"I am the bell of
fearsome
folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in
pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo
only in ardent imaginations.
pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo
only in ardent imaginations.
Gustavo Adolfo Becuqer
' 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. What
right had I to go to the defence of that woman?
"Not a quarter of an hour had passed when I had opportunity to
contradict this man who had insulted her. I do not know exactly what the
point was on which I contradicted him; what I can assure you of is that
I did it with so much sharpness, not to say rudeness, that out of our
dispute grew a quarrel. That is what I was seeking.
"My friends, knowing my disposition, wondered, not only that I should
have sought a duel for so trifling a cause, but at my firm refusal to
give or receive explanations of any kind.
"I fought, I do not know whether to say with good fortune or not, for
although on firing I saw my adversary sway an instant and fall to the
ground, a second after I felt my ears buzzing and my eyes clouding over.
I was wounded, too, and seriously, in the breast.
"They carried me, already in a burning fever, to my mean lodging. There
I know not how many days went by, while I called aloud I know not on
whom; undoubtedly on her. I would have had courage to suffer in silence
all my life for one look of gratitude on the brink of the grave; but to
die without leaving her even a memory of me!
"These ideas were tormenting my imagination one wakeful, fevered night,
when I saw the curtains of my alcove part and in the opening appeared a
woman. I thought that I was dreaming; but no. That woman approached my
bed, that poor, hot bed on which I was tossing in pain, and lifting the
veil which covered her face, disclosed a tear trembling on her long,
dark lashes. It was she!
"I started up with frightened eyes, I started up and--at that moment I
arrived in front of Duran's bookstore--"
"What! " I exclaimed, interrupting my friend on hearing that change of
tone. "Then you were not wounded and in bed? "
"In bed! --ah! what the deuce! I had forgotten to tell you that all this
is what I was thinking as I came from the jewelry shop of Samper,--where
in sober truth I saw the set of emeralds and heard, on the lips of a
beautiful woman, the exclamation which I have mentioned to you,--to the
_Carrera de San Jeronimo_, where a thrust from the elbow of a porter
roused me from my revery in front of Duran's, in whose window I observed
a book by Mery with this title, _Histoire de ce qui n'est pas arrive_,
'The Story of that which did not happen. ' Do you understand it now? "
On hearing this _denouement_, I could not repress a shout of laughter.
Really I do not know of what Mery's book may treat, but I now see how,
with that title, a million incomparable stories might be written.
THE TAVERN OF THE CATS
In Seville, at the half-way point of the road that runs from the
Macarena gate to the convent of San Jeronimo, there is, among other
famous taverns, one which, because of its location and the special
features that attach to it, may be said to have been, if it is not now,
the _real thing_, the most characteristic of all the Andalusian roadside
inns.
Picture to yourself a little house, white as the driven snow, under its
roof of tiles, some reddish, some deep green, with an endless growth of
yellow mustard and sprigs of mignonette springing up among them. A
wooden overhang shadows the door, which has on either side a bench of
cemented brick. Mortised into the wall, which is broken by various
little casements, opened at caprice to give light to the interior, some
lower, some higher, one square, another imitating a Moorish arched
window with its dividing colonnettes, or a dormer, are seen at regular
distances iron spikes and rings for hitching the horses. A vine, full of
years, which twists its blackening stems in and out of the sustaining
wooden lattice, clothing it with clusters of grapes and broad green
leaves, covers like a canopy the guest-hall, that consists of three pine
benches, half a dozen rickety rush chairs, and as many as six or seven
crippled tables made of ill-joined boards. On one side of the house
climbs a honeysuckle, clinging to the cracks in the wall, up to the
roof, from whose eaves droop sprays that sway with the wind, like
floating curtains of verdure. On the other side runs a fence of wattled
twigs, defining the bounds of a little garden that looks like a basket
of rushes overflowing with flowers. The tops of two great trees,
towering up behind the tavern, form the dark background against which
stand out its white chimneys; the decoration is completed by the
orchard-plots full of century-plants and blackberries, the broom that
grows on the borders of the river, and the Guadalquivir, which flows
into the distance, slowly winding its tortuous way between those rural
banks to the foot of the ancient convent of San Jeronimo, that peers
above the thick olive groves surrounding it and traces the black
silhouette of its towers against a transparent, azure sky.
Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures--men, women,
children and animals, forming groups that vie with one another in the
characteristic and the picturesque; here the innkeeper, round and ruddy,
seated in the sun on a low chair, rolling between his hands the tobacco
to make a cigarette, with the paper in his mouth; there a huckster of
Macarena who sings, rolling up his eyes, to the accompaniment of his
guitar, while others beat time by clapping their hands or striking their
glasses on the tables; over yonder a group of peasant girls with their
gauzy kerchiefs of a million colors, and a whole flower-pot of pinks in
their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk at
the top of their voices as they push like mad the swing hung between two
trees; and the serving-boys of the tavern who come and go with trays of
wine-glasses full of manzanilla and with plates of olives; and the group
of village people who swarm in the road; two drunken fellows quarrelling
with a dandy who is making love, in passing, to a pretty girl; a cock
that, proudly spreading out its wings, crows from the thatch of the
poultry-yard; a dog that barks at the boys who tease him with sticks and
stones; olive-oil boiling and bubbling in the pan where fish is frying;
the cracking of the whips of the cab-drivers who arrive in a cloud of
dust; a din of songs, castanets, peals of laughter, voices, whistles and
guitars, and blows on the tables, and clappings, and crash of breaking
pitchers, and thousands of strange, discordant sounds forming a jocund
hullabaloo impossible to describe. Fancy all this on a pleasant calm
afternoon, the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia
where all the days are so beautiful, and you will have an idea of the
spectacle that presented itself for the first time to my eyes, when, led
by its fame, I came to visit that celebrated tavern.
This was many years ago; ten or twelve, at least. I was there as a
stranger, away from my natural environment, and everything about me,
from the cut of my clothes to the astonished expression of my face, was
out of keeping with that picture of frank and boisterous jollity. It
seemed to me that the passers-by turned their heads to stare at me with
the dislike with which one regards an intruder.
Not wishing to attract attention nor choosing that my appearance should
be made the butt of mockeries more or less dissembled, I took a seat at
one side of the tavern door, called for something to drink, which I did
not drink, and when all had forgotten my alien presence, I drew out a
sheet of sketching paper from the portfolio which I carried with me,
sharpened a pencil, and began to look about for a characteristic figure
to copy and preserve as a souvenir of that day.
Soon my eyes fastened on one of the girls forming the merry group around
the swing. She was tall, slender, brunette, with sleepy eyes, big and
black, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the sketch a
group of men, among them one who played lively flourishes on the guitar
with much skill, chorused songs that alluded to personal qualities, the
secrets of love, the likings of the girls who were sporting about the
swing or stories of their jealousy and their disdain,--songs to which
these in their turn responded with others no less saucy, piquant and
gay.
The slender brunette, quick of wit, whom I had chosen for model, led the
singing of the women, composing the quatrains and reciting them to her
companions who greeted them with clapping and laughter, while the
guitar-player seemed to be the leader of the lads and the one eminent
among them all for his cleverness and ready retorts.
For my part, it did not take me long to understand that between these
two there was a feeling of affection which betrayed itself in their
songs, full of transparent allusions and enamoured phrases.
