No More Learning

Then it was I who gazed at him with astonished eyes and remained some
minutes silent before speaking a single word.

We returned to the city, and that day went by, and still more days,
without my being able entirely to throw off the impression which news so
unexpected had made upon me. The more variations I played upon it, still
the love story of the brunette had no conclusion, for what I had
invented before was not conceivable, since I could not make natural a
picture of happiness and mirth with a cemetery for a background.

One afternoon, determined to resolve my doubts, I pleaded a slight
indisposition as an excuse for not accompanying my friend in our
accustomed rambles, and I started out alone for the inn. When I had left
behind me the Macarena gate and its picturesque suburb and had begun to
cross by a narrow footpath that labyrinth of orchards, already I seemed
to perceive something strange in my surroundings.

Whether it was because the afternoon had become a little clouded, or
that the tendency of my mind inclined me to melancholy ideas, the fact
is that I felt cold and sad, and noticed a silence about me which
reminded me of utter solitude, as sleep reminds us of death.

I walked a little without stopping, crossed the orchards to shorten the
distance and came out into the street of San Lazaro, whence already may
be seen in the distance the convent of San Jeronimo.

Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems to me that along the road where
pass the dead even the trees and the vegetation come to take on a
different color. I fancied there, at least, that warm and harmonious
tones were lacking,--no freshness in the groves, no atmosphere in space,
no light upon the earth. The landscape was monotonous; its figures black
and isolated.

Here was a hearse moving slowly, covered with mourning draperies,
raising no dust, cracking no whip, without shout to the horses, almost
without movement; further on a man of ill countenance with a spade on
his shoulder, or a priest in long, dark robe, or a group of old men
poorly clad and of repugnant aspect, with extinguished candles in their
hands, who were returning in silence, with lowered heads, and eyes fixed
on the ground. I believed myself transported I know not whither; for all
that I saw reminded me of a landscape whose contours were the same as
ever, but whose colors had been, as it were, blotted out, there being
left of them merely a vague half-tone. The impression that I experienced
can be compared only to that which we feel in those dreams where, by an
inexplicable phenomenon, things are and are not at one and the same
time, and the places in which we believe ourselves to be, partially
transform themselves in an eccentric and impossible fashion.

At last I reached the roadside inn; I recognized it more by the name,
which it still keeps printed in large letters on one of its walls, than
by anything else; for as to the little house itself, it seemed to me
that it had changed even its outlines and its proportions. At once I saw
that it was much more ruinous, that it was forsaken and sad. The shadow
of the cemetery, which rose just beyond it, appeared to fall over it,
enveloping it in a dark covering, like the cloth laid on the face of the
dead. The innkeeper was there, utterly alone. I recognized him as the
same of ten years back; I recognized him I know not why, for in this
time he had aged even to the point of appearing a decrepit old man on
the edge of the grave, whereas when I first saw him he seemed fifty,
abounding in health, satisfaction and vitality.

I sat down at one of the deserted tables; I asked for something to
drink, which the innkeeper brought me, and from one detached remark
after another we fell finally into continuous conversation relating to
that love story of whose last chapter I was still in ignorance, although
I had several times attempted to divine it.

"Everything," said the poor old man to me, "everything seems to have
conspired against us since the period in which you remember me. You know
how it was with us. Amparo was the delight of our eyes; she had been
reared here from her birth; she was the joy of the house; never could
she miss her own parents, for I loved her like a father; my son had
loved her, too, from his boyhood, first as a brother, afterwards with a
devotion greater yet. They were on the eve of marriage; I was ready to
make over to them the better part of my modest property, for with the
profits of my business it seemed to me that I should have more than
enough to live at ease, when some evil spirit--I know not what--envied
our happiness and destroyed it in a moment. In the first place the
whisper went about that they were going to locate a cemetery on this
side of San Jeronimo; some said close by, others further off, and while
we were all uneasy and anxious, fearing that they might carry out this
project, a greater and more certain trouble fell upon us.

