he exclaimed, stopping short:
"What the deuce is that? "
And he touched with the toe of his shoe a soft object that moved, and
fell again to mewling and whining. It was one of those new-born puppies
that people cast out to the mercy of the rubbish heap.
"Providence has placed it in my path," said Andres to himself, picking
it up and wrapping it in the skirt of his coat; and he carried it to his
miserable lodging.
"What now! " grumbled the landlady on seeing him enter with the puppy;
"all we needed was this fresh nuisance in the house. Take it back this
minute to where you found it, or else look up new quarters for the two
of you to-morrow. "
The next day Andres was turned out of the house, and in the course of
two or three months he left some two hundred more, for the same reason.
But for all these inconveniences, and a thousand others which it is
impossible to detail, he was richly compensated by the intelligence and
affection of the dog, with whom he diverted himself as with a person in
his long hours of solitude and _ennui_. They ate together, they enjoyed
their siestas together, and together they would take a turn in the
Ronda, or go to walk along the Carabanchel road.
Evening gatherings, fashionable promenades, theatres, cafes, places
where dogs are not allowed or would be in the way, were forbidden to our
hero, who sometimes exclaimed from the fulness of his heart, as he
responded to the caresses of his very own:
"Doggy mine! you can do everything but talk. "
II.
It would be wearisome to explain how, but it came to pass that Andres
somewhat bettered his position, and seeing that he had money in hand, he
said:
"If I only had a wife! But having a wife is very expensive. Men like me,
before choosing a bride, should have a paradise to offer her, and a
paradise in Madrid is worth as much as a man's eye. --If I could buy a
horse! A horse! There is no animal more noble or more beautiful. How he
would love my dog! what merry times they would have with each other, and
I with both! "
One afternoon he went to the bullfight, and before the entertainment
began, he unpremeditatedly strolled out into the court-yard, where the
horses who had to take part in the contest were waiting, already
saddled.
I do not know whether my readers have ever had the curiosity to go and
see them. For myself, without claiming to be as tender-hearted as the
protagonist of this tale, I can assure you that I have often had a mind
to buy them all. So great was the pity that I felt for them.
Andres could not fail to experience a most grievous sensation on finding
himself in this place. Some of the horses, with drooping heads,
creatures all skin and bone, their manes rough and dirty, were standing
motionless, awaiting their turn, as if they had a foreboding of the
dreadful death which would put an end, within a few hours, to that
miserable life of theirs; others, half blind, were sniffing about for
the rack and eating, or, tearing the ground with the hoof and snorting
wildly, were struggling to pull themselves loose and flee from the peril
which they scented with horror. And all those animals had been young and
beautiful. What aristocratic hands had patted their necks! What
affectionate voices had urged on their speed! And now all was blows from
one side, oaths from the other, and death at last, death in terrible
agony accompanied by jests and hisses!
"If they think at all," said Andres, "what will these animals think at
the core of their dim intelligence, when in the middle of the ring they
bite their tongues and expire with a frightful spasm? Truly the
ingratitude of man is sometimes inconceivable. "
He was startled out of those reflections by the rough voice of one of
the _picadores_, who was swearing and cursing while he tested the legs
of one of the horses, striking the butt-end of his lance against the
wall. The horse did not seem entirely contemptible; apparently it was
crazy or had some mortal disease.
Andres thought of buying it. As for the cost, it ought not to cost much;
but how about its keep? The _picador_ plunged the spur into its flank
and started to ride toward the gate of the ring; our youth wavered for
an instant and then stopped him. How he did it, I do not know; but in
less than a quarter of an hour he had induced the horseman to leave the
beast behind, had hunted up the contractor, made his bargain for the
horse and taken it away.
I suppose it is superfluous to say that on that afternoon he did not see
the bullfight.
He led off the horse in triumph; but the horse, in fact, was or appeared
to be crazy.
"Use plenty of stick on him," said one authority.
"Don't give him much to eat," advised a blacksmith.
The horse was still unruly. "Bah! " at last exclaimed his owner. "Let him
eat what he likes and do as he chooses. " The horse was not old, and now
began to fatten and grow more docile. It is true that he still had his
whims, and that nobody but Andres could mount him; but his master said:
"So I shall not be teased to lend him; and as for his oddities, each of
us will get accustomed to those of the other. " And they came to such a
good understanding that Andres knew when the horse felt like doing a
thing and when not, and as for the horse, the voice of his master was
enough to make him take a leap, stand still, or set off at a gallop,
swift as a hurricane.
Of the dog we need say nothing; he came to be so friendly with his new
comrade that neither could go out, even to drink, without the other.
From this time on, when Andres set off at a gallop in a cloud of dust on
the Carabanchel road, with his dog frisking along beside him, dashing
ahead to turn back and hunt for him, or letting him pass to scamper up
and overtake him, he believed himself the happiest of men.
Time went by; our young man was rich, or almost rich.
One day, after a long gallop, he alighted, tired out, near a tree and
stretched himself in its shade.
It was a spring day, bright and blue,--one of those days in which men
breathe voluptuously the warm air impregnated with passion, in which the
blowing of the wind comes to the ear like distant harmonies, in which
the clear horizons are outlined in gold, and there float before our eyes
shining motes of I know not what, motes like transparent forms that
follow us, encompass us and intoxicate us with sadness and with
happiness at once.
"I dearly love these two beings," exclaimed Andres as he reclined there
stroking his dog with one hand and with the other giving to his horse a
handful of grass, "dearly; but yet there is a vacancy in my heart which
has never been filled; I still have it in me to lavish a love greater,
holier, purer. Decidedly I need a wife. "
At that moment there passed along the road a young girl with a water-jar
upon her head.
Andres was not thirsty, but yet he begged a drink of water. The girl
stopped to offer it to him, and did so with such gentle grace that our
youth comprehended perfectly one of the most patriarchal episodes of the
Bible.
"What is your name? " he asked when he had drunk.
"Placida. "
"And what do you do with yourself? "
"I am the daughter of a merchant who died ruined and persecuted for his
political opinions. After his death, my mother and I retired to a
hamlet, where we get on very badly with a pension of three _reales_
[fifteen cents a day] for all our living. My mother is ill, and
everything comes on me. "
"And why haven't you married? "
"I don't know; in the village they say that I am good for nothing about
work, that I am very delicate, very much the _senorita_. "
The girl, with a courteous good-bye, moved away.
While she was still in sight, Andres watched her retreating form in
silence; when she was lost to view, he said with the satisfaction of one
who solves a problem:
"This is the woman for me. "
He mounted his horse and, followed by his dog, took his way to the
village. He promptly made the acquaintance of the mother and, almost as
soon, utterly lost his heart to the daughter. When at the end of a few
months she was left an orphan, he married her, a man in love with his
wife, which is one of the greatest blessings life affords.
To marry, and to set up housekeeping in a country mansion situated in
one of the most picturesque spots of his native land, was the work of a
few days.
When he saw himself in this residence, rich, with his wife, his dog and
his horse, he had to rub his eyes; he thought he must be dreaming. So
happy, so perfectly happy was poor Andres.
IV.
So he lived for a period of several years, in divine bliss, when one
afternoon he thought he noticed that some one was prowling about his
house, and later he surprised a man fitting his eye to the key-hole of
one of the garden-doors.
"There are robbers about," he said. And he determined to inform the
nearest town, where there was a brace of civil guards.
"Where are you going? " asked his wife.
