No More Learning

"Come, for now the moon, protector of mysteries, sparkles in the
fulness of splendor.
"Come, for the moment of marvellous transformation is at hand.
"Come, for those who love you, await you with impatience. "

Garces, who remained motionless, felt on hearing those mysterious songs
the asp of jealousy stinging his heart, and yielding to an impulse
stronger than his will, bent on breaking once for all the spell that was
fascinating his senses, thrust apart with a tremulous, convulsive hand
the boughs which concealed him, and with a single bound gained the
river-bank. The charm was broken, everything vanished like a vapor and,
looking about him, he neither saw nor heard more than the noisy
confusion with which the timid deer, surprised at the height of their
nocturnal gambols, were fleeing in fright from his presence, hither and
thither, one clearing the thickets with a bound, another gaining at full
speed the mountain path.

"Oh, well did I say that all these things were only delusions of the
Devil," exclaimed the hunter, "but this time, by good luck, he
blundered, leaving the chief prize in my hands. "

And so, in fact, it was. The white doe, trying to escape through the
grove, had rushed into the labyrinth of its trees and, entangled in a
network of honeysuckles, was striving in vain to free herself. Garces
aimed his shaft, but at the very instant in which he was going to wound
her, the doe turned toward the hunter and arrested his action with a
cry, saying in a voice clear and sharp: "Garces, what wouldst thou do? "
The young man hesitated and, after a moment's doubt, let his bow fall to
the ground, aghast at the mere idea of having been in danger of harming
his beloved. A loud, mocking laugh roused him finally from his stupor.
The white doe had taken advantage of those brief instants to extricate
herself and to flee swift as a flash of lightning, laughing at the trick
played on the hunter.

"Ah, damned offspring of Satan! " he shouted in a terrible voice,
catching up his bow with unspeakable swiftness, "too soon hast thou sung
thy victory; too soon hast thou thought thyself beyond my reach. " And so
saying, he sped the arrow, that went hissing on its way and was lost in
the darkness of the wood, from whose depths there simultaneously came a
shriek followed by choking groans.

"My God! " exclaimed Garces on hearing those sobs of anguish. "My God! if
it should be true! " And beside himself, hardly aware of what he did, he
ran like a madman in the direction in which he had shot the arrow, the
same direction from which sounded the groans. He reached the place at
last, but on arriving there, his hair stood erect with horror, the words
throbbed vainly in his throat and he had to clutch the trunk of a tree
to save himself from falling to the ground.

Constanza, wounded by his hand, was dying there before his eyes,
writhing in her own blood, among the sharp brambles of the mountain.




THE PASSION ROSE


One summer afternoon, in a garden of Toledo, this curious tale was
related to me by a young girl as good as she was pretty.

While explaining to me the mystery of its especial structure, she kissed
the leaves and pistils which she was plucking one by one from the flower
that gives to this legend its name.

If I could tell it with the gentle charm and the appealing simplicity
which it had upon her lips, the history of the unhappy Sara would move
you as it moved me.

But since this cannot be, I here set down what of the tradition I can at
this instant recall.


I.

In one of the most obscure and crooked lanes of the Imperial City,
wedged in and almost hidden between the high Moorish tower of an old
Visigothic church and the gloomy walls, sculptured with armorial
bearings, of a family mansion, there was many years ago a tumbledown
dwelling-house dark and miserable as its owner, a Jew named Daniel Levi.

This Jew, like all his race, was spiteful and vindictive, but for deceit
and hypocrisy he had no match.

The possessor, according to popular report, of an immense fortune, he
might nevertheless be seen all day long huddled up in the shadowy
doorway of his home, making and repairing chains, old belts and broken
trappings of all sorts, in which he carried on a thriving business with
the riff-raff of

[Illustration: A MOORISH WINDOW]

the Zocodover, the hucksters of the Postigo and the poor squires.

Though an implacable hater of Christians and of everything pertaining to
them, he never passed a cavalier of note or an eminent canon without
doffing, not only once, but ten times over, the dingy little cap which
covered his bald, yellow head, nor did he receive in his wretched shop
one of his regular customers without bending low in the most humble
salutations accompanied by flattering smiles.

The smile of Daniel had come to be proverbial in all Toledo, and his
meekness, proof against the most vexatious pranks, mocks and cat-calls
of his neighbors, knew no limit.