"One day two gentlemen arrived here in a carriage; they put to me
thousands of questions about Amparo whom I had taken in her babyhood
from the foundling hospital; they asked to see the swaddling-clothes
which she wore when she was abandoned and which I had kept, with the
final result that Amparo proved to be the daughter of a very rich
gentleman, who went to law to recover her from us and persisted until he
gained his end. I do not wish even to call to memory the day when they
took her away. She wept like a Magdalen, my son would have made a mad
resistance, I was like one dumfounded, not understanding what was
happening to me. She went. Rather, she did not go, for she loved us too
much to go of her own accord, but they carried her off, and a curse fell
upon the house. My son, after an attack of terrible despair, fell into a
sort of lethargy. I do not know how to express my own state of mind. I
believed that for me the world had ended.

"While these things were going on, they began to lay out the cemetery.
The village-folk fled from this neighborhood. There were no more
festivals, songs and music; all the merriment of this countryside was
over, even as the joy of our souls.

"And Amparo was no happier than we; bred here in the open air, in the
bustle and animation of the inn, brought up to be joyous in poverty,
they plucked her from this life, and she withered, as wither the flowers
gathered in a garden to adorn a drawing-room. My son made incredible
efforts to see her again, to have a moment's speech with her. All was
in vain; her family did not wish it. At last he saw her, but he saw her
dead. The funeral train passed by here. I knew nothing about it and I
cannot tell why I fell to weeping when I saw her hearse. The heart,
loyal to love, clamored to me:

"'She is young like Amparo; she, too, must be beautiful; who knows if it
may not be herself? ' And it was. My son followed the train, entered the
enclosure and, when the coffin was opened, uttered a cry and fell
senseless to the ground; and so they brought him back to me. Afterwards
he went mad, and is now a lunatic. "

When the poor old man had reached this point in his narrative, there
entered the inn two gravediggers of sinister bearing and repellent look.
Having finished their task, they had come to take a drink "_to the
health of the dead_," as one of them said, accompanying the jest with a
silly leer. The innkeeper brushed off a tear with the back of his hand
and went to serve them.

Night was beginning to fall, a dark night and most gloomy. The sky was
black and so was the landscape. From the boughs of the trees still hung,
half rotted, the ropes of the swing swaying in the wind; it reminded me
of a gallows-rope quivering yet after the body of the felon had been
taken down. Only confused noises reached my ears,--the distant barking
of dogs on guard in the orchards; the creaking of a water-wheel,
prolonged, melancholy and shrill like a lament; disconnected, horrible
words of the gravediggers who were plotting in low tones a sacrilegious
robbery--I know not what; my memory has kept of this fantastic scene of
desolation as of that other scene of merriment only a confused
recollection that I cannot reproduce. What I still seem to hear as I
heard it then is this refrain intoned in a plaintive voice, suddenly
disturbing the silence that reigned about:

"The coach of the dead was grand
As it passed our humble door,
But from it beckoned a pallid hand,
And I saw my love once more. "

It was the poor boy, who was locked up in one of the rooms of the inn,
where he passed his days in motionless contemplation of the picture of
his beloved, without speaking a word, scarcely eating, never weeping,
hardly opening his lips save to sing this simple, tender verse enclosing
a poem of sorrow that I then learned to decipher.




ALL SOULS' NIGHT


The gloaming of a misty, melancholy autumn day is succeeded by a cold,
dark night. For several hours now, the continuous stir of the town seems
to have ceased.

Some near, others far, some with grave and measured beat and others with
a quick and tremulous vibration, the bells are swinging in their towers,
flinging out upon the air their metallic notes which float and mingle,
lessen and die away to yield place to a new rain of sounds pouring
continually from the deep brazen throats as from a spring of
inexhaustible harmonies.

It is said that joy is contagious, but I believe that sadness is much
more so. There are melancholy spirits who succeed in eluding the
intoxication of delight that our great popular festivals carry in their
atmosphere. It is hard to find one who is able to bear unaffected the
icy touch of the atmosphere of sorrow, if this comes to seek us in the
privacy of our own fireside,--comes in the wearisome, slow vibration of
the bell that is like a grieving voice, uttering its tale of troubles at
one's very ear.

