No More Learning

I dusted my portfolio, tucked it under
my arm, provided myself with a quire of paper, a half-dozen pencils and
a few napoleons and, deploring the fact that the railroad was not yet
finished, crowded myself into a public stage that I might journey in
reverse order through the scenes of Tirso's famous comedy _From Toledo
to Madrid_.

Once installed in the historic city, I devoted myself to visiting again
the spots which had most excited my interest on my former trip, and
certain others which as yet I knew only by name.

Thus I let slip by, in long, solitary rambles among the most ancient
quarters of the town, the greater part of the time which I could spare
for my little artistic expedition, finding a veritable pleasure in
losing myself in that confused labyrinth of blind lanes, narrow streets,
dark passages and steep, impracticable heights.

One afternoon, the last that I might at that time remain in Toledo,
after one of these long wanderings in unknown ways, I arrived--by what
streets I can scarcely tell--at a great deserted square, apparently
forgotten by the very inhabitants of the city and hidden away, as it
were, in one of its most remote nooks.

The filth and the rubbish cast out in this square from time immemorial
had identified themselves, if I may say so, with the earth in such a
manner as to present the broken and mountainous aspect of a miniature
Switzerland. On the hillocks and in the valleys formed by these
irregularities were growing at their own will wild mallows of colossal
proportions, circles of giant nettles, creeping tangles of white
morning-glories, stretches of that nameless, common herb, small, fine
and of a darkish green, and among these, swaying gently in the light
breath of the air, overtopping like kings all the other parasitic
plants, the no less poetic than vulgar yellow mustard, true flower of
wastes and ruins.

Scattered along the ground, some half buried, others almost hidden by
the tall weeds, might be seen an infinite number of fragments of
thousands on thousands of diverse articles, broken and thrown out on
that spot in different epochs, where they were in process of forming
strata in which it would be easy to follow out a course of genealogical
history.

Moorish tiles enamelled in various colors, sections of marble and of
jasper columns, fragments of brick of a hundred varying kinds, great
blocks covered with verdure and moss, pieces of wood already nearly
turned to dust, remains of antique panelling, rags of cloth, strips of
leather, and countless other objects, formless, nameless, were what at
first sight appeared on the surface, even while the attention was caught
and the eyes dazzled by glancing sparks of light sprinkled over the
green like a handful of diamonds flung broadcast and which, on closer
survey, proved to be nothing else than tiny bits of glass and of glazed
earthenware,--pots, plates, pitchers,--that, flashing back the sunlight,
counterfeited a very heaven of microscopic, glittering stars.

Such was the flooring of that square, though actually paved in some
places with small pebbles of various colors arranged in patterns, and in
others covered with great slabs of slate, but in the main, as we have
just said, like a garden of parasitic plants or a waste and weedy field.

Nor were the buildings which outlined its irregular form less strange
and worthy of study. On one side it was bounded by a line of dingy
little houses, the roofs twinkling with chimneys, weathercocks and
overhangs, the marble guardposts fastened to the corners with iron
rings, the balconies low or narrow, the small windows set with
flower-pots, and the hanging lantern surrounded by a wire network to
protect its smoky glass from the missiles of the street urchins.

Another boundary was constituted by a great, time-blackened wall full of
chinks and crevices, from which, amid patches of moss, peeped out, with
little bright eyes, the heads of various reptiles,--a wall exceedingly
high, formed of bulky blocks sprinkled over with hollows for doors and
balconies that had been closed up with stone and mortar, and on one of
whose extremities joined, forming an angle with it, a wall of brick
stripped of its plaster and full of rough holes, daubed at intervals
with streaks of red, green and yellow and crowned with a thatch of hay,
in and out of which ran sprays of climbing plants.

This was no more, so to speak, than the side scenery of the strange
stage-setting which, as I made my way into the square, suddenly
presented itself to view, captivating my mind and holding it spell-bound
for a space, for the true culminating point of the panorama, the edifice
which gave it its general tone, rose at the rear of the square, more
whimsical, more original, infinitely more beautiful in its artistic
disorder than all the buildings about.

"Here is what I have been wanting to find," I exclaimed on seeing it,
and seating myself on a rough piece of marble, placing my portfolio on
my knees and sharpening a pencil, I made ready to sketch, though only in
outline, its irregular and eccentric form that I might ever keep it in
memory.

If I could fasten on here with wafers the very slight and ill-drawn
sketch of this building that I still keep, imperfect and impressionistic
though it is, it would save me a mountain of words, giving to my readers
a truer idea of it than all the descriptions imaginable.

But since this may not be, I will try to depict it as best I can, so
that the readers of these lines may form a remote conception if not of
its infinite details, at least of its effect as a whole.