When I finished my drawing, night was beginning to fall. Already there
had been lighted in the tower of the cathedral the two lanterns of the
shrine of the bells, and their lustres seemed like fiery eyes from that
giant of brick and mortar which dominates all the city. The groups were
going, melting away little by little and disappearing up the road in the
dim twilight silvered by the moon, that now began to show against the
violet dusk of the sky. The girls went singing away together, and their
clear, bright voices gradually lessened until they became but a part of
the other indistinct and distant sounds that trembled in the air. All
was over at once,--the day, the jollity, the animation and the impromptu
festival; and of all there remained only an echo in the ear and in the
soul, like the softest of vibrations, like a sweet drowsiness such as
one experiences on waking from a pleasant dream.
When the last loiterers were gone, I folded my drawing, placed it safely
in the portfolio, called the waiter with a hand-clap, paid my trifling
account, and was just on the point of departing when I felt myself
caught gently by the arm. It was the young guitar-player whom I had
noticed before and who while I was drawing had often stared at me with
unusual curiosity. I had not observed that, after the fun was over, he
approached under some pretext the place where I was sitting in order to
see what I was doing that I should be looking so steadily at the woman
in whom he seemed to have a special interest.
"_Senorito_," he said to me in a tone which he strove to soften as much
as possible, "I am going to ask you to do me a favor. "
"A favor! " I exclaimed, without comprehending what he could want of me.
"Name it, and if it is in my power, count on it as done. "
"Would you give me the picture you have made? " On hearing this, I could
not help pausing a moment in perplexity, surprised both by the request,
rare enough in itself, and by the tone, which baffled me to determine
whether it was one of threat or of entreaty. He must have understood my
hesitation, and he immediately hastened to add:
"I beg it of you for the sake of your mother, for the sake of the woman
whom you hold dearest in the world, if you hold any dear; ask of me in
return all that my poverty affords. "
I did not know how to make my way out of this difficulty, I would almost
have preferred that it had come in guise of a quarrel, if so I might
have kept the sketch of that woman who had so deeply impressed me; but
whether it was the surprise of the moment, or my inability to say no to
anything, the fact is that I opened my portfolio, took out the drawing
and handed it to him without a word.
To repeat the lad's expressions of gratitude, his exclamations as he
gazed at it anew by the light of the tavern's metal lamp, the care with
which he folded it to put it away securely in his sash, the offers of
devotion he made me, and the extravagant praises with which he cried up
his good fortune in that he had met one whom he called, in his clipped
Andalusian speech, a "reg'lar _senorito_," would be a task most
difficult, not to say impossible. I will only say that, as the night,
what with one delay and another, was now fully upon us, he insisted,
willy-nilly, on going with me to the Macarena gate; and he laid so much
stress on it, that finally I decided that it would be better to take the
road together. The way is very short, but while it lasted he managed to
tell me from beginning to end all the story of his love.
The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his
father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which
adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the
object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors
and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that
she had been brought up in his father's house from her babyhood, and
that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other
details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come
to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands,
again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose
echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a
moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt
joyous with a strange and nameless joy--a reflected joy, if I may say
so.
He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:
"Too long our separation;
Soul of my soul thou art,
The Virgin of Consolation
On the altar of my heart. "
When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind
another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further
distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.
A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my
return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory
of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my
memory.
II.
As I have said, many years passed after my leaving Seville without my
forgetting in the least that afternoon whose recollection sometimes
passed over my imagination like a reviving breeze that cools the heated
brow.
When chance brought me again to the great city which is called with so
much reason the Queen of Andalusia, one of the things that most
attracted my attention was the remarkable change effected during my
absence. Great buildings, blocks of houses and entire suburbs had risen
at the magic touch of industry and capital; on every side were
factories, public gardens, parks, shady walks, but unhappily many
venerable monuments of antiquity had disappeared.
I visited again many proud edifices full of historical and artistic
memories; again I wandered and lost my way amid the million turns of the
curious suburb of _Santa Cruz_; I surprised in the course of my strolls
many new buildings which had been erected I know not how; I missed many
old ones which had vanished I know not why; and finally I took my way to
the bank of the river. The river-bank has ever been in Seville the
chosen field for my excursions.
After I had admired the magnificent panorama which offers itself to the
view at the point where the iron bridge connects the opposite shores;
after I had noticed, with absorbed gaze, the myriad details,--palaces
and rows of small white houses; after I had passed in review the
innumerable ships at anchor in the stream, unfurling to the wind their
airy pennants of a thousand colors, and when I heard the confused hum of
the wharves, where everything breathes activity and movement, I
transported myself, following in imagination the river, against its
current, to San Jeronimo.
I remembered that tranquil landscape, reposeful, luminous, where the
rich vegetation of Andalusia displays without cultivation her natural
charms. As if I had been in a boat rowed upstream, again, with memory's
aid, I saw file by, on one side, the _Cartuja_ [Carthusian convent] with
its groves and its lofty, slender towers; on the other, the _Barrio de
los Humeros_ [the old gypsy quarter], the ancient city walls, half Arab,
half Roman, the orchards with their fences covered with brambles, and
the water-wheels shaded by great, isolated trees, and finally, San
Jeronimo. --On reaching this point in my imagination, those memories that
I still cherished of the famous inn rose before me more vividly than
ever, and I fancied myself present once again at those peasant
merry-makings; I heard the girls singing, as they flew through the air
in the swing; and I saw the groups of village folk wandering over the
meadows, some picnicking, some quarrelling, some laughing, some dancing,
and all in motion, overflowing with youth, vivacity and glee. There was
she, surrounded by her children, now holding herself aloof from the
group of merry girls who were still laughing and singing, and there was
he, tranquil and content with his felicity, looking with tenderness at
the persons whom he loved best in the world, all together about him and
all happy,--his wife, his children, his father, who was there as ten
years ago, seated at the door of his inn, impassively twisting the paper
about his cigarette, without more change than that his head, which then
was gray, would now be white as snow.
A friend who accompanied me in the walk, noting the sort of blissful
revery in which for several moments I had been rapt with these
imaginings, shook me at last by the arm, asking:
"What are you thinking about? "
"I was thinking," I replied, "of the Tavern of the Cats, and revolving
in my mind all the pleasant recollections I cherish of an afternoon when
I was at San Jeronimo. --This very instant I was ending a love story
which I left there well begun, and I ended it so much to my liking that
I believe there cannot be any other conclusion than that which I have
made for it. And speaking of the Tavern of the Cats," I continued,
turning to my friend, "when shall we take a day and go there for
luncheon or to enjoy an hour of revel? "
"An hour of revel! " exclaimed my friend, with an expression of
astonishment which I did not at that time succeed in explaining to
myself, "an hour of revel! A very appropriate place it is for that! "
"And why not? " I rejoined, wondering in my turn at his surprise.
"The reason is very simple," he told me at last, "for at one hundred
paces from the tavern they have laid out the new cemetery" [of San
Fernando].
Then it was I who gazed at him with astonished eyes and remained some
minutes silent before speaking a single word.
We returned to the city, and that day went by, and still more days,
without my being able entirely to throw off the impression which news so
unexpected had made upon me. The more variations I played upon it, still
the love story of the brunette had no conclusion, for what I had
invented before was not conceivable, since I could not make natural a
picture of happiness and mirth with a cemetery for a background.
