No More Learning

We were few, the combat was stern, and I was face to
face with death. Thou sawest, in the most critical moment of the fight,
my horse, wounded and blind with rage, dash toward the main body of the
Moorish host. I strove in vain to check him; the reins had escaped from
my hands, and the fiery animal galloped on, bearing me to certain death.

"Already the Moors, closing up their ranks, were grounding their long
pikes to receive me on the points; a cloud of arrows hissed about my
ears; the horse was but a few bounds from the serried spears on which we
were about to fling

[Illustration: AN ANCIENT CASTLE]

ourselves, when--believe me, it was not an illusion--I saw a hand that,
grasping the bridle, stopped him with an unearthly force and, turning
him in the direction of my own troops, saved me by a miracle.

"In vain I asked of one and another who my deliverer was; no one knew
him, no one had seen him.

"'When you were rushing to throw yourself upon the wall of pikes,' they
said, 'you went alone, absolutely alone; this is why we marvelled to see
you turn, knowing that the steed no longer obeyed his rider. '

"That night I entered my tent distraught; I strove in vain to extirpate
from my imagination the memory of the strange adventure; but on
advancing toward my bed, again I saw the same hand, a beautiful hand,
white to the point of pallor, which drew the curtains, vanishing after
it had drawn them. Ever since, at all hours, in all places, I see that
mysterious hand which anticipates my desires and forestalls my actions.
I saw it, when we were storming the castle of Triana, catch between its
fingers and break in the air an arrow which was about to strike me; I
have seen it at banquets where I was trying to drown my trouble in the
tumultuous revelry, pour the wine into my cup; and always it flickers
before my eyes, and wherever I go it follows me; in the tent, in the
battle, by day, by night,--even now, see it, see it here, resting gently
on my shoulder! "

On speaking these last words, the Count sprang to his feet, striding
back and forth as if beside himself, overwhelmed by utter terror.

The squire dashed away a tear. Believing his lord mad, he did not try to
combat his ideas, but confined himself to saying in a voice of deep
emotion:

"Come; let us go out from the tent a moment; perhaps the evening air
will cool your temples, calming this incomprehensible grief, for which I
find no words of consolation. "


IV.

The camp of the Christians extended over all the plain of Guadaira, even
to the left bank of the Guadalquivir. In front of the camp and clearly
defined against the bright horizon, rose the walls of Seville flanked by
massive, menacing towers. Above the crown of battlements showed in its
rich profusion the green leafage of the thousand gardens enclosed in the
Moorish stronghold, and amid the dim clusters of foliage gleamed the
observation turrets, white as snow, the minarets of the mosques, and the
gigantic watch-tower, over whose aerial parapet the four great balls of
gold, which from the Christian camp looked like four flames, threw out,
when smitten by the sun, sparks of living light.

The enterprise of Don Fernando, one of the most heroic and intrepid of
that epoch, had drawn to his banners the greatest warriors of the
various kingdoms in the Peninsula, with others who, called by fame, had
come from foreign, far-off lands to add their forces to those of the
Royal Saint. Stretching along the plain might be seen, therefore,
army-tents of all forms and colors, above whose peaks waved in the wind
the various ensigns with their quartered escutcheons,--stars, griffins,
lions, chains, bars and caldrons, with hundreds of other heraldic
figures or symbols which proclaimed the name and quality of their
owners. Through the streets of that improvised city were circulating in
all directions a multitude of soldiers who, speaking diverse dialects,
dressed each in the fashion of his own locality and armed according to
his fancy, formed a scene of strange and picturesque contrasts.

Here a group of nobles were resting from the fatigues of combat, seated
on benches of larchwood at the door of their tents and playing at chess,
while their pages poured them wine in metal cups; there some
foot-soldiers were taking advantage of a moment of leisure to clean and
mend their armor, the worse for their last skirmish; further on, the
most expert archers of the army were covering the mark with arrows,
amidst the applause of the crowd marvelling at their dexterity; and the
beating of the drums, the shrilling of the trumpets, the cries of
pedlars hawking their wares, the clang of iron striking on iron, the
ballad-singing of the minstrels who entertained their hearers with the
relation of prodigious exploits, and the shouts of the heralds who
published the orders of the camp-masters, all these, filling the air
with thousands of discordant noises, contributed to that picture of
soldier life a vivacity and animation impossible to portray in words.

The Count of Gomara, attended by his faithful squire, passed among the
lively groups without raising his eyes from the ground, silent, sad, as
if not a sight disturbed his gaze nor the least sound reached his
hearing. He moved mechanically, as a sleepwalker, whose spirit is busy
in the world of dreams, steps and takes his course without consciousness
of his actions, as if impelled by a will not his own.

Close by the royal tent and in the middle of a ring of soldiers, little
pages and camp-servants, who were listening to him open-mouthed, making
haste to buy some of the tawdry knickknacks which he was enumerating in
a loud voice, with extravagant praises, was an odd personage, half
pilgrim, half minstrel, who, at one moment reciting a kind of litany in
barbarous Latin, and the next giving vent to some buffoonery or
scurrility, was mingling in his interminable tale devout prayers with
jests broad enough to make a common soldier blush, romances of illicit
love with legends of saints. In the huge pack that hung from his
shoulders were a thousand different objects all tossed and tumbled
together,--ribbons touched to the sepulchre of Santiago, scrolls with
words which he averred were Hebrew, the very same that King Solomon
spoke when he founded the temple, and the only words able to keep you
free of every contagious disease; marvellous balsams capable of sticking
together men who were cut in two; secret charms to make all women in
love with you; Gospels sewed into little silk bags; relics of the patron
saints of all the towns in Spain; tinsel jewels, chains, sword-belts,
medals and many other gewgaws of brass, glass and lead.

When the Count approached the group formed by the pilgrim and his
admirers, the fellow began to tune a kind of mandolin or Arab guitar
with which he accompanied himself in the singsong recital of his
romances. When he had thoroughly tested the strings, one after another,
very coolly, while his companion made the round of the circle coaxing
out the last coppers from the flaccid pouches of the audience, the
pilgrim began to sing in nasal voice, to a monotonous and plaintive air,
a ballad whose stanzas always ended in the same refrain.

The Count drew near the group and gave attention. By an apparently
strange coincidence, the title of this tale was entirely at one with the
melancholy thoughts that burdened his mind. As the singer had announced
before beginning, the lay was called the _Ballad of the Dead Hand_.