"To the town. "
"What for? "
"To inform the civil guards that I suspect some one is prowling about
our house. "
When his wife heard that, she paled slightly. He, giving her a kiss,
continued:
"I am going on foot, for it is not far. Good-bye till I come again. "
On passing through the court-yard to reach the gate, he stepped into the
stable a moment, looked his horse over and, patting him, said:
"Good-bye, old fellow, good-bye; to-day you shall rest, for yesterday I
put you to your paces. "
The horse, who was accustomed to go out every day with his master,
whinnied sadly on hearing him depart.
When Andres was about to leave the premises, the dog began to frolic for
joy.
"No, you are not coming with me," he exclaimed, speaking as if the dog
would understand. "When you go to the town, you bark at the boys and
chase the hens, and some fine day somebody will give you such a blow
that you will have no spirit left to go back for another. Don't let him
out until I am gone," he continued, addressing a servant, and he shut
the gate that the dog might not follow him.
He had taken the turn in the road before he ceased hearing the prolonged
howls.
He went to the town, despatched his business, had a pleasant half-hour
with the _alcalde_, chatting of this and that, and returned home. On
reaching the neighborhood of his estate, he was greatly surprised that
the dog did not come out to welcome him, the dog that on other
occasions, as if aware of his movements, would meet him half way down
the road. --He whistles--no response! He enters the outer gates. Not a
servant! "What the deuce is the meaning of this? " he exclaims
disquieted, and proceeds to the house.
Arrived, he enters the court. The first sight that meets his eyes is the
dog stretched in a pool of blood at the stable door. A few pieces of
cloth scattered over the ground, some threads still hanging from his
jaws, covered with crimson foam, witness that he made a good defence and
that in the defence he had received the wounds so thick upon him.
Andres calls him by his name; the dying dog half opens his eyes, tries
in vain to get upon his feet, feebly wags his tail, licks the hand that
caresses him, and dies.
"My horse! where is my horse? " then exclaimed Andres with a voice hoarse
and stifled by emotion, as he saw the stall empty and the halter broken.
He dashes thence like a madman; he calls his wife,--no answer; his
servants,--nothing. Beside himself, he rushes over the whole
house,--vacant, abandoned. Again he goes out to the street, sees the
hoof-marks of his horse, his own,--no doubt of it,--for he knows, or
thinks he knows, even the tracks of his cherished animal.
"I understand it all," he says, as if illumined by a sudden idea. "The
robbers have taken advantage of my absence to accomplish their design,
and they are carrying off my wife to exact of me for her ransom a great
sum of money. Money! my blood, my soul's salvation, would I give for
her. --My poor dog! " he exclaims, returning to look at him, and then he
starts forth running like a man out of his wits, following the direction
of the hoof-prints.
And he ran, he ran without resting for an instant after those tracks;
one hour, two, three.
"Have you seen," he asked of everybody, "a man on horseback with a woman
on the crupper? "
"Yes," they answered.
"Which way did they go? "
"That way. "
And Andres would gather fresh force and keep on running.
The night commenced to fall. To the same question he had ever the same
reply; and he ran, and he ran, until at last he discerned a village, and
near the entrance, at the foot of a cross which marked the point where
the road divided into two, he saw a group of people, laborers, old men,
boys, who were regarding with curiosity something that he could not
distinguish.
He arrives, puts the same question as ever, and one of the group says:
"Yes, we have had sight of that pair; look! for a clearer trace see the
horse that carried them, who fell here ruptured with running. "
Andres turns his eyes in the direction they indicated, and indeed sees
his horse, his beloved horse, which some men of the place were preparing
to flay for the sake of its hide. He could scarcely resist his grief,
but recovering himself, he turned again to the thought of his wife.
and unable to control herself, exclaimed, fascinated with the account of
the fabulous riches which had met the shepherd's view:
"And what then? Did he take away nothing out of all that? "
"Nothing," replied Uncle Gregorio.
"What a silly! " the girls exclaimed in concert.
"Heaven helped him in that moment of peril," continued the old man, "for
at the very instant when avarice, the ruling passion, began to dispel
his fear and, bewitched by the sight of those jewels, one alone of which
would have made him wealthy, the shepherd was about to possess himself
of some small share of that treasure, he says he heard--listen and
marvel--clear and distinct in those profound abodes,--despite the shouts
of laughter and harsh voices of the gnomes, the roar of the subterranean
fire, the murmur of running water and the laments of the imprisoned
air, he heard, I say, as if he had been at the foot of the hill where it
stands, the pealing of the bell in the hermitage of Our Lady of the
Moncayo.
"On hearing the bell, which was ringing the _Ave Maria_, the shepherd
fell to his knees, calling on the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and
instantly, without knowing the means nor the way, he found himself on
the outside of the mountain, near the road which leads to the village,
thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great bewilderment as if
he had just been startled out of a dream.
"Since then everybody has understood why our village fountain sometimes
has in its waters a glint as of very fine gold-dust; and when night
falls, vague words are heard in its murmur, flattering words with which
the gnomes, that defile it from its source, try to entice the foolhardy
who lend them ear, promising them riches and treasures that are bound to
be the destruction of their souls. "
When Uncle Gregorio had reached this point in his relation, night had
fallen and the church bell commenced to call to prayer. The girls
crossed themselves devoutly, repeating in low voices an _Ave Maria_, and
after bidding good-night to Uncle Gregorio, who again counselled them
not to tarry at the fountain, each picked up her water-jar and all went
forth, silent and musing, from the churchyard. They were already far
from the spot where they had found the old man, and had, indeed, reached
the central square of the village whence they were to go their several
ways, before the more resolute and decided of them all broke out with
the question:
"Do you girls believe any of that nonsense Uncle Gregorio has been
telling us? "
"Not I," said one.
"Nor I," exclaimed another.
"Nor I! nor I! " chimed in the rest, laughing at their momentary
credulity.
The group of lasses melted away, each taking her course toward one or
another side of the square. Last of all, when the others had disappeared
down the better streets that led out from this market-place, two girls,
the only ones who had not opened their lips to make fun of Uncle
Gregorio's veracity, but who, still musing on the marvellous tale,
seemed absorbed in their own meditations, went away together, with the
slow step natural to people deep in thought, by a dismal, narrow,
crooked alley.
Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be some twenty years old,
was called Marta; and the younger, who had not yet finished her
sixteenth year, Magdalena.
As long as the walk lasted, both kept complete silence; but when they
reached the threshold of their home and had set down their water-jars on
the stone bench by the door, Marta said to Magdalena: "And do you
believe in the marvels of the Moncayo and the spirits of the fountain? "
"Yes," answered Magdalena simply, "I believe it all. But you, perhaps,
have doubts? " "Oh, no! " Marta hastily interrupted. "I, too, believe
everything, everything--that I wish to believe. "
II.
Marta and Magdalena were sisters. Orphans from early childhood, they
were living wretchedly under the protection of a kinswoman of their
mother,--a kinswoman who had taken them in for charity and who at every
step made them feel, by her taunting and humiliating words, the weight
of their obligation. Everything would seem to tend toward tightening the
knot of love between those two sister souls,--not merely the bond of
blood, but those of poverty and suffering, and yet there existed between
Marta and Magdalena a mute rivalry, a secret antipathy explicable only
by a study of their characters, as utterly contrasted as were their
physical types.
