The night
commenced
to fall.
Gustavo Adolfo Becuqer
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 tell me," he exclaimed impetuously; "how you failed to render aid
to that woman in distress. "
"And didn't we aid her! " said another of the circle. "Didn't I sell them
another saddle-horse so that they might press on their way with all the
speed that seemed so important to them! "
"But," interrupted Andres, "that woman was stolen away by force; that
man is a bandit, who, regardless of her tears and her laments, drags her
I know not whither. "
The sly rustics exchanged glances and compassionate smiles.
"Not so, _senorito_! what tales are you telling us? " slowly continued
the man with whom he was talking. "Stolen away by force! But how if it
were she herself who said with the greatest earnestness: 'Quick, quick,
let us flee from this district! I shall not be at rest until it is out
of my sight forever. '"
Andres comprehended all; a cloud of blood passed before his eyes--eyes
which shed no tear, and he fell to the earth prone as the dead.
He went mad; in a few days, he died.
There was an autopsy; no organic trouble was found. Ah! if it were
possible to dissect the soul, how many deaths similar to this would be
explained!
* * * * *
"And did he actually die of that? " exclaimed the youth, who was still
playing with the charms that hung from his watch chain, as I finished my
story.
I glanced at him as if to say: "Does it seem to you so little? " He
continued with a certain air of profundity: "Strange! I know what it is
to suffer; when in the last races my Herminia stumbled, killed the
jockey and broke a leg, the misfortune of that animal vexed me
horribly; but, frankly, not so much as that--not so much as that. "
I was still regarding him with astonishment, when I heard a melodious
and slightly veiled voice, the voice of the girl with the azure eyes.
"Strange, indeed! I love my Medoro dearly," she said, dropping a kiss on
the snout of the sluggish and blear-eyed lap-dog, who gave a little
grunt, "but if he should die, or somebody should kill him, I do not
believe that I would go mad nor anything like it. "
My astonishment was passing into stupefaction; these people had not
understood me, nor wished to understand me.
Finally I turned to the gentleman who was taking tea, for at his years
he might be expected to be somewhat more reasonable.
"And you? how does it seem to you? " I asked.
"I will tell you," he replied. "I am married; I loved my wife; I have,
it seems to me, a regard for her still; there came up between us a
domestic unpleasantness, that by its publicity forced me to demand
satisfaction; a duel followed; I had the good luck to wound my
adversary, an excellent fellow, as full of jest and wit as any man
alive, with whom I am still in the habit of taking coffee occasionally
in the Iberia. Since then I have ceased to live with my wife, and have
devoted myself to travel. --When I am in Madrid, I stay with her as a
friend visiting a friend; and all this has taken place without any
violent passions, without any great emotions, without any extraordinary
sufferings. After this slight sketch of my character and of my life,
what shall I say to you about these phenomenal explosions of feeling
except that all this seems to me strange, very strange? "
When he had finished speaking, the blonde girl and the young man who was
making love to her looked over together an album of Gabarni's
caricatures. In those few moments the elder gentleman treated himself
with exquisite enjoyment to his third cup of tea.
When I called to mind that on hearing the outcome of my story they all
had said--_Strange! _--I for my part exclaimed to myself--_Natural! _
WITHERED LEAVES
The sun had set. The wheeling masses of cloud were hastening to heap
themselves one above another in the distant horizon. The cold wind of
autumn evenings was whirling the withered leaves about my feet.
I was sitting by the side of a road [the road to the cemetery] where
ever there return fewer than those who go.
I do not know of what I was thinking, if, indeed, I was just then
thinking of anything at all. My soul was trembling on the point of
soaring into space, as the bird trembles and flutters its wings before
taking flight.
There are moments in which, thanks to a series of abstractions, the
spirit withdraws from its environment and, self-absorbed, analyzes and
comprehends the mysterious phenomena of the inner life of man.
