No More Learning

I am
sure you will grant that I have not exaggerated her beauty. "

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

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

"In truth, an angel! " murmured one.

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

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

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

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

After these brief explanations, the guests, who did not lose sight of
the principal object of the gathering, proceeded to uncork some of the
bottles and, seating themselves around the bonfire, began to pass the
wine from hand to hand.

In proportion as their libations became more copious and frequent, and
the fumes of the foaming champagne commenced to cloud their brains, the
animation, the uproar and the merriment of the young Frenchmen rose to
such a pitch that some of them threw the broken necks of the empty
bottles at the granite monks carved against the pillars, and others
trolled at the tops of their voices scandalous drinking-songs, while the
rest burst into roars of laughter, clapped their hands in applause or
quarrelled among themselves with angry words and oaths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




THE SPIRITS' MOUNTAIN


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

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

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

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


I.

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

"So soon! "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


II.

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

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

Both maintained for some time an unbroken silence.

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PASS]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes. "

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

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

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

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

Then he went on in a voice choked and broken:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


IV.

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




THE CAVE OF THE MOOR'S DAUGHTER


I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN GROTTO]

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

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

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

Through this good fellow I learned that there was a tradition clinging
to this Arab castle and the vault which I believed to communicate with
it. And as I am a most willing hearer of all these legends, especially
from the lips of the neighbor-folk, I begged him to relate it to me, and
so he did, almost in the very words in which I in turn am going to
relate it to my readers.


II.

When the castle, of which there remain to-day only a few shapeless
ruins, was still held by the Moorish kings, and its towers, not one
stone now left upon another, commanded from their lofty site all that
most fertile valley watered by the river Alhama, there was fought near
the town of Fitero a hotly contested battle in which a famous Christian
knight, as worthy of renown for his piety as for his valor, fell,
wounded, into the hands of the Arabs.

Taken to the fortress and loaded with irons by his enemies, he was for
some days in the depths of a dungeon struggling between life and death,
until, healed as if miraculously of his wounds, he was redeemed by his
kindred with a ransom of gold.

The captive returned to his home,--returned to clasp to his breast those
who had given him being. His brothers-in-arms and his men-of-war were
overjoyed to see him, supposing that he would sound the call to new
combat, but the soul of the knight had become possessed by a deep
melancholy, and neither the endearments of parental love nor the
assiduities of friendship could dissipate his strange gloom.

During his imprisonment he had managed to see the daughter of the
Moorish chief, rumors of whose beauty had already reached his ears. But
when he beheld her, he found her so superior to the idea he had formed
of her that he could not resist the fascination of her charms and fell
desperately in love with one who could never be his bride.

Months and months were spent by the knight in devising the most daring,
most absurd plans; now he would imagine some way of breaking the
barriers that separated him from that woman; again, he would make the
utmost efforts to forget her; to-day he would decide on one course of
action and to-morrow he would resolve on another absolutely different.
At last, one morning, he called together his brothers and
companions-in-arms, summoned his men-of-war, and after having made, with
the greatest secrecy, all necessary preparations, fell suddenly upon the
fortress which sheltered the beautiful being who was the object of his
insensate love.

On setting out on this expedition, all believed that their commander was
moved only by eagerness to avenge himself for the sufferings he had
endured loaded with irons in the dungeon depth, but after the fortress
was taken, the true cause of that reckless enterprise, in which so many
good Christians had perished to contribute to the satisfaction of an
unworthy passion, was hid from none.

The knight, intoxicated with the love which he had at last succeeded in
kindling in the breast of the beautiful Moorish girl, gave no heed to
the counsels of his friends, and was deaf to the murmurs and complaints
of his soldiers. One and all were clamoring to go out as soon as
possible from those walls, upon which it was natural that the Arabs,
recovered from the panic of the surprise, would fall anew.