One afternoon, determined to resolve my doubts, I pleaded a slight
indisposition as an excuse for not accompanying my friend in our
accustomed rambles, and I started out alone for the inn. When I had left
behind me the Macarena gate and its picturesque suburb and had begun to
cross by a narrow footpath that labyrinth of orchards, already I seemed
to perceive something strange in my surroundings.
Whether it was because the afternoon had become a little clouded, or
that the tendency of my mind inclined me to melancholy ideas, the fact
is that I felt cold and sad, and noticed a silence about me which
reminded me of utter solitude, as sleep reminds us of death.
I walked a little without stopping, crossed the orchards to shorten the
distance and came out into the street of San Lazaro, whence already may
be seen in the distance the convent of San Jeronimo.
Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems to me that along the road where
pass the dead even the trees and the vegetation come to take on a
different color. I fancied there, at least, that warm and harmonious
tones were lacking,--no freshness in the groves, no atmosphere in space,
no light upon the earth. The landscape was monotonous; its figures black
and isolated.
Here was a hearse moving slowly, covered with mourning draperies,
raising no dust, cracking no whip, without shout to the horses, almost
without movement; further on a man of ill countenance with a spade on
his shoulder, or a priest in long, dark robe, or a group of old men
poorly clad and of repugnant aspect, with extinguished candles in their
hands, who were returning in silence, with lowered heads, and eyes fixed
on the ground. I believed myself transported I know not whither; for all
that I saw reminded me of a landscape whose contours were the same as
ever, but whose colors had been, as it were, blotted out, there being
left of them merely a vague half-tone. The impression that I experienced
can be compared only to that which we feel in those dreams where, by an
inexplicable phenomenon, things are and are not at one and the same
time, and the places in which we believe ourselves to be, partially
transform themselves in an eccentric and impossible fashion.
At last I reached the roadside inn; I recognized it more by the name,
which it still keeps printed in large letters on one of its walls, than
by anything else; for as to the little house itself, it seemed to me
that it had changed even its outlines and its proportions. At once I saw
that it was much more ruinous, that it was forsaken and sad. The shadow
of the cemetery, which rose just beyond it, appeared to fall over it,
enveloping it in a dark covering, like the cloth laid on the face of the
dead. The innkeeper was there, utterly alone. I recognized him as the
same of ten years back; I recognized him I know not why, for in this
time he had aged even to the point of appearing a decrepit old man on
the edge of the grave, whereas when I first saw him he seemed fifty,
abounding in health, satisfaction and vitality.
I sat down at one of the deserted tables; I asked for something to
drink, which the innkeeper brought me, and from one detached remark
after another we fell finally into continuous conversation relating to
that love story of whose last chapter I was still in ignorance, although
I had several times attempted to divine it.
"Everything," said the poor old man to me, "everything seems to have
conspired against us since the period in which you remember me. You know
how it was with us. Amparo was the delight of our eyes; she had been
reared here from her birth; she was the joy of the house; never could
she miss her own parents, for I loved her like a father; my son had
loved her, too, from his boyhood, first as a brother, afterwards with a
devotion greater yet. They were on the eve of marriage; I was ready to
make over to them the better part of my modest property, for with the
profits of my business it seemed to me that I should have more than
enough to live at ease, when some evil spirit--I know not what--envied
our happiness and destroyed it in a moment. In the first place the
whisper went about that they were going to locate a cemetery on this
side of San Jeronimo; some said close by, others further off, and while
we were all uneasy and anxious, fearing that they might carry out this
project, a greater and more certain trouble fell upon us.
"One day two gentlemen arrived here in a carriage; they put to me
thousands of questions about Amparo whom I had taken in her babyhood
from the foundling hospital; they asked to see the swaddling-clothes
which she wore when she was abandoned and which I had kept, with the
final result that Amparo proved to be the daughter of a very rich
gentleman, who went to law to recover her from us and persisted until he
gained his end. I do not wish even to call to memory the day when they
took her away. She wept like a Magdalen, my son would have made a mad
resistance, I was like one dumfounded, not understanding what was
happening to me. She went. Rather, she did not go, for she loved us too
much to go of her own accord, but they carried her off, and a curse fell
upon the house. My son, after an attack of terrible despair, fell into a
sort of lethargy. I do not know how to express my own state of mind. I
believed that for me the world had ended.
"While these things were going on, they began to lay out the cemetery.
The village-folk fled from this neighborhood. There were no more
festivals, songs and music; all the merriment of this countryside was
over, even as the joy of our souls.
"And Amparo was no happier than we; bred here in the open air, in the
bustle and animation of the inn, brought up to be joyous in poverty,
they plucked her from this life, and she withered, as wither the flowers
gathered in a garden to adorn a drawing-room. My son made incredible
efforts to see her again, to have a moment's speech with her. All was
in vain; her family did not wish it. At last he saw her, but he saw her
dead. The funeral train passed by here. I knew nothing about it and I
cannot tell why I fell to weeping when I saw her hearse. The heart,
loyal to love, clamored to me:
"'She is young like Amparo; she, too, must be beautiful; who knows if it
may not be herself? ' And it was. My son followed the train, entered the
enclosure and, when the coffin was opened, uttered a cry and fell
senseless to the ground; and so they brought him back to me. Afterwards
he went mad, and is now a lunatic. "
When the poor old man had reached this point in his narrative, there
entered the inn two gravediggers of sinister bearing and repellent look.
Having finished their task, they had come to take a drink "_to the
health of the dead_," as one of them said, accompanying the jest with a
silly leer. The innkeeper brushed off a tear with the back of his hand
and went to serve them.
Night was beginning to fall, a dark night and most gloomy. The sky was
black and so was the landscape. From the boughs of the trees still hung,
half rotted, the ropes of the swing swaying in the wind; it reminded me
of a gallows-rope quivering yet after the body of the felon had been
taken down. Only confused noises reached my ears,--the distant barking
of dogs on guard in the orchards; the creaking of a water-wheel,
prolonged, melancholy and shrill like a lament; disconnected, horrible
words of the gravediggers who were plotting in low tones a sacrilegious
robbery--I know not what; my memory has kept of this fantastic scene of
desolation as of that other scene of merriment only a confused
recollection that I cannot reproduce. What I still seem to hear as I
heard it then is this refrain intoned in a plaintive voice, suddenly
disturbing the silence that reigned about:
"The coach of the dead was grand
As it passed our humble door,
But from it beckoned a pallid hand,
And I saw my love once more. "
It was the poor boy, who was locked up in one of the rooms of the inn,
where he passed his days in motionless contemplation of the picture of
his beloved, without speaking a word, scarcely eating, never weeping,
hardly opening his lips save to sing this simple, tender verse enclosing
a poem of sorrow that I then learned to decipher.
ALL SOULS' NIGHT
The gloaming of a misty, melancholy autumn day is succeeded by a cold,
dark night. For several hours now, the continuous stir of the town seems
to have ceased.
Some near, others far, some with grave and measured beat and others with
a quick and tremulous vibration, the bells are swinging in their towers,
flinging out upon the air their metallic notes which float and mingle,
lessen and die away to yield place to a new rain of sounds pouring
continually from the deep brazen throats as from a spring of
inexhaustible harmonies.
It is said that joy is contagious, but I believe that sadness is much
more so. There are melancholy spirits who succeed in eluding the
intoxication of delight that our great popular festivals carry in their
atmosphere. It is hard to find one who is able to bear unaffected the
icy touch of the atmosphere of sorrow, if this comes to seek us in the
privacy of our own fireside,--comes in the wearisome, slow vibration of
the bell that is like a grieving voice, uttering its tale of troubles at
one's very ear.