I cannot hear the bells, even when they ring out merry peals as for a
festival, without having my soul possessed by a sentiment of
inexplicable and involuntary sadness. In the great capitals, by good or
evil hap, the confused murmur of the multitude which beats on every
sense, full of the noisy giddiness of action, ordinarily drowns the
clamor of the bells to such a degree as to make one believe it does not
exist. To me at least it seems that on All Souls' Night, the only night
of the year when I hear them, the towers of the Madrid

[Illustration: A RUINED CLOISTER]

churches, thanks to a miracle, regain their voices, breaking for a few
hours only their long silence. Whether it be that my imagination,
predisposed to melancholy thoughts, aids in producing this effect, or
that the novelty of the sound strikes me the more profoundly; always
when I perceive, borne on the wind, the separate notes of this harmony,
a strange phenomenon takes place in my senses. I think that I
distinguish the different voices of the bells one from another; I think
that each of them has its own tone and expresses a special feeling; I
think, in fine, that after lending for some time profound attention to
the discordant combination of sounds, deep or shrill, dull or silvery,
which they breathe forth, I succeed in surprising mysterious words that
palpitate upon the air enveloped in its prolonged vibrations.

These words without connection, without meaning, that float in space
accompanied by sighs scarcely perceptible and by long sobs, commence to
reunite one with another as the vague ideas of a dream combine on
waking, and reunited, they form an immense, dolorous poem, in which each
bell chants its strophe, and all together interpret by means of symbolic
sounds the dumb thought that seethes in the brain of those who harken,
plunged in profound meditation.

A bell of hollow, deafening tone, swinging heavily in its lofty tower
with ceremonial slowness, that seems to have a mathematical rhythm and
moves by some perfect mechanism, says in peals punctiliously adjusted to
the ritual:

"I am the empty sound that melts away without having made vibrate a
single one of the infinite chords of feeling in the heart of man. I bear
in my echoes neither sobs nor sighs. I perform correctly my part in the
lugubrious, aerial symphony of grief, my sonorous strokes never falling
behind nor going in advance by a single second. I am the bell of the
parish church, the official bell of funeral honors. My voice proclaims
the mourning of etiquette; my voice laments from the heights of the
belfry announcing to the neighborhood the fatality, groan by groan; my
voice, which sorrows at so much a sob, releases the rich heir and the
young widow from other cares than those of the formalities attending the
reading of the will, and the orders for elegant mourning.

"At my peal the artisans of death come out of their atrophy: the
carpenter hastens to adorn with gold braid the most comfortable of his
coffins; the marble worker strikes in his chisel seeking a new allegory
for the ostentatious sepulchre; even the horses of the grotesque hearse,
theatre of the last triumph of vanity, proudly shake their antique tufts
of flywing-colored plumes, while the pillars of the church are wound
about with black baize, the traditional catafalque is set up under the
dome, and the choir-master rehearses on the violin a new _Dies Irae_ for
the last mass of the _Requiem_.

"I am the grief of tinsel tears, of paper flowers and of distichs in
letters of gold.

"To-day it is my duty to commemorate my fellow-countrymen, the
illustrious dead for whom I mourn officially, and on doing this with all
the pomp and all the noise befitting their social position, my only
regret is that I cannot utter one by one their names, titles and
decorations; perchance this new formula would be a comfort to their
families. "

"When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its
distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away,
is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a
little clapper-bell. "

"I am," it says, "the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows
of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of
the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon
the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the
storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in
wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.

"I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the
groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on
the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.

"On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and
my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden
graves--an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as
it waves the tall grass that covers them.

"I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the
fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron
hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.

"To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life
unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat
and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in
earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which,
perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but
amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the
angels sow over the graves of the just. "

The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is
lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the
crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set
shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient
Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.

"I am," says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, "the voice of
the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the
amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the
long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who
keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the
shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of
the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined
stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of
tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls' Night, rung by
an invisible hand.

"I am the bell of fearsome folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in
pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo
only in ardent imaginations.

"At my voice, knights armed with all manner of arms rise from their
Gothic sepulchres; monks come forth from the dim vaults in which they
are sleeping their last sleep to the foot of their abbey altars; and the
cemeteries open their gates little by little to let pass the troops of
yellow skeletons that run nimbly to dance in giddy round about the
pointed spire which shelters me.