Marta was overbearing, strong in her passions and of a rough directness
in the expression of her feelings; she did not understand either
laughter or tears, and so had never wept nor laughed. Magdalena, on the
other hand, was gentle, affectionate, kind, and more than once had been
seen to laugh and weep together, as children do.
Marta's eyes were blacker than night and from under her dark lashes
there sometimes seemed to leap fiery sparks as from a burning coal.
The blue eyes of Magdalena appeared to swim in liquid light behind the
golden curve of her blond lashes. And everything in them was in keeping
with the different expression of their eyes. Marta, thin, pale, tall,
stiff of movement, her dark, crisp hair shading her brow and falling
upon her shoulders like a velvet mantle, formed a singular contrast to
Magdalena, white and pink, _petite_, with the rounded face and figure of
babyhood, and with golden tresses encircling her temples like the gilded
halo about the head of an angel.
Despite the inexplicable repulsion which each felt for the other, the
two sisters had lived up to this time on terms of indifference that
might have been mistaken for peace and affection; there had been no
caresses to quarrel over, nor partialities to envy; equal in misfortune
and affliction, Marta, withdrawn into herself, had borne her troubles in
a proud, self-centered silence; and Magdalena, finding no response in
her sister's heart, would weep alone when the tears involuntarily rushed
into her eyes.
They had not a sentiment in common; they never confided to one another
their joys and griefs, and yet the only secret which each had striven to
hide in the depths of her soul had been divined by the other with the
marvelous instinct of love and jealousy. Marta and Magdalena had in fact
set their hearts on one and the same man.
The passion of the one was a stubborn desire, born of a wilful and
indomitable character; in the other, love was manifest in that vague,
spontaneous tenderness of youth, which, needing an object on which to
spend itself, takes the first that comes. Both guarded the secret of
their love, for the man who had inspired it would perchance have made
mock of a devotion which could be interpreted as an absurd ambition in
penniless girls of lowly birth. Both, despite the distance which
separated them from their idol, cherished a faint hope of winning him.
Hard by the village, and above a height which dominated the country
round about, there was an ancient castle abandoned by its owners. The
old women, in their evening gossips, would relate a marvellous story
about its founders. They told how the King of Aragon, finding himself at
war with his enemies, his resources exhausted, forsaken by his allies
and on the point of losing the throne, was sought out one day by a
shepherdess of those parts, who, after revealing to him the existence of
certain subterranean passages by means of which he could go through the
Moncayo without being perceived by his enemies, gave him a treasure in
fine pearls, precious stones of the richest, and bars of gold and
silver; with these the king paid his troops, raised a mighty army and,
marching beneath the earth one whole night long, fell the next day upon
his adversaries and routed them, establishing the crown securely on his
head.
After he had won so distinguished a victory, the story goes that the
king said to the shepherdess: "Ask of me what thou wilt, and even though
it be the half of my kingdom, I swear I will give it thee on the
instant. "
"I wish no more than to go back to the keeping of my flock," replied
the shepherdess. "Thou shalt keep only my frontiers," rejoined the king,
and he gave her lordship over all the boundary, and bade her build a
stronghold in the town nearest the borders of Castile; here dwelt the
shepherdess, married to one of the king's favorites, a husband noble,
gallant, valiant and, as well, lord over many fortresses and many fiefs.
The astonishing account given by Uncle Gregorio of the Moncayo gnomes,
whose secret haunt was in the village fountain, set soaring anew the
wild dreams of the two enamored sisters, for it formed a sequel, so to
speak, to the hitherto unexplained tradition of the treasure found by
the fabled shepherdess--treasure whose remembered gleam had troubled
more than once their wakeful, embittered nights, flashing before their
imaginations like a fragile ray of hope.
The evening following their afternoon meeting with Uncle Gregorio, all
the other girls of the village chatted in their homes about the
wonderful story he had told them. Marta and Magdalena preserved an
unbroken silence, and neither that evening, nor throughout the following
day, did they exchange a single word on this matter, the theme of all
the talk throughout the hamlet and text of all the neighbors'
commentaries.
At the usual hour, Magdalena took her water-jar and said to her sister:
"Shall we go to the fountain? " Marta did not answer, and Magdalena said
again: "Shall we go to the fountain? If we do not hurry, the sun will
have set before we are back. " Marta finally replied shortly and roughly:
"I don't care about going to-day. " "Neither do I," rejoined Magdalena
after an instant of silence during which she kept her eyes fastened on
those of her sister, as if she would read in them the cause of her
resolution.
III.
For nearly an hour the village girls had been back in their homes. The
last glow of sunset had faded on the horizon, and the night was
beginning to close in more and more darkly, when Marta and Magdalena,
each avoiding the other, left the hamlet by different paths in the
direction of the mysterious fountain. The fountain welled up in a hidden
nook among some steep, mossy rocks at the further end of a deep grove.
Now that the sounds of the day had ceased little by little, and no
longer was heard the distant echo of voices from the laborers who return
home in knightly fashion, mounted on their yoked oxen and trolling out
songs to the accompaniment of the beam of the plough they go dragging
over the ground,--now that the monotonous clang of the sheep-bells had
gone beyond hearing, together with the shouts of the shepherds and the
barking of their dogs gathering the flocks together,--now that there had
sounded in the village-tower the last peal of the call to prayers, there
reigned august that double silence of night and solitude, a silence full
of strange, soft murmurs making it yet more perceptible.
Marta and Magdalena slipped through the labyrinth of the trees and,
sheltered by the darkness, arrived without seeing each other at the far
end of the grove. Marta knew no fear; her steps were firm and
unfaltering. Magdalena trembled at the mere rustle made by her feet as
they trod upon the dry leaves carpeting the ground. When the two sisters
were close to the fountain, the night wind began to stir the branches of
the poplars, and to their uneven, sighing whispers the springing water
seemed to make answer with a steady, regular murmur.
Marta and Magdalena lent attention to those soft noises of the
night,--those that flowed beneath their feet like a continuous ripple
of laughter, and those that floated above their heads like a lament
rising and falling only to rise again and spread through the foliage of
the grove. As the hours went on, that unceasing sound of the air and of
the water began to produce in them a strange exaltation, a kind of
dizziness that, clouding the eyes and humming in the ears, seemed to
confuse them utterly. Then as one hears in dreams the far, vague echo of
speech, they seemed to perceive, amid those nameless noises,
inarticulate sounds as of a child who would call his mother and cannot;
then words repeated over and over, always the same; then disconnected,
inconsequent phrases, without order or meaning, and at last--at last the
wind wandering among the trees, and the water leaping from rock to rock,
commenced to speak.
And they spoke thus:
THE WATER.
Woman! --woman! --hear me! --hear me and draw near that thou mayst hear me,
and I will kiss thy feet while I tremble to copy thine image in the
shadowy depth of my waves. Woman! --hear how my murmurs are words.
THE WIND.
Maiden! --Gentle maiden, lift thine head, let me give thy brow the kiss
of peace, while I stir thy tresses. Gentle maiden, listen to me, for I,
too, know how to speak and I will murmur in thine ear phrases of
tenderness.
MARTA.
Oh, speak! Speak, and I will understand, for my mind floats in a dizzy
maze, as float those dim words of thine.
Speak, mysterious stream.
MAGDALENA.
I am afraid. Air of night, air of perfumes, refresh my burning brow!
Tell me what may inspire me with courage, for my spirit wavers.
THE WATER.
I have crossed the dark hollow of the earth, I have surprised the secret
of its marvellous fecundity, and I know the phenomena of its inner
parts, whence springs the life to be.