The squire, on hearing so strange an announcement, had striven to draw
his lord away; but the Count, with his eyes fixed on the minstrel,
remained motionless, listening to this song.

I.

A maiden had a lover gay
Who said he was a squire;
The war-drums called him far away;
Not tears could quench his fire.
"Thou goest to return no more. "
"Nay, by all oaths that bind"--
But even while the lover swore,
A voice was on the wind:
_Ill fares the soul that sets its trust_
_On faith of dust. _

II.

Forth from his castle rode the lord
With all his glittering train,
But never will his battle-sword
Inflict so keen a pain.
"His soldier-honor well he keeps;
Mine honor--blind! oh, blind! "
While the forsaken woman weeps,
A voice is on the wind:
_Ill fares the soul that sets its trust_
_On faith of dust. _

III.

Her brother's eye her secret reads;
His fatal angers burn.
"Thou hast us shamed. " Her terror pleads,--
"He swore he would return. "
"But not to find thee, if he tries,
Where he was wont to find. "
Beneath her brother's blow she dies;
A voice is on the wind:
_Ill fares the soul that sets its trust_
_On faith of dust. _

IV.

In the trysting-wood, where love made mirth,
They have buried her deep,--but lo!
However high they heap the earth,
A hand as white as snow
Comes stealing up, a hand whose ring
A noble's troth doth bind.
Above her grave no maidens sing,
But a voice is on the wind:
_Ill fares the soul that sets its trust_
_On faith of dust. _

Hardly had the singer finished the last stanza, when, breaking through
the wall of eager listeners who respectfully gave way on recognizing
him, the Count fronted the pilgrim and, clutching his arm, demanded in a
low, convulsive voice:

"From what part of Spain art thou? "

"From Soria," was the unmoved response.

"And where hast thou learned this ballad? Who is that maiden of whom the
story tells? " again exclaimed the Count, with ever more profound
emotion.

"My lord," said the pilgrim, fixing his eyes upon the Count with
imperturbable steadiness, "this ballad is passed from mouth to mouth
among the peasants in the fief of Gomara, and it refers to an unhappy
village-girl cruelly wronged by a great lord. The high justice of God
has permitted that, in her burial, there shall still remain above the
earth the hand on which her lover placed a ring in plighting her his
troth. Perchance you know whom it behooves to keep that pledge. "


V.

In a wretched village which may be found at one side of the highway
leading to Gomara, I saw not long since the spot where the strange
ceremony of the Count's marriage is said to have taken place.

After he, kneeling upon the humble grave, had pressed the hand of
Margarita in his own, and a priest, authorized by the Pope, had blessed
the mournful union, the story goes that the miracle ceased, and _the
dead hand_ buried itself forever.

At the foot of some great old trees there is a bit of meadow which,
every spring, covers itself spontaneously with flowers.

The country-folk say that this is the burial place of Margarita.




THE KISS


I.

When a division of the French army, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, took possession of historic Toledo, the officers in command,
not unaware of the danger to which French soldiers were exposed in
Spanish towns by being quartered in separate lodgings, commenced to fit
up as barracks the largest and best edifices of the city.

After occupying the magnificent palace of Carlos V. they appropriated
the City Hall, and when this could hold no more, they began to invade
the pious shade of monasteries, at last making over into stables even
the churches sacred to worship. Such was the state of affairs in the
famous old town, scene of the event which I am about to recount, when
one night, already late, there entered the city, muffled in their dark
army-cloaks and deafening the narrow, lonely streets, from the Gate of
the Sun to the Zocodover, with the clang of weapons and the resounding
beat of the hoofs that struck sparks from the flinty way, one hundred or
so of these tall dragoons, dashing, mettlesome fellows, whom our
grandmothers still tell about with admiration.

The force was commanded by a youthful officer, riding about thirty paces
in advance of his troop and talking in low tones with a man on foot,
who, so far as might be inferred from his dress, was also a soldier.
Walking in front of his interlocutor, with a small lantern in hand, he
seemed to be serving as guide through that labyrinth of obscure, twisted
and intertangled streets.

"In sooth," said the trooper to his companion, "if the lodging prepared
for us is even such as you picture it, perhaps it would be better to
camp out in the country or in one of the public squares. "

"But what would you, my captain? " answered the guide, who was, in fact,
a sergeant sent on before to make ready for their reception. "In the
palace there is not room for another grain of wheat, much less for a
man; of _San Juan de los Reyes_ there is no use in talking, for there it
has reached such a point that in one of the friars' cells are sleeping
fifteen hussars. The monastery to which I am taking you was not so bad,
but some three or four days ago there fell upon us, as if out of the
clouds, one of the flying columns that scour the province, and we are
lucky to have prevailed on them to heap themselves up along the
cloisters and leave the church free for us. "

"Ah, well! " exclaimed the officer, after a brief silence, with an air of
resigning himself to the strange quarters which chance had apportioned
him, "an ill lodging is better than none. At all events, in case of
rain,--not unlikely, judging from the massing of the clouds,--we shall
be under cover, and that is something. "

With this the conversation was broken off, and the troopers, preceded by
the guide, took the onward way in silence until they came to one of the
smaller squares, on the further side of which stood out the black
silhouette of the monastery with its Moorish minaret, spired bell-tower,
ogive cupola and dark, uneven roof.

"Here is your lodging! " exclaimed the sergeant at sight of it,
addressing the captain, who, after commanding his troop to halt,
dismounted, caught the lantern from the hands of the guide, and took his
way toward the building designated.

Since the church of the monastery was thoroughly dismantled, the
soldiers who occupied the other parts of the

[Illustration: PALACE OF CARLOS V. , TOLEDO]

building had thought that the doors were now a trifle less than useless
and, piece by piece, had wrenched off one to-day, another to-morrow, to
make bonfires for warming themselves by night.

Our young officer, therefore, did not have to delay for turning of keys
or drawing of bolts before penetrating into the heart of the sanctuary.

By the light of the lantern, whose doubtful ray, lost in the heavy
glooms of nave and aisles, threw in giant proportions upon the wall the
fantastic shadow of the sergeant going on before, he traversed the
length and breadth of the church and peered into the deserted chapels,
one by one, until he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the
place, when he ordered his troop to dismount, and set about the
bestowing of that confused crowd of men and horses as best he could.