There are other moments in which the soul slips free from the flesh,
loses its personality, mingles with the elements of nature, relates
itself to their mode of being and translates their incomprehensible
language.
In one of these latter moments was I, when, alone and in the midst of a
clear tract of level ground, I heard talking near me.
The speakers were two withered leaves, and this, a little more or less
exact, was their strange dialogue:
"Whence comest thou, sister? "
"I come from riding on the whirlwind, enveloped in the cloud of dust and
of withered leaves, our companions, all the length of the interminable
plain. And thou? "
"I drifted for a time with the current of the river, until the strong
south wind snatched me up from the mud and reeds of the bank. "
"And whither bound? "
"I know not. Doth perchance the wind that driveth me know? "
"Woe is me! Who would have said that we should end like this, faded and
withered, dragging ourselves along the ground--we who lived clothed in
color and light, dancing in the air? "
"Rememberest thou the beautiful days of our budding--that peaceful
morning when, at the breaking of the swollen sheath which had served us
for a cradle, we unfolded to the gentle kiss of the sun, like a fan of
emeralds? "
"Oh, how sweet it was to be swayed at that height by the breeze,
drinking in through every pore the air and the light! "
"Oh, how beautiful it was to watch the flowing water of the river that
lapped the twisted roots of the ancient tree which sustained us, that
limpid, transparent water, reflecting like a mirror the azure of the
sky, so that we seemed to live suspended between two blue abysses! "
"With what delight we used to peep over the green foliage to see
ourselves pictured in the tremulous stream! "
"How we would sing together, imitating the murmur of the breeze and
following the rhythm of the waves! "
"Brilliant insects would flit about us, spreading their gauzy wings. "
"And the white butterflies and blue dragon-flies, gyrating in strange
circles through the air, would alight for a moment on our dentate edges
to tell each other the secrets of that mysterious love lasting but an
instant and burning up their lives. "
"Each of us was a note in the concert of the groves. "
"Each of us was a tone in their harmony of color. "
"In the silver nights when the moonbeams glided over the mountain tops,
dost remember how we would chat in low voices amid the translucent
shadows? "
"And we would relate in soft whispers stories of the sylphs who swing in
the golden threads that the spiders hang from tree to tree. "
"Until we hushed our murmurous speech to listen enraptured to the
plaints of the nightingale, who had chosen our tree for her throne of
song. "
"And so sad and so tender were her lamenting strains that, though filled
with joy to hear her, the dawn found us weeping. "
"Oh, how sweet were those tears which the dew of night would shed upon
us, and which would sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the
first gleam of dawn! "
"Then came the jocund flock of linnets to pour into the grove life and
sound with the gleeful, gay confusion of their songs. "
"And one enamoured pair hung close to us their round nest of straws and
feathers. "
"We served to shelter the little ones from the troublesome rain-drops in
the summer tempests. "
"We served as a canopy to shield them from the fierce rays of the sun. "
"Our life passed like a golden dream from which we had no thought there
could be an awakening. "
"One beautiful afternoon, when everything around us seemed to smile,
when the setting sun was kindling the west and crimsoning the clouds,
and from the earth, touched by the evening damp, were rising exhalations
of life and the perfumes of flowers, two lovers stayed their steps on
the river bank at the foot of our parent tree. "
"Never will that memory fade! She was young, scarcely more than a child,
beautiful and pallid. He asked her tenderly, 'Why weepest thou? '
'Forgive this involuntary selfishness,' she replied, brushing away a
tear; 'I weep for myself; I weep for the life which is slipping from me.