In vain the boys, to tease him, stoned his poor old house; in vain the
little pages and even the men-at-arms of the neighboring castle tried to
provoke him by insulting nicknames, or the devout old women of the
parish crossed themselves when passing his door as if they saw the very
Lucifer in person. Daniel smiled eternally with a strange, indescribable
smile. His thin, sunken lips twitched under the shadow of his nose,
which was enormous and hooked like the beak of an eagle, and although
from his eyes, small, green, round and almost hidden by the heavy brows,
there gleamed a spark of ill-suppressed anger, he went on imperturbably
beating with his little iron hammer upon the anvil where he repaired the
thousand rusty and seemingly useless trifles which constituted his stock
in trade.

Over the door of the Jew's humble dwelling and within a casing of
bright-colored tiles there opened an Arabic window left over from the
original building of the Toledan Moors. Around the fretted frame of the
window and climbing over the slender marble colonettes that divided it
into two equal apertures there arose from the interior of the house one
of those climbing plants which, green and full of sap and of exuberant
growth, spread themselves over the blackened walls of ruins.

In the part of the house that received an uncertain light through the
narrow spaces of the casement, the only opening in the time-stained,
weather-worn wall, lived Sara, the beloved daughter of Daniel.

When the neighbors, passing the shop of the Hebrew, chanced to see Sara
through the lattice of her Moorish window and Daniel crouched over his
anvil, they would exclaim aloud in admiration of the charms of the
beautiful Jewess: "It seems impossible that such an ugly old trunk
should have put forth so beautiful a branch! "

For, in truth, Sara was a miracle of beauty. In the pupils of her great
eyes, shadowed by the cloudy arch of their black lashes, gleamed a point
of light like a star in a darkened sky. Her glowing lips seemed to have
been cut from a carmine weft by the invisible hands of a fairy. Her
complexion was pale and transparent as the alabaster of a sepulchral
statue. She was scarcely sixteen years of age and yet there seemed
engraven on her countenance the sweet seriousness of precocious
intelligence, and there arose from her bosom and escaped from her mouth
those sighs which reveal the vague awakening of passion.

The most prominent Jews of the city, captivated by her marvellous
beauty, had sought her in marriage, but the Hebrew maiden, untouched by
the homage of her admirers and the counsels of her father, who urged her
to choose a companion before she should be left alone in the world, held
herself aloof in a deep reserve, giving no other reason for her strange
conduct than the caprice of wishing to retain her freedom. At last, one
of her adorers, tired of suffering Sara's repulses and suspecting that
her perpetual sadness was a certain sign that her heart hid some
important secret, approached Daniel and said to him:

"Do you know, Daniel, that among our brothers there is complaint of your
daughter? "

The Jew raised his eyes for an instant from his anvil, stopped his
eternal hammering and, without showing the least emotion, asked his
questioner:

"And what do they say of her? "

"They say," continued his interlocutor, "they say--what do I know? --many
things; among them, that your daughter is in love with a Christian. " At
this, the despised suitor waited to see what effect his words had had
upon Daniel.

Daniel raised his eyes once more, looked at him fixedly a moment without
speaking and, lowering his gaze again to resume his interrupted work,
exclaimed:

"And who says this is not slander? "

"One who has seen them more than once in this very street talking
together while you were absent at our Rabbinical service," insisted the
young Hebrew, wondering that his mere suspicions, much more his positive
statements, should have made so little impression on the mind of Daniel.

The Jew, without giving up his work, his gaze fixed upon the anvil where
he was now busying himself, his little hammer laid aside, in brightening
the metal clasp of a sword guard with a small file, began to speak in a
low, broken voice as if his lips were repeating mechanically the
thoughts that struggled through his mind:

"He! He! He! " he chuckled, laughing in a strange, diabolical way. "So a
Christian dog thinks he can snatch from me my Sara, the pride of our
people, the staff on which my old age leans! And do you believe he will
do it? He! He! " he continued, always talking to himself and always
laughing, while his file, biting the metal with its teeth of steel,
grated with an ever-increasing force. "He! He! 'Poor Daniel,' my friends
will say, 'is in his dotage. What right has this decrepit old fellow,
already at death's door, to a daughter so young and so beautiful, if he
doesn't know how to guard her from the covetous eyes of our enemies? '
He! He! He! Do you think perchance that Daniel sleeps? Do you think,
peradventure, that if my daughter has a lover--and that might well
be--and this lover is a Christian and tries to win her heart and wins
it--all which is possible--and plans to flee with her--which also is
easy--and flees, for instance, to-morrow morning,--which falls within
human probability,--do you think that Daniel will suffer his treasure to
be thus snatched away? Do you think he will not know how to avenge
himself? "