My murmur lulls to sleep and awakens. Awaken thou that thou mayst
comprehend it.
THE WIND.
I am the air which the angels, as they traverse space, set in motion
with their mighty wings. I mass up in the west the clouds that offer to
the sun a bed of purple, and I shed at dawn, from the mists that vanish
into drops, a pearly dew over the flowers. My sighs are a balm: open
thine heart and I will flood it with bliss.
MARTA.
When for the first time I heard the murmur of a subterranean stream, not
in vain did I bow myself to the earth, lending it ear. With it there
went a mystery which at last it should be mine to understand.
MAGDALENA.
Sighs of the wind, I know you well: you used to caress me, a dreaming
child, when, spent with weeping, I gave myself up to slumber, and your
soft breathings would seem to me the words of a mother who sings her
child to sleep.
* * * * *
The water ceased from speech for a few moments and made no other noise
than that of water breaking on rocks. The wind was voiceless, too, and
its sound was no other than the sound of blowing leaves. So passed some
time, and then they spoke again, and thus they spoke:
THE WATER.
Since I came filtering, drop by drop, through the vein of gold in an
inexhaustible mine; since I came running along a bed of silver and
leaping, as over pebbles, amid innumerable sapphires and amethysts,
bearing on with me, in lieu of sands, diamonds and rubies, I have joined
myself in mystic union to a spirit of the earth. Enriched by his power
and by the occult virtues of the precious stones and metals, saturated
with whose atoms I come, I can offer thee the utmost reach of thine
ambitions. I have the force of an incantation, the power of a talisman,
and the virtue of the seven stones and the seven colors.
THE WIND.
I come from wandering over the plain, and as the bee that returns to the
hive with its booty of sweet honey, I bring with me woman's sighs,
children's prayers, words of chaste love, and aromas of nard and wild
lilies. I have gathered in my journey no more than fragrances and echoes
of harmonies; my treasures are not material, but they give peace of soul
and the vague happiness of pleasant dreams.
* * * * *
While her sister, drawn on and on as by a spell, was leaning over the
margin of the fountain to hear better, Magdalena was instinctively
moving away, withdrawing from the steep rocks in whose midst bubbled the
spring.
Both had their eyes fixed, the one on the depth of the waters, the other
on the depth of the sky.
And Magdalena exclaimed, seeing the astral splendors overhead: "These
are the halos of the invisible angels who have us in their keeping. "
At the same instant Marta was saying, seeing the reflection of the stars
tremble in the clear waters of the fountain: "These are the particles of
gold which the stream gathers in its mysterious course. "
The fountain and the wind, after a second brief period of silence, spoke
again and said:
THE WATER.
Trust thyself to my current, cast from thee fear as a coarse garment,
and dare to cross the threshold of the unknown. I have divined that thy
soul is of the essence of the higher spirits.
Envy perchance hath thrust thee out of heaven to plunge thee into the
mire of mortal misery. Yet I see in thy darkened brow a seal of pride
that renders thee worthy of us, spirits strong and free. --Come; I am
going to teach thee magic words of such virtue that as thou speakest
them the rocks will open and allure thee with the diamonds that are in
their hearts, as pearls are in the shells which fishermen bring up from
the bottom of the sea. Come! I will give thee treasures that thou mayst
live in joy, and later, when the cell that imprisons thee is shattered,
thy spirit shall be made like unto our own, which are human spirits, and
all in one we shall be the motive force, the vital ray of the universe,
circulating like a fluid through its subterranean arteries.
THE WIND.
Water licks the earth and lives in the mud; I roam the ether and fly in
limitless space. Follow the impulses of thy heart; let thy soul rise
like flame and the azure spirals of smoke. Wretched is he who, having
wings, descends to the depths to seek for gold, while he might mount to
the heights for love and sympathy.
Live hidden as the violet, and I will give thee in a fruitful kiss the
living seed of another, sister flower, and I will rend the clouds that
there may not be lacking a sunbeam to illume thy joy. Live obscure, live
unheeded, and when thy spirit is set free, I will lift it on a rosy
cloud up to the world of light.
* * * * *
Wind and wave were hushed, and there appeared the gnome.
The gnome was like a transparent pigmy, a sort of dwarf all made of
light, as a Will-o-the-wisp; it laughed hugely, but without noise, and
leapt from rock to rock, making one dizzy with its giddy antics.
Sometimes it plunged into the water and kept on shining in the depths
like a precious stone of myriad colors; again it leapt to the surface,
and tossed its feet and its hands, and swung its head from one side to
the other with a rapidity that was little short of prodigious.
Marta had seen the gnome and was following him with a bewildered gaze in
all his extravagant evolutions; and when the diabolical spirit darted
away at last into the craggy wilds of the Moncayo, like a running flame,
shaking out sparks from its hair, she felt an irresistible attraction
and rushed after it in frantic chase.
_Magdalena! _ at the same instant called the breeze, slowly withdrawing;
and Magdalena, moving step by step like a sleep-walker guided in slumber
by a friendly voice, followed the zephyr, which was softly blowing over
the plain.
When all was done, again there was silence in the dusky grove, and the
wind and the water kept on, as ever, with sounds as of murmuring and
sighing.
IV.
Magdalena returned to the hamlet pale and full of amazement. They waited
in vain for Marta all that night.
On the afternoon of the following day, the village girls found a broken
water-jar at the margin of the fountain in the grove. It was Marta's
water-jar; nothing more was ever known of her. Since then the girls go
for water so early that they rise with the sun. A few have assured me
that by night there has been heard, more than once, the weeping of
Marta, whose spirit lives imprisoned in the fountain. I do not know what
credit to give to this last part of the story, for the truth is that
since that night nobody has dared penetrate into the grove to hear it
after the ringing of the _Ave Maria_.
THE MISERERE
Some months since, while visiting the celebrated abbey of Fitero and
entertaining myself by turning over a few volumes in its neglected
library, I discovered, stowed away in a dark corner, two or three old
books of manuscript music, covered with dust and gnawed at the edges by
rats.
It was a _Miserere_.
I do not read music, but it attracts me so that, even though I do not
understand it, I sometimes take up the score of an opera and pore over
its pages for hours, looking at the groups of notes more or less crowded
together, the dashes, the semi-circles, the triangles and that sort of
_et cetera_ called keys, and all this without comprehending an iota or
deriving the slightest profit.
After this foolish habit of mine, I turned over the leaves of the
music-books, and the first thing which attracted my attention was the
fact that, although on the last page stood that Latin word so common in
all compositions, _finis_, the _Miserere_ was not concluded, for the
music did not go beyond the tenth verse of the psalm.
This it was, undoubtedly, that arrested my attention first; but as soon
as I scanned the pages closely, I was still more surprised to observe
that instead of the Italian words commonly used, such as _maestoso_,
_allegro_, _ritardando_, _piu vivo_, _a piacere_, there were lines of
very small German script written in, some of which called for things as
difficult to do as this: "_They crack--crack the bones, and from their
marrow must the cries seem to come forth_;" or this other: "_The chord
shrieketh, yet in unison; the tone thundereth, yet without deafening;
for all that hath sound soundeth, and there is no confusion, and all is
humanity that sobbeth and groaneth_;" or what was certainly the most
original of all, enjoined just under the last verse: "_The notes are
bones covered with flesh; light inextinguishable, the heavens and their
harmony--force! --force and sweetness. _"
"Do you know what this is? " I asked of the old friar who accompanied me,
after I had half translated these lines, which seemed like phrases
scribbled by a lunatic.