I cannot hear the bells, even when they ring out merry peals as for a
festival, without having my soul possessed by a sentiment of
inexplicable and involuntary sadness. In the great capitals, by good or
evil hap, the confused murmur of the multitude which beats on every
sense, full of the noisy giddiness of action, ordinarily drowns the
clamor of the bells to such a degree as to make one believe it does not
exist. To me at least it seems that on All Souls' Night, the only night
of the year when I hear them, the towers of the Madrid
[Illustration: A RUINED CLOISTER]
churches, thanks to a miracle, regain their voices, breaking for a few
hours only their long silence. Whether it be that my imagination,
predisposed to melancholy thoughts, aids in producing this effect, or
that the novelty of the sound strikes me the more profoundly; always
when I perceive, borne on the wind, the separate notes of this harmony,
a strange phenomenon takes place in my senses. I think that I
distinguish the different voices of the bells one from another; I think
that each of them has its own tone and expresses a special feeling; I
think, in fine, that after lending for some time profound attention to
the discordant combination of sounds, deep or shrill, dull or silvery,
which they breathe forth, I succeed in surprising mysterious words that
palpitate upon the air enveloped in its prolonged vibrations.
These words without connection, without meaning, that float in space
accompanied by sighs scarcely perceptible and by long sobs, commence to
reunite one with another as the vague ideas of a dream combine on
waking, and reunited, they form an immense, dolorous poem, in which each
bell chants its strophe, and all together interpret by means of symbolic
sounds the dumb thought that seethes in the brain of those who harken,
plunged in profound meditation.
A bell of hollow, deafening tone, swinging heavily in its lofty tower
with ceremonial slowness, that seems to have a mathematical rhythm and
moves by some perfect mechanism, says in peals punctiliously adjusted to
the ritual:
"I am the empty sound that melts away without having made vibrate a
single one of the infinite chords of feeling in the heart of man. I bear
in my echoes neither sobs nor sighs. I perform correctly my part in the
lugubrious, aerial symphony of grief, my sonorous strokes never falling
behind nor going in advance by a single second. I am the bell of the
parish church, the official bell of funeral honors. My voice proclaims
the mourning of etiquette; my voice laments from the heights of the
belfry announcing to the neighborhood the fatality, groan by groan; my
voice, which sorrows at so much a sob, releases the rich heir and the
young widow from other cares than those of the formalities attending the
reading of the will, and the orders for elegant mourning.
"At my peal the artisans of death come out of their atrophy: the
carpenter hastens to adorn with gold braid the most comfortable of his
coffins; the marble worker strikes in his chisel seeking a new allegory
for the ostentatious sepulchre; even the horses of the grotesque hearse,
theatre of the last triumph of vanity, proudly shake their antique tufts
of flywing-colored plumes, while the pillars of the church are wound
about with black baize, the traditional catafalque is set up under the
dome, and the choir-master rehearses on the violin a new _Dies Irae_ for
the last mass of the _Requiem_.
"I am the grief of tinsel tears, of paper flowers and of distichs in
letters of gold.
"To-day it is my duty to commemorate my fellow-countrymen, the
illustrious dead for whom I mourn officially, and on doing this with all
the pomp and all the noise befitting their social position, my only
regret is that I cannot utter one by one their names, titles and
decorations; perchance this new formula would be a comfort to their
families. "
"When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its
distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away,
is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a
little clapper-bell. "
"I am," it says, "the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows
of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of
the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon
the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the
storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in
wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.
"I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the
groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on
the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.
"On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and
my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden
graves--an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as
it waves the tall grass that covers them.
"I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the
fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron
hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.
"To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life
unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat
and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in
earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which,
perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but
amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the
angels sow over the graves of the just. "
The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is
lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the
crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set
shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient
Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.
"I am," says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, "the voice of
the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the
amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the
long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who
keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the
shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of
the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined
stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of
tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls' Night, rung by
an invisible hand.
"I am the bell of fearsome folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in
pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo
only in ardent imaginations.
"At my voice, knights armed with all manner of arms rise from their
Gothic sepulchres; monks come forth from the dim vaults in which they
are sleeping their last sleep to the foot of their abbey altars; and the
cemeteries open their gates little by little to let pass the troops of
yellow skeletons that run nimbly to dance in giddy round about the
pointed spire which shelters me.
"When my tremendous clamor surprises the credulous old woman before the
antique shrine whose lights she tends, she believes that she sees for a
moment the spirits of the picture dance amid the vermilion and ochre
flames by the glimmer of the dying lantern.
"When my mighty vibrations accompany the monotonous recital of an
old-time fable to which the children, grouped about the hearth, listen
all absorbed, the tongues of red and blue fire that glide along the
glowing logs, and the fiery sparks that leap up against the obscure
background of the kitchen, are taken for spirits circling in the air,
and the noise of the wind shaking the doors, for the work of souls
knocking at the leaded panes of the windows with the fleshless knuckles
of their bony hands.
"I am the bell that prays to God for the souls condemned to hell; I am
the voice of superstitious terror; I cause not weeping, but rising of
the hair, and I carry the chill of fright to the marrow of his bones who
harkens to me. "
So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as
the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand
symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the
wind.
Only the daylight and the noises that come up from the heart of the town
at the first dawn can put to flight the strange abortions of the mind
and the doleful, persistent tolling of the bells, which even in sleep is
felt as an exhausting nightmare through the eternal _Noche de Difuntos_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To the posthumous edition of Becquer's _Works_, Senor Correa
prefixed an account of the poet's life. This, brief and often
indefinite as it is, remains the authentic biography. It has been
partially reproduced in English by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who published
in _Macmillan's Magazine_, February, 1883, pp. 305-320, a valuable
article entitled: _A Spanish Romanticist: Gustavo Becquer_. Professor
Olmsted of Cornell, in his recent class-room edition of selected
_Legends, Tales and Poems_ by Becquer (Ginn and Company, Boston,
1907) contributes additional facts gathered from Spanish periodical
articles--of which he gives a bibliography--and in conversation with
Spaniards who had known the poet.
[2] Of the seventy-six poems that make up the _Rimas_, thirty-two
are given in literal English rendering by Lucy White Jennison ("Owen
Innsley") as the third section of her _Love Songs and Other Poems_
(The Grafton Press, New York, 1883), and a few are similarly rendered
by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the article already mentioned. A complete
translation in English verse, by Jules Renard of Seattle, has just
come (1908) from The Gorham Press, Richard G. Badger, Boston.
[3] Not, to my knowledge, translated into English.
[4] Except for a few magazine waifs and strays, usually in abridged
form, and for seven out of the twelve stories in W. W. Gibbings'
_Terrible Tales_, where the translation, according to Professor
Olmsted, is "often inaccurate," these legends have not before been
translated into English. The twenty-one here given include everything
even remotely in the nature of a tale contained in the three volumes,
with the exception of the two East Indian legends already mentioned,
and the two witchcraft tales in _From My Cell_. Good as these witch
stories are, it seemed a pity to take them out of their context.
What might be considered further omission is noted later. Of the
translations in this volume, several have appeared in _Short Stories_,
two in _The Churchman_, and one in the _Boston Evening Transcript_.