"When my tremendous clamor surprises the credulous old woman before the
antique shrine whose lights she tends, she believes that she sees for a
moment the spirits of the picture dance amid the vermilion and ochre
flames by the glimmer of the dying lantern.

"When my mighty vibrations accompany the monotonous recital of an
old-time fable to which the children, grouped about the hearth, listen
all absorbed, the tongues of red and blue fire that glide along the
glowing logs, and the fiery sparks that leap up against the obscure
background of the kitchen, are taken for spirits circling in the air,
and the noise of the wind shaking the doors, for the work of souls
knocking at the leaded panes of the windows with the fleshless knuckles
of their bony hands.

"I am the bell that prays to God for the souls condemned to hell; I am
the voice of superstitious terror; I cause not weeping, but rising of
the hair, and I carry the chill of fright to the marrow of his bones who
harkens to me. "

So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as
the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand
symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the
wind.

Only the daylight and the noises that come up from the heart of the town
at the first dawn can put to flight the strange abortions of the mind
and the doleful, persistent tolling of the bells, which even in sleep is
felt as an exhausting nightmare through the eternal _Noche de Difuntos_.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] To the posthumous edition of Becquer's _Works_, Senor Correa
prefixed an account of the poet's life. This, brief and often
indefinite as it is, remains the authentic biography. It has been
partially reproduced in English by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who published
in _Macmillan's Magazine_, February, 1883, pp. 305-320, a valuable
article entitled: _A Spanish Romanticist: Gustavo Becquer_. Professor
Olmsted of Cornell, in his recent class-room edition of selected
_Legends, Tales and Poems_ by Becquer (Ginn and Company, Boston,
1907) contributes additional facts gathered from Spanish periodical
articles--of which he gives a bibliography--and in conversation with
Spaniards who had known the poet.

[2] Of the seventy-six poems that make up the _Rimas_, thirty-two
are given in literal English rendering by Lucy White Jennison ("Owen
Innsley") as the third section of her _Love Songs and Other Poems_
(The Grafton Press, New York, 1883), and a few are similarly rendered
by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the article already mentioned. A complete
translation in English verse, by Jules Renard of Seattle, has just
come (1908) from The Gorham Press, Richard G. Badger, Boston.

[3] Not, to my knowledge, translated into English.

[4] Except for a few magazine waifs and strays, usually in abridged
form, and for seven out of the twelve stories in W. W. Gibbings'
_Terrible Tales_, where the translation, according to Professor
Olmsted, is "often inaccurate," these legends have not before been
translated into English. The twenty-one here given include everything
even remotely in the nature of a tale contained in the three volumes,
with the exception of the two East Indian legends already mentioned,
and the two witchcraft tales in _From My Cell_. Good as these witch
stories are, it seemed a pity to take them out of their context.
What might be considered further omission is noted later. Of the
translations in this volume, several have appeared in _Short Stories_,
two in _The Churchman_, and one in the _Boston Evening Transcript_.

[5] And therefore has not been included in this volume.

[6] Not included in this volume because it should not be taken from
its context.







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by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
Edited with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary, by Everett Ward Olmsted

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Title: Legends, Tales and Poems

Author: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
Edited with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary, by Everett Ward Olmsted

Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10814]
[Last updated: January 12, 2016]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEGENDS, TALES AND POEMS ***




Produced by Keren Vergon, Arno Peters and PG Distributed Proofreaders




Legends, Tales and Poems

[Illustration: After an etching by B. Maura]



LEGENDS, TALES AND POEMS

BY

GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER

EDITED

WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND VOCABULARY

BY

EVERETT WARD OLMSTED, PH. D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES IN

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

* * * * *

TO

MY MOTHER

* * * * *



PREFACE


In preparing this collection of Becquer's legends, tales, and short
poems, which is the only annotated edition of this author's works that
has been published as yet for English-speaking students, the editor
has aimed to give to our schools and colleges a book that may serve,
not only as a reader for first or second year classes, but also as an
introduction to Spanish literature, through the works of one of the
most original and charming authors of the Spanish Romantic school.