My aged guide then told me the legend which I now pass on to you.
I.
Many years ago, on a dark and rainy night, a pilgrim arrived at the
cloister door of this abbey and begged for a little fire to dry his
clothes, a morsel of bread to appease his hunger, and a shelter, however
humble, till the morning, when he would resume his journey at dawn.
The lay-brother of whom this request was made placed his own meagre
repast, his own poor bed and his glowing hearth at the service of the
traveller, to whom, after he had recovered from his exhaustion, were put
the usual questions as to the purpose of his pilgrimage and the goal to
which his steps were bent.
"I am a musician," replied the stranger. "I was born far from here, and
in my own country I enjoyed a day of great renown. In my youth I made of
my art a powerful weapon of seduction and I enkindled with it passions
which drew me on to crime. In my old age I would use for good the
talents which I have employed for evil, redeeming my soul by the very
means that have brought it into danger of the judgment. "
As the enigmatic words of the unknown guest did not seem at all clear
to the lay-brother, whose curiosity was now becoming aroused, he was
moved to press his questions further, obtaining the following response:
"I was ever weeping in the depths of my soul for the sin that I had
committed; but when I tried to pray to God for mercy, I could find no
adequate words to utter my repentance, until one day my eyes chanced to
fall upon a holy book. I opened that book and on one of its pages I met
with a giant cry of true contrition, a psalm of David, commencing:
_Miserere mei, Domine! _ From the instant in which I read those verses my
one thought has been to find a musical expression so magnificent, so
sublime, that it would suffice as a setting for the Royal Psalmist's
mighty hymn of anguish. As yet I have not found it; but if I ever attain
to the point of expressing what I feel in my heart, what I hear
confusedly in my brain, I am sure of writing a _Miserere_ so marvellous
in beauty that the sons of men will have heard no other like unto it, so
desperate in grief that, as its first strains rise to heaven, the
archangels, their eyes flooded with tears, will with me cry out unto the
Lord, beseeching _Mercy_; and the Lord will be merciful to his unhappy
creature. "
The pilgrim, on reaching this point in his narrative, paused for an
instant, and then, heaving a sigh, took up again the thread of his
story. The lay-brother, a few dependents of the abbey, and two or three
shepherds from the friars' farm--these who formed the circle about the
hearth--listened to him in the deepest silence.
"After travelling over all Germany," he continued, "all Italy and the
greater part of this country whose sacred music is classic, I have not
yet heard a _Miserere_ that can give me my inspiration, not one,--not
one, and I have heard so many that I may say I have heard them all. "
"All? " broke in one of the upper shepherds. "But you have not heard,
have you, the _Miserere_ of the Mountain? "
[Illustration: A MONASTERY COURT]
"The _Miserere_ of the Mountain! " exclaimed the musician with an air of
amazement. "What _Miserere_ is that? "
"Didn't I say so? " muttered the peasant under his breath, and then went
on in a mysterious tone: "This _Miserere_, which is only heard, as
chance may fall, by those who, like myself, wander day and night
following the sheep through the thickets and over the rocky hills, is,
in fact, a tradition, a very old tradition; yet incredible as it seems,
it is no less true.
"The case is that, in the most rugged part of yonder mountain chains
which bound the horizon of this valley in whose bosom the abbey stands,
there used to be, many years ago--why do I say many years! --many
centuries, rather, a famous monastery. This monastery, it seems, was
built at his own cost by a lord with the wealth that he would naturally
have left to his son, whom on his death-bed he disinherited, as a
punishment for the young profligate's evil deeds.
"So far, all had gone well; but the trouble is that this son, who, from
what will be seen further on, must have been the skin of the Devil, if
not the Devil himself, learning that his goods were in the possession of
the monks, and that his castle had been transformed into a church,
gathered together a crew of banditti, comrades of his in the ruffian
life he had taken up on forsaking his father's house, and one Holy
Thursday night, when the monks would be in the choir, and at the very
hour and minute when they would be just beginning or would have just
begun the _Miserere_, these outlaws set fire to the monastery, sacked
the church, and willy-nilly, left not a single monk alive.
"After this atrocity, the banditti and their leader went away, whither
no one knows, perhaps to hell.
"The flames reduced the monastery to ashes; of the church there still
remain standing the ruins upon the hollow crag whence springs the
cascade that after leaping down from rock to rock, forms the rill which
comes to bathe the walls of this abbey. "
"But,"--interrupted the musician impatiently, "the _Miserere_? "
"Wait a while," said the shepherd with great deliberation, "and all will
be told in proper order. " Vouchsafing no further reply, he continued his
story:
"The people of all the country round about were shocked at the crime; it
was related with horror in the long winter evenings, handed down from
father to son, and from son to grandson; but what tends most of all to
keep it fresh in memory is that every year, on the anniversary of that
night when the church was burned, lights are seen shining out through
its shattered windows, and there is heard a sort of strange music, with
mournful, terrible chants that are borne at intervals upon the gusts of
wind.
"The singers are the monks, who, slain perchance before they were ready
to present themselves pure of all sin at the Judgment Seat of God, still
come from Purgatory to implore His mercy, chanting the _Miserere_. "
The group about the fire exchanged glances of incredulity; but the
pilgrim, who had seemed to be vitally interested in the recital of the
tradition, inquired eagerly of the narrator:
"And do you say that this marvel still takes place? "
"It will begin without fail in less than three hours, for the precise
reason that this is Holy Thursday night, and the abbey clock has just
struck eight. "
"How far is the monastery from here? "
"Barely a league and a half,--but what are you doing? " "Whither would
you go on a night like this? " "Have you fallen from the shelter of God's
hand? " exclaimed one and another as they saw the pilgrim, rising from
his bench and taking his staff, leave the fireplace and move toward the
door.
"Whither am I going? To hear this miraculous music, to hear the great,
the true _Miserere_, the _Miserere_ of those who return to the world
after death, those who know what it is to die in sin. "
And so saying, he disappeared from the sight of the amazed lay-brother
and the no less astonished shepherds.
The wind shrilled without and shook the doors as if a powerful hand were
striving to tear them from their hinges; the rain fell in torrents,
beating against the window-panes, and from time to time a
lightning-flash lit up for an instant all the horizon that could be seen
from there.
After the first moment of bewilderment had passed the lay-brother
exclaimed:
"He is mad. "
"He is mad," repeated the shepherds and, replenishing the fire, they
gathered closely around the hearth.
II.
After walking for an hour or two, the mysterious personage, to whom they
had given the degree of madman in the abbey, by following upstream the
course of the rill which the story-telling shepherd had pointed out to
him, reached the spot where rose the blackened, impressive ruins of the
monastery.
The rain had ceased; the clouds were drifting in long, dark masses, from
between whose shifting shapes there glided from time to time a furtive
ray of doubtful, pallid light; and one would say that the wind, as it
lashed the strong buttresses and swept with widening wings through the
deserted cloisters, was groaning in its flight. Yet nothing
supernatural, nothing extraordinary occurred to strike the imagination.
To him who had slept more nights than one without other shelter than
the ruins of an abandoned tower or a lonely castle,--to him who in his
far pilgrimage had encountered hundreds on hundreds of storms, all those
noises were familiar.