Imagine an Arab palace with horse-shoe portals, its walls adorned by
long rows of arches with hundreds of intercrossings, running over a
stripe of brilliant tiles; here is seen the recess of an arched window,
cut in two by a group of slender colonnettes and enclosed in a frame of
exquisite, fanciful ornament; there rises a watch-tower with its light
and airy turret, roofed with glazed tiles of green and yellow, its keen
golden arrow losing itself in the void; further on is descried the
cupola that covers a chamber painted in gold and blue, or lofty
galleries closed with green Venetian blinds which on opening reveal
gardens with walks of myrtle, groves of laurel, and high-jetting
fountains. All is unique, all harmonious, though unsymmetrical; all
gives one a glimpse of the luxury and the marvels of its interior; all
lets one divine the character and the customs of its inmates.

The wealthy Arab who owned this edifice finally abandons it; the process
of the years begins to disintegrate the walls, dim their colors and even
corrode their marbles. A king of Castile then chooses for his residence
that already crumbling palace, and at this point he breaks the front,
opening an ogee and adorning it with a border of escutcheons through
whose midst is curled a garland of thistles and clover; yonder he
raises a massive fortress-tower of hewn stone with narrow loopholes and
pointed battlements; further along he builds on a wing of lofty, gloomy
rooms, where may be seen, in curious fellowship, stretches of shining
tiles, dusky vaulting, or a solitary Arab window, or a horse-shoe arch,
light and elegant, giving entrance to a Gothic hall, austere and grand.

But there comes a day when the king, too, abandons this dwelling,
passing it over to a community of nuns, and these in their turn remodel
it, adding new features to the already strange physiognomy of the
Moorish palace. They lattice the windows; between two Arab arches they
set the symbol of their faith, carved in granite; where tamarinds and
laurels used to grow they plant sad and gloomy cypresses; and making use
of some remnants of the old edifice, and building on top of others, they
form the most picturesque and incongruous combinations conceivable.

Above the main portal of the church, where may be dimly seen, as if
enveloped in the mystic twilight made by the shadows of their canopies,
a broadside of saints, angels and virgins at whose feet are
twisted--among acanthus leaves--stone serpents, monsters and dragons,
rises a slender minaret filagreed over with Moorish work; close below
the loopholes of the battlemented walls, whose merlons are now broken,
they place a shrine with a sacred fresco; and they close up the great
slits with thin partitions decorated with little squares like a
chess-board; they put crosses on all the pinnacles, and finally they
rear a spire full of bells which peal mournfully night and day calling
to prayer,--bells which swing at the impulsion of an unseen hand, bells
whose far-off sound sometimes draws from the listener tears of
involuntary grief.

Still the years are passing and are bathing in a dull, mellow,
nondescript hue the whole edifice, harmonizing its colors and sowing ivy
in its crevices.

White storks hang their nests on the tower-vane, martins build under the
eaves, swallows in the granite canopies, and the owls choose for their
haunt lofty holes left by fallen stones, whence on cloudy nights they
affright superstitious old women and timid children with the phosphoric
gleam of their round eyes and their shrill, uncanny hoots.

Only all these changes of fortune, only all these special circumstances
could have resulted in a building so individual, so full of contrasts,
of poetry and of memories as the one which on that afternoon presented
itself to my view and which to-day I have essayed, albeit in vain, to
describe by words.

I had drawn it in part on one of the leaves of my sketch-book. The sun
was scarcely gilding the highest spires of the city, the evening breeze
was beginning to caress my brow, when rapt in the ideas that suddenly
had assailed me on contemplating the silent remains of other eras more
poetic than the material age in which we live, suffocating in its utter
prose, I let my pencil slip from my fingers and gave over the drawing,
leaning against the wall at my back and yielding myself up completely to
the visions of imagination. Of what was I thinking? I do not know that I
can tell. I clearly saw epoch succeeding epoch, walls falling and other
walls rising in their stead. I saw men or, rather, women giving place to
other women, and the first and those who came after changing into dust
and flying like dust upon the air, a puff of wind bearing away
beauty,--beauty which had been wont to call forth secret sighs,
to engender passions, to be the source of ecstasies; then--what
know I? --all confused of thought, I saw many things jumbled
together,--boudoirs of cunning work, with clouds of perfume and beds of
flowers, strait and dreary cells with prayer-stool and crucifix, at the
foot of the crucifix an open book, and upon the book a skull; stern and
stately halls, hung with tapestries and adorned with trophies of war;
and many women passing and still repassing before my gaze, tall nuns
pale and thin, brown concubines with reddest lips and blackest eyes;
great dames of faultless profile, high bearing and majestic gait.

All these things I saw; and many more of those which, though visioned,
cannot be remembered; of those so immaterial that it is impossible to
confine them in the narrow compass of a word,--when suddenly I gave a
bound upon my seat and, passing my hand over my eyes to convince myself
that I was not still dreaming, leaping up as if moved by a nerve-spring,
I fastened my gaze on one of the lofty turrets of the convent. I had
seen--there is no room for doubt--perfectly had I seen a hand of
transcendent whiteness, which, reaching out from one of the apertures of
those turrets mortared like chess-boards, had waved several times as if
greeting me with a mute and loving sign. And it was I whom it greeted;
there was no possibility of a mistake; I was alone, utterly alone in the
square.