"But," exclaimed the youth, interrupting him, "did you then know it
before? "

"I know," said Daniel, rising and giving him a slap on the shoulder, "I
know more than you, who know nothing, and would know nothing had not the
hour come for telling all. Adieu! Bid our brethren assemble as soon as
possible. To-night, in an hour or two, I will be with them. Adieu! "

And saying this, Daniel gently pushed his interlocutor out into the
street, gathered up his tools very slowly, and began to fasten with
double bolts and bars the door of his little shop.

The noise made by the door as it closed on its creaking hinges prevented
the departing youth from hearing the sound of the window lattice, which
at the same time fell suddenly as if the Jewess were just withdrawing
from the embrasure.


II.

It was the night of Good Friday, and the people of Toledo, after having
attended the service of the Tenebrae in their magnificent cathedral, had
just retired to rest, or, gathered at their firesides, were relating
legends like that of the Christ of the Light, a statue which, stolen by
Jews, left a trail of blood causing the discovery of the criminals, or
the story of the Child Martyr, upon whom the implacable enemies of our
faith repeated the cruel Passion of Jesus. In the city there reigned a
profound silence, broken at intervals, now by the distant cries of the
night-watchman, at that epoch accustomed to keep guard about the
Alcazar, and again by the sighing of the wind which was whirling the
weather-cocks of the towers or sighing through the tortuous windings of
the streets. At this dead hour the master of a little boat that, moored
to a post, lay swaying near the mills which seem like natural
incrustations at the foot of the rocks bathed by the Tagus and above
which the city is seated, saw approaching the shore, descending with
difficulty one of the narrow paths which lead down from the height of
the walls to the river, a person whom he seemed to await with
impatience.

"It is she," the boatman muttered between his teeth. "It would seem that
this night all that accursed race of Jews is bent on mischief. Where the
devil will they hold their tryst with Satan that they all come to my
boat when the bridge is so near? No, they are bound on no honest errand
when they take such pains to avoid a sudden meeting with the soldiers of
San Servando,--but, after all, they give me the chance to earn good
money and--every man for himself--it is no business of mine. "

Saying this, the worthy ferryman, seating himself in his boat, adjusted
the oars, and when Sara, for it was no other than she for whom he had
been waiting, had leaped into the little craft, he cast off the rope
that held it and began to row toward the opposite shore.

"How many have crossed to-night? " asked Sara of the boatman, when they
had scarcely pulled away from the mills, as though referring to
something of which they had just been speaking.

"I could not count them," he replied, "a swarm. It looks as though
to-night will be the last of their gatherings. "

"And do you know what they have in mind and for what purpose they leave
the city at this hour? "

"I don't know, but it is likely that they are expecting some one who
ought to arrive to-night. I cannot tell why they are lying in wait for
him, but I suspect for no good end. "

After this brief dialogue Sara remained for some moments plunged in deep
silence as if trying to collect her thoughts. "Beyond a doubt," she
reflected, "my father has discovered our love and is preparing some
terrible vengeance. I must know where they go, what they do, and what
they are plotting. A moment of hesitation might be death to him. "

While Sara sprang to her feet and, as if to thrust away the horrible
doubts that distracted her, passed her hand over her forehead which
anguish had covered with an icy sweat, the boat touched the opposite
shore.

"Friend," exclaimed the beautiful Jewess, tossing some coins to the
ferryman and pointing to a narrow, crooked road that wound up among the
rocks, "is that the way they take? "

"It is, and when they come to the Moor's Head they turn to the left.
Then the Devil and they know where they go next," replied the boatman.

Sara set out in the direction he had indicated. For some moments he saw
her appear and disappear alternately in that dusky labyrinth of dim,
steep rocks. When she had reached the summit called the Moor's Head, her
dark silhouette was outlined for an instant against the azure background
of the sky and then was lost amid the shades of night.


