No More Learning

In this tomb, whose inscription is the motto of my
song, rests in peace the last baron of Fortcastell, Teobaldo de
Montagut, whose strange history I am about to tell.


I.

While the noble Countess of Montagut was pregnant with her firstborn
son, Teobaldo, she had a strange and terrible dream. Perchance a divine
warning; mayhap a vain fantasy which time made real in later years. She
dreamed that in her womb she had borne a serpent, a monstrous serpent
that, darting out shrill hisses, now gliding through the short grass,
now coiling upon itself for a spring, fled from her sight, hiding at
last in a clump of briers.

"There it is! there it is! " shrieked the Countess in her horrible
nightmare, pointing out to her servitors the brambles among which the
nauseous reptile had sought concealment.

When the servitors had swiftly reached the spot which the noble lady,
motionless and overwhelmed by a profound terror, was still pointing out
to them with her finger, a white dove rose from out the prickly thicket
and soared to the clouds.

The serpent had disappeared.


II.

Teobaldo was born. His mother died in giving him birth; his father
perished a few years later in an ambuscade, warring like a good
Christian against the Moors, the enemies of God.

From this time on the youth of the heir of Fortcastell can be likened
only to a hurricane. Wherever he went, his way was marked by a trail of
tears and blood. He hanged his vassals, he fought his equals, he pursued
maidens, he beat the monks, and never ceased from oaths and blasphemies.
There was no saint in peace, no hallowed thing, he did not curse.


III.

One day when he was out hunting and when, as was his custom, he had had
all his devilish retinue of profligate pages, inhuman archers and
debased servants, with the dogs, horses and gerfalcons, take shelter
from the rain in a village church of his demesne, a venerable priest,
daring the young lord's wrath, not quailing at thought of the fury-fits
of that wild nature, raised the consecrated Host in his hands and
conjured the invader in the name of Heaven to depart from that place and
go on foot, with pilgrim staff, to entreat of the Pope absolution for
his crimes.

"Leave me alone, old fool! " exclaimed Teobaldo on hearing this,--"leave
me alone! Or, since I have not come on a single quarry all day long, I
will let loose my hounds and chase thee like a wild boar for my sport. "


IV.

With Teobaldo a word was a deed. Yet the priest made no answer save
this:

"Do what thou wilt, but remember that there is a God who chastises and
who pardons. If I die at thy hands, He will blot out my sins from the
book of His displeasure, to write thy name in their place and to make
thee expiate thy crime. "

"A God who chastises and pardons! " interrupted the blasphemous baron
with a burst of laughter. "I do not believe in God and, by way of proof,
I am going to carry out my threat; for though not much given to prayer,
I am a man of my word. Raimundo! Gerardo! Pedro! Set on the pack! give
me a javelin! blow the _alali_ on your horns, since we will hunt down
this idiot, though he climb to the tops of his altars. "


V.

After an instant's hesitation and a fresh command from their lord, the
pages began to unleash the greyhounds that filled the church with the
din of their eager barking; the baron had strung his crossbow, laughing
a Satanic laugh; and the venerable priest, murmuring a prayer, was, with
his eyes raised to heaven, tranquilly awaiting death, when there rose
outside the sacred enclosure a wild halloo, the braying of horns
proclaiming that the game had been sighted, and shouts of _After the
boar! Across the brushwood! To the mountain! _ Teobaldo, at this
announcement of the longed-for quarry, dashed open the doors of the
church, transported by delight; behind him went his retainers, and with
his retainers the horses and hounds.


VI.

"Which way went the boar? " asked the baron as he sprang upon his steed
without touching the stirrups or unstringing his bow. "By the glen which
runs to the foot of those hills," they answered him. Without hearing the
last word, the impetuous hunter buried his golden spur in the flank of
the horse, who bounded away at full gallop. Behind him departed all the
rest.

The dwellers in the hamlet, who had been the first to give the alarm and
who, at the approach of the terrible beast, had taken refuge in their
huts, timidly thrust out their heads from behind their window-shutters,
and when they saw that the infernal troop had disappeared among the
foliage of the woods, they crossed themselves in silence.


VII.

Teobaldo rode in advance of all. His steed, swifter by nature or more
severely goaded than those of the retainers, followed so close to the
quarry that twice or thrice the baron, dropping his bridle upon the neck
of the fiery courser, had stood up in his stirrups and drawn the bow to
his shoulder to wound his prey. But the boar, whom he saw only at
intervals among the tangled thickets, would again vanish from view to
reappear just out of reach of the arrow.