And this, in fact, was what took place. The Moorish chief called
together the Arabs from all about; and, one morning, the look-out who
was stationed in the watch-tower of the keep went down to announce to
the infatuated lovers that over all the mountain range which was
discernible from that summit, such a cloud of warriors was descending
that he was convinced all Mohammedanism was going to fall upon the
castle.

The Moor's daughter, hearing this, stood still, pale as death; the
knight shouted for his arms, and everything was put in motion in the
fortress. The soldiers rushed out tumultuously from their quarters; the
captains began to give orders; the portcullis was lowered; the
drawbridge was raised, and the battlements were manned with archers.

After some hours, the assault began.

The castle might well be called impregnable. Only by surprise, as the
Christians had taken it, could it be overcome. So its defenders resisted
one, two, and even ten onsets.

The Moors, seeing the uselessness of their efforts, contented themselves
with closely surrounding the castle, that they might bring its defenders
to capitulation through famine.

Hunger began, indeed, to make frightful ravages among the Christians,
but, knowing that once the castle was surrendered, the price of the life
of its defenders would be the head of their leader, no one would betray
him, and the very soldiers who had reprobated his conduct swore to
perish in his defence.

The Moors, waxing impatient, resolved to make a fresh assault in the
middle of the night. The attack was furious; the defence, desperate; the
encounter, horrible. During the combat, the Moorish chief, his forehead
cleft by an axe, fell into the moat from the top of the wall to which he
had succeeded in climbing by the aid of a scaling ladder.
Simultaneously the knight received a mortal stroke in the breach of the
barbican where men were fighting hand to hand in the darkness.

The Christians began to give way and fell back. At this point, the
Moorish girl bent over her lover, who lay in deathlike swoon on the
ground and, taking him in her arms, with a strength born of desperation
and the sense of peril, she dragged him to the castle court. There she
touched a spring and through a passage disclosed by a stone, which rose
as if supernaturally moved, she disappeared with her precious burden and
began to descend until she reached the bottom of the vault.


III.

When the knight recovered consciousness, he cast a wandering glance
about him, crying: "I thirst! I die! I burn! " And in his delirium,
precursor of death, from his dry lips, through which whistled the
difficult breath, came only these words of agony: "I thirst! I burn!
Water! Water! "

The Moorish girl knew that there was an opening from that vault to the
valley through which the river flows. The valley and all the heights
which overlook it were full of Moslem soldiers, who, the fortress now
surrendered, were vainly seeking everywhere the knight and his beloved
to satiate on them their thirst for destruction; yet she did not
hesitate an instant, but taking the helmet of the dying man, she slipped
like a shadow through the thicket which covered the mouth of the cave
and went down to the river bank.

Already she had dipped up the water and was rising to return to the side
of her lover, when an arrow hissed and a cry resounded.

Two Arab archers who were on watch near the fortress had drawn their
bows in the direction in which they heard the foliage rustle.

The Moor's daughter, mortally wounded, yet succeeded in dragging herself
to the entrance of the vault and down into its depths where she joined
the knight. He, on seeing her bathed with blood and at the point of
death, recovered his reason and, realizing the enormity of the sin which
demanded so fearful an expiation, raised his eyes to heaven, took the
water which his beloved offered him and, without lifting it to his lips,
asked the Moorish girl: "Would you be a Christian? Would you die in my
faith and, if I am saved, be saved with me? " The Moor's daughter, who
had fallen to the ground, faint with loss of blood, made a slight
movement of her head, and upon it the knight poured the baptismal water,
invoking the name of the Almighty.

The next day the soldier who had shot the arrow saw a trace of blood on
the river bank and, following it, went into the cave where he found the
dead bodies of the cavalier and his beloved, who, ever since, come out
at night to wander through these parts.




THE GNOME


The young girls of the village were returning from the fountain with
their water-jars on their heads; they were returning with song and
laughter, a merry confusion of sound comparable only to the gleeful
twitter of a flock of swallows when, thick as hail, they circle around
the weather-vane of a belfry.