III.

On the path where to-day stands the picturesque hermitage of the Virgin
of the Valley, and about two arrow flights from the summit known by the
Toledan populace as the Moor's Head, there existed at that period the
ruins of a Byzantine church of date anterior to the Arab conquest.

In the porch, outlined by rough blocks of marble scattered over the
ground, were growing brambles and other parasitical plants, among which
lay, half concealed--here, the shattered capital of a column, there, a
square-hewn stone rudely sculptured with interlacing leaves, horrible or
grotesque monsters and formless human figures. Of the temple there
remained standing only the side walls and some broken ivy-grown arches.

Sara, who seemed to be guided by a supernatural instinct, on arriving at
the point the boatman had indicated, hesitated a little, uncertain which
way to take; but, finally, with a firm and resolute step, directed her
course toward the abandoned ruins of the church.

In truth, her instinct had not been at fault; Daniel, who was no longer
smiling, no longer the feeble and humble old man, but rather, fury
flashing from his little round eyes, seemed inspired by the spirit of
Vengeance, was in the midst of a throng of Jews eager, like himself, to
wreak their thirsty hate on one of the enemies of their religion. He
seemed to multiply himself, giving orders to some, urging others forward
in the work, making, with a hideous solicitude, all the necessary
preparations for the accomplishment of the frightful deed which he had
been meditating, day in, day out, while, impassive, he hammered the
anvil in his den at Toledo.

Sara, who, favored by the darkness, had succeeded in reaching the porch
of the church, had to make a supreme effort to suppress a cry of horror
as her glance penetrated its interior. In the ruddy glow of a blaze
which threw the shadow of that infernal group on the walls of the
church, she thought she saw that some were making efforts to raise a
heavy cross, while others wove a crown of briers, or sharpened on a
stone the points of enormous nails. A fearful thought crossed her mind.
She remembered that her race had been accused more than once of
mysterious crimes. She recalled vaguely the terrifying story of the
Crucified Child which she had hitherto believed a gross calumny invented
by the populace for the taunting and reproaching of the Hebrews.

But now there was no longer room for doubt. There, before her eyes, were
those awful instruments of martyrdom, and the ferocious executioners
only awaited their victim.

Sara, filled with holy indignation, overflowing with noble wrath and
inspired by that unquenchable faith in the true God whom her lover had
revealed to her, could not control herself at sight of that spectacle,
and, breaking through the tangled undergrowth that concealed her,
suddenly appeared on the threshold of the temple.

On beholding her the Jews raised a cry of amazement, and Daniel, taking
a step toward his daughter with threatening aspect, hoarsely asked her:
"What seekest thou here, unhappy one? "

"I come to cast in your faces," said Sara, in a clear, unfaltering
voice, "all the shame of your infamous work and I come to tell you that
in vain you await the victim for the sacrifice, unless you mean to
quench in me your thirst for blood, for the Christian you are expecting
will not come, because I have warned him of your plot. "

"Sara! " exclaimed the Jew, roaring with anger, "Sara, this is not true;
thou canst not have been so treacherous to us as to reveal our
mysterious rites. If it is true that thou hast revealed them, thou art
no longer my daughter. "

"No, I am not thy daughter. I have found another Father, a father all
love for his children, a Father whom you Jews nailed to an ignominious
cross and who died upon it to redeem us, opening to us for an eternity
the doors of heaven. No, I am no longer thy daughter, for I am a
Christian, and I am ashamed of my origin. "

On hearing these words, pronounced with that strong fortitude which
heaven puts only into the mouth of martyrs, Daniel, blind with rage,
rushed upon the beautiful Hebrew girl and, throwing her to the ground,
dragged her by the hair, as though he were possessed by an infernal
spirit, to the foot of the cross which seemed to open its bare arms to
receive her.

"Here I deliver her up to you," he exclaimed to those who stood around.
"Deal justice to this shameless one, who has sold her honor, her
religion and her brethren. "


IV.

On the day following, when the cathedral bells were pealing the Gloria
and the worthy citizens of Toledo were amusing themselves by shooting
from crossbows at Judases of straw, just as is done to-day in some of
our villages, Daniel opened the door of his shop, according to his
custom and, with that everlasting smile on his lips, commenced to salute
the passers-by, beating ceaselessly on his anvil with his little iron
hammer; but the lattices of Sara's Moorish window were unopened, nor was
the beautiful Jewess ever seen again reclining at her casement of
colored tiles.