So he pursued the chase hour after hour, traversing the ravines of the
valley and the stony bed of the stream, until, plunging into a deep
forest, he lost his way in its shadowy defiles, his eyes ever fixed on
the coveted game he constantly expected to overtake, only to find
himself constantly mocked by its marvellous agility.


VIII.

At last, he had his chance; he extended his arm and let fly the shaft,
which plunged, quivering, into the loin of the terrible beast that gave
a leap and a frightful snort. --"Dead! " exclaims the hunter with a shout
of glee, driving his spur for the hundredth time into the bloody flank
of his horse. "Dead! in vain he flees. The trail of his flowing blood
marks his way. " And so speaking, Teobaldo commenced to sound upon his
bugle the signal of triumph that his retinue might hear.

At that instant his steed stopped short, its legs gave way, a slight
tremor shook its strained muscles, it fell flat to the ground, shooting
out from its swollen nostrils, bathed in foam, a rill of blood.

It had died of exhaustion, died when the pace of the wounded boar was
beginning to slacken, when but one more effort was needed to run the
quarry down.


IX.

To paint the wrath of the fierce-tempered Teobaldo would be impossible.
To repeat his oaths and his curses, merely to repeat them, would be
scandalous and impious. He shouted at the top of his voice to his
retainers, but only echo answered him in those vast solitudes, and he
tore his hair and plucked at his beard, a prey to the most furious
despair. --"I will run it down, even though I break every blood-vessel in
my body," he exclaimed at last, stringing his bow anew and making ready
to pursue the game on foot; but at that very instant he heard a sound
behind him; the thick branches of the wood opened, and before his eyes
appeared a page leading by the halter a charger black as night.

"Heaven hath sent it to me," exclaimed the hunter, leaping upon its
loins lightly as a deer. The page, who was thin, very thin, and yellow
as death, smiled a strange smile as he handed him the bridle.


X.

The horse whinnied with a force which made the forest tremble, gave an
incredible bound, a bound that raised him more than thirty feet above
the earth, and the air began to hum about the ears of the rider, as a
stone hums, hurled from a sling. He had started off at full gallop; but
at a gallop so headlong that, afraid of losing the stirrups and in his
dizziness falling to the ground, he had to shut his eyes and with both
hands clutch the streaming mane.

And still without a shake of the reins, without touch of spur or call of
voice, the steed ran, ran without ceasing. How long did Teobaldo gallop
thus, unwitting where, feeling the branches buffet his face as he rushed
by, and the brambles tear at his clothing, and the wind whistle about
his head? No human being knows.


XI.

When, recovering courage, he opened his eyes an instant to throw a
troubled glance about him, he found himself far, very far from Montagut,
and in a district that was to him entirely unknown. The steed ran, ran
without ceasing, and trees, rocks, castles and villages passed by him
like a breath. New and still new horizons opened to his view,--horizons
that melted away only to give place to others stranger and yet more
strange. Narrow valleys, bristling with colossal fragments of granite
which the tempests had torn down from mountain-summits; smiling plains,
covered with a carpet of verdure and sprinkled over with white villages;
limitless deserts, where the sands seethed beneath the searching rays of
a sun of fire; immeasurable wildernesses, boundless steppes, regions of
eternal snow, where the gigantic icebergs, standing out against a dim
grey sky, were like white phantoms reaching out their arms to seize him
by the hair as he fled past; all this, and thousands of other sights
that I cannot depict, he saw in his wild race, until, enveloped in an
obscure cloud, he ceased to hear the tramp of his horse's hoofs beating
the ground.

* * * * *


I.

Noble Knights, Shepherds, Lovely Little Maids who hearken to my lay, if
what I tell be a marvel in your ears, deem it not a fable woven at my
whim to steal a march on your credulity; from mouth to mouth this
tradition has been passed down to me, and the inscription upon the tomb
which still abides in the monastery of Montagut is an unimpeachable
proof of the veracity of my words.

Believe, then, what I have told, and believe what I have yet to tell,
for it is as certain as the foregoing, although more wonderful.
Perchance I shall be able to adorn with a few graces of poetry the bare
skeleton of this simple and terrible history, but never will I
consciously depart one iota from the truth.