[5] And therefore has not been included in this volume.
[6] Not included in this volume because it should not be taken from
its context.
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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. What
right had I to go to the defence of that woman?
"Not a quarter of an hour had passed when I had opportunity to
contradict this man who had insulted her. I do not know exactly what the
point was on which I contradicted him; what I can assure you of is that
I did it with so much sharpness, not to say rudeness, that out of our
dispute grew a quarrel. That is what I was seeking.
"My friends, knowing my disposition, wondered, not only that I should
have sought a duel for so trifling a cause, but at my firm refusal to
give or receive explanations of any kind.
"I fought, I do not know whether to say with good fortune or not, for
although on firing I saw my adversary sway an instant and fall to the
ground, a second after I felt my ears buzzing and my eyes clouding over.
I was wounded, too, and seriously, in the breast.
"They carried me, already in a burning fever, to my mean lodging. There
I know not how many days went by, while I called aloud I know not on
whom; undoubtedly on her. I would have had courage to suffer in silence
all my life for one look of gratitude on the brink of the grave; but to
die without leaving her even a memory of me!
"These ideas were tormenting my imagination one wakeful, fevered night,
when I saw the curtains of my alcove part and in the opening appeared a
woman. I thought that I was dreaming; but no. That woman approached my
bed, that poor, hot bed on which I was tossing in pain, and lifting the
veil which covered her face, disclosed a tear trembling on her long,
dark lashes. It was she!
"I started up with frightened eyes, I started up and--at that moment I
arrived in front of Duran's bookstore--"
"What! " I exclaimed, interrupting my friend on hearing that change of
tone. "Then you were not wounded and in bed? "
"In bed! --ah! what the deuce! I had forgotten to tell you that all this
is what I was thinking as I came from the jewelry shop of Samper,--where
in sober truth I saw the set of emeralds and heard, on the lips of a
beautiful woman, the exclamation which I have mentioned to you,--to the
_Carrera de San Jeronimo_, where a thrust from the elbow of a porter
roused me from my revery in front of Duran's, in whose window I observed
a book by Mery with this title, _Histoire de ce qui n'est pas arrive_,
'The Story of that which did not happen. ' Do you understand it now? "
On hearing this _denouement_, I could not repress a shout of laughter.
Really I do not know of what Mery's book may treat, but I now see how,
with that title, a million incomparable stories might be written.
THE TAVERN OF THE CATS
In Seville, at the half-way point of the road that runs from the
Macarena gate to the convent of San Jeronimo, there is, among other
famous taverns, one which, because of its location and the special
features that attach to it, may be said to have been, if it is not now,
the _real thing_, the most characteristic of all the Andalusian roadside
inns.
Picture to yourself a little house, white as the driven snow, under its
roof of tiles, some reddish, some deep green, with an endless growth of
yellow mustard and sprigs of mignonette springing up among them. A
wooden overhang shadows the door, which has on either side a bench of
cemented brick. Mortised into the wall, which is broken by various
little casements, opened at caprice to give light to the interior, some
lower, some higher, one square, another imitating a Moorish arched
window with its dividing colonnettes, or a dormer, are seen at regular
distances iron spikes and rings for hitching the horses. A vine, full of
years, which twists its blackening stems in and out of the sustaining
wooden lattice, clothing it with clusters of grapes and broad green
leaves, covers like a canopy the guest-hall, that consists of three pine
benches, half a dozen rickety rush chairs, and as many as six or seven
crippled tables made of ill-joined boards. On one side of the house
climbs a honeysuckle, clinging to the cracks in the wall, up to the
roof, from whose eaves droop sprays that sway with the wind, like
floating curtains of verdure. On the other side runs a fence of wattled
twigs, defining the bounds of a little garden that looks like a basket
of rushes overflowing with flowers. The tops of two great trees,
towering up behind the tavern, form the dark background against which
stand out its white chimneys; the decoration is completed by the
orchard-plots full of century-plants and blackberries, the broom that
grows on the borders of the river, and the Guadalquivir, which flows
into the distance, slowly winding its tortuous way between those rural
banks to the foot of the ancient convent of San Jeronimo, that peers
above the thick olive groves surrounding it and traces the black
silhouette of its towers against a transparent, azure sky.
Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures--men, women,
children and animals, forming groups that vie with one another in the
characteristic and the picturesque; here the innkeeper, round and ruddy,
seated in the sun on a low chair, rolling between his hands the tobacco
to make a cigarette, with the paper in his mouth; there a huckster of
Macarena who sings, rolling up his eyes, to the accompaniment of his
guitar, while others beat time by clapping their hands or striking their
glasses on the tables; over yonder a group of peasant girls with their
gauzy kerchiefs of a million colors, and a whole flower-pot of pinks in
their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk at
the top of their voices as they push like mad the swing hung between two
trees; and the serving-boys of the tavern who come and go with trays of
wine-glasses full of manzanilla and with plates of olives; and the group
of village people who swarm in the road; two drunken fellows quarrelling
with a dandy who is making love, in passing, to a pretty girl; a cock
that, proudly spreading out its wings, crows from the thatch of the
poultry-yard; a dog that barks at the boys who tease him with sticks and
stones; olive-oil boiling and bubbling in the pan where fish is frying;
the cracking of the whips of the cab-drivers who arrive in a cloud of
dust; a din of songs, castanets, peals of laughter, voices, whistles and
guitars, and blows on the tables, and clappings, and crash of breaking
pitchers, and thousands of strange, discordant sounds forming a jocund
hullabaloo impossible to describe. Fancy all this on a pleasant calm
afternoon, the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia
where all the days are so beautiful, and you will have an idea of the
spectacle that presented itself for the first time to my eyes, when, led
by its fame, I came to visit that celebrated tavern.
This was many years ago; ten or twelve, at least. I was there as a
stranger, away from my natural environment, and everything about me,
from the cut of my clothes to the astonished expression of my face, was
out of keeping with that picture of frank and boisterous jollity. It
seemed to me that the passers-by turned their heads to stare at me with
the dislike with which one regards an intruder.
Not wishing to attract attention nor choosing that my appearance should
be made the butt of mockeries more or less dissembled, I took a seat at
one side of the tavern door, called for something to drink, which I did
not drink, and when all had forgotten my alien presence, I drew out a
sheet of sketching paper from the portfolio which I carried with me,
sharpened a pencil, and began to look about for a characteristic figure
to copy and preserve as a souvenir of that day.
Soon my eyes fastened on one of the girls forming the merry group around
the swing. She was tall, slender, brunette, with sleepy eyes, big and
black, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the sketch a
group of men, among them one who played lively flourishes on the guitar
with much skill, chorused songs that alluded to personal qualities, the
secrets of love, the likings of the girls who were sporting about the
swing or stories of their jealousy and their disdain,--songs to which
these in their turn responded with others no less saucy, piquant and
gay.
The slender brunette, quick of wit, whom I had chosen for model, led the
singing of the women, composing the quatrains and reciting them to her
companions who greeted them with clapping and laughter, while the
guitar-player seemed to be the leader of the lads and the one eminent
among them all for his cleverness and ready retorts.
For my part, it did not take me long to understand that between these
two there was a feeling of affection which betrayed itself in their
songs, full of transparent allusions and enamoured phrases.