In vain I waited till night, nailed to that spot and without removing my
eyes for an instant from the turret; fruitlessly I often returned to
take up my watch again on the dark stone which had served me for seat
that afternoon when I saw appear the mysterious hand, already the object
of my dreams by night and wildest fantasies by day. I beheld it
nevermore.

And finally came the hour when I must depart from Toledo, leaving there,
as a useless and ridiculous burden, all the illusions which in its bosom
had been raised in my mind. I turned with a sigh to put my papers
together in my portfolio; but before securing them there, I wrote
another date, the second, the one which I know as the Date of the Hand.
As I wrote it, I noticed for a moment the earlier, that of the Window,
and could not but smile at my own folly.


III.

From the time of the strange occurrence which I have just related until
my return to Toledo, there elapsed about a year, during which the memory
of that afternoon was still present to my imagination, at first
constantly and in full detail, then less often, and at last so vaguely
that I even came to believe sometimes that I had been the sport of an
illusive dream.

Nevertheless, scarcely had I arrived at the city which some with good
reason call the Spanish Rome than this recollection beset me anew and
under its spell I set forth in absent-minded fashion to roam the
streets, without determined direction, with no preconceived purpose of
making my way to any special point.

The day was gloomy with that gloom which invades all that one hears and
sees and feels. The sky was the color of lead, and under its melancholy
shadow the houses seemed older, quainter and duskier than ever. The wind
moaned along the tortuous, narrow streets, bearing upon its gusts, like
the lost notes of a mysterious symphony, unintelligible words, the peal
of bells, and echoes of heavy, far-off blows. The damp, chill air froze
the soul with its icy breath.

I wandered for several hours through the most remote and deserted parts
of the city, rapt in a thousand confused imaginings; and, contrary to my
custom, with a gaze all vague and lost in space, nor could my attention
be aroused by any playful detail of architecture, by any monument of an
unknown style, by any marvellous and hidden work of sculpture, by any
one, in short, of those rare features for whose minute examination I had
been wont to pause at every step, at times when only artistic and
antiquarian interests held sway in my mind.

The sky was continually growing darker; the wind was blowing more
strongly and more boisterously; and a fine sleet had begun to fall,
very keen and penetrating, when unwittingly,--for I was still ignorant
of the way--and as if borne thither by an impulse which I could not
resist, an impulse whose occult force had brought me to the spot whither
my thoughts were tending, I found myself in the lonely square which my
readers already know.

On finding myself in that place I sprang to clear consciousness from out
the depths of that lethargy in which I had been sunken, as if awakened
from profound slumber by a violent shock.

I looked about me. All was as I described it--nay, it was more dreary. I
know not whether this gloom was due to the darkness of the sky, the lack
of verdure, or the state of my own spirit, but the truth is that between
the feeling with which I first contemplated that spot and this later
impression there was all the distance which lies between poetic
melancholy and personal bitterness.

For some moments I stood gazing at the sombre convent, now more sombre
than ever to my eyes, and I was already on the point of withdrawing when
my ears were wounded by the sound of a bell, a bell of broken, husky
voice, which was tolling slowly, while in vivid contrast it was
accompanied by something like a little clapper-bell which suddenly began
to revolve with the rapidity of a ringing so sharp and so incessant that
it seemed to have been seized by an attack of vertigo.

Nothing was ever stranger than that edifice, whose black silhouette was
outlined against the sky like that of a cliff bristling with thousands
of freakish points, speaking with tongues of bronze through bells that
seemed moved by the touch of invisible powers, the one weeping with
smothered sobs, the other laughing with shrill, wild outcry, like the
laughter of a madwoman.

At intervals and confused with the bewildering clamor of the bells, I
seemed to hear, too, something like the indistinct notes of an organ and
the words of a sacred, solemn chant.

I changed my intention; and instead of departing I approached the door
of the church and asked one of the ragged beggars squatted on the stone
steps:

"What is going on here? "

"A taking of the veil," the mendicant answered, interrupting the prayer
which he was muttering between his teeth to resume it later, although
not until he had kissed the bit of copper that I dropped into his hand
as I put my question.

I had never been present at that ceremony, nor had I ever seen the
interior of the convent church. Both considerations impelled me to
enter.

The church was high and dark; its aisles were defined by two rows of
pillars made up of slender columns gathered into sheaves and resting on
broad octagonal bases, while from their rich crowning of capitals sprang
the vaulting of the strong ogee arches. The High Altar was placed at the
further end under a cupola of Renaissance style decorated with great
shield-bearing angels, griffins, a profusion of foliage on the finials,
cornices with gilded moldings and rosettes, and odd, elaborate frescoes.
Bordering the aisles might be seen a countless number of dusky chapels,
in whose recesses were burning a few lamps like stars lost in a cloudy
sky. Chapels there were of Arab architecture, Gothic, rococo; some
enclosed by magnificent iron gratings; some by humble wooden rails; some
submerged in shadow with an ancient marble tomb before the altar; some
brightly lighted, with an image clad in tinsel and surrounded by votive
offerings of silver and wax, together with little bows of gay-colored
ribbon.