II.

When Teobaldo ceased to perceive the hoof-beats of his courser and felt
himself hurled forth upon the void, he could not repress an involuntary
shudder of terror. Up to this point he had believed that the objects
which flashed before his eyes were the wild visions of his imagination,
perturbed as it was by giddiness, and that his steed ran uncontrolled,
to be sure, but still ran within the boundaries of his own seigniory.
Now there remained no doubt that he was the sport of a supernatural
power, which was hurrying him he knew not whither, through those masses
of dark clouds, clouds of freakish and fantastic forms, in whose depths,
lit up from time to time by flashes of lightning, he thought he could
distinguish the burning thunderbolts about to break upon him.

The steed still ran, or, be it better said, swam now in that ocean of
vague and fiery vapors, and the wonders of the sky began to display
themselves one after another before the astounded eyes of his rider.


III.

He saw the angels, ministers of the wrath of God, clad in long tunics
with fringes of fire, their burning hair loose on the hurricane, their
brandished swords, which flashed the lightning, throwing out sparks of
crimson light,--he saw this heavenly cavalry wheeling upon the clouds,
sweeping like a mighty army over the wings of the tempest.

And he mounted higher, and he deemed he descried, from far above, the
stormy clouds like a sea of lava, and heard the thunder moan below him
as moans the ocean breaking on the cliff from whose summit the pilgrim
views it all amazed.


IV.

And he saw the archangel, white as snow, who, throned on a great crystal
globe, steers it through space in the cloudless nights like a silver
boat over the surface of an azure lake.

And he saw the sun revolving in splendor on golden axles through an
atmosphere of color and of flame, and at its centre the fiery spirits
who dwell unharmed in that intensest glow and from its blazing heart
entone to their Creator hymns of praise.

He saw the threads of imperceptible light which bind men to the stars,
and he saw the rainbow arch, thrown like a colossal bridge across the
abyss which divides the first from the second heaven.


V.

By a mystic stair he saw souls descend to earth; he saw many come down,
and few go up. Each one of these innocent spirits went accompanied by a
most radiant archangel who covered it with the shadow of his wings. The
archangels who returned alone came in silence, weeping; but the others
mounted singing like the larks on April mornings.

Then the rosy and azure mists which floated in the ether, like curtains
of transparent gauze, were rent, as Holy Saturday, the Day of Glory,
rends in our churches the veiling of the altars, and the Paradise of the
Righteous opened, dazzling in its beauty, to his gaze.


VI.

There were the holy prophets whom you have seen rudely sculptured on the
stone portals of our cathedrals, there the shining virgins whom the
painter vainly strives, in the stained glass of the ogive windows, to
copy from his dreams; there the cherubim with their long and floating
robes and haloes of gold; as in the altar pictures; there, at last,
crowned with stars, clad in light, surrounded by all the celestial
hierarchy, and beautiful beyond all thought, Our Lady of Montserrat,
Mother of God, Queen of Archangels, the shelter of sinners and the
consolation of the afflicted.

[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF MONTSERRAT]


VII.

Beyond the Paradise of the Righteous; beyond the throne where sits the
Virgin Mary. The mind of Teobaldo was stricken by terror; a fathomless
fear possessed his soul. Eternal solitude, eternal silence live in those
spaces that lead to the mysterious sanctuary of the Most High. From time
to time a rush of wind, cold as the blade of a poniard, smote his
forehead,--a wind that shriveled his hair with horror and penetrated to
the marrow of his bones,--a wind like to those which announced to the
prophets the approach of the Divine Spirit. At last he reached a point
where he thought he perceived a dull murmur that might be likened to the
far-off hum of a swarm of bees, when, in autumn evenings, they hover
around the last of the flowers.


VIII.

He crossed that fantastic region whither go all the accents of the
earth, the sounds which we say have ceased, the words which we deem are
lost in the air, the laments which we believe are heard of none.

There, in a harmonious circle, float the prayers of little children, the
orisons of virgins, the psalms of holy hermits, the petitions of the
humble, the chaste words of the pure in heart, the resigned moans of
those in pain, the sobs of souls that suffer and the hymns of souls that
hope. Teobaldo heard among those voices, that throbbed still in the
luminous ether, the voice of his sainted mother who prayed to God for
him; but he heard no prayer of his own.