The drops of water which filtered through the cracks of the broken
arches and fell upon the stones below with a measured sound like the
ticking of a great clock; the hoots of the owl, screeching from his
refuge beneath the stone nimbus of an image still standing in a niche of
the wall; the stir of the reptiles that, wakened from their lethargy by
the tempest, thrust out their misshapen heads from the holes where they
sleep, or crawled among the wild mustard and the briers that grow at the
foot of the altar, rooted in the crevices between the sepulchral slabs
that form the pavement of the church,--all those strange and mysterious
murmurs of the open country, of solitude and of night, came perceptibly
to the ear of the pilgrim who, seated on the mutilated statue of a tomb,
was anxiously awaiting the hour when the marvellous event should take
place.
But still the time went by and nothing more was heard; those myriad
confused noises kept on sounding and combining with one another in a
thousand different ways, but themselves always the same.
"Ah, they have played a joke on me! " thought the musician; but at that
moment he heard a new sound, a sound inexplicable in such a place, like
that made by a clock a few seconds before striking the hour, a sound of
whirring wheels, of stretching cords, of machinery secretly setting to
work and making ready to use its mysterious mechanic vitality, and a
bell rang out the hour--one, two, three, up to eleven.
In the ruined church there was no bell nor clock, not even a bell-tower.
The last peal, lessening from echo to echo, had not yet died away; the
vibration was still perceptible, trembling in the air, when the granite
canopies which overhung the sculptures, the marble steps of the altars,
the hewn stones of the ogee arches, the fretted screens of the choir,
the festoons of trefoil on the cornices, the black buttresses of the
walls, the pavements, the vaulted ceiling, the entire church, began to
be lighted by no visible agency, nor was there in sight torch or lamp or
candle to shed abroad that unwonted radiance.
It suggested a skeleton over whose yellow bones spreads that phosphoric
gas which burns and puts forth fumes in the darkness like a blue light,
restless and terrible.
Everything seemed to be in motion, but with that galvanic movement which
lends to death contractions that parody life, instantaneous movement
more horrible even than the inertia of the corpse which stirs with that
unknown force. Stones reunited themselves to stones; the altar, whose
broken fragments had before been scattered about in disorder, rose
intact, as if the artificer had just given it the last blow of the
chisel, and simultaneously with the altar rose the ruined chapels, the
shattered capitals and the great, crumbled series of arches which,
crossing and interlacing at caprice, formed with their columns a
labyrinth of porphyry.
As soon as the church was rebuilt there grew upon the hearing a distant
harmony which might have been taken for the wailing of the wind, but
which was a chorus of far-off, solemn voices, that seemed to come from
the depths of the earth and rise to the surface little by little,
continually growing more distinct.
The daring pilgrim began to fear, but with his fear still battled his
passion for the bygone and the marvellous, and made valiant by the
strength of his desire, he left the tomb on which he was resting, leaned
over the brink of the abyss, amid whose rocks leapt the torrent, rushing
over the precipice with an incessant and terrifying thunder, and his
hair rose with horror.
Ill wrapped in the tatters of their habits, their cowls, beneath whose
folds the dark eye-cavities of the skulls contrasted with the fleshless
jaws and the white teeth, drawn forward over their heads, he saw the
skeletons of the monks who had been thrown from the battlements of the
church down that headlong steep, emerging from the depth of the waters
and, clutching with the long fingers of their bony hands at the fissures
in the rocks, clamber over them up to the brink, chanting in low,
sepulchral voice, but with a heartrending intonation of anguish, the
first verse of David's Psalm:
_Miserere mei, Domine, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam! _
When the monks reached the peristyle of the church they arranged
themselves in two rows and, entering, went in procession to the choir
where they knelt in their places, while with voices louder and yet more
solemn they continued to intone the verses of the psalm. The music
sounded in accompaniment to their voices; that music was the distant
roll of the thunder which sank into murmurs as the tempest subsided; it
was the blowing of the wind which groaned in the hollow of the mountain;
it was the monotonous splash of the cascade falling down the crag; and
the drip of the filtered waterdrops, and the hoot of the hidden owl,
and the gliding sound of the uneasy reptiles. All this was in the
music, and something more that cannot be expressed nor scarcely
conceived,--something more that seemed like the echo of an organ
accompanying the verses of the Royal Psalmist's giant hymn of
contrition, with notes and chords as tremendous as the awful words.
The service proceeded; the musician who witnessed it, absorbed and
terrified as he was, believed himself to be outside the actual world,
living in that fantastic region of dreams where all things reclothe
themselves in phenomenal and alien forms.
A terrible shock came to rouse him from that stupor which was clogging
all the faculties of his mind. His nerves sprang to the thrill of a
mighty emotion, his teeth chattered, shaking with a tremor he could in
no wise repress, and the chill penetrated to the marrow of his bones.
At that instant the monks were intoning those dread words of the
_Miserere_:
_In iniquitatibus conceptus sum; et in peccatis concepit me mater mea. _
As the thunder of this verse went rolling in sonorous echo from vault to
vault, there arose a terrible outcry which seemed a wail of agony
breaking from all humanity for its sense of sin, a horrible wail made up
of all the laments of the unfortunate, all the shrieks of despair, all
the blasphemies of the impious, a monstrous consonance, fit interpreter
of those who live in sin and were conceived in iniquity.
The chant went on, now sad and deep, now like a sunbeam which breaks
through the dark storm cloud, succeeding the lightning-flash of terror
by another flash of joy, until by grace of a sudden transformation the
church stood resplendent, bathed in celestial light; the skeletons of
the monks were again clothed in their flesh, about their brows shone
lustrous aureoles, the roof vanished and above was seen heaven like a
sea of light open to the gaze of the righteous.
Seraphim, archangels, angels and all the heavenly hierarchy accompanied
with a hymn of glory this verse, which then rose sublime to the throne
of the Lord like the rhythmical notes of a trumpet, like a colossal
spiral of sonorous incense:
_Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam, et exultabunt ossa humiliata. _
At this point the dazzling brightness blinded the pilgrim's eyes, his
temples throbbed violently, there was a roaring in his ears, he fell
senseless to the ground and heard no more.
III.
On the following day, the peaceful monks of the Abbey of Fitero, to whom
the lay-brother had given an account of the strange visit of the night
before, saw the unknown pilgrim, pallid and like a man beside himself,
entering their doors.
"Did you hear the _Miserere_ at last? " the lay-brother asked him with a
certain tinge of irony, slyly casting a glance of intelligence at his
superiors.
"Yes," replied the musician.
"And how did you like it? "
"I am going to write it. Give me a refuge in your house," he continued,
addressing the abbot, "a refuge and bread for a few months, and I will
leave you an immortal work of art, a _Miserere_ which shall blot out my
sins from the sight of God, eternize my memory, and with it the memory
of this abbey. "
The monks, out of curiosity, counselled the abbot to grant his request;
the abbot, for charity, though he believed the man a lunatic, finally
consented; and the musician, thus installed in the monastery, began his
work.
Night and day he labored with unremitting zeal. In the midst of his task
he would pause and appear to be listening to something which sounded in
his imagination; his pupils would dilate and he would spring from his
seat exclaiming: "That is it; so; so; no doubt about it--so! " And he
would go on writing notes with a feverish haste which more than once
made those who kept him under secret observation wonder.
He wrote the first verses, and those following to about the middle of
the Psalm; but when he had written the last verse that he had heard upon
the mountain, it was impossible for him to proceed.
He made one, two, one hundred, two hundred rough drafts; all in vain.