The fantastic light which illuminated all the church, whose structural
confusion and artistic disorder were entirely in keeping with the rest
of the convent, tended to enhance its effect of mystery. From the lamps
of silver and copper, suspended from the vaulting, from the
altar-candles, from the narrow ogive windows and Moorish casements of
the walls, were shed rays of a thousand diverse hues,--white, stealing
in from the street by little skylights in the cupola; red, spreading
their glow from the great wax-candles before the shrines; green, blue,
and a hundred other diverse tints making their way through the stained
glass of the rose-windows. All these lustres, insufficient to flood that
sacred place with adequate light, seemed at certain points to blend in
strife, while others stood out, clear patches of brightness, over
against the veiled, dim depths of the chapels. Despite the solemnity of
the rite which was there taking place, but few of the faithful were in
attendance. The ceremony had commenced some time ago and was now nearing
its close. The priests who officiated at the High Altar were, at that
moment, enveloped in a cloud of azure incense which swayed slowly
through the air, as they descended the carpeted steps to take their way
to the choir where the nuns were heard intoning a psalm.

I, too, moved toward that spot with the intent of peering through the
double gratings which isolated the choir from the rest of the church. It
seemed borne in upon me that I must know the face of that woman of whom
I had seen only--and for one instant--the hand; and opening my eyes to
their widest extent and dilating the pupils in the effort to give them
greater power and penetration, I strained my gaze on to the deepest
recesses of the choir. Fruitless attempt; across the interwoven irons,
little or nothing could be seen. Some white and black phantoms moving
amidst a gloom against which fought in vain the inadequate radiance of a
few tall wax candles; a long line of lofty, crocketed sedilia, crowned
with canopies, beneath which might be divined, veiled by the dusk, the
indistinct figures of nuns clad in long flowing robes; a crucifix
illuminated by four candles and standing out against the dark
background of the picture as those points of high light which, on the
canvases of Rembrandt, make the shadows more palpable; this was the
utmost that could be discerned from the place where I stood.

The priests, covered with their gold-bordered copes, preceded by
acolytes who bore a silver cross and two great candles, and followed by
others who swung censers that shed perfume all about, advancing through
the throng of the faithful who kissed their hands and the hems of their
vestments, finally reached the choir-screen.

Up to this moment I had not been able to distinguish, amid the other
vague phantoms, that of the maiden who was about to consecrate herself
to Christ.

Have you never seen, in those last instants of twilight, a shred of mist
rise from the waters of a river, the surface of a fen, the waves of the
sea, or the deep heart of a mountain tarn,--a shred of mist that floats
slowly in the void, and now looks like a woman moving, walking, trailing
her gown behind her, now like a white veil fastening the tresses of an
invisible sylph, now a ghost which rises in the air hiding its yellow
bones beneath a winding-sheet against which is still seen outlined its
angular shape? Such was the hallucination I experienced in beholding
draw near the screen, as if detaching herself from the sombre depth of
the choir, that white, tall, most lightly moving form.

The face I could not see. She had placed herself exactly in front of the
candles which lit up the crucifix; and their gleam, making a halo about
her head, had left the rest obscure, bathing her in a wavering shadow.

Profound silence reigned; all eyes were fixed on her, and the final act
of the ceremony began.

The abbess, murmuring some unintelligible words, words which in their
turn the priests repeated with deep and hollow voice, caught from the
virgin's brow the enwreathing crown of blossoms and flung it far
away. --Poor flowers! They were the last she was to wear, that woman,
sister of the flowers even as all women are.

Then the abbess despoiled her of her veil, and her fair tresses poured
in a golden cascade down her back and shoulders, which they were
suffered to cover but an instant, for at once there began to be heard,
in the midst of that profound silence reigning among the faithful, a
sharp, metallic clickity-click which set the nerves twitching, and first
the magnificent waves of hair fell from the forehead they had shaded,
and then those flowing locks that the fragrant air must have kissed so
many times slipped over her bosom and dropped upon the floor.

Again the abbess fell to murmuring the unintelligible words; the priest
repeated them; and once more all was silence in the church. Only from
time to time were heard, afar off, sounds like long-drawn, dreadful
moans. It was the wind complaining as it broke upon the edges of the
battlements and towers, and shuddering as it passed the colored panes of
the ogive windows.

She was motionless, motionless and pallid as a maiden of stone wrenched
from the niche of a Gothic cloister.

And they despoiled her of the jewels which covered her arms and throat,
and finally they divested her of her wedding robe, that raiment which
seemed to have been wrought that a lover might break its clasps with a
hand trembling for bliss and passion.