IX.

Further on, thousands on thousands of harsh, rough accents wounded his
ears with a discordant roar,--blasphemies, cries for vengeance, drinking
songs, indecencies, curses of despair, threats of the helpless, and
sacrilegious oaths of the impious.

Teobaldo traversed the second circle with the rapidity of a meteor
crossing the sky in a summer evening, that he might not hear his own
voice which vibrated there thunderously loud, exceeding all other voices
in the stress of that infernal concert.

"I do not believe in God! I do not believe in God! " still spake his tone
beating through that ocean of blasphemies; and Teobaldo began to
believe.


X.

He left those regions behind him and crossed other illimitable spaces
full of terrible visions, which neither could he comprehend nor am I
able to conceive, and finally he came to the uppermost circle of the
spiral heavens, where the seraphim adore Jehovah, covering their faces
with their triple wings and prostrate at His feet.

He would see God.

A waft of fire scorched his face, a sea of light darkened his eyes,
unbearable thunder resounded in his ears and, caught from his charger
and hurled into the void, like an incandescent stone shot out from a
volcano, he felt himself falling, and falling without ever alighting,
blind, burned and deafened, as the rebellious angel fell when God
overthrew with a breath the pedestal of his pride.

* * * * *


I.

Night had shut in, and the wind moaned as it stirred the leaves of the
trees, through whose luxuriant foliage was slipping a soft ray of
moonlight, when Teobaldo, rising upon his elbow and rubbing his eyes as
if awakening from profound slumber, looked about him and found himself
in the same wood where he had wounded the boar, where his steed fell
dead, where was given him that phantasmal courser which had rushed him
away to unknown, mysterious realms.

A deathlike silence reigned about him, a silence broken only by the
distant calling of the deer, the timid murmur of the leaves, and the
echo of a far-off bell borne to his ears from time to time upon the
gentle gusts.

"I must have dreamed," said the baron, and set forth on his way across
the wood, coming out at last into the open.


II.

At a great distance, and above the rocks of Montagut, he saw the black
silhouette of his castle standing out against the blue, transparent
background of the night sky--"My castle is far away and I am weary," he
muttered. "I will await the day in this village-hut near by," and he
bent his steps to the hut. He knocked at the door. "Who are you? " they
demanded from within. "The Baron of Fortcastell," he replied, and they
laughed in his face. He knocked at another door. "Who are you and what
do you want? " these, too, asked him. "Your liege lord," urged the
knight, surprised that they did not recognize him. "Teobaldo de
Montagut. " "Teobaldo de Montagut! " angrily repeated the person within, a
woman not yet old. "Teobaldo de Montagut, the count of the story! Bah!
Go your way and don't come back to rouse honest folk from their sleep to
hear your stupid jests. "


III.

Teobaldo, full of astonishment, left the village and pursued his way to
the castle, at whose gates he arrived when it was scarcely dawn. The
moat was filled up with great blocks of stone from the ruined
battlements; the raised drawbridge, now useless, was rotting as it still
hung from its strong iron chains, covered with rust though they were by
the wasting of the years; in the homage-tower slowly tolled a bell; in
front of the principal arch of the fortress and upon a granite pedestal
was raised a cross; upon the walls not a single soldier was to be
discerned; and, indistinct and muffled, there seemed to come from its
heart like a distant murmur a sacred hymn, grave, solemn and majestic.

"But this is my castle, beyond a doubt," said Teobaldo, shifting his
troubled gaze from one point to another, unable to comprehend the
situation. "That is my escutcheon, still engraved above the keystone of
the arch. This is the valley of Montagut. These are the lands it
governs, the seigniory of Fortcastell"--

At this instant the heavy doors swung upon their hinges and a monk
appeared beneath the lintel.


IV.

"Who are you and what are you doing here? " demanded Teobaldo of the
monk.

"I am," he answered, "a humble servant of God, a monk of the monastery
of Montagut. "

"But"--interrupted the baron. "Montagut? Is it not a seigniory? "

"It was," replied the monk, "a long time ago. Its last lord, the story
goes, was carried off by the Devil, and as he left no heir to succeed
him in the fief, the Sovereign Counts granted his estate to the monks of
our order, who have been here for a matter of from one hundred to one
hundred and twenty years. And you--who are you? "

"I"--stammered the Baron of Fortcastell, after a long moment of silence,
"I am--a miserable sinner, who, repenting of his misdeeds, comes to make
confession to your abbot and beg him for admittance into the bosom of
his faith. "




THE PROMISE


I.