Just in front of the church porch, seated at the foot of a juniper tree,
was Uncle Gregorio. Uncle Gregorio was the patriarch of the village; he
was nearly ninety years old, with white hair, smiling lips, roguish eyes
and trembling hands. In childhood he had been a shepherd; in his young
manhood, a soldier; then he tilled a little piece of fruitful land
inherited from his parents, until at last his strength was spent and he
sat tranquilly awaiting death which he neither dreaded nor longed for.
Nobody retailed a bit of gossip more spicily than he, nor knew more
marvellous tales, nor could bring so neatly to bear an old refrain,
proverb or adage.

The girls, on seeing him, quickened their steps, eager for his talk, and
when they were in the porch they all began to tease him for a story to
pass away the time still left them before nightfall--not much, for the
setting sun was slanting his rays across the earth, and the shadows of
the mountains grew larger moment by moment all along the plain.

Uncle Gregorio smiled as he listened to the pleading of the lasses, who,
having once coaxed from him a promise to tell them something, let down
their water-jars upon the ground, and sitting all about him, made a
circle with the patriarch in the centre; then he began to talk to them
after this fashion:

"I will not tell you a story, for though several come into my mind this
minute, they have to do with such weighty matters that the attention of
a group of giddypates, like you, would never hold out to the end;
besides, with the afternoon so nearly gone, I would not have time to
tell them through. So I will give you instead a piece of good counsel. "

"Good counsel! " exclaimed the girls with undisguised vexation. "Bah! it
isn't to hear good counsel that we are stopping here; when we have need
of that, his Reverence the priest will give it to us. "

"But perhaps," went on the old man with his habitual smile, speaking in
his broken, tremulous voice, "his Reverence the priest will not know how
to give you, this once, such timely advice as Uncle Gregorio; for the
priest, busy with his liturgies and litanies, will not have noticed, as
I have noticed, that every day you go earlier to the fountain and come
back later. "

The girls looked at one another with hardly perceptible smiles of
derision, while some of those who were placed behind Uncle Gregorio
touched finger to forehead, accompanying the action with a significant
gesture.

"And what harm do you find in our lingering at the fountain to chat a
minute with our friends and neighbors? " asked one of them. "Do slanders,
perhaps, go about the village because the lads step out on to the road
for a pleasant word or two, or come offering to carry our water-jars
till we are in sight of the houses? "

"Ay, people talk," replied the old man to the girl who had asked him the
question for them all. "The old dames of the village murmur that to-day
the girls resort for fun and frolic to a spot whither they used to go
swiftly and in fear to draw the water, since only there can water be
had; and I find it much amiss that you are losing little by little the
dread which the vicinity of the fountain inspires in all your
elders,--for so it might come to pass that some time the night should
overtake you there. "

Uncle Gregorio spoke these last words in a tone so full of mystery that
the lasses opened wide their frightened eyes to look at him, and with
blended curiosity and mischief, again pressed their questions:

"The night! But what goes on in that place by night that you should
scare us so and throw out such dark and dreadful hints of what might
befall? Do you think the wolves will eat us? "

"When the Moncayo is covered with snow, the wolves, driven from their
dens, come down in packs and range over its slope; more than once we
have heard them howling in horrible concert, not only in the
neighborhood of the fountain, but in the very streets of the village;
yet the wolves are not the most terrible tenants of the Moncayo; in its
deep and dark caverns, on its wild and lonely summits, in its hollow
heart there live certain diabolical spirits that, during the night, pour
down its cascades in swarms and people the empty spaces, thronging like
ants upon the plain, leaping from rock to rock, sporting in the waters
and swinging on the bare boughs of the trees. It is these spirits that
cry from the clefts of the crags, that roll up and push along those
immense snowballs which come rolling down from the lofty peaks and sweep
away and crush whatever they find in their path,--theirs are the voices
calling in the hail at our windows on stormy nights,--theirs the forms
that flit like thin, blue flames over the marshes. Among these
spirits--who, driven from the lowlands by the sacred services and
exorcisms of the Church, have taken refuge on the inaccessible crests of
the mountains,--are those of diverse natures, that on appearing to our
eyes clothe themselves in