As we have said, the church was completely dismantled; before the High
Altar were still hanging from the lofty cornices torn shreds of the veil
with which the monks had covered it on abandoning that holy place; at
intervals along the aisles might be seen shrines fastened against the
wall, their niches bereft of images; in the choir a line of light traced
the strange contour of the shadowy larchwood stalls; upon the pavement,
destroyed at various points, might still be distinguished broad burial
slabs filled with heraldic devices, shields and long Gothic
inscriptions; and far away, in the depths of the silent chapels and
along the transepts, were vaguely visible in the dimness, like
motionless white spectres, marble statues which, some extended at full
length and others kneeling on their stony tombs, appeared to be the only
tenants of that ruined structure.

For anyone less spent than the captain of dragoons, who carried in his
body the fatigues of a ride of fourteen leagues, or less accustomed to
seeing these sacrileges as the most natural thing in the world, two
drams of imagination would have sufficed to keep eyes from closing the
whole night long in that dusky, awesome haunt, where the oaths of the
soldiers, who were loudly complaining of their improvised barracks, the
metallic clink of their spurs striking rudely against the once
sepulchral slabs of the pavement, the clatter of the horses as they
pawed impatiently, tossing their heads and rattling the chains which
bound them to the pillars, formed a strange and fearful confusion of
sounds that reverberated through the reaches of the church and was
repeated, ever more weirdly, from echo to echo among the lofty vaults.

But our hero, young though he was, had already become so familiar with
those shiftings of the scene in a soldier's life, that scarcely had he
assigned places to his men than he ordered a sack of fodder flung down
at the foot of the chancel steps, and rolling himself as snugly as
possible into his cloak, resting his head upon the lowest stair, in five
minutes was snoring with more tranquillity than King Joseph himself in
his palace at Madrid.

The soldiers, making pillows of the saddles, followed his example, and
little by little the murmur of their voices died away.

Half an hour later, nothing was to be heard save the stifled groans of
the wind which entered by the broken ogive windows of the church, the
skurrying flights of night-birds whose nests were built in the stone
canopies above the sculptured figures of the walls, and the tramp, now
near, now far, of the sentry who was pacing up and down the portico,
wound in the wide folds of his military cloak.


II.

In the epoch to which the account of this incident, no less true than
strange, reverts, the city of Toledo, for those who knew not how to
value the treasures of art which its walls enclose, was, even as now,
no more than a great huddle of houses, old-fashioned, ruinous,
insufferable.

The officers of the French army who, to judge from the acts of vandalism
by which they left in Toledo a sad and enduring memory of their
occupation, counted few artists and archaeologists in their number, found
themselves, as goes without the saying, supremely bored in the ancient
city of the Caesars.

In this frame of mind, the most trifling event which came to break the
monotonous calm of those eternal, unvarying days was eagerly caught up
among the idlers, so that the promotion of one of their comrades to the
next grade, a report of the strategic movement of a flying column, the
departure of an official post or the arrival at the city of any military
force whatsoever, became a fertile theme of conversation and object of
every sort of comment, until something else occurred to take its place
and serve as foundation for new grumblings, criticisms and conjectures.

As was to be expected, among those officers who, according to their
custom, gathered on the following day to take the air and chat a little
in the Zocodover, the dish of gossip was supplied by nothing else than
the arrival of the dragoons, whose leader was left in the former chapter
stretched out at his ease, sleeping off the fatigues of the march. For
upwards of an hour the conversation had been beating about this event,
and already various explanations had been put forward to account for the
non-appearance of the new-comer, whom an officer present, a former
schoolmate, had invited to the Zocodover, when at last, in one of the
side-streets that radiate from the square, appeared our gallant captain,
no longer obscured by his voluminous army-cloak, but sporting a great
shining helmet with a plume of white feathers, a turquoise-blue coat
with scarlet facings, and a magnificent two-handed sword in a steel
scabbard which clanked as it struck the ground in time to his martial
stride and to the keener, sharper clink of his golden spurs.

As soon as his former chum caught sight of him, off he went to meet him
and bid him welcome, followed by almost all the officers who chanced to
be in the group that morning and who had been stirred to curiosity and a
desire to know him by what they had already heard of his original,
extraordinary traits of character.

After the customary close embraces, and the exclamations, compliments
and questions enjoined by etiquette in meetings like this; after
discussing at length and in detail the latest news from Madrid, the
changing fortune of the war, and old friends dead or far away, the
conversation, flitting from one subject to another, came to roost at
last on the inevitable theme, to wit, the hardships of the service, the
dearth of amusements in the city, and the inconveniences of their
lodgings.

Now at this juncture one of the company, who, it would seem, had heard
of the ill grace with which the young officer had resigned himself to
quartering his troop in the abandoned church, said to him with an air of
raillery:

"And speaking of lodgings, what sort of a night did you have in yours? "

"We lacked for nothing," answered the captain, "and if it is the truth
that I slept but little, the cause of my insomnia is well worth the
pains of wakefulness. A vigil in the society of a charming woman is
surely not the worst of evils. "

"A woman! " repeated his interlocutor, as if wondering at the good
fortune of the new arrival. "This is what they call ending the
pilgrimage and kissing the saint. "

"Perhaps it is some old flame of the Capital who follows him to Madrid
to make his exile more endurable," added another of the circle.

"Oh, no! " exclaimed the captain, "nothing of the sort. I swear to you,
on the word of a gentleman, I had never seen her before, nor had I
dreamed of finding so gracious a hostess in so bad a hostelry. It is
altogether what one might call a genuine adventure. "

"Tell it! tell it! " chorused the officers who surrounded the captain,
and as he proceeded so to do, all lent the most eager attention, while
he began his story thus:

"I was sleeping last night the sleep of a man who carries in his body
the effects of a thirteen-league ride, when, look you, in the best of my
slumber I was startled wide-awake,--springing up and leaning on my
elbows,--by a horrible uproar, such an uproar that it deafened me for an
instant and left my ears, a full minute after, humming as if a horse-fly
were singing on my cheek.

"As you will have guessed, the cause of my alarm was the first stroke
which I heard of that diabolical _campana gorda_, a sort of bronze
chorister, which the canons of Toledo have placed in their cathedral for
the praiseworthy object of killing the weary with wrath.