When the sky is crowned with sunshine and the earth is clothed with
verdure and flowers, and the wind is laden with perfumes, with the songs
of birds and with far-off harmonies, and when one loves and feels
herself beloved, life is good. ' 'And why wilt thou not live? ' he
insisted, deeply moved, clasping her hands close in his. 'Because I
cannot. When these leaves, which whisper in unison above our heads, fall
withered, I, too, shall die, and the wind will some day bear away their
dust, and mine--whither, who knoweth? '"
"I heard, and thou did'st hear, and we shuddered and were silent. We
must wither! We must die, and be whirled about by the rushing wind! Mute
and full of terror we remained even till nightfall. O, how terrible was
that night! "
"For the first time the love-lorn nightingale failed at the tryst which
she had enchanted with her mournful lays. "
"Soon the birds flew away, and with them their little ones now clothed
with plumage, and only the nest remained, rocking slowly and sadly, like
the empty cradle of a dead child. "
"And the white butterflies and the blue dragonflies fled, leaving their
place to obscure insects which came to eat away our fibre and to deposit
in our bosoms their nauseous larvae. "
"Oh, and how we shivered, shrinking from the icy touch of the night
frosts! "
"We lost our color and freshness. "
"We lost our pliancy and grace, and what before had been to us like the
soft sound of kisses, like the murmur of love words, now became a harsh,
dry call, unwelcome, dismal. "
"And at last, dislodged, we flew away. "
"Trodden under foot by the careless passers-by, whirled incessantly
from one point to another in the dust and the mire, I accounted myself
happy when I could rest for an instant in the deep rut of a road. "
"I have revolved unceasingly in the grip of the turbid stream; and in
the course of my long travels I saw, alone, in mourning garb and with
clouded brow, gazing absently upon the running waters and the withered
leaves which shared and marked their movement, one of those two lovers
whose words gave us our first presentment of death. "
"She, too, has lost her hold on life, and perchance will sleep in an
open, new-made grave over which I paused a moment. "
"Ah, she sleeps and rests at last; but we, when shall we come to the end
of our long journey? "
"Never! --Even now the wind, which has given us a brief repose, blows
once more, and I feel myself constrained to rise from the ground and
follow. Adieu, sister! "
"Adieu! "
* * * * *
The wind, quiet for a moment, whistled again, and the leaves rose in a
whirling confusion, to be lost afar in the darkness of the night.
And then there came to me a thought that I cannot remember and that,
even though I were to remember it, I could find no words to utter.
THE SET OF EMERALDS
We were pausing on the Street of San Jeronimo, in front of Duran's and
were reading the title of a book by Mery.
As my attention was called to that extraordinary title, and as I spoke
of it to the friend who accompanied me, he, leaning lightly on my arm,
exclaimed: "The day could not be more beautiful. Let us take a turn by
the Fuente Castellana. While we are walking, I will tell you a story in
which I am the principal hero. You will see how, after hearing it, you
will not only understand this title, but will find its explanation the
easiest thing in the world. "
I had plenty to do; but as I am always glad of an excuse for doing
nothing, I accepted the proposition, and my friend began his story as
follows:
"Some time ago, one night when I had set out to stroll the streets,
without any more definite object,--after having examined all the
collections of prints and photographs in the shop-windows, after having
chosen in imagination in front of the Savoyard store the bronzes with
which I would adorn my house, if I had one, after having made a minute
survey, in fine, of all the objects of art and luxury exposed to public
view upon the shelves behind the lighted plate-glass, I stopped a moment
before Samper's.
"I do not know how long it was that I remained there, adorning, in
fancy, all the pretty women I know, one with a collar of pearls, another
with a cross of diamonds, another with ear-rings of amethyst and gold. I
was deliberating at that point to whom to offer--who would be worthy of
it--a magnificent set of emeralds as rich as it was elegant, which
among all the other jewelled ornaments claimed attention for the beauty
and clearness of its stones, when I heard at my side the softest,
sweetest voice exclaim with an accent which could not fail to put my
fancies to flight: 'What beautiful emeralds! '
"I turned my head in the direction of that voice, a woman's voice, for
only so could it have left such an echo, and I confronted, in fact, a
woman supremely beautiful. I could look at her only a moment, and yet
her loveliness made on me a profound impression.