Margarita, her face hidden in her hands, was weeping; she did not sob,
but the tears ran silently down her cheeks, slipping between her fingers
to fall to the earth toward which her brow was bent.

Near Margarita was Pedro, who from time to time lifted his eyes to steal
a glance at her and, seeing that she still wept, dropped them again,
maintaining for his part utter silence.

All was hushed about them, as if respecting her grief. The murmurs of
the field were stilled, the breeze of evening slept, and darkness was
beginning to envelop the dense growth of the wood.

Thus some moments passed, during which the trace of light that the dying
sun had left on the horizon faded quite away; the moon began to be
faintly sketched against the violet background of the twilight sky, and
one after another shone out the brighter stars.

Pedro broke at last that distressful silence, exclaiming in a hoarse and
gasping voice and as if he were communing with himself:

"'Tis impossible--impossible! "

Then, coming close to the inconsolable maiden and taking one of her
hands, he continued in a softer, more caressing tone:

"Margarita, for thee love is all, and thou seest naught beyond love.
Yet there is one thing as binding as our love, and that is my duty. Our
lord the Count of Gomara goes forth to-morrow from his castle to join
his force to the army of King Fernando, who is on his way to deliver
Seville out of the power of the Infidels, and it is my duty to depart
with the Count.

"An obscure orphan, without name or family, I owe to him all that I am.
I have served him in the idle days of peace, I have slept beneath his
roof, I have been warmed at his hearth and eaten at his board. If I
forsake him now, to-morrow his men-at-arms, as they sally forth in
marching array from his castle gates, will ask, wondering at my absence:
'Where is the favorite squire of the Count of Gomara? ' And my lord will
be silent for shame, and his pages and his fools will say in mocking
tone: 'The Count's squire is only a gallant of the jousts, a warrior in
the game of courtesy. '"

When he had spoken thus far, Margarita lifted her eyes full of tears to
meet those of her lover and moved her lips as if to answer him; but her
voice was choked in a sob.

Pedro, with still tenderer and more persuasive tone, went on:

"Weep not, for God's sake, Margarita; weep not, for thy tears hurt me. I
must go from thee, but I will return as soon as I shall have gained a
little glory for my obscure name.

"Heaven will aid us in our holy enterprise; we shall conquer Seville,
and to us conquerors the King will give fiefs along the banks of the
Guadalquivir. Then I will come back for thee, and we will go together to
dwell in that paradise of the Arabs, where they say the sky is clearer
and more blue than the sky above Castile.

"I will come back, I swear to thee I will; I will return to keep the
troth solemnly pledged thee that day when I placed on thy finger this
ring, symbol of a promise. "

"Pedro! " here exclaimed Margarita, controlling her emotion and speaking
in a firm, determined tone:

"Go, go to uphold thine honor," and on pronouncing these words, she
threw herself for the last time into the embrace of her lover. Then she
added in a tone lower and more shaken: "Go to uphold thine honor, but
come back--come back--to save mine. "

Pedro kissed the brow of Margarita, loosed his horse, that was tied to
one of the trees of the grove, and rode off at a gallop through the
depths of the poplar-wood.

Margarita followed Pedro with her eyes until his dim form was swallowed
up in the shades of night. When he could no longer be discerned, she
went back slowly to the village where her brothers were awaiting her.

"Put on thy gala dress," one of them said to her as she entered, "for in
the morning we go to Gomara with all the neighborhood to see the Count
marching to Andalusia. "

"For my part, it saddens rather than gladdens me to see those go forth
who perchance shall not return," replied Margarita with a sigh.

"Yet come with us thou must," insisted the other brother, "and thou must
come with mien composed and glad; so that the gossiping folk shall have
no cause to say thou hast a lover in the castle, and thy lover goeth to
the war. "


II.

Hardly was the first light of dawn streaming up the sky when there began
to sound throughout all the camp of Gomara the shrill trumpeting of the
Count's soldiers; and the peasants who were arriving in numerous groups
from the villages round about saw the seigniorial banner flung to the
winds from the highest tower of the fortress.