"Cursing between my teeth both bell and bell-ringer, I disposed myself,
as soon as that strange and frightful noise had ceased, to take up anew
the thread of my broken dream, when there befell, to pique my
imagination and challenge my senses, a thing of wonder. By the uncertain
moonlight which entered the church through the narrow Moorish window of
the chancel wall, I saw a woman kneeling at the altar. "

The officers exchanged glances of mingled astonishment and incredulity;
the captain, without heeding the impression his narrative was making,
continued as follows:

"It could not enter into man's heart to conceive that nocturnal,
phantasmal vision, vaguely outlined in the twilight of the chapel, like
those virgins painted in colored glass that you have sometimes seen,
from afar off, stand out, white and luminous, across the shadowy
stretch of the cathedrals.

"Her oval face, on which one saw stamped the seal, delicate and
spiritual, of emaciation, her harmonious features full of a gentle,
melancholy sweetness, her intense pallor, the perfect lines of her
slender figure, her reposeful, noble posture, her robe of flowing white,
brought to my memory the women of whom I used to dream when I was still
little more than a child. Chaste, celestial images, illusive objects of
the wandering love of youth!

"I believed myself the sport of an hallucination and not withdrawing my
eyes from her for an instant, I scarcely dared breathe, fearing that a
breath might dissolve the enchantment.

"She remained motionless.

"The fancy crossed my mind, on seeing her so shining, so transparent,
that this was no creature of the earth, but a spirit, that, once more
assuming for an instant the veil of human form, had descended in the
moonbeam, leaving in the air behind it the azure track which slanted
from the high window to the foot of the opposite wall, breaking the deep
gloom of that dusky, mysterious recess. "

"But--" interrupted his former schoolmate, who, inclined at the outset
to make fun of the story, had at last grown closely attentive--"how came
that woman there? Did you not speak to her? Did she not explain to you
her presence in that place? "

"I decided not to address her, because I was sure that she would not
answer me, nor see me, nor hear me. "

"Was she deaf? "

"Was she blind? "

"Was she dumb? " exclaimed simultaneously three or four of those who were
listening to the story.

"She was all at once," finally declared the captain after a moment's
pause, "for she was---- marble. "

On hearing this remarkable _denouement_ of so strange an adventure, the
bystanders burst into a noisy peal of laughter, while one of them said
to the narrator of this curious experience, who alone remained quiet and
of grave deportment:

"We will make a complete thing of it. As for this sort of ladies, I have
more than a thousand, a regular seraglio, in _San Juan de los Reyes_, a
seraglio which from this time on I put quite at your service, since, it
would seem, a woman of stone is the same to you as a woman of flesh. "

"Oh, no! " responded the captain, not nettled in the slightest by the
laughter of his companions. "I am sure that they cannot be like mine.
Mine is a true Castilian dame of high degree, who by a miracle of
sculpture appears not to have been buried in a sepulchre, but still,
body and soul, to kneel upon the lid of her own tomb, motionless, with
hands joined in attitude of prayer, drowned in an ecstasy of mystic
love. "

"You are so plausible that you will end by making us believe in the
fable of Galatea. "

"For my part, I admit that I had always supposed it nonsense, but since
last night I begin to comprehend the passion of the Greek sculptor. "

"Considering the peculiar circumstances of your new lady, I presume you
would have no objection to presenting us. As for me, I vow that already
I am dead with longing to behold this paragon. But--what the devil! --one
would say that you do not wish to introduce us. Ha, ha, ha! It would be
a joke indeed if we should find you jealous. "

"Jealous! " the captain hastened to reply. "Jealous--of men, no; but yet
see to what lengths my madness reaches. Close beside the image of this
woman is a warrior, also of marble, an august figure, as lifelike as
herself,--her husband, without doubt. Well, then! I am going to make a
clean breast of it, jeer at my folly as you may,--if I had not feared
being taken for a lunatic, I believe I should have broken him to pieces
a hundred times over. "

A fresh and yet more riotous outburst of laughter from the officers
greeted this original revelation on the part of the eccentric lover of
the marble lady.

"We will take no refusal. We must see her," cried some.

"Yes, yes, we must know if the object of such devotion is as unique as
the passion itself," added others.

"When shall we come together to take a drink in the church where you
lodge? " demanded the rest.

"Whenever you please; this very evening, if you like," replied the young
captain, regaining his usual debonair expression, dispelled for an
instant by that flash of jealousy. "By the way, along with the baggage I
have brought as many as two dozen bottles of champagne, genuine
champagne, what was left over from a present given to our
brigadier-general, who, as you know, is a distant relative of mine. "

"Bravo! Bravo! " shouted the officers with one voice, breaking into
gleeful exclamations.

"We will drink the wine of our native land! "

"And we will sing one of Ronsard's songs! "

"And we will talk of women, apropos of the lady of our host. "

"And so--good-bye till evening! "

"Till evening! "


III.

It was now a good hour since the peaceful inhabitants of Toledo had
secured with key and bolt the massive doors of their ancient mansions;
the _campana gorda_ of the cathedral was ringing curfew, and from the
summit of the palace, now converted into barracks, was sounding the last
bugle-call for silence, when ten or twelve officers, who had been
gradually assembling in the Zocodover, took the road leading thence to
the monastery where the captain was lodged, impelled more by hope of
draining the promised bottles than by eagerness to make acquaintance
with the marvellous piece of sculpture.

The night had shut down dark and threatening; the sky was covered with
leaden clouds; the wind, whistling along the imprisoning channels of the
narrow, tortuous streets, was shaking the dying flames of the shielded
lamps before the shrines, or making the iron weather-vanes of the towers
whirl about with a shrill creaking.

Scarcely had the officers caught sight of the square where stood the
monastery which served as quarters for their new friend, than he, who
was impatiently looking out for their arrival, sallied forth to meet
them, and after the exchange of a few low-toned sentences, all together
entered the church, within whose dim enclosure the faint gleam of a
lantern was struggling at hopeless odds with the black and heavy
shadows.

"'Pon my honor! " exclaimed one of the guests, peering about him. "If
this isn't the last place in the world for a revel! "

"True enough! " said another. "You bring us here to meet a lady, and
scarcely can a man see his hand before his face. "

"And worst of all, it's so icy cold that we might as well be in
Siberia," added a third, hugging the folds of his cloak about him.