The mystic Bridegroom was awaiting the bride. Where? Beyond the doors of
death; lifting, undoubtedly, the stone of the sepulchre and calling her
to enter, even as the timid bride crosses the threshold of the sanctuary
of nuptial love, for she fell to the floor prostrate as a corpse. As if
she were clay, the nuns strewed her body with flowers, intoning a most
mournful psalm; a murmur went up from amid the multitude, and the
priests with their deep and hollow voices commenced the service for the
dead, accompanied by those instruments that seem to weep, augmenting the
unfathomable fear which the terrible words they pronounce inspire of
themselves.

_De profundis clamavi a te! _ chanted the nuns from the depths of the
choir with plaintive, lamenting voices.

_Dies irae, dies illa! _ responded the priests in thunderous, awful echo,
and therewith the bells pealed slowly, tolling for the dead, and between
the peals the metal was heard to vibrate with a strange and dolorous
drone.

I was touched; no, not touched--terrified. I believed that I was in
presence of the supernatural, that I felt the heart of my own life torn
from me, and that vacancy was closing in upon me; I felt that I had just
lost something precious, as a father, a mother, or a cherished wife, and
I suffered that immeasurable desolation which death leaves behind
wheresoever it passes, a desolation nameless, indescribable, to be
comprehended only by those who have had it to bear.

I was still rooted to that spot with wildly staring eyes, quaking from
head to foot and half beside myself, when the new nun rose from the
ground. The abbess robed her in the habit of the order, the sisters took
lighted candles in their hands and, forming two long lines, led her in
procession back to the further side of the choir.

There, amid the shadows, I saw the sudden glint of a ray of light; the
door of the cloister was opened. As she stepped beneath the lintel, the
nun turned for the last time toward the altar. The brightness of all the
lights suddenly shone upon her, and I could see her face. As I saw it, I
had to choke back a cry.

I knew that woman; not that I had ever seen her, but I knew her from the
visions of my dreams; she was one of those beings whom the soul
foretells or perchance remembers from another better world which, in
our descent to this, some of us do not altogether forget.

I took two steps forward; I longed to call to her--to cry out--I know
not what--giddiness assailed me; but at that instant the cloister door
shut--forever. The silver bells rang blithely, the priests raised a
_Hosanna_, clouds of incense swept through the air, the organ poured
forth from a hundred metal mouths a torrent of thunderous harmony, and
the bells of the tower began to chime, swinging with a frightful
ecstasy.

That mad and clamorous glee made my hair rise on my head. I looked about
searching for the parents, family, motherless children of that woman. I
found none.

"Perhaps she was alone in the world," I said, and could not repress a
tear.

"God grant thee in the cloister the happiness which He denied thee in
the world! " simultaneously exclaimed an old woman by my side, and she
sobbed and groaned, clutching the grating.

"Do you know her? " I asked.

"The poor dear! Indeed I knew her. I saw her born and I have nursed her
in my arms. "

"And why does she take the veil? "

"Because she found herself alone in the world. Her father and mother
died of the cholera on one and the same day, a little more than a year
ago. Seeing her an orphan and unprotected, the dean gave her a dowry so
that she might enter the sisterhood; and now you see--what else was
there to do? "

"And who was she? "

"Daughter of the steward of the Count of C----, whom I served until his
death. "

"Where did he live? "

When I heard the name of the street, I could not repress an exclamation
of surprise.

A line of light, that line of light which is as swift as thought,
running brightly through the obscurity and confusion of the mind,
uniting experiences far removed from one another and marvellously
binding them together, connected my vague memories and I understood--or
believed that I understood--all.

* * * * *

This date, which has no name, I have not written anywhere,--nay; I bear
it written there where only I may read it and whence it shall never be
erased.

Occasionally in recalling these events, even now in relating them here,
I have asked myself:--

Some day in the mysterious hour of twilight, when the breath of the
spring zephyr, warm and laden with perfumes, penetrates even into the
recesses of the most retired dwellings, bearing there an airy touch of
memory, of the world, must not a woman, alone, lost in the dim shades of
a Gothic cloister, her cheek upon her hand, her elbow resting on the
embrasure of an ogive window, have exhaled a sigh as the recollection of
these dates crossed her imagination?

Who knows?

Oh! if she sighed, where might that sigh be?




THE CHRIST OF THE SKULL


The King of Castile was going to the Moorish war and, in order to
contend with the enemies of the faith, he had sent a martial summons to
all the flower of his nobility. The silent streets of Toledo now
resounded night and day with the stirring sound of kettle-drums and
trumpets; and in the Moorish gateway of Visagra, or in that of Cambron,
or in the narrow entrance to the ancient bridge of St. Martin, not an
hour passed without one's hearing the hoarse cry of the sentinels
proclaiming the arrival of some knight who, preceded by his seigniorial
banner and followed by horsemen and foot-soldiers, had come to join the
main body of the Castilian army.