Fondness for good literature should be stimulated from the very first,
and the quaint tales and legends of old Spain contained in this
edition, told, as they are, in a most fascinating style, are well
adapted to captivate the student's interest and to lead him to
investigate further the rich mine of Spanish literature. Becquer's
poetry is no less pleasing than his prose, and not much more difficult
to read. With the aid of the ample treatise on Spanish versification
contained in the introduction, the student will be enabled to
appreciate the harmony and rhythm of Becquer's verse, and in all
subsequent reading of Spanish poetry he will find this treatise a
convenient and valuable work of reference.

The Life of Becquer, though concise, is perhaps the most complete that
has yet been published, for it embodies all the data given by previous
biographers and a certain number of facts gathered by the writer at
the time of his last visit to Spain (in 1905-1906), from friends of
Becquer who were then living.

The vocabulary has been made sufficiently complete to free the notes
from that too frequent translation of words or phrases which often
encumbers them.

The notes have been printed in the only convenient place for them, at
the bottom of each page, and will be found to be as complete and
definite as possible on geographical, biographical, historical, or
other points that may not be familiar to the student or the teacher.
All grammatical or syntactical matter, unless of a difficult or
peculiar character, has been omitted, while the literary citations
that abound will, it is hoped, stimulate the student to do further
reading and to make literary comparisons of his own.

It remains for the editor to express his profound gratitude to the
following gentlemen for their aid in collecting facts regarding
Becquer and for their encouragement of this work: the Exc^{mo} Sr.
Conde de las Navas, the Exc^{mo} Sr. Licenciado D. Jose Gestoso y
Perez, and the Exc^{mo} Sr. D. Francisco de Laiglesia. It is his
pleasure also to convey his thanks to Professor George L. Burr of
Cornell University for aid in certain of the historical notes, and
most especially to gratefully acknowledge his indebtedness to the aid,
or rather collaboration, of Mr. Arthur Gordon of Cornell University,
and Mr. W. R. Price of the High School of Commerce, New York City.

EVERETT WARD OLMSTED
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Ithaca, N. Y.



CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION
LIFE OF BECQUER
UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF BECQUER
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
SPANISH PROSODY
DESDE MI CELDA--CARTA SEXTA
LOS OJOS VERDES
LA CORZA BLANCA
LA AJORCA DEL ORO
EL CRISTO DE LA CALAVERA
EL BESO
MAESE PEREZ EL ORGANISTA
LA CRUZ DEL DIABLO
CREED EN DROS
LAS HOJAS SECAS
RIMAS
VOCABULARY



INTRODUCTION


LIFE OF BECQUER


"In Seville, along the Guadalquivir, and close to the bank that leads
to the convent of San Jeronimo, may be found a kind of lagoon, which
fertilizes a miniature valley formed by the natural slope of the bank,
at that point very high and steep. Two or three leafy white poplars,
intertwining their branches, protect the spot from the rays of the
sun, which rarely succeeds in slipping through them. Their leaves
produce a soft and pleasing murmur as the wind stirs them and causes
them to appear now silver, now green, according to the point from
which it blows. A willow bathes its roots in the current of the
stream, toward which it leans as though bowed by an invisible weight,
and all about are multitudes of reeds and yellow lilies, such as grow
spontaneously at the edges of springs and streams.

"When I was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, and my soul was overflowing
with numberless longings, with pure thoughts and with that infinite
hope that is the most precious jewel of youth, when I deemed myself a
poet, when my imagination was full of those pleasing tales of the
classic world, and Rioja in his _silvas_ to the flowers, Herrera in
his tender elegies, and all my Seville singers, the Penates of my
special literature, spoke to me continually of the majestic Betis, the
river of nymphs, naiads, and poets, which, crowned with belfries and
laurels, flows to the sea from a crystal amphora, how often, absorbed
in the contemplation of my childish dreams, I would go and sit upon
its bank, and there, where the poplars protected me with their shadow,
would give rein to my fancies, and conjure up one of those impossible
dreams in which the very skeleton of death appeared before my eyes in
splendid, fascinating garb! I used to dream then of a happy,
independent life, like that of the bird, which is born to sing, and
receives its food from God. I used to dream of that tranquil life of
the poet, which glows with a soft light from generation to generation.
I used to dream that the city that saw my birth would one day swell
with pride at my name, adding it to the brilliant list of her
illustrious sons, and, when death should put an end to my existence,
that they would lay me down to dream the golden dream of immortality
on the banks of the Betis, whose praises I should have sung in
splendid odes, and in that very spot where I used to go so often to
hear the sweet murmur of its waves. A white stone with a cross and my
name should be my only monument.