"Patience, gentlemen, patience! " interposed the host. "A little patience
will set all to rights. Here, my lad! " he continued, addressing one of
his men. "Hunt us up a bit of fuel and kindle a rousing bonfire in the
chancel. "

The orderly, obeying his captain's directions, commenced to rain
swinging blows on the carven stalls of the choir, and after he had thus
collected a goodly supply of wood, which was heaped up at the foot of
the chancel steps, he took the lantern and proceeded to make an _auto de
fe_ of those fragments carved in richest designs. Among them might be
seen here a portion of a spiral column, there the effigy of a holy
abbot, the torso of a woman, or the misshapen head of a griffin peeping
through foliage.

In a few minutes, a great light which suddenly streamed out through all
the compass of the church announced to the officers that the hour for
the carousal had arrived.

The captain, who did the honors of his lodging with the same
punctiliousness which he would have observed in his own house, turned to
his guests and said:

"We will, if you please, pass to the refreshment room. "

His comrades, affecting the utmost gravity, responded to the invitation
with absurdly profound bows and took their way to the chancel preceded
by the lord of the revel, who, on reaching the stone steps, paused an
instant, and extending his hand in the direction of the tomb, said to
them with the most exquisite courtesy:

"I have the pleasure of presenting you to the lady of my dreams. I am
sure you will grant that I have not exaggerated her beauty. "

The officers turned their eyes toward the point which their friend
designated, and exclamations of astonishment broke involuntarily from
the lips of all.

In the depths of a sepulchral arch lined with black marbles, they saw,
in fact, kneeling before a prayer-stool, with folded palms and face
turned toward the altar, the image of a woman so beautiful that never
did her equal come from sculptor's hands, nor could desire paint her in
imagination more supremely lovely.

"In truth, an angel! " murmured one.

"A pity that she is marble! " added another.

"Well might--illusion though it be--the neighborhood of such a woman
suffice to keep one from closing eye the whole night through. "

"And you do not know who she is? " others of the group, contemplating the
statue, asked of the captain, who stood smiling, satisfied with his
triumph.

"Recalling a little of the Latin which I learned in my boyhood, I have
been able, at no small pains, to decipher the inscription on the stone,"
he answered, "and by what I have managed to make out, it is the tomb of
a Castilian noble, a famous warrior who fought under the Great Captain.
His name I have forgotten, but his wife, on whom you look, is called
Dona Elvira de Castaneda, and by my hopes of salvation, if the copy
resembles the original, this should be the most notable woman of her
time. "

After these brief explanations, the guests, who did not lose sight of
the principal object of the gathering, proceeded to uncork some of the
bottles and, seating themselves around the bonfire, began to pass the
wine from hand to hand.
In proportion as their libations became more copious and frequent, and
the fumes of the foaming champagne commenced to cloud their brains, the
animation, the uproar and the merriment of the young Frenchmen rose to
such a pitch that some of them threw the broken necks of the empty
bottles at the granite monks carved against the pillars, and others
trolled at the tops of their voices scandalous drinking-songs, while the
rest burst into roars of laughter, clapped their hands in applause or
quarrelled among themselves with angry words and oaths.

The captain sat drinking in silence, like a man distraught, without
moving his eyes from the statue of Dona Elvira.

Illumed by the ruddy splendor of the bonfire, and seen across the misty
veil which wine had drawn before his vision, the marble image sometimes
seemed to him to be changing into an actual woman; it seemed to him
that her lips parted, as if murmuring a prayer, that her breast heaved
as if with stifled sobs, that her palms were pressed together with more
energy, and finally, that rosy color crept into her cheeks, as if she
were blushing before that sacrilegious and repugnant scene.

The officers, noting the gloomy silence of their comrade, roused him
from the trance into which he had fallen, and thrusting a cup into his
hands, exclaimed in noisy chorus:

"Come, give us a toast, you, the only man that has failed of it
to-night! "

The young host took the cup, rose and, lifting it on high, turned to
face the statue of the warrior kneeling beside Dona Elvira and said:

"I drink to the Emperor, and I drink to the success of his arms, thanks
to which we have been able to penetrate even to the heart of Castile and
to court, at his own tomb, the wife of a conqueror of Cerniola. "

The officers drank the toast with a storm of applause, and the captain,
keeping his balance with some difficulty, took a few steps toward the
sepulchre.

"No," he continued, always addressing, with the stupid smile of
intoxication, the statue of the warrior. "Don't suppose that I have a
grudge against you for being my rival. On the contrary, old lad, I
admire you for a patient husband, an example of meekness and long
suffering, and, for my part, I wish to be generous, too. You should be a
tippler, since you are a soldier, and it shall not be said that I left
you to die of thirst in the sight of twenty empty bottles. Drink! "

And with these words he raised the cup to his lips and, after wetting
them with the liquor which it contained, flung the rest into the marble
face, bursting into a boisterous peal of laughter to see how the wine
splashed down over the tomb from the carven beard of the motionless
warrior.

"Captain," exclaimed at that point one of his comrades in a tone of
raillery, "take heed what you do. Bear in mind that these jests with the
stone people are apt to cost dear. Remember what happened to the Fifth
Hussars in the monastery of Poblet. The story goes that the warriors of
the cloister laid hand to their granite swords one night and gave plenty
of occupation to those merry fellows who had amused themselves by
adorning them with charcoal mustaches. "

The young revellers received this report with roars of laughter, but the
captain, heedless of their mirth, continued, his mind fixed ever on the
same idea.

"Do you think that I would have given him the wine, had I not known that
he would swallow at least as much as fell upon his mouth? Oh, no! I do
not believe like you that these statues are mere blocks of marble as
inert to-day as when hewed from the quarry. Undoubtedly the artist, who
is always a god, gives to his work a breath of life which is not
powerful enough to make the figure move and walk, but which inspires it
with a strange, incomprehensible life, a life which I do not fully
explain to myself, but which I feel, especially when I am a little
drunk. "

"Magnificent! " exclaimed his comrades. "Drink and continue! "

The officer drank and, fixing his eyes upon the image of Dona Elvira,
went on with mounting excitement:

"Look at her! Look at her! Do you not note those changing flushes of her
soft, transparent flesh? Does it not seem that beneath this delicate
alabaster skin, azure-veined and tender, circulates a fluid of
rose-colored light? Would you wish more life, more reality? "

"Oh, but yes, by all means," said one of those who was listening. "We
would have her of flesh and bone. "