[Illustration: GIRLS AT THE FOUNTAIN]

varied forms. Yet the most dangerous, those who with sweet words win
their way into the hearts of maidens and dazzle them with magnificent
promises, are the gnomes. The gnomes live in the inner recesses of the
mountains; they know their subterranean roads and, eternal guardians of
the treasures hidden in the heart of the hills, they keep watch day and
night over the veins of metal and the precious stones. Do you see--"
continued the old man, pointing with the stick which served him for a
prop to the summit of the Moncayo, that rose at his right, looming dark
and gigantic against the misted, violet sky of twilight--"do you see
that mighty mass still crowned with snow? In its deep cavities these
diabolical spirits have their dwellings. The palace they inhabit is
terrible and glorious to see. Many years ago a shepherd, following some
stray of his flock, penetrated into the mouth of one of those caves
whose entrances are covered by thick growths of bushes and whose outlets
no man has ever seen. When he came back to the village, he was pale as
death; he had surprised the secret of the gnomes; he had breathed their
poisonous atmosphere, and he paid for his rashness with his life; but
before he died he related marvellous things. Going on along that cavern,
he had come at last to vast subterranean galleries lighted by a fitful,
fantastic splendor shed from the phosphorescence in the rocks, which
there were like great boulders of quartz crystallized into a thousand
strange, fantastic forms. The floor, the vaulted ceiling and the walls
of those immense halls, the work of nature, seemed variegated like the
richest marbles; but the veins which crossed them were of gold and
silver, and among those shining veins, as if incrusted in the rock, were
seen jewels, a multitude of precious stones of all colors and sizes.
There were jacinths and emeralds in heaps, and diamonds and rubies, and
sapphires and--how should I know? --many other gems unrecognized--more
than he could name but all so great and beautiful that his eyes dazzled
at the sight. No noise of the outer world reached the depths of that
weird cavern; the only perceptible sounds were, at intervals, the
prolonged and pitiful groans of the air which blew through that
enchanted labyrinth, a vague roar of subterranean fire furious in its
prison, and murmurs of running water which flowed on not knowing whither
they went. The shepherd, alone and lost in that immensity, wandered I
know not how many hours without finding any outlet, until at last he
chanced upon the source of a spring whose murmur he had heard. This
broke from the ground like a miraculous fountain, a leap of foam-crowned
water that fell in an exquisite cascade, singing a silver song as it
slipped away through the crannies of the rocks. About him grew plants
that he had never seen, some with wide, thick leaves, and others
delicate and long like floating ribbons. Half hidden in that humid
foliage were running about a number of extraordinary creatures, some of
them manlike, some reptilian, or both at once, changing shape
continually, at one moment appearing like human beings, deformed and
tiny, the next like gleaming salamanders or fugitive flames that danced
in circles above the tip of the fountain-jet. There, darting in all
directions, running across the floor in form of repugnant, hunchbacked
dwarfs, scrambling up the walls, wriggling along, reptile-shaped, in
their slime, dancing like Will-o-the-wisps on the pool of water, went
the gnomes, the lords of those recesses, counting over and shifting from
place to place their fabulous riches. They know where misers store those
treasures which, afterwards, the heirs seek in vain; they know the spot
where the Moors, before their flight, hid their jewels; and the
ornaments which are lost, the money that is missing, everything that has
value and disappears, they search for, find and steal, to hide in their
caves, for they know how to go to and fro through all the world by
secret, unimagined paths beneath the earth. So there they were keeping
stored up in heaps all manner of rare and precious things. There were
jewels of inestimable worth; chains and necklaces of pearls and
exquisite gems; golden jars of classic form, full of rubies; chiseled
cups, armor richly wrought, coins with images and superscriptions that
it is no longer possible to recognize or decipher; treasures, in short,
so fabulous and limitless that scarcely may imagination picture them.
And all glittered together, flashing out such vivid sparks of light and
color that it seemed as if the whole hoard were on fire, quivering and
wavering. At least, the shepherd said that so it had seemed to him. " At
this point the old patriarch paused a moment. The girls, who in the
beginning had hearkened to Uncle Gregorio's story with a mocking smile,
now maintained unbroken silence, hoping that he would go on,--waiting
with frightened eyes, with lips slightly parted, and with curiosity and
interest depicted on their faces. One of them finally broke the hush,
and unable to control herself, exclaimed, fascinated with the account of
the fabulous riches which had met the shepherd's view:

"And what then? Did he take away nothing out of all that? "

"Nothing," replied Uncle Gregorio.

"What a silly! " the girls exclaimed in concert.

"Heaven helped him in that moment of peril," continued the old man, "for
at the very instant when avarice, the ruling passion, began to dispel
his fear and, bewitched by the sight of those jewels, one alone of which
would have made him wealthy, the shepherd was about to possess himself
of some small share of that treasure, he says he heard--listen and
marvel--clear and distinct in those profound abodes,--despite the shouts
of laughter and harsh voices of the gnomes, the roar of the subterranean
fire, the murmur of running water and the laments of the imprisoned
air, he heard, I say, as if he had been at the foot of the hill where it
stands, the pealing of the bell in the hermitage of Our Lady of the
Moncayo.

"On hearing the bell, which was ringing the _Ave Maria_, the shepherd
fell to his knees, calling on the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and
instantly, without knowing the means nor the way, he found himself on
the outside of the mountain, near the road which leads to the village,
thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great bewilderment as if
he had just been startled out of a dream.

"Since then everybody has understood why our village fountain sometimes
has in its waters a glint as of very fine gold-dust; and when night
falls, vague words are heard in its murmur, flattering words with which
the gnomes, that defile it from its source, try to entice the foolhardy
who lend them ear, promising them riches and treasures that are bound to
be the destruction of their souls. "

When Uncle Gregorio had reached this point in his relation, night had
fallen and the church bell commenced to call to prayer. The girls
crossed themselves devoutly, repeating in low voices an _Ave Maria_, and
after bidding good-night to Uncle Gregorio, who again counselled them
not to tarry at the fountain, each picked up her water-jar and all went
forth, silent and musing, from the churchyard. They were already far
from the spot where they had found the old man, and had, indeed, reached
the central square of the village whence they were to go their several
ways, before the more resolute and decided of them all broke out with
the question:

"Do you girls believe any of that nonsense Uncle Gregorio has been
telling us? "

"Not I," said one.

"Nor I," exclaimed another.

"Nor I! nor I! " chimed in the rest, laughing at their momentary
credulity.

The group of lasses melted away, each taking her course toward one or
another side of the square. Last of all, when the others had disappeared
down the better streets that led out from this market-place, two girls,
the only ones who had not opened their lips to make fun of Uncle
Gregorio's veracity, but who, still musing on the marvellous tale,
seemed absorbed in their own meditations, went away together, with the
slow step natural to people deep in thought, by a dismal, narrow,
crooked alley.

Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be some twenty years old,
was called Marta; and the younger, who had not yet finished her
sixteenth year, Magdalena.

As long as the walk lasted, both kept complete silence; but when they
reached the threshold of their home and had set down their water-jars on
the stone bench by the door, Marta said to Magdalena: "And do you
believe in the marvels of the Moncayo and the spirits of the fountain? "
"Yes," answered Magdalena simply, "I believe it all. But you, perhaps,
have doubts? " "Oh, no! " Marta hastily interrupted. "I, too, believe
everything, everything--that I wish to believe. "


II.

Marta and Magdalena were sisters. Orphans from early childhood, they
were living wretchedly under the protection of a kinswoman of their
mother,--a kinswoman who had taken them in for charity and who at every
step made them feel, by her taunting and humiliating words, the weight
of their obligation. Everything would seem to tend toward tightening the
knot of love between those two sister souls,--not merely the bond of
blood, but those of poverty and suffering, and yet there existed between
Marta and Magdalena a mute rivalry, a secret antipathy explicable only
by a study of their characters, as utterly contrasted as were their
physical types.