When I finished my drawing, night was beginning to fall. Already there
had been lighted in the tower of the cathedral the two lanterns of the
shrine of the bells, and their lustres seemed like fiery eyes from that
giant of brick and mortar which dominates all the city. The groups were
going, melting away little by little and disappearing up the road in the
dim twilight silvered by the moon, that now began to show against the
violet dusk of the sky. The girls went singing away together, and their
clear, bright voices gradually lessened until they became but a part of
the other indistinct and distant sounds that trembled in the air. All
was over at once,--the day, the jollity, the animation and the impromptu
festival; and of all there remained only an echo in the ear and in the
soul, like the softest of vibrations, like a sweet drowsiness such as
one experiences on waking from a pleasant dream.
When the last loiterers were gone, I folded my drawing, placed it safely
in the portfolio, called the waiter with a hand-clap, paid my trifling
account, and was just on the point of departing when I felt myself
caught gently by the arm. It was the young guitar-player whom I had
noticed before and who while I was drawing had often stared at me with
unusual curiosity. I had not observed that, after the fun was over, he
approached under some pretext the place where I was sitting in order to
see what I was doing that I should be looking so steadily at the woman
in whom he seemed to have a special interest.
"_Senorito_," he said to me in a tone which he strove to soften as much
as possible, "I am going to ask you to do me a favor. "
"A favor! " I exclaimed, without comprehending what he could want of me.
"Name it, and if it is in my power, count on it as done. "
"Would you give me the picture you have made? " On hearing this, I could
not help pausing a moment in perplexity, surprised both by the request,
rare enough in itself, and by the tone, which baffled me to determine
whether it was one of threat or of entreaty. He must have understood my
hesitation, and he immediately hastened to add:
"I beg it of you for the sake of your mother, for the sake of the woman
whom you hold dearest in the world, if you hold any dear; ask of me in
return all that my poverty affords. "
I did not know how to make my way out of this difficulty, I would almost
have preferred that it had come in guise of a quarrel, if so I might
have kept the sketch of that woman who had so deeply impressed me; but
whether it was the surprise of the moment, or my inability to say no to
anything, the fact is that I opened my portfolio, took out the drawing
and handed it to him without a word.
To repeat the lad's expressions of gratitude, his exclamations as he
gazed at it anew by the light of the tavern's metal lamp, the care with
which he folded it to put it away securely in his sash, the offers of
devotion he made me, and the extravagant praises with which he cried up
his good fortune in that he had met one whom he called, in his clipped
Andalusian speech, a "reg'lar _senorito_," would be a task most
difficult, not to say impossible. I will only say that, as the night,
what with one delay and another, was now fully upon us, he insisted,
willy-nilly, on going with me to the Macarena gate; and he laid so much
stress on it, that finally I decided that it would be better to take the
road together. The way is very short, but while it lasted he managed to
tell me from beginning to end all the story of his love.
The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his
father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which
adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the
object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors
and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that
she had been brought up in his father's house from her babyhood, and
that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other
details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come
to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands,
again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose
echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a
moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt
joyous with a strange and nameless joy--a reflected joy, if I may say
so.
He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:
"Too long our separation;
Soul of my soul thou art,
The Virgin of Consolation
On the altar of my heart. "
When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind
another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further
distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.
A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my
return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory
of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my
memory.
II.
As I have said, many years passed after my leaving Seville without my
forgetting in the least that afternoon whose recollection sometimes
passed over my imagination like a reviving breeze that cools the heated
brow.
When chance brought me again to the great city which is called with so
much reason the Queen of Andalusia, one of the things that most
attracted my attention was the remarkable change effected during my
absence. Great buildings, blocks of houses and entire suburbs had risen
at the magic touch of industry and capital; on every side were
factories, public gardens, parks, shady walks, but unhappily many
venerable monuments of antiquity had disappeared.
I visited again many proud edifices full of historical and artistic
memories; again I wandered and lost my way amid the million turns of the
curious suburb of _Santa Cruz_; I surprised in the course of my strolls
many new buildings which had been erected I know not how; I missed many
old ones which had vanished I know not why; and finally I took my way to
the bank of the river. The river-bank has ever been in Seville the
chosen field for my excursions.
After I had admired the magnificent panorama which offers itself to the
view at the point where the iron bridge connects the opposite shores;
after I had noticed, with absorbed gaze, the myriad details,--palaces
and rows of small white houses; after I had passed in review the
innumerable ships at anchor in the stream, unfurling to the wind their
airy pennants of a thousand colors, and when I heard the confused hum of
the wharves, where everything breathes activity and movement, I
transported myself, following in imagination the river, against its
current, to San Jeronimo.
I remembered that tranquil landscape, reposeful, luminous, where the
rich vegetation of Andalusia displays without cultivation her natural
charms. As if I had been in a boat rowed upstream, again, with memory's
aid, I saw file by, on one side, the _Cartuja_ [Carthusian convent] with
its groves and its lofty, slender towers; on the other, the _Barrio de
los Humeros_ [the old gypsy quarter], the ancient city walls, half Arab,
half Roman, the orchards with their fences covered with brambles, and
the water-wheels shaded by great, isolated trees, and finally, San
Jeronimo. --On reaching this point in my imagination, those memories that
I still cherished of the famous inn rose before me more vividly than
ever, and I fancied myself present once again at those peasant
merry-makings; I heard the girls singing, as they flew through the air
in the swing; and I saw the groups of village folk wandering over the
meadows, some picnicking, some quarrelling, some laughing, some dancing,
and all in motion, overflowing with youth, vivacity and glee. There was
she, surrounded by her children, now holding herself aloof from the
group of merry girls who were still laughing and singing, and there was
he, tranquil and content with his felicity, looking with tenderness at
the persons whom he loved best in the world, all together about him and
all happy,--his wife, his children, his father, who was there as ten
years ago, seated at the door of his inn, impassively twisting the paper
about his cigarette, without more change than that his head, which then
was gray, would now be white as snow.
A friend who accompanied me in the walk, noting the sort of blissful
revery in which for several moments I had been rapt with these
imaginings, shook me at last by the arm, asking:
"What are you thinking about? "
"I was thinking," I replied, "of the Tavern of the Cats, and revolving
in my mind all the pleasant recollections I cherish of an afternoon when
I was at San Jeronimo. --This very instant I was ending a love story
which I left there well begun, and I ended it so much to my liking that
I believe there cannot be any other conclusion than that which I have
made for it. And speaking of the Tavern of the Cats," I continued,
turning to my friend, "when shall we take a day and go there for
luncheon or to enjoy an hour of revel? "
"An hour of revel! " exclaimed my friend, with an expression of
astonishment which I did not at that time succeed in explaining to
myself, "an hour of revel! A very appropriate place it is for that! "
"And why not? " I rejoined, wondering in my turn at his surprise.
"The reason is very simple," he told me at last, "for at one hundred
paces from the tavern they have laid out the new cemetery" [of San
Fernando].
Then it was I who gazed at him with astonished eyes and remained some
minutes silent before speaking a single word.
We returned to the city, and that day went by, and still more days,
without my being able entirely to throw off the impression which news so
unexpected had made upon me. The more variations I played upon it, still
the love story of the brunette had no conclusion, for what I had
invented before was not conceivable, since I could not make natural a
picture of happiness and mirth with a cemetery for a background.
One afternoon, determined to resolve my doubts, I pleaded a slight
indisposition as an excuse for not accompanying my friend in our
accustomed rambles, and I started out alone for the inn. When I had left
behind me the Macarena gate and its picturesque suburb and had begun to
cross by a narrow footpath that labyrinth of orchards, already I seemed
to perceive something strange in my surroundings.