"Flesh and bone! Misery and corruption! " exclaimed the captain. "I have
felt in the course of an orgy my lips burn, and my head. I have felt
that fire which runs boiling through the veins like the lava of a
volcano, that fire whose dim vapors trouble and confuse the brain and
conjure up strange visions. Then the kiss of these material women burned
me like a red-hot iron, and I thrust them from me with displeasure, with
horror and with loathing; for then, as now, I needed for my fevered
forehead a breath of the sea-breeze, to drink ice and to kiss snow, snow
tinted by mellow light, snow illumined by a golden ray of sunshine,--a
woman white, beautiful and cold, like this woman of stone who seems to
allure me with her ethereal grace, to sway like a flame--who challenges
me with parted lips, offering me a wealth of love. Oh, yes, a kiss! Only
a kiss of thine can calm the fire which is consuming me. "

"Captain! " exclaimed some of the officers, on seeing him start toward
the statue as if beside himself, his gaze wild and his steps reeling.
"What mad foolery would you commit? Enough of jesting! Leave the dead in
peace. "

The young host did not even hear the warnings of his friends;
staggering, groping his way, he reached the tomb and approached the
statue of Dona Elvira, but as he stretched out his arms to clasp it, a
cry of horror resounded through the temple. With blood gushing from
eyes, mouth and nostrils, he had fallen prone, his face crushed in, at
the foot of the sepulchre.

The officers, hushed and terrified, dared not take one step forward to
his aid.

At the moment when their comrade strove to touch his burning lips to
those of Dona Elvira, they had seen the marble warrior lift its hand
and, with a frightful blow of the stone gauntlet, strike him down.




THE SPIRITS' MOUNTAIN


On All Souls' Night I was awakened, I knew not at what hour, by the
tolling of bells; their monotonous, unceasing sound brought to mind this
tradition which I heard a short time ago in Soria.

I tried to sleep again. Impossible! The imagination, once roused, is a
horse that runs wild and cannot be reined in. To pass the time, I
decided to write the story out, and so in fact I did.

I had heard it in the very place where it originated and, as I wrote, I
sometimes glanced behind me with sudden fear, when, smitten by the cold
night air, the glass of my balcony crackled.

Make of it what you will,--here it goes loose, like the mounted horseman
in a Spanish pack of cards.


I.

"Leash the dogs! Blow the horns to call the hunters together, and let us
return to the city. Night is at hand,--the Night of All Souls, and we
are on the Spirits' Mountain. "

"So soon! "

"Were it any day but this, I would not give up till I had made an end of
that pack of wolves which the snows of the Moncayo have driven from
their dens; but to-day it is impossible. Very soon the Angelus will
sound in the monastery of the Knights Templars, and the souls of the
dead will commence to toll their bell in the chapel on the mountain. "

"In that ruined chapel! Bah! Would you frighten me? "

"No, fair cousin; but you are not aware of all that happens hereabout,
for it is not yet a year since you came hither from a distant part of
Spain. Rein in your mare; I will keep mine at the same pace and tell you
this story on the way. "

The pages gathered together in merry, boisterous groups; the Counts of
Borges and Alcudiel mounted their noble steeds, and the whole company
followed after the son and daughter of those great houses, Alonso and
Beatriz, who rode at some little distance in advance of the company.

As they went, Alonso related in these words the promised tradition:

"This mountain, which is now called the Spirits' Mountain, belonged to
the Knights Templars, whose monastery you see yonder on the river bank.
The Templars were both monks and warriors. After Soria had been wrested
from the Moors, the King summoned the Templars here from foreign lands
to defend the city on the side next to the bridge, thus giving deep
offense to his Castilian nobles, who, as they had won Soria alone, would
alone have been able to defend it.

"Between the knights of the new and powerful Order and the nobles of the
city there fermented for some years an animosity which finally developed
into a deadly hatred. The Templars claimed for their own this mountain,
where they reserved an abundance of game to satisfy their needs and
contribute to their pleasures; the nobles determined to organize a great
hunt within the bounds notwithstanding the rigorous prohibitions of the
_clergy with spurs_, as their enemies called them.

"The news of the projected invasion spread fast, and nothing availed to
check the rage for the hunt on the one side, and the determination to
break it up on the other. The proposed expedition came off. The wild
beasts did not remember it; but it was never to be forgotten by the
many mothers mourning for their sons. That was not a hunting-trip, but a
frightful battle; the mountain was strewn with corpses, and the wolves,
whose extermination was the end in view, had a bloody feast. Finally the
authority of the King was brought to bear; the mountain, the accursed
cause of so many bereavements, was declared abandoned, and the chapel of
the Templars, situated on this same wild steep, friends and enemies
buried together in its cloister, began to fall into ruins.

"They say that ever since, on All Souls' Night, the chapel bell is heard
tolling all alone, and the spirits of the dead, wrapt in the tatters of
their shrouds, run as in a fantastic chase through the bushes and
brambles. The deer trumpet in terror, wolves howl, snakes hiss horribly,
and on the following morning there have been seen clearly marked in the
snow the prints of the fleshless feet of the skeletons. This is why we
call it in Soria the Spirits' Mountain, and this is why I wished to
leave it before nightfall. "

Alonso's story was finished just as the two young people arrived at the
end of the bridge which admits to the city from that side. There they
waited for the rest of the company to join them, and then the whole
cavalcade was lost to sight in the dim and narrow streets of Soria.


II.

The servants had just cleared the tables; the high Gothic fireplace of
the palace of the Counts of Alcudiel was shedding a vivid glow over the
groups of lords and ladies who were chatting in friendly fashion,
gathered about the blaze; and the wind shook the leaded glass of the
ogive windows.

Two persons only seemed to hold aloof from the general
conversation,--Beatriz and Alonso. Beatriz, absorbed in a vague revery,
followed with her eyes the capricious dance of the flames. Alonso
watched the reflection of the fire sparkling in the blue eyes of
Beatriz.

Both maintained for some time an unbroken silence.

The duennas were telling gruesome stories, appropriate to the Night of
All Souls,--stories in which ghosts and spectres played the principal
roles, and the church bells of Soria were tolling in the distance with a
monotonous and mournful sound.

"Fair cousin," finally exclaimed Alonso, breaking the long silence
between them. "Soon we are to separate, perhaps forever. I know you do
not like the arid plains of Castile, its rough, soldier customs, its
simple, patriarchal ways. At various times I have heard you sigh,
perhaps for some lover in your far-away demesne. "

Beatriz made a gesture of cold indifference; the whole character of the
woman was revealed in that disdainful contraction of her delicate lips.