Marta was overbearing, strong in her passions and of a rough directness
in the expression of her feelings; she did not understand either
laughter or tears, and so had never wept nor laughed. Magdalena, on the
other hand, was gentle, affectionate, kind, and more than once had been
seen to laugh and weep together, as children do.

Marta's eyes were blacker than night and from under her dark lashes
there sometimes seemed to leap fiery sparks as from a burning coal.

The blue eyes of Magdalena appeared to swim in liquid light behind the
golden curve of her blond lashes. And everything in them was in keeping
with the different expression of their eyes. Marta, thin, pale, tall,
stiff of movement, her dark, crisp hair shading her brow and falling
upon her shoulders like a velvet mantle, formed a singular contrast to
Magdalena, white and pink, _petite_, with the rounded face and figure of
babyhood, and with golden tresses encircling her temples like the gilded
halo about the head of an angel.

Despite the inexplicable repulsion which each felt for the other, the
two sisters had lived up to this time on terms of indifference that
might have been mistaken for peace and affection; there had been no
caresses to quarrel over, nor partialities to envy; equal in misfortune
and affliction, Marta, withdrawn into herself, had borne her troubles in
a proud, self-centered silence; and Magdalena, finding no response in
her sister's heart, would weep alone when the tears involuntarily rushed
into her eyes.

They had not a sentiment in common; they never confided to one another
their joys and griefs, and yet the only secret which each had striven to
hide in the depths of her soul had been divined by the other with the
marvelous instinct of love and jealousy. Marta and Magdalena had in fact
set their hearts on one and the same man.

The passion of the one was a stubborn desire, born of a wilful and
indomitable character; in the other, love was manifest in that vague,
spontaneous tenderness of youth, which, needing an object on which to
spend itself, takes the first that comes. Both guarded the secret of
their love, for the man who had inspired it would perchance have made
mock of a devotion which could be interpreted as an absurd ambition in
penniless girls of lowly birth. Both, despite the distance which
separated them from their idol, cherished a faint hope of winning him.

Hard by the village, and above a height which dominated the country
round about, there was an ancient castle abandoned by its owners. The
old women, in their evening gossips, would relate a marvellous story
about its founders. They told how the King of Aragon, finding himself at
war with his enemies, his resources exhausted, forsaken by his allies
and on the point of losing the throne, was sought out one day by a
shepherdess of those parts, who, after revealing to him the existence of
certain subterranean passages by means of which he could go through the
Moncayo without being perceived by his enemies, gave him a treasure in
fine pearls, precious stones of the richest, and bars of gold and
silver; with these the king paid his troops, raised a mighty army and,
marching beneath the earth one whole night long, fell the next day upon
his adversaries and routed them, establishing the crown securely on his
head.

After he had won so distinguished a victory, the story goes that the
king said to the shepherdess: "Ask of me what thou wilt, and even though
it be the half of my kingdom, I swear I will give it thee on the
instant. "

"I wish no more than to go back to the keeping of my flock," replied
the shepherdess. "Thou shalt keep only my frontiers," rejoined the king,
and he gave her lordship over all the boundary, and bade her build a
stronghold in the town nearest the borders of Castile; here dwelt the
shepherdess, married to one of the king's favorites, a husband noble,
gallant, valiant and, as well, lord over many fortresses and many fiefs.

The astonishing account given by Uncle Gregorio of the Moncayo gnomes,
whose secret haunt was in the village fountain, set soaring anew the
wild dreams of the two enamored sisters, for it formed a sequel, so to
speak, to the hitherto unexplained tradition of the treasure found by
the fabled shepherdess--treasure whose remembered gleam had troubled
more than once their wakeful, embittered nights, flashing before their
imaginations like a fragile ray of hope.