* * * * *

They say that some years afterward a shepherd brought to the archbishop
a flower till then unknown, in which were represented all the
instruments of the Saviour's martyrdom--a flower strange and mysterious,
which had grown, a climbing vine, over the crumbling walls of the ruined
church.

Penetrating into that precinct and seeking to discover the origin of
this marvel, there was found, they add, the skeleton of a woman and,
buried with her, those instruments of the Passion which characterize the
flower.

The skeleton, although no one could ascertain whose it might be, was
preserved many years with special veneration in the hermitage of _San
Pedro el Verde_, and the flower, now common, is called the Passion
Rose.




BELIEVE IN GOD

_A Provencal Ballad. _

"_I was the true Teobaldo de Montagut, Baron of Fortcastell. Lord or
serf, noble or commoner, thou, whosoever thou mayst be, who pausest an
instant beside my sepulchre, believe in God, as I have believed, and
pray for me. _"


Ye gallant Knights Errant, who, lance in rest, vizor closed, mounted on
powerful charger, ride the world over with no more patrimony than your
illustrious name and your good sword, seeking honor and glory in the
profession of arms,--if on crossing the rugged valley of Montagut you
have been overtaken by night and storm and have found a refuge in the
ruins of the monastery still to be seen in its bosom, hearken to me!

Ye Shepherds, who follow with slow step your herds that go grazing far
and wide over the hills and plains, if on leading them to the border of
the transparent rivulet which runs, struggling and leaping, amid the
great rocks of the valley of Montagut in the drought of summer, ye have
found, on a fiery afternoon, shade and slumber beneath the broken
monastery arches, whose mossy pillars kiss the waves, hearken to me!

Little Daughters of the hamlets roundabout, ye wild lilies who bloom
happy in the shelter of your humbleness, if on the morning of the Patron
Saint of this locality, coming down into the valley of Montagut to
gather clovers and daisies to deck his shrine, conquering the fear which
the sombre monastery, rising on its rocks, strikes to your childish
hearts, ye have ventured into its silent and deserted cloister to wander
amid its forsaken tombs, on whose edges grow the fullest-petaled daisies
and the bluest harebells, hearken to me!

Thou, Noble Knight, perchance by the gleam of a lightning flash; thou,
Wandering Shepherd, bronzed by the fierce heat of the sun; thou, Lovely
Child, still besprent with drops of dew like tears, all ye would have
seen in that holy place a tomb, a lowly tomb. Formerly it consisted of
an unhewn stone and a wooden cross; the cross has disappeared and only
the stone remains. In this tomb, whose inscription is the motto of my
song, rests in peace the last baron of Fortcastell, Teobaldo de
Montagut, whose strange history I am about to tell.


I.

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

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

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

The serpent had disappeared.


II.

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

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


III.

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

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


IV.

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

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

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


V.

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


VI.

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

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


VII.

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

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


VIII.

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

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

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


IX.

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

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


X.

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

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


XI.

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

* * * * *


I.

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

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


II.

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

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


III.

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

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


IV.

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

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

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


V.

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

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


VI.

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

[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF MONTSERRAT]


VII.

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


VIII.

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

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


IX.

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

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

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


X.

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

He would see God.

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

* * * * *


I.

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

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

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


II.

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


III.

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

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

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


IV.

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

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

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

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

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




THE PROMISE


I.

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

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

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

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

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

"'Tis impossible--impossible! "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


III.

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

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

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

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

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

"It must be that I am under the power of some awful curse. Heaven or
hell must wish something of me, and tell me so by supernatural events.
Recallest thou the day of our encounter with the Moors of Nebriza in the
Aljarafe de Triana? We were few, the combat was stern, and I was face to
face with death. Thou sawest, in the most critical moment of the fight,
my horse, wounded and blind with rage, dash toward the main body of the
Moorish host. I strove in vain to check him; the reins had escaped from
my hands, and the fiery animal galloped on, bearing me to certain death.

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

[Illustration: AN ANCIENT CASTLE]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


IV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I.

A maiden had a lover gay
Who said he was a squire;
The war-drums called him far away;
Not tears could quench his fire.
"Thou goest to return no more.