"Or perhaps for the grandeur and gaiety of the French capital, where you
have lived hitherto," the young man hastened to add. "In one way or
another, I foresee that I shall lose you before long. When we part, I
would like to have you carry hence a remembrance of me. Do you recollect
the time when we went to church to give thanks to God for having granted
you that restoration to health which was your object in coming to this
region? The jewel that fastened the plume of my cap attracted your
attention. How well it would look clasping a veil over your dark hair!
It has already been the adornment of a bride. My father gave it to my
mother, and she wore it to the altar. Would you like it? "

"I do not know how it may be in your part of the country," replied the
beauty, "but in mine to accept a gift is to incur an obligation. Only on
a holy day may one receive a present

[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PASS]

from a kinsman,--though he may go to Rome without returning
empty-handed. "

The frigid tone in which Beatriz spoke these words troubled the youth
for a moment, but, clearing his brow, he replied sadly:

"I know it, cousin, but to-day is the festival of All Saints, and yours
among them,--a holiday on which gifts are fitting. Will you accept
mine? "

Beatriz slightly bit her lip and put out her hand for the jewel, without
a word.

The two again fell silent and again heard the quavering voices of the
old women telling of witches and hobgoblins, the whistling wind which
shook the ogive windows, and the mournful, monotonous tolling of the
bells.

After the lapse of some little time, the interrupted dialogue was thus
renewed:

"And before All Saints' Day ends, which is holy to my saint as well as
to yours, so that you can, without compromising yourself, give me a
keepsake, will you not do so? " pleaded Alonso, fixing his eyes on his
cousin's, which flashed like lightning, gleaming with a diabolical
thought.

"Why not? " she exclaimed, raising her hand to her right shoulder as
though seeking for something amid the folds of her wide velvet sleeve
embroidered with gold. Then, with an innocent air of disappointment, she
added:

"Do you recollect the blue scarf I wore to-day to the hunt,--the scarf
which you said, because of something about the meaning of its color, was
the emblem of your soul? "

"Yes. "

"Well! it is lost! it is lost, and I was thinking of letting you have it
for a souvenir. "

"Lost! where? " asked Alonso, rising from his seat with an indescribable
expression of mingled fear and hope.

"I do not know,--perhaps on the mountain. "

"On the Spirits' Mountain! " he murmured, paling and sinking back into
his seat. "On the Spirits' Mountain! "

Then he went on in a voice choked and broken:

"You know, for you have heard it a thousand times, that I am called in
the city, in all Castile, the king of the hunters. Not having yet had a
chance to try, like my ancestors, my strength in battle, I have brought
to bear on this pastime, the image of war, all the energy of my youth,
all the hereditary ardor of my race. The rugs your feet tread on are the
spoils of the chase, the hides of the wild beasts I have killed with my
own hand. I know their haunts and their habits; I have fought them by
day and by night, on foot and on horseback, alone and with
hunting-parties, and there is not a man will say that he has ever seen
me shrink from danger. On any other night I would fly for that
scarf,--fly as joyously as to a festival; but to-night, this one
night--why disguise it? --I am afraid. Do you hear? The bells are
tolling, the Angelus has sounded in San Juan del Duero, the ghosts of
the mountain are now beginning to lift their yellowing skulls from amid
the brambles that cover their graves--the ghosts! the mere sight of them
is enough to curdle with horror the blood of the bravest, turn his hair
white, or sweep him away in the stormy whirl of their fantastic chase as
a leaf, unwitting whither, is carried by the wind. "

While the young man was speaking, an almost imperceptible smile curled
the lips of Beatriz, who, when he had ceased, exclaimed in an
indifferent tone, while she was stirring the fire on the hearth, where
the wood blazed and snapped, throwing off sparks of a thousand colors:

"Oh, by no means! What folly! To go to the mountain at this hour for
such a trifle! On so dark a night, too, with ghosts abroad, and the road
beset by wolves! "

As she spoke this closing phrase, she emphasized it with so peculiar an
intonation that Alonso could not fail to understand all her bitter
irony. As moved by a spring, he leapt to his feet, passed his hand over
his brow as if to dispel the fear which was in his brain, not in his
breast, and with firm voice he said, addressing his beautiful cousin,
who was still leaning over the hearth, amusing herself by stirring the
fire:

"Farewell, Beatriz, farewell. If I return, it will be soon. "

"Alonso, Alonso! " she called, turning quickly, but now that she
wished--or made show of wishing--to detain him, the youth had gone.

In a few moments she heard the beat of a horse's hoofs departing at a
gallop. The beauty, with a radiant expression of satisfied pride
flushing her cheeks, listened attentively to the sound which grew
fainter and fainter until it died away.

The old dames, meanwhile, were continuing their tales of ghostly
apparitions; the wind was shrilling against the balcony glass, and far
away the bells of the city tolled on.


III

An hour had passed, two, three; midnight would soon be striking, and
Beatriz withdrew to her chamber. Alonso had not returned; he had not
returned, though less than an hour would have sufficed for his errand.

"He must have been afraid! " exclaimed the girl, closing her prayer-book
and turning toward her bed after a vain attempt to murmur some of the
prayers that the church offers for the dead on the Day of All Souls.

After putting out her light and drawing the double silken curtains, she
fell asleep; but her sleep was restless, light, uneasy.

The Postigo clock struck midnight. Beatriz heard through her dreams the
slow, dull, melancholy strokes, and half opened her eyes. She thought
she had heard, at the same time, her name spoken, but far, far away, and
in a faint, suffering voice. The wind groaned outside her window.

"It must have been the wind," she said, and pressing her hand above her
heart, she strove to calm herself. But her heart beat ever more wildly.
The larchwood doors of the chamber grated on their hinges with a sharp
creak, prolonged and strident.

First these doors, then the more distant ones,--all the doors which led
to her room opened, one after another, some with a heavy, groaning
sound, some with a long wail that set the nerves on edge. Then silence,
a silence full of strange noises, the silence of midnight, with a
monotonous murmur of far-off water, the distant barking of dogs,
confused voices, unintelligible words, echoes of footsteps going and
coming, the rustle of trailing garments, half-suppressed sighs, labored
breathing almost felt upon the face, involuntary shudders that announce
the presence of something not seen, though its approach is felt in the
darkness.