The evening following their afternoon meeting with Uncle Gregorio, all
the other girls of the village chatted in their homes about the
wonderful story he had told them. Marta and Magdalena preserved an
unbroken silence, and neither that evening, nor throughout the following
day, did they exchange a single word on this matter, the theme of all
the talk throughout the hamlet and text of all the neighbors'
commentaries.

At the usual hour, Magdalena took her water-jar and said to her sister:
"Shall we go to the fountain? " Marta did not answer, and Magdalena said
again: "Shall we go to the fountain? If we do not hurry, the sun will
have set before we are back. " Marta finally replied shortly and roughly:
"I don't care about going to-day. " "Neither do I," rejoined Magdalena
after an instant of silence during which she kept her eyes fastened on
those of her sister, as if she would read in them the cause of her
resolution.


III.

For nearly an hour the village girls had been back in their homes. The
last glow of sunset had faded on the horizon, and the night was
beginning to close in more and more darkly, when Marta and Magdalena,
each avoiding the other, left the hamlet by different paths in the
direction of the mysterious fountain. The fountain welled up in a hidden
nook among some steep, mossy rocks at the further end of a deep grove.
Now that the sounds of the day had ceased little by little, and no
longer was heard the distant echo of voices from the laborers who return
home in knightly fashion, mounted on their yoked oxen and trolling out
songs to the accompaniment of the beam of the plough they go dragging
over the ground,--now that the monotonous clang of the sheep-bells had
gone beyond hearing, together with the shouts of the shepherds and the
barking of their dogs gathering the flocks together,--now that there had
sounded in the village-tower the last peal of the call to prayers, there
reigned august that double silence of night and solitude, a silence full
of strange, soft murmurs making it yet more perceptible.

Marta and Magdalena slipped through the labyrinth of the trees and,
sheltered by the darkness, arrived without seeing each other at the far
end of the grove. Marta knew no fear; her steps were firm and
unfaltering. Magdalena trembled at the mere rustle made by her feet as
they trod upon the dry leaves carpeting the ground. When the two sisters
were close to the fountain, the night wind began to stir the branches of
the poplars, and to their uneven, sighing whispers the springing water
seemed to make answer with a steady, regular murmur.

Marta and Magdalena lent attention to those soft noises of the
night,--those that flowed beneath their feet like a continuous ripple
of laughter, and those that floated above their heads like a lament
rising and falling only to rise again and spread through the foliage of
the grove. As the hours went on, that unceasing sound of the air and of
the water began to produce in them a strange exaltation, a kind of
dizziness that, clouding the eyes and humming in the ears, seemed to
confuse them utterly. Then as one hears in dreams the far, vague echo of
speech, they seemed to perceive, amid those nameless noises,
inarticulate sounds as of a child who would call his mother and cannot;
then words repeated over and over, always the same; then disconnected,
inconsequent phrases, without order or meaning, and at last--at last the
wind wandering among the trees, and the water leaping from rock to rock,
commenced to speak.

And they spoke thus:

THE WATER.

Woman! --woman! --hear me! --hear me and draw near that thou mayst hear me,
and I will kiss thy feet while I tremble to copy thine image in the
shadowy depth of my waves. Woman! --hear how my murmurs are words.

THE WIND.

Maiden! --Gentle maiden, lift thine head, let me give thy brow the kiss
of peace, while I stir thy tresses. Gentle maiden, listen to me, for I,
too, know how to speak and I will murmur in thine ear phrases of
tenderness.

MARTA.

Oh, speak! Speak, and I will understand, for my mind floats in a dizzy
maze, as float those dim words of thine.

Speak, mysterious stream.

MAGDALENA.

I am afraid. Air of night, air of perfumes, refresh my burning brow!
Tell me what may inspire me with courage, for my spirit wavers.

THE WATER.

I have crossed the dark hollow of the earth, I have surprised the secret
of its marvellous fecundity, and I know the phenomena of its inner
parts, whence springs the life to be.

My murmur lulls to sleep and awakens. Awaken thou that thou mayst
comprehend it.