The peasants were everywhere,--seated on the edge of the moat, ensconced
in the tops of trees, strolling over the plain, crowning the crests of
the hills, forming a line far along the highway, and it must have been
already for nearly an hour that their curiosity had awaited the show,
not without some signs of impatience, when the ringing bugle-call
sounded again, the chains of the drawbridge creaked as it fell slowly
across the moat, and the portcullis was raised, while little by little,
groaning upon their hinges, the massive doors of the arched passage
which led to the Court of Arms swung wide.

The multitude ran to press for places on the sloping banks beside the
road in order to see their fill of the brilliant armor and sumptuous
trappings of the following of the Count of Gomara, famed through all the
countryside for his splendor and his lavish pomp.

The march was opened by the heralds who, halting at fixed intervals,
proclaimed in loud voice, to the beat of the drum, the commands of the
King, summoning his feudatories to the Moorish war and requiring the
villages and free towns to give passage and aid to his armies.

After the heralds followed the kings-at-arms, proud of their silken
vestments, their shields bordered with gold and bright colors, and their
caps decked with graceful plumes.

Then came the chief retainer of the castle armed cap-a-pie, a knight
mounted on a young black horse, bearing in his hands the pennon of a
grandee with his motto and device; at his left hand rode the executioner
of the seigniory, clad in black and red.

The seneschal was preceded by fully a score of those famous trumpeters
of Castile celebrated in the chronicles of our kings for the incredible
power of their lungs.

When the shrill clamor of their mighty trumpeting ceased to wound the
wind, a dull sound, steady and monotonous, began to reach the ear,--the
tramp of the foot-soldiers, armed with long pikes and provided with a
leather shield apiece.
Behind these soon came in view the soldiers who
managed the engines of war, with their crude machines and their wooden
towers, the bands of wall-scalers and the rabble of stable-boys in
charge of the mules.

Then, enveloped in the cloud of dust raised by the hoofs of their
horses, flashing sparks from their iron breastplates, passed the
men-at-arms of the castle, formed in thick platoons, looking from a
distance like a forest of spears.

Last of all, preceded by the drummers who were mounted on strong mules
tricked out in housings and plumes, surrounded by pages in rich raiment
of silk and gold and followed by the squires of the castle, appeared the
Count.

As the multitude caught sight of him, a great shout of greeting went up
and in the tumult of acclamation was stifled the cry of a woman, who at
that moment, as if struck by a thunderbolt, fell fainting into the arms
of those who sprang to her aid. It was Margarita, Margarita who had
recognized her mysterious lover in that great and dreadful lord, the
Count of Gomara, one of the most exalted and powerful feudatories of the
Crown of Castile.


III.

The host of Don Fernando, after going forth from Cordova, had marched to
Seville, not without having to fight its way at Ecija, Carmona, and
Alcala del Rio del Guadaira, whose famous castle, once taken by storm,
put the army in sight of the stronghold of the Infidels.

The Count of Gomara was in his tent seated on a bench of larchwood,
motionless, pale, terrible, his hands crossed upon the hilt of his
broadsword, his eyes fixed on space with that vague regard which appears
to behold a definite object and yet takes cognizance of naught in the
encompassing scene.

Standing by his side, the squire who had been longest in the castle, the
only one who in those moods of black despondency could have ventured to
intrude without drawing down upon his head an explosion of wrath, was
speaking to him. "What is your ail, my lord? " he was saying. "What
trouble wears and wastes you? Sad you go to battle, and sad return, even
though returning victorious. When all the warriors sleep, surrendered to
the weariness of the day, I hear your anguished sighs; and if I run to
your bed, I see you struggling there against some invisible torment. You
open your eyes, but your terror does not vanish. What is it, my lord?
Tell me. If it be a secret, I will guard it in the depths of my memory
as in a grave. "

The Count seemed not to hear his squire, but after a long pause, as if
the words had taken all that time to make slow way from his ears to his
understanding, he emerged little by little from his trance and, drawing
the squire affectionately toward him, said to him with grave and quiet
tone:

"I have suffered much in silence. Believing myself the sport of a vain
fantasy, I have until now held my peace for shame,--but nay, what is
happening to me is no illusion.

"It must be that I am under the power of some awful curse. Heaven or
hell must wish something of me, and tell me so by supernatural events.
Recallest thou the day of our encounter with the Moors of Nebriza in the
Aljarafe de Triana? 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.