"At the door of the jeweller's shop from which she had come out, there
was a carriage. She was accompanied by a lady of mature age, too young
to be her mother, too old to be her friend. When both had entered the
_coupe_, the horses started, and I stood like a fool staring after her
until she was lost to sight.
"'What beautiful emeralds! ' she had said. The emeralds were indeed
superb. That collar, around her snowy neck, would look like a garland of
young almond leaves besprent with dew; that brooch upon her bosom, a
lotus-flower when it sways on its pulsing wave, crowned with foam. 'What
beautiful emeralds! ' Would she like them, perhaps? And if she would like
them, why not have them? She must be rich, a lady of high rank. She has
an elegant carriage, and on the door of that carriage I thought I saw a
crest. Doubtless in the life of this woman there is some mystery.
"These were the thoughts that agitated my mind after I lost sight of
her,--when not even the sound of her carriage wheels came to my ears.
And truly there was in her life, apparently so peaceful and enviable, a
horrible mystery. I found it out--I will not tell you how.
"Married when a mere child to a profligate who, after squandering his
own fortune, had sought a profitable alliance, as the best means of
squandering another's, that woman, a model of wives and mothers, had
refused to gratify the least of her caprices that she might save some
part of her inheritance for her daughter and that she might maintain in
outer appearance the dignity of her house at the height which it had
always held in Spanish society.
"People tell of some women's great sacrifices. I believe that,
considering their peculiar organization, there is none comparable with
the sacrifice of an ardent desire in which vanity and coquetry are
concerned.
"From the time when I penetrated the mystery of her life, all my
aspirations, through one of these freakish enthusiasms of my character,
were reduced to this only,--to get possession of that marvellous set of
jewels and to give it to her in such a way that she could not refuse it,
nor even know from whose hand it might have come.
"Among other difficulties which I at once encountered in the realization
of my idea, assuredly not the least was that I had not money, neither
much nor little, to buy the gems.
"Yet I did not despair.
"'Where shall I look for money? ' I said to myself, and I remembered the
marvels of _The Thousand and One Nights_; those cabalistic words at
whose echo the earth opened and revealed hidden treasures; those rods of
such rare virtue that, when rocks were smitten by them, there bubbled
from the clefts not a spring of water, which was a small miracle, but
rubies, topazes, pearls and diamonds.
"Being ignorant of the words and not knowing where to find a rod, I
decided at last to write a book and sell it. To get money out of the
rock of a publisher is nothing short of miraculous; but I did it.
"I wrote a book of original quality, which few people liked, as only one
person could understand it; for the rest it was merely a collection of
phrases.
[Illustration: A SENORITA
From the painting by F. Goya]
"The book was entitled _The Set of Emeralds_, and I signed it with my
initials only.
"Since I am not Victor Hugo, nor anybody of the sort, I need not tell
you that I did not get for my novel what the author of _Notre Dame de
Paris_ had for his latest; but what with one thing and another I
gathered together a sufficient sum to begin my plan of campaign.
"The emeralds in question would be worth from fourteen to fifteen
thousand dollars, and toward the purchase I now counted up the
respectable sum of one hundred and fifty. It was necessary, then, to
game.
"I gamed; and I gamed with such good sense and good fortune that in a
single night I won what I needed.
"Apropos of gambling, I have made an observation in which every day has
confirmed me more and more. If one puts down his money with the full
expectation of winning, he wins. One must not approach the green table
with the hesitancy of a man who is going to try his luck, but with the
coolness of him who comes to take his own. For myself, I can assure you
that I should have been as much surprised to lose that night as if a
substantial bank had refused me money on a check with Rothschild's
signature.
"The next day I went to Samper's. Will you believe that in throwing down
upon the jeweller's counter that handful of many-colored notes, those
notes which represented for me at least a year of pleasure, many
beautiful women, a journey to Italy, and champagne and cigars at
discretion, that I wavered a moment? Then don't believe it. I threw them
down with the same nonchalance--do I say nonchalance? --with the same
satisfaction with which Buckingham, breaking the thread on which they
were strung, strewed with pearls the carpet of his beloved's palace.