The time which remained before taking the road to the frontier and
completing the order of the royal hosts was spent in public
entertainments, lavish feasts and brilliant tournaments, until at last,
on the evening before the day appointed by His Highness for the setting
out of the army, a grand ball closed the festivities.

On the night of the ball, the royal palace presented a singular
appearance. In the spacious courts might be seen, promiscuously mingled
around huge bonfires, a motley multitude of pages, soldiers, crossbowmen
and hangers-on, who, some grooming their chargers and polishing their
arms preparatory to combat, others bewailing with outcries and
blasphemies the unforeseen turns of Fortune, personified for them in the
cast of the dice, and others chorusing the refrain of a martial ballad
which a minstrel was chanting to the accompaniment of a rude violin;
others still buying of a palmer cockle-shells, crosses and girdles
hallowed by the touch of the sepulchre of Santiago, or greeting with
wild outbursts of laughter the jokes of a clown, or practising on the
trumpets the battle-airs of the several seigniories, or telling old
stories of chivalry and love adventures, or of miracles recently
performed,--all contributed their quota to an infernal,
undistinguishable uproar impossible to describe in words.

Above that tumultuous ocean of war songs, noise of hammers smiting
anvils, creaking of files that bit the steel, stamping of horses,
insolent voices, irrepressible laughter, disorderly shouts and
intemperate reproaches, oaths and all manner of strange, discordant
sounds, there floated at intervals like a breath of harmony the distant
music of the ball.

This, which was taking place in the salons of the second story of the
palace, offered in its turn a picture, if not so fantastic and
capricious, more dazzling and magnificent.

Through galleries of far extent which formed an intricate labyrinth of
slender columns and ogees of fretted stone delicate as lace; through
great halls hung with tapestries on which silk and gold had pictured
with a thousand diverse colors scenes of love, of the chase and of
war,--halls adorned with trophies of arms and escutcheons over which was
shed a sea of sparkling light from innumerable lamps, suspended from the
loftiest vaults, and from candelabras of bronze, silver and gold,
fastened into the massive blocks of the walls; on all sides, wherever
the eyes turned, might be seen floating and drifting hither and thither
a cloud of beautiful ladies in rich, gold-embroidered garments, nets of
pearls imprisoning their tresses, necklaces of rubies blazing upon their
breasts, feather fans with ivory handles hanging from their wrists,
veils of white laces caressing their cheeks; and joyous throngs of
gallants with velvet sword-belts, brocaded jackets and silken trousers,
morocco buskins, full-sleeved mantelets with pointed

[Illustration: THE VISAGRA GATE]

hoods, poniards with ornamental hilts, and rapiers polished, thin and
light.

But in that bright and shining assemblage of youthful cavaliers and
ladies, whom their elders, seated in the high larch chairs which
encircled the royal dais, with smiles of joy saw defiling by, there was
one woman who attracted attention for her incomparable loveliness, one
who had been hailed Queen of Beauty in all the tournaments and courts of
love of the period, one whose colors the most valiant knights had
adopted as their emblem, one whose charms were the theme of the songs of
the troubadours most proficient in the _gay science_, one toward whom
all eyes turned with wonder, for whom all hearts sighed in secret,
around whom might be seen gathering with eagerness, like humble vassals
in the train of their mistress, the most illustrious scions of the
Toledan nobility assembled at the ball that night.

Those presumptive gallants who were continually in the retinue of the
Dona Ines de Tordesillas, for such was the name of this celebrated
beauty, were never discouraged in their suit despite her haughty and
disdainful character. One was emboldened by a smile which he thought he
detected on her lips; another, by a gracious look which he deemed he had
surprised in her eyes; another, by a flattering word, the slightest sign
of preference, or a vague promise. Each in silence cherished the hope
that he would be her choice. Yet among them all there were two
particularly prominent for their assiduity and devotion, two who to all
appearance, if not the acknowledged favorites of the beauty, might claim
to be the farthest advanced upon the path to her heart. These two
knights, equals in birth, valor and chivalric accomplishments, subjects
of the same king and aspirants for the same lady, were Alonso de
Carrillo and Lope de Sandoval.

Both were natives of Toledo; together they had first borne arms; and on
one and the same day, their eyes meeting those of Dona Ines, both had
conceived a hidden and ardent love for her, a love that for some time
grew in secrecy and silence, but at length came to an involuntary
betrayal of itself in their actions and conversation.

At the tournaments in the Zocodover, at the floral games of the court,
whenever opportunity was presented for rivalry in gallantry or wit, both
knights had availed themselves of it with eagerness, desirous to win
distinction under the eyes of their lady; and that night, impelled
doubtless by the same passion, changing their helmets for plumes and
their mail for brocade and silk, standing together by the seat where she
rested a moment after a turn through the salons, they began to engage in
a brilliant contest of exquisite and ingenious phrases or keen and
covert epigrams.