His music was not like the music already written. Sleep fled from his
eyelids, he lost his appetite, fever seized upon his brain, he went mad,
and died, at last, without being able to finish the _Miserere_, which,
as a curiosity, the monks treasured till his death, and even yet
preserve in the archives of the abbey.
* * * * *
When the old man had made an end of telling me this story, I could not
refrain from turning my eyes again to the dusty, ancient manuscript of
the _Miserere_, which still lay upon one of the tables.
_In peccatis concepit me mater mea. _
These were the words on the page before me, seeming to mock me with
their notes, their keys and their scrawls unintelligible to lay-brothers
in music.
I would have given a world to be able to read them.
Who knows if they may not be mere nonsense?
STRANGE
I.
We were taking tea in the house of a lady who is a friend of mine, and
the talk turned upon the social dramas which develop from act to act,
unheeded of the world,--dramas with whose leading characters we have
been acquainted, if indeed we have not ourselves played a part in one or
another of their scenes.
Among numerous other persons whom I do not remember, there was a girl of
the blonde type, fair and slender, who, if she had had a lapful of
flowers in place of the blear-eyed little dog that growled half hidden
in the wide folds of her skirt, might have been compared without
exaggeration to Shakespeare's Ophelia.
So pure was the white of her forehead, the azure of her eyes.
Conversing with the fair girl was a young man, who stood with one hand
resting on the _causeuse_ of blue velvet where she sat and the other
caressing the precious trinkets of his gold chain. In his affected
pronunciation a slight foreign accent was noticeable, despite the fact
that his look and bearing were as Spanish as those of the Cid or
Bernardo del Carpio.
A gentleman of mature years, tall, thin, of distinguished and courteous
manners, who seemed seriously preoccupied with the operation of
sweetening to the exact point his cup of tea, completed the group
nearest the fireplace, in whose warmth I sat down to tell this human
history. It seems like a fable, but it is not; one could make a book of
it; I have done so several times in imagination. Nevertheless, I will
tell it in few words, since for him to whom it is given to comprehend
it, these few will be more than enough.
Andres, for so the hero of my tale was called, was one of those men
whose hearts abound with feeling for which they have found no outlet,
and with love that has no object on which to spend itself.
An orphan almost from his birth, he was left in the care of relatives. I
do not know the details of his childhood; I can only say that whenever
it was mentioned, his face would cloud and he would exclaim, with a
sigh: "That is over now. "
We all say the same, sadly recalling bygone joys. But was this the
explanation of his words? I repeat that I do not know; but I suspect
not.
As soon as he was grown, he launched out into the world. Though I would
not calumniate it, the fact remains that the world for the poor, and
especially for a certain class of the poor, is not a Paradise nor
anything like it. Andres was, as the saying goes, one of those people
who rise, most days, with nothing to look forward to but twenty-four
hours more. Judge then, my readers, what would be the state of a spirit
all idealism, all love, put to the no less difficult than prosaic task
of seeking our daily bread.
Yet sometimes, sitting on the edge of his lonely bed, his elbows on his
knees and his head between his hands, he would exclaim:
"If I only had something to love with all my heart! A wife, a horse,
even a dog! "
As he had not a copper to spare, it was not possible for him to get
anything,--not any object on which to satisfy his hunger to love. This
waxed to such a point that in its acute attacks he came to feel an
affection for the wretched closet where he slept, the scanty furniture
that met his needs, his very landlady, that patron saint who was his
evil genius.
This is not at all surprising; Josephus relates that during the siege of
Jerusalem hunger reached such a point that mothers devoured their
children.
There came a day when he was able to secure a very small living wage.
The evening of that day, when he was returning to his boarding-house, on
crossing a narrow street he heard a sort of wail, like the crying of a
new-born child. He had taken but a few steps further after hearing those
doleful sounds, when he exclaimed, stopping short:
"What the deuce is that? "
And he touched with the toe of his shoe a soft object that moved, and
fell again to mewling and whining. It was one of those new-born puppies
that people cast out to the mercy of the rubbish heap.
"Providence has placed it in my path," said Andres to himself, picking
it up and wrapping it in the skirt of his coat; and he carried it to his
miserable lodging.
"What now! " grumbled the landlady on seeing him enter with the puppy;
"all we needed was this fresh nuisance in the house. Take it back this
minute to where you found it, or else look up new quarters for the two
of you to-morrow. "
The next day Andres was turned out of the house, and in the course of
two or three months he left some two hundred more, for the same reason.
But for all these inconveniences, and a thousand others which it is
impossible to detail, he was richly compensated by the intelligence and
affection of the dog, with whom he diverted himself as with a person in
his long hours of solitude and _ennui_. They ate together, they enjoyed
their siestas together, and together they would take a turn in the
Ronda, or go to walk along the Carabanchel road.
Evening gatherings, fashionable promenades, theatres, cafes, places
where dogs are not allowed or would be in the way, were forbidden to our
hero, who sometimes exclaimed from the fulness of his heart, as he
responded to the caresses of his very own:
"Doggy mine! you can do everything but talk. "
II.
It would be wearisome to explain how, but it came to pass that Andres
somewhat bettered his position, and seeing that he had money in hand, he
said:
"If I only had a wife! But having a wife is very expensive. Men like me,
before choosing a bride, should have a paradise to offer her, and a
paradise in Madrid is worth as much as a man's eye. --If I could buy a
horse! A horse! There is no animal more noble or more beautiful. How he
would love my dog! what merry times they would have with each other, and
I with both! "
One afternoon he went to the bullfight, and before the entertainment
began, he unpremeditatedly strolled out into the court-yard, where the
horses who had to take part in the contest were waiting, already
saddled.
I do not know whether my readers have ever had the curiosity to go and
see them. For myself, without claiming to be as tender-hearted as the
protagonist of this tale, I can assure you that I have often had a mind
to buy them all. So great was the pity that I felt for them.
Andres could not fail to experience a most grievous sensation on finding
himself in this place. Some of the horses, with drooping heads,
creatures all skin and bone, their manes rough and dirty, were standing
motionless, awaiting their turn, as if they had a foreboding of the
dreadful death which would put an end, within a few hours, to that
miserable life of theirs; others, half blind, were sniffing about for
the rack and eating, or, tearing the ground with the hoof and snorting
wildly, were struggling to pull themselves loose and flee from the peril
which they scented with horror. And all those animals had been young and
beautiful. What aristocratic hands had patted their necks! What
affectionate voices had urged on their speed! And now all was blows from
one side, oaths from the other, and death at last, death in terrible
agony accompanied by jests and hisses!
"If they think at all," said Andres, "what will these animals think at
the core of their dim intelligence, when in the middle of the ring they
bite their tongues and expire with a frightful spasm? Truly the
ingratitude of man is sometimes inconceivable. "
He was startled out of those reflections by the rough voice of one of
the _picadores_, who was swearing and cursing while he tested the legs
of one of the horses, striking the butt-end of his lance against the
wall. The horse did not seem entirely contemptible; apparently it was
crazy or had some mortal disease.
Andres thought of buying it. As for the cost, it ought not to cost much;
but how about its keep? The _picador_ plunged the spur into its flank
and started to ride toward the gate of the ring; our youth wavered for
an instant and then stopped him. How he did it, I do not know; but in
less than a quarter of an hour he had induced the horseman to leave the
beast behind, had hunted up the contractor, made his bargain for the
horse and taken it away.