Whether it was because the afternoon had become a little clouded, or
that the tendency of my mind inclined me to melancholy ideas, the fact
is that I felt cold and sad, and noticed a silence about me which
reminded me of utter solitude, as sleep reminds us of death.
I walked a little without stopping, crossed the orchards to shorten the
distance and came out into the street of San Lazaro, whence already may
be seen in the distance the convent of San Jeronimo.
Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems to me that along the road where
pass the dead even the trees and the vegetation come to take on a
different color. I fancied there, at least, that warm and harmonious
tones were lacking,--no freshness in the groves, no atmosphere in space,
no light upon the earth. The landscape was monotonous; its figures black
and isolated.
Here was a hearse moving slowly, covered with mourning draperies,
raising no dust, cracking no whip, without shout to the horses, almost
without movement; further on a man of ill countenance with a spade on
his shoulder, or a priest in long, dark robe, or a group of old men
poorly clad and of repugnant aspect, with extinguished candles in their
hands, who were returning in silence, with lowered heads, and eyes fixed
on the ground. I believed myself transported I know not whither; for all
that I saw reminded me of a landscape whose contours were the same as
ever, but whose colors had been, as it were, blotted out, there being
left of them merely a vague half-tone. The impression that I experienced
can be compared only to that which we feel in those dreams where, by an
inexplicable phenomenon, things are and are not at one and the same
time, and the places in which we believe ourselves to be, partially
transform themselves in an eccentric and impossible fashion.
At last I reached the roadside inn; I recognized it more by the name,
which it still keeps printed in large letters on one of its walls, than
by anything else; for as to the little house itself, it seemed to me
that it had changed even its outlines and its proportions. At once I saw
that it was much more ruinous, that it was forsaken and sad. The shadow
of the cemetery, which rose just beyond it, appeared to fall over it,
enveloping it in a dark covering, like the cloth laid on the face of the
dead. The innkeeper was there, utterly alone. I recognized him as the
same of ten years back; I recognized him I know not why, for in this
time he had aged even to the point of appearing a decrepit old man on
the edge of the grave, whereas when I first saw him he seemed fifty,
abounding in health, satisfaction and vitality.
I sat down at one of the deserted tables; I asked for something to
drink, which the innkeeper brought me, and from one detached remark
after another we fell finally into continuous conversation relating to
that love story of whose last chapter I was still in ignorance, although
I had several times attempted to divine it.
"Everything," said the poor old man to me, "everything seems to have
conspired against us since the period in which you remember me. You know
how it was with us. Amparo was the delight of our eyes; she had been
reared here from her birth; she was the joy of the house; never could
she miss her own parents, for I loved her like a father; my son had
loved her, too, from his boyhood, first as a brother, afterwards with a
devotion greater yet. They were on the eve of marriage; I was ready to
make over to them the better part of my modest property, for with the
profits of my business it seemed to me that I should have more than
enough to live at ease, when some evil spirit--I know not what--envied
our happiness and destroyed it in a moment. In the first place the
whisper went about that they were going to locate a cemetery on this
side of San Jeronimo; some said close by, others further off, and while
we were all uneasy and anxious, fearing that they might carry out this
project, a greater and more certain trouble fell upon us.
"One day two gentlemen arrived here in a carriage; they put to me
thousands of questions about Amparo whom I had taken in her babyhood
from the foundling hospital; they asked to see the swaddling-clothes
which she wore when she was abandoned and which I had kept, with the
final result that Amparo proved to be the daughter of a very rich
gentleman, who went to law to recover her from us and persisted until he
gained his end. I do not wish even to call to memory the day when they
took her away. She wept like a Magdalen, my son would have made a mad
resistance, I was like one dumfounded, not understanding what was
happening to me. She went. Rather, she did not go, for she loved us too
much to go of her own accord, but they carried her off, and a curse fell
upon the house. My son, after an attack of terrible despair, fell into a
sort of lethargy. I do not know how to express my own state of mind. I
believed that for me the world had ended.
"While these things were going on, they began to lay out the cemetery.
The village-folk fled from this neighborhood. There were no more
festivals, songs and music; all the merriment of this countryside was
over, even as the joy of our souls.
"And Amparo was no happier than we; bred here in the open air, in the
bustle and animation of the inn, brought up to be joyous in poverty,
they plucked her from this life, and she withered, as wither the flowers
gathered in a garden to adorn a drawing-room. My son made incredible
efforts to see her again, to have a moment's speech with her. All was
in vain; her family did not wish it. At last he saw her, but he saw her
dead. The funeral train passed by here. I knew nothing about it and I
cannot tell why I fell to weeping when I saw her hearse. The heart,
loyal to love, clamored to me:
"'She is young like Amparo; she, too, must be beautiful; who knows if it
may not be herself? ' And it was. My son followed the train, entered the
enclosure and, when the coffin was opened, uttered a cry and fell
senseless to the ground; and so they brought him back to me. Afterwards
he went mad, and is now a lunatic. "
When the poor old man had reached this point in his narrative, there
entered the inn two gravediggers of sinister bearing and repellent look.
Having finished their task, they had come to take a drink "_to the
health of the dead_," as one of them said, accompanying the jest with a
silly leer. The innkeeper brushed off a tear with the back of his hand
and went to serve them.
Night was beginning to fall, a dark night and most gloomy. The sky was
black and so was the landscape. From the boughs of the trees still hung,
half rotted, the ropes of the swing swaying in the wind; it reminded me
of a gallows-rope quivering yet after the body of the felon had been
taken down. Only confused noises reached my ears,--the distant barking
of dogs on guard in the orchards; the creaking of a water-wheel,
prolonged, melancholy and shrill like a lament; disconnected, horrible
words of the gravediggers who were plotting in low tones a sacrilegious
robbery--I know not what; my memory has kept of this fantastic scene of
desolation as of that other scene of merriment only a confused
recollection that I cannot reproduce. What I still seem to hear as I
heard it then is this refrain intoned in a plaintive voice, suddenly
disturbing the silence that reigned about:
"The coach of the dead was grand
As it passed our humble door,
But from it beckoned a pallid hand,
And I saw my love once more. "
It was the poor boy, who was locked up in one of the rooms of the inn,
where he passed his days in motionless contemplation of the picture of
his beloved, without speaking a word, scarcely eating, never weeping,
hardly opening his lips save to sing this simple, tender verse enclosing
a poem of sorrow that I then learned to decipher.
ALL SOULS' NIGHT
The gloaming of a misty, melancholy autumn day is succeeded by a cold,
dark night. For several hours now, the continuous stir of the town seems
to have ceased.
Some near, others far, some with grave and measured beat and others with
a quick and tremulous vibration, the bells are swinging in their towers,
flinging out upon the air their metallic notes which float and mingle,
lessen and die away to yield place to a new rain of sounds pouring
continually from the deep brazen throats as from a spring of
inexhaustible harmonies.
It is said that joy is contagious, but I believe that sadness is much
more so. There are melancholy spirits who succeed in eluding the
intoxication of delight that our great popular festivals carry in their
atmosphere. It is hard to find one who is able to bear unaffected the
icy touch of the atmosphere of sorrow, if this comes to seek us in the
privacy of our own fireside,--comes in the wearisome, slow vibration of
the bell that is like a grieving voice, uttering its tale of troubles at
one's very ear.