The lesser stars of that sparkling constellation, forming a gilded
semicircle around the two gallants, laughed and cheered on the delicate
strife; and the fair lady, the prize of that word-tournament, approved
with a scarcely perceptible smile the flashes of wit, elegantly phrased
or full of hidden meaning, whether they fell from the lips of her
adorers like a light wave of perfume flattering to her vanity, or leapt
forth like a sharp arrow seeking to pierce the opponent in his most
vulnerable point, his self-love.

Already with each sally the courtly combat of wit and gallantry was
growing fiercer; the phrases were still civil in form, but terse and
dry, and in the speaking, accompanied though it was by a slight curving
of the lips in semblance of a smile, unconcealable lightnings of the
eyes betrayed that repressed anger which raged in the breasts of the
rivals.

It was a situation that could not be sustained. The lady, so perceiving,
had risen to make another tour of the salons, when an incident occurred
that broke down the barrier of formal courtesy which had hitherto
restrained the two enamoured youths. Perchance intentionally, perchance
through carelessness, Dona Ines had let fall upon her lap one of her
perfumed gloves whose golden buttons she had amused herself in pulling
off one by one during the conversation. As she rose, the glove slipped
between the wide silken plaits of her dress and fell upon the carpet.
Seeing it drop, all the knights who formed her brilliant retinue bent
eagerly to recover it, disputing with one another the honor of a slight
inclination of her head as a reward of their gallantry.

Noting the precipitation with which all stooped to pick up her glove, a
half smile of satisfied vanity appeared on the lips of the haughty Dona
Ines. With a gesture of general acknowledgment to the cavaliers who had
shown such eagerness to serve her, the lady, with a lofty, arrogant mien
and scarcely glancing in that direction, reached out her hand for the
glove toward Lope and Alonso, the first to reach it. In fact, both
youths had seen the glove fall close to their feet, both had stooped
with equal haste to pick it up and, on rising, each held it seized by
one end. On seeing them immovable, looking silent defiance each upon the
other, and both determined not to give up the glove which they had just
raised from the floor, the lady uttered a light, involuntary cry,
stifled by the murmur of the astonished spectators. The whole presented
a threatening scene, that there in the royal castle and in the presence
of the king might be designated as a serious breach of courtesy.

Lope and Alonso, notwithstanding, remained motionless, mute, scanning
each other from head to foot, showing no sign of the tempest in their
souls save by a slight nervous tremor which shivered through their limbs
as if they had been attacked by a sudden fever.

The murmurs and exclamations were reaching a climax. The people began to
group themselves around the principal actors in the scene. Dona Ines,
either bewildered or taking delight in prolonging the situation, was
moving to and fro as if seeking refuge or escape from the eyes of the
throng whose numbers were continually augmented. Catastrophe now seemed
inevitable. The two young men had already exchanged a few words in an
undertone, and each, while still with one hand holding the glove in a
convulsive grip, seemed instinctively to be seeking with the other the
golden hilt of his poniard, when the crowd of spectators respectfully
opened and there appeared the king.

His brow was tranquil. There was neither indignation in his countenance
nor anger in his bearing.

He surveyed the scene; one glance was sufficient to put him in command
of the situation. With all the grace of the most accomplished page, he
drew the glove from the young knights' hands which, as though moved by a
spring, opened without difficulty at the touch of their sovereign, and
turning to Dona Ines de Tordesillas, who, leaning on the arm of a
duenna, seemed about to faint, said with a firm though controlled voice,
as he presented the glove:

"Take it, _senora_, and be careful not to let it fall again, lest when
you recover it, you find it stained with blood. "

By the time the king had finished speaking, Dona Ines, we will not
undertake to say whether overcome by emotion, or in order to retreat
more gracefully from the situation, had swooned in the arms of those
about her.

Alonso and Lope, the former crushing in silence between his hands his
velvet cap whose plume trailed along the carpet, and the latter biting
his lips till the blood came, fixed each other with a stubborn, intense
stare.

A stare at that crisis was equivalent to a blow, a glove thrown in the
face, a challenge to mortal combat.


II.

At midnight, the king and queen retired to their chamber. The ball was
at an end, and the inquisitive folk outside, who, forming groups and
circles in the vicinity of the palace, had been impatiently awaiting
this moment, ran to station themselves beside the steep road, up in the
balconies along the route, and in the central square of the city, known
as the Zocodover.

For an hour or two there reigned, at these points and in the adjacent
streets, clamor, bustle, activity indescribable. Everywhere might be
seen squires caracoling on their richly caparisoned steeds,
masters-at-arms with showy vestments full of shields and heraldic
devices, drummers dressed in gay colors, soldiers in shining armor,
pages in velvet cloaks and plumed hats, footmen who preceded luxurious
chairs and litters covered with rich cloth. The great, blazing torches
borne by the footmen cast a rosy glow upon the multitude, who, with
wondering faces, open mouths and frightened eyes, saw with amazement all
the chief nobility of Castile passing by, surrounded on that occasion by
fabulous splendor and pomp.