"I bought the jewels and carried them to my lodgings. You can picture
nothing more glorious than that set of emeralds. No wonder the women
sigh now and then as they pass in front of those shops which present to
their eyes such glittering temptations; no wonder that Mephistopheles
selected a collar of precious stones as the object most likely to seduce
Marguerite. I, man that I am, could have wished for an instant to live
in the Orient and be one of those fabulous monarchs who wreathe their
brows with a coil of gold and gems, that I might adorn myself with those
magnificent emerald leaves and diamond flowers.
"A gnome, to buy a kiss from a sylph, would not have been able to find
among the immense treasures hoarded in the avaricious heart of the earth
and known to those elves alone, an emerald larger, clearer, more
beautiful than that which sparkled, fastening a knot of rubies, in the
centre of the diadem.
"Now that I had the gems, I began to think out a way of placing them in
possession of the woman for whom they were intended.
"At the end of several days, I prevailed upon one of her maids--thanks
to the money that I still had left--to promise me that she, when
unobserved, would place the set in the jewel-box; and to assure myself
that she should not, by her conduct, betray the source of the gift, I
gave her what money was left over, several hundred dollars, on condition
that she, as soon as she had put the emeralds in the place agreed upon,
should leave the capital and remove to Barcelona. This, in fact, she
did.
"Judge for yourself what must have been the surprise of her mistress
when, after noticing her sudden disappearance and suspecting that
perhaps she had fled from the house with something stolen, she found in
the jewel-box the magnificent set of emeralds. Who had divined her
thought? Who had been able to surmise that she still, from time to time,
remembered those gems with a sigh?
"The weeks and the months passed on. I knew that she kept my gift; I
knew that great efforts had been made to discover whence it came; and
yet I had never seen her adorned with it. --Did she scorn the offering?
'Ah! ' I said, 'if she knew all the merit of that gift! if she knew that
its desert is scarcely surpassed by the gift of that lover who pawned
his cloak in winter to buy a nosegay! Does she perhaps think that it
comes from the hands of some great personage who will one day present
himself, if admitted, to claim its price? What a mistake she makes! '
"One night when there was to be a royal ball I stationed myself at the
door of the palace and, lost in the crowd, waited for her carriage that
I might see her. When it arrived and, the footman opening the door, she
appeared in radiant beauty, a murmur of admiration went up from among
the pressing multitude. The women beheld her with envy; the men with
longing; from me there broke a low, involuntary cry. She was wearing the
set of emeralds.
"That night I went to bed without my supper; I do not remember whether
it was because emotion had taken away my appetite or because I had no
money. In either case, I was happy. In my dreams I thought I heard the
music of the ball and saw her crossing before my eyes, flashing sparks
of a thousand colors, until I dreamed even that I was dancing with her.
"The romance of the emeralds had been conjectured, since they had been
talked about when they first appeared in the cabinet, by some ladies of
rank.
"Now that the set had been seen, there was no longer room for doubt, and
idle tongues began to comment on the affair. She enjoyed a spotless
reputation. Notwithstanding the dissipation of her husband and his
neglect of her, calumny could never reach to the height on which her
virtue had placed her; but yet, on this occasion, there began to stir
that little breath of gossip from which, according to Don Basilio,
scandal begins.
"On a day when I chanced to be in a circle of young men, the
conversation fell on the famous emeralds, and finally a coxcomb said, as
if settling the matter:
"There is no need of discussion. These jewels have as vulgar an origin
as all such presents in this world of ours. The time has gone by when
invisible spirits placed marvellous gifts under the pillows of lovely
ladies, and the man who makes a present of this value makes it with the
hope of a recompense--and this recompense, who knows that it was not
given in advance? "
"The words of that idiot roused my wrath, and all the more because they
found response in those who heard them. Yet I controlled myself.