Beatriz, stiffening with fear, yet trembling, thrust her head out from
the bed-curtains and listened a moment. She heard a thousand diverse
noises; she passed her hand across her brow and listened again; nothing,
silence.

She saw, with that dilation of the pupils common in nervous crises, dim
shapes moving hither and thither all about the room, but when she fixed
her gaze on any one point, there was nothing but darkness and
impenetrable shadows.

"Bah! " she exclaimed, again resting her beautiful head upon her blue
satin pillow, "am I as timid as these poor kinsfolk of mine, whose
hearts thump with terror under their armor when they hear a
ghost-story? "

And closing her eyes she tried to sleep,--but her effort to compose
herself was in vain. Soon she started up again, paler, more uneasy,
more terrified. This time it was no illusion; the brocade hangings of
the door had rustled as they were pushed to either side, and slow
footsteps were heard upon the carpet; the sound of those footsteps was
muffled, almost imperceptible, but continuous, and she heard, keeping
measure with them, a creaking as of dry wood or bones. And the footfalls
came nearer, nearer; the prayer-stool by the side of her bed moved.
Beatriz uttered a sharp cry, and burying herself under the bedclothes,
hid her head and held her breath.

The wind beat against the balcony glass; the water of the far-off
fountain was falling, falling, with a monotonous, unceasing sound; the
barking of the dogs was borne upon the gusts, and the church bells in
the city of Soria, some near, some remote, tolled sadly for the souls of
the dead.

So passed an hour, two, the night, a century, for that night seemed to
Beatrix eternal. At last the day began to break; putting fear from her,
she half opened her eyes to the first silver rays. How beautiful, after
a night of wakefulness and terrors, is the clear white light of dawn!
She parted the silken curtains of her bed and was ready to laugh at her
past alarms, when suddenly a cold sweat covered her body, her eyes
seemed starting from their sockets, and a deadly pallor overspread her
cheeks; for on her prayer-stool she had seen, torn and blood-stained,
the blue scarf she lost on the mountain, the blue scarf Alonso went to
seek.

When her attendants rushed in, aghast, to tell her of the death of the
heir of Alcudiel, whose body, partly devoured by wolves, had been found
that morning among the brambles on the Spirits' Mountain, they
discovered her motionless, convulsed, clinging with both hands to one of
the ebony bedposts, her eyes staring, her mouth open, the lips white,
her limbs rigid,--dead, dead of fright!


IV.

They say that, some time after this event, a hunter who, having lost his
way, had been obliged to pass the Night of the Dead on the Spirits'
Mountain, and who in the morning, before he died, was able to relate
what he had seen, told a tale of horror. Among other awful sights, he
avowed he beheld the skeletons of the ancient Knights Templars and of
the nobles of Soria, buried in the cloister of the chapel, rise at the
hour of the Angelus with a horrible rattle and, mounted on their bony
steeds, chase, as a wild beast, a beautiful woman, pallid, with
streaming hair, who, uttering cries of terror and anguish, had been
wandering, with bare and bloody feet, about the tomb of Alonso.




THE CAVE OF THE MOOR'S DAUGHTER


I.

Opposite the Baths of Fitero, on a rocky, precipitous eminence, at whose
base flows the river Alhama, there may be seen to this day the abandoned
ruins of a Moorish castle celebrated in the glorious memories of the
Reconquest as having been the theatre of great and famous exploits, as
well on the part of the defenders as of those who valiantly nailed to
its parapets the standard of the Cross.

Of the walls there remain only some scattered ruins; the stones of the
watch-tower have fallen one above another into the moat, filling it to
the top; in the court-of-arms grow briers and patches of yellow mustard;
in whatever direction you look, you see only broken arches, blackened
and crumbling blocks of stone; here a section of the barbican in whose
fissures springs the ivy, there a round tower, standing yet, as by a
miracle; further on, pillars of cement with the iron rings which
supported the drawbridge.

During my stay at the Baths, partly for exercise, which I was assured
would be conducive to my health, and partly from curiosity, I strolled
every afternoon along the rough path that leads to the ruins of the Arab
fortress. There I passed hours and hours, closely scanning the ground in
the hope of discovering some fragments of armor, beating the walls to
find out whether they were hollow and might be the hiding place of
treasure, and investigating all the nooks and crannies with the idea of
hitting upon the entrance to some of those underground cells which are
believed to exist in all Moorish castles.

My diligent search was, after all, a fruitless one.

But yet, one afternoon, when I had quite despaired of discovering
anything new and curious on the rocky height crowned by the castle and
had given up the climb, limiting my walk to the banks of the river which
flows by its foot, I saw, as I walked along by the stream, a sort of
gaping hole in the living rock, half hidden by thickly-leaved bushes.
Not without a little tremor, I parted the branches covering the entrance
to what seemed a natural cave, but what I perceived, after advancing a
few steps, was a subterranean vault narrowing to the mouth. Not being
able to penetrate to the end, which was lost in darkness, I confined
myself to observing attentively the peculiarities of the arch and of the
pavement that appeared to me to rise in great stairs toward the height
on which stood the castle I have mentioned, and in whose ruins I then
remembered having seen a closed-up trap door. Doubtless I had discovered
one of those secret passages so common in the fortifications of that
epoch, serving for covert sallies, or for bringing, in state of siege,
water from the river which flows hard by.

That I might be more sure of the truth of my inferences, after I had
come out from the cave by the same way in which I had entered, I fell
into conversation with a workman who was pruning some vines in that
rough region and whom I accosted under pretence of asking a light for my
cigarette.

We talked of various matters: the medicinal properties of the waters of
Fitero; the last harvest and the next; the women of Navarre and the
cultivation of vines; indeed, we talked of everything which occurred to
the sociable body before we spoke of the cave, the object of my
curiosity.

When, at last, the conversation had reached this point, I asked him if
he knew of any one who had gone through it, and seen the other end.

"Gone through the cave of the Moor's Daughter! " he

[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN GROTTO]

repeated, astonished at hearing such a question. "Who would dare? Do you
not know that from this cave there comes out, every night, _a ghost_? "

"A ghost! " I exclaimed, smiling. "Whose ghost? "

"The ghost of the daughter of a Moorish chief, she who yet wanders
mourning about these places and is seen every night coming out of this
cave, robed in white, and filling at the river a water-jar.