"The white poplars, swaying night and day above my grave, should seem
to utter prayers for my soul in the rustling of their green and silver
leaves. In them the birds should come and nest, that they might sing
at dawn a joyous hymn to the resurrection of the spirit to regions
more serene. The willow, covering the spot with floating shadows,
should lend to it its own vague sadness, as it bent and shed about its
soft, wan leaves, as if to protect and to caress my mortal spoils. The
river, too, which in flood tide might almost come and kiss the border
of the slab o'ergrown with reeds, should lull my sleep with pleasant
music. And when some time had passed, and patches of moss had begun to
spread over the stone, a dense growth of wild morning-glories, of
those blue morning-glories with a disk of carmine in the center, which
I loved so much, should grow up by its side, twining through its
crevices and clothing it with their broad transparent leaves, which,
by I know not what mystery, have the form of hearts. Golden insects
with wings of light, whose buzzing lulls to sleep on heated
afternoons, should come and hover round their chalices, and one would
be obliged to draw aside the leafy curtain to read my name, now
blurred by time and moisture. But why should my name be read? Who
would not know that I was sleeping there? "[1]

[Footnote 1: _Obras de Gustavo A. Becquer_, Madrid, 1898, vol. II,
pp. 242-245. This edition will be understood hereafter in all
references to the works of Becquer. ]

So mused the poet Becquer[1] in the golden days of his youth, when his
veins were swelling with health, when his heart was fired with
ambition, and in his ears was ringing the joyous invitation of his
muse.

[Footnote 1: The name is spelled indifferently with or without
accent--_Becquer_ or _Becquer_. In the choice of the latter
spelling, the authority of his principal biographer, Ramon Rodriguez
Correa, has been followed. ]

His knowledge of the world was confined to the enchanting city of his
birth. Her gems of art and architecture had wrought themselves into
the fabric of his dreams; he had mused in her palm-gardens, worshiped
in her temples, and dreamed long afternoons on the shores of her
historic river. He knew nothing of the cold, prosaic world of selfish
interests. The time had not yet come when, in bitterness of spirit,
and wrapping his mantle about him against the chill wind of
indifference, he should say: "To-day my sole ambition is to be a
supernumerary in the vast human comedy, and when my silent role is
ended, to withdraw behind the scenes, neither hissed nor applauded,
making my exit unnoticed. "[1]

[Footnote 1: _Obras_, vol. II, p. 251. ]

Indeed, in those later days of trial and hardship, he would often look
out wearily upon Madrid, the city of his adoption, the scene of his
crushing struggle with necessity, as it lay outspread before his
windows,--"dirty, black, and ugly as a fleshless skeleton, shivering
under its immense shroud of snow,"[1] and in his mind he would conjure
up the city of his youth, his ever cherished Seville, "with her
_Giralda_ of lacework, mirrored in the trembling Guadalquivir, with
her narrow and tortuous Moorish streets, in which one fancies still he
hears the strange cracking sound of the walk of the Justiciary King;
Seville, with her barred windows and her love-songs, her iron
door-screens and her night watchmen, her altar-pieces and her stories,
her brawls and her music, her tranquil nights and her fiery
afternoons, her rosy dawns and her blue twilights; Seville, with all
the traditions that twenty centuries have heaped upon her brow, with
all the pomp and splendor of her southern nature. "[2] No words of
praise seemed too glowing for her ardent lover.

[Footnote 1: _Ibid_. , vol. III, p. iii. ]

[Footnote 2: _Obras_, vol. III, pp. 109-110.