I cannot hear the bells, even when they ring out merry peals as for a
festival, without having my soul possessed by a sentiment of
inexplicable and involuntary sadness. In the great capitals, by good or
evil hap, the confused murmur of the multitude which beats on every
sense, full of the noisy giddiness of action, ordinarily drowns the
clamor of the bells to such a degree as to make one believe it does not
exist. To me at least it seems that on All Souls' Night, the only night
of the year when I hear them, the towers of the Madrid
[Illustration: A RUINED CLOISTER]
churches, thanks to a miracle, regain their voices, breaking for a few
hours only their long silence. Whether it be that my imagination,
predisposed to melancholy thoughts, aids in producing this effect, or
that the novelty of the sound strikes me the more profoundly; always
when I perceive, borne on the wind, the separate notes of this harmony,
a strange phenomenon takes place in my senses. I think that I
distinguish the different voices of the bells one from another; I think
that each of them has its own tone and expresses a special feeling; I
think, in fine, that after lending for some time profound attention to
the discordant combination of sounds, deep or shrill, dull or silvery,
which they breathe forth, I succeed in surprising mysterious words that
palpitate upon the air enveloped in its prolonged vibrations.
These words without connection, without meaning, that float in space
accompanied by sighs scarcely perceptible and by long sobs, commence to
reunite one with another as the vague ideas of a dream combine on
waking, and reunited, they form an immense, dolorous poem, in which each
bell chants its strophe, and all together interpret by means of symbolic
sounds the dumb thought that seethes in the brain of those who harken,
plunged in profound meditation.
A bell of hollow, deafening tone, swinging heavily in its lofty tower
with ceremonial slowness, that seems to have a mathematical rhythm and
moves by some perfect mechanism, says in peals punctiliously adjusted to
the ritual:
"I am the empty sound that melts away without having made vibrate a
single one of the infinite chords of feeling in the heart of man. I bear
in my echoes neither sobs nor sighs. I perform correctly my part in the
lugubrious, aerial symphony of grief, my sonorous strokes never falling
behind nor going in advance by a single second. I am the bell of the
parish church, the official bell of funeral honors. My voice proclaims
the mourning of etiquette; my voice laments from the heights of the
belfry announcing to the neighborhood the fatality, groan by groan; my
voice, which sorrows at so much a sob, releases the rich heir and the
young widow from other cares than those of the formalities attending the
reading of the will, and the orders for elegant mourning.
"At my peal the artisans of death come out of their atrophy: the
carpenter hastens to adorn with gold braid the most comfortable of his
coffins; the marble worker strikes in his chisel seeking a new allegory
for the ostentatious sepulchre; even the horses of the grotesque hearse,
theatre of the last triumph of vanity, proudly shake their antique tufts
of flywing-colored plumes, while the pillars of the church are wound
about with black baize, the traditional catafalque is set up under the
dome, and the choir-master rehearses on the violin a new _Dies Irae_ for
the last mass of the _Requiem_.
"I am the grief of tinsel tears, of paper flowers and of distichs in
letters of gold.
"To-day it is my duty to commemorate my fellow-countrymen, the
illustrious dead for whom I mourn officially, and on doing this with all
the pomp and all the noise befitting their social position, my only
regret is that I cannot utter one by one their names, titles and
decorations; perchance this new formula would be a comfort to their
families. "
"When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its
distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away,
is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a
little clapper-bell. "
"I am," it says, "the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows
of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of
the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon
the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the
storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in
wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.
"I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the
groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on
the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.
"On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and
my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden
graves--an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as
it waves the tall grass that covers them.
"I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the
fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron
hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.
"To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life
unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat
and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in
earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which,
perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but
amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the
angels sow over the graves of the just. "
The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is
lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the
crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set
shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient
Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.
"I am," says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, "the voice of
the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the
amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the
long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who
keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the
shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of
the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined
stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of
tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls' Night, rung by
an invisible hand.
"I am the bell of fearsome folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in
pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo
only in ardent imaginations.
"At my voice, knights armed with all manner of arms rise from their
Gothic sepulchres; monks come forth from the dim vaults in which they
are sleeping their last sleep to the foot of their abbey altars; and the
cemeteries open their gates little by little to let pass the troops of
yellow skeletons that run nimbly to dance in giddy round about the
pointed spire which shelters me.
"When my tremendous clamor surprises the credulous old woman before the
antique shrine whose lights she tends, she believes that she sees for a
moment the spirits of the picture dance amid the vermilion and ochre
flames by the glimmer of the dying lantern.
"When my mighty vibrations accompany the monotonous recital of an
old-time fable to which the children, grouped about the hearth, listen
all absorbed, the tongues of red and blue fire that glide along the
glowing logs, and the fiery sparks that leap up against the obscure
background of the kitchen, are taken for spirits circling in the air,
and the noise of the wind shaking the doors, for the work of souls
knocking at the leaded panes of the windows with the fleshless knuckles
of their bony hands.
"I am the bell that prays to God for the souls condemned to hell; I am
the voice of superstitious terror; I cause not weeping, but rising of
the hair, and I carry the chill of fright to the marrow of his bones who
harkens to me. "
So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as
the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand
symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the
wind.
Only the daylight and the noises that come up from the heart of the town
at the first dawn can put to flight the strange abortions of the mind
and the doleful, persistent tolling of the bells, which even in sleep is
felt as an exhausting nightmare through the eternal _Noche de Difuntos_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To the posthumous edition of Becquer's _Works_, Senor Correa
prefixed an account of the poet's life. This, brief and often
indefinite as it is, remains the authentic biography. It has been
partially reproduced in English by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who published
in _Macmillan's Magazine_, February, 1883, pp. 305-320, a valuable
article entitled: _A Spanish Romanticist: Gustavo Becquer_. Professor
Olmsted of Cornell, in his recent class-room edition of selected
_Legends, Tales and Poems_ by Becquer (Ginn and Company, Boston,
1907) contributes additional facts gathered from Spanish periodical
articles--of which he gives a bibliography--and in conversation with
Spaniards who had known the poet.
[2] Of the seventy-six poems that make up the _Rimas_, thirty-two
are given in literal English rendering by Lucy White Jennison ("Owen
Innsley") as the third section of her _Love Songs and Other Poems_
(The Grafton Press, New York, 1883), and a few are similarly rendered
by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the article already mentioned. A complete
translation in English verse, by Jules Renard of Seattle, has just
come (1908) from The Gorham Press, Richard G. Badger, Boston.
[3] Not, to my knowledge, translated into English.
[4] Except for a few magazine waifs and strays, usually in abridged
form, and for seven out of the twelve stories in W. W. Gibbings'
_Terrible Tales_, where the translation, according to Professor
Olmsted, is "often inaccurate," these legends have not before been
translated into English. The twenty-one here given include everything
even remotely in the nature of a tale contained in the three volumes,
with the exception of the two East Indian legends already mentioned,
and the two witchcraft tales in _From My Cell_. Good as these witch
stories are, it seemed a pity to take them out of their context.
What might be considered further omission is noted later. Of the
translations in this volume, several have appeared in _Short Stories_,
two in _The Churchman_, and one in the _Boston Evening Transcript_.
[5] And therefore has not been included in this volume.
[6] Not included in this volume because it should not be taken from
its context.
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