I suppose it is superfluous to say that on that afternoon he did not see
the bullfight.
He led off the horse in triumph; but the horse, in fact, was or appeared
to be crazy.
"Use plenty of stick on him," said one authority.
"Don't give him much to eat," advised a blacksmith.
The horse was still unruly. "Bah! " at last exclaimed his owner. "Let him
eat what he likes and do as he chooses. " The horse was not old, and now
began to fatten and grow more docile. It is true that he still had his
whims, and that nobody but Andres could mount him; but his master said:
"So I shall not be teased to lend him; and as for his oddities, each of
us will get accustomed to those of the other. " And they came to such a
good understanding that Andres knew when the horse felt like doing a
thing and when not, and as for the horse, the voice of his master was
enough to make him take a leap, stand still, or set off at a gallop,
swift as a hurricane.
Of the dog we need say nothing; he came to be so friendly with his new
comrade that neither could go out, even to drink, without the other.
From this time on, when Andres set off at a gallop in a cloud of dust on
the Carabanchel road, with his dog frisking along beside him, dashing
ahead to turn back and hunt for him, or letting him pass to scamper up
and overtake him, he believed himself the happiest of men.
Time went by; our young man was rich, or almost rich.
One day, after a long gallop, he alighted, tired out, near a tree and
stretched himself in its shade.
It was a spring day, bright and blue,--one of those days in which men
breathe voluptuously the warm air impregnated with passion, in which the
blowing of the wind comes to the ear like distant harmonies, in which
the clear horizons are outlined in gold, and there float before our eyes
shining motes of I know not what, motes like transparent forms that
follow us, encompass us and intoxicate us with sadness and with
happiness at once.
"I dearly love these two beings," exclaimed Andres as he reclined there
stroking his dog with one hand and with the other giving to his horse a
handful of grass, "dearly; but yet there is a vacancy in my heart which
has never been filled; I still have it in me to lavish a love greater,
holier, purer. Decidedly I need a wife. "
At that moment there passed along the road a young girl with a water-jar
upon her head.
Andres was not thirsty, but yet he begged a drink of water. The girl
stopped to offer it to him, and did so with such gentle grace that our
youth comprehended perfectly one of the most patriarchal episodes of the
Bible.
"What is your name? " he asked when he had drunk.
"Placida. "
"And what do you do with yourself? "
"I am the daughter of a merchant who died ruined and persecuted for his
political opinions. After his death, my mother and I retired to a
hamlet, where we get on very badly with a pension of three _reales_
[fifteen cents a day] for all our living. My mother is ill, and
everything comes on me. "
"And why haven't you married? "
"I don't know; in the village they say that I am good for nothing about
work, that I am very delicate, very much the _senorita_. "
The girl, with a courteous good-bye, moved away.
While she was still in sight, Andres watched her retreating form in
silence; when she was lost to view, he said with the satisfaction of one
who solves a problem:
"This is the woman for me. "
He mounted his horse and, followed by his dog, took his way to the
village. He promptly made the acquaintance of the mother and, almost as
soon, utterly lost his heart to the daughter. When at the end of a few
months she was left an orphan, he married her, a man in love with his
wife, which is one of the greatest blessings life affords.
To marry, and to set up housekeeping in a country mansion situated in
one of the most picturesque spots of his native land, was the work of a
few days.
When he saw himself in this residence, rich, with his wife, his dog and
his horse, he had to rub his eyes; he thought he must be dreaming. So
happy, so perfectly happy was poor Andres.
IV.
So he lived for a period of several years, in divine bliss, when one
afternoon he thought he noticed that some one was prowling about his
house, and later he surprised a man fitting his eye to the key-hole of
one of the garden-doors.
"There are robbers about," he said. And he determined to inform the
nearest town, where there was a brace of civil guards.
"Where are you going? " asked his wife.
"To the town. "
"What for? "
"To inform the civil guards that I suspect some one is prowling about
our house. "
When his wife heard that, she paled slightly. He, giving her a kiss,
continued:
"I am going on foot, for it is not far. Good-bye till I come again. "
On passing through the court-yard to reach the gate, he stepped into the
stable a moment, looked his horse over and, patting him, said:
"Good-bye, old fellow, good-bye; to-day you shall rest, for yesterday I
put you to your paces. "
The horse, who was accustomed to go out every day with his master,
whinnied sadly on hearing him depart.
When Andres was about to leave the premises, the dog began to frolic for
joy.
"No, you are not coming with me," he exclaimed, speaking as if the dog
would understand. "When you go to the town, you bark at the boys and
chase the hens, and some fine day somebody will give you such a blow
that you will have no spirit left to go back for another. Don't let him
out until I am gone," he continued, addressing a servant, and he shut
the gate that the dog might not follow him.
He had taken the turn in the road before he ceased hearing the prolonged
howls.
He went to the town, despatched his business, had a pleasant half-hour
with the _alcalde_, chatting of this and that, and returned home. On
reaching the neighborhood of his estate, he was greatly surprised that
the dog did not come out to welcome him, the dog that on other
occasions, as if aware of his movements, would meet him half way down
the road. --He whistles--no response! He enters the outer gates. Not a
servant! "What the deuce is the meaning of this? " he exclaims
disquieted, and proceeds to the house.
Arrived, he enters the court. The first sight that meets his eyes is the
dog stretched in a pool of blood at the stable door. A few pieces of
cloth scattered over the ground, some threads still hanging from his
jaws, covered with crimson foam, witness that he made a good defence and
that in the defence he had received the wounds so thick upon him.
Andres calls him by his name; the dying dog half opens his eyes, tries
in vain to get upon his feet, feebly wags his tail, licks the hand that
caresses him, and dies.
"My horse! where is my horse? " then exclaimed Andres with a voice hoarse
and stifled by emotion, as he saw the stall empty and the halter broken.
He dashes thence like a madman; he calls his wife,--no answer; his
servants,--nothing. Beside himself, he rushes over the whole
house,--vacant, abandoned. Again he goes out to the street, sees the
hoof-marks of his horse, his own,--no doubt of it,--for he knows, or
thinks he knows, even the tracks of his cherished animal.
"I understand it all," he says, as if illumined by a sudden idea. "The
robbers have taken advantage of my absence to accomplish their design,
and they are carrying off my wife to exact of me for her ransom a great
sum of money. Money! my blood, my soul's salvation, would I give for
her. --My poor dog! " he exclaims, returning to look at him, and then he
starts forth running like a man out of his wits, following the direction
of the hoof-prints.
And he ran, he ran without resting for an instant after those tracks;
one hour, two, three.
"Have you seen," he asked of everybody, "a man on horseback with a woman
on the crupper? "
"Yes," they answered.
"Which way did they go? "
"That way. "
And Andres would gather fresh force and keep on running.
The night commenced to fall. To the same question he had ever the same
reply; and he ran, and he ran, until at last he discerned a village, and
near the entrance, at the foot of a cross which marked the point where
the road divided into two, he saw a group of people, laborers, old men,
boys, who were regarding with curiosity something that he could not
distinguish.
He arrives, puts the same question as ever, and one of the group says:
"Yes, we have had sight of that pair; look! for a clearer trace see the
horse that carried them, who fell here ruptured with running. "
Andres turns his eyes in the direction they indicated, and indeed sees
his horse, his beloved horse, which some men of the place were preparing
to flay for the sake of its hide. He could scarcely resist his grief,
but recovering himself, he turned again to the thought of his wife.