Then, by degrees, the noise and excitement subsided, the stained glass
in the lofty ogive windows of the palace ceased to shine, the last
cavalcade passed through the close-packed throngs, the rabble in their
turn began to disperse in all directions, disappearing among the shadows
of the puzzling labyrinth formed by those dark, narrow, tortuous
streets, and now the deep silence of the night was broken only by the
far-off call of some sentinel, the footsteps of some lingerer whose
curiosity had left him to the last, the clang of bolts and bars in
closing gates, when on the summit of the stone stairway which leads to
the platform of the palace, there appeared a knight, who, after looking
on all sides as if seeking some one who should have been expecting him,
slowly descended to the Cuesta del Alcazar, by which he took his way
toward the Zocodover.

On arriving at the square, he halted a moment and cast a searching
glance around. The night was dark, not a star glistened in the sky, nor
in all the square could a single light be seen; yet afar off, and in the
same direction in which he began to perceive a slight sound as of
approaching footsteps, he believed he saw the figure of a man, without
doubt the same whom he had seemed to await with such impatience.

The knight who had just quitted the castle for the Zocodover was Alonso
Carrillo, who, on account of the post of honor which he held near the
person of the king, had been kept on attendance in the royal chamber
until that hour. The man coming to meet him out of the shadows of the
arcades which surround the square was Lope de Sandoval. When the two
knights were face to face, they exchanged a few sentences in suppressed
voices.

"I thought you would be expecting me," said the one.

"I hoped that you would surmise as much," answered the other.

"Where shall we go? "

"Wherever there can be found four handsbreadth of ground to turn around
in and a ray to give us light. "

This briefest of dialogues ended, the two young men plunged into one of
the narrow streets leading out from the Zocodover and vanished in the
darkness like those phantoms of the night, which, after terrifying for
an instant the beholder, dissolve into atoms of mist and are lost in the
depth of the shadows.

A long time they went on, traversing the streets of Toledo, seeking a
suitable place to end their quarrel, but the darkness of the night was
so dense that the duel seemed impossible. Yet both wished to fight and
to fight before the whitening of the east; for at dawn the royal hosts
were to go forth, and Alonso with them.

So they pressed on, threading at random deserted squares, dusky alleys,
long and gloomy passages, till at last they saw shining in the distance
a light, a light small and waning, about which the mist formed a circle
of ghostly, glimmering lustre.

They had reached the Street of the Christ, and the radiance discernible
at one end seemed to come from the small lantern which illuminated then
and illuminates still the image that gives the street its name.

On seeing it, both let escape an exclamation of joy and, quickening
their steps toward it, were not long in finding themselves near the
shrine in which it burned.

An arched recess in the wall, in the depths of which might be seen the
image of the Redeemer, nailed to the cross, with a skull at his feet, a
rude board covering for protection from the weather, and a small lantern
hung by a cord, swaying with the wind and shedding a faint effulgence,
constituted the entire shrine.
About it clung festoons of ivy which had
sprung up among the dark and broken stones forming, as it were, a
curtain of verdure.

The cavaliers, after reverently saluting the image of Christ by removing
their military caps and murmuring a short prayer, glanced over the
ground, threw off their mantles and, each perceiving the other to be
ready for the combat and both giving the signal by a slight motion of
the head, crossed swords. But scarcely had the blades touched when,
before either of the combatants had been able to take a single step or
strike a blow, the light suddenly went out, leaving the street plunged
in utter darkness. As if moved by the same thought, the two antagonists,
on finding themselves surrounded by that instantaneous gloom, took a
step backward, lowered the points of their swords to the ground and
raised their eyes to the lantern, whose light, a moment before
extinguished, began to shine anew at the very instant the duel was
suspended.

"It must have been some passing gust that lowered the flame," exclaimed
Carrillo, placing himself again on guard, and giving warning to Lope,
who seemed preoccupied.

Lope took a step forward to recover the lost ground, extended his arm
and the blades touched once more, but at their touching the light again
went out of itself, remaining thus until the swords separated.

"In truth, but this is strange! " murmured Lope, gazing at the lantern
which had begun spontaneously to burn again. The gleam, slowly wavering
with the wind, spread a tremulous, wonderful radiance over the yellow
skull placed at the feet of Christ.

"Bah! " said Alonso, "it must be because the holy woman who has charge of
the lamp cheats the devotees and scants the oil, so that the light,
almost out, brightens and then darkens again in its dying agony. "

Thus speaking, the impetuous youth placed himself once more in attitude
of defence. His opponent did the same; but this time, not only were they
enveloped in a thick and impenetrable gloom, but simultaneously there
fell upon their ears the deep echo of a mysterious voice like those long
sighs of the south-west wind which seems to complain and articulate
words as it wanders imprisoned in the crooked, narrow and dim streets of
Toledo.

What was uttered by that fearful and superhuman voice never could be
learned; but on hearing it, both youths were seized with such profound
terror that their swords dropped from their hands, their hair stood on
end, and over their bodies, shaken by an involuntary tremor, and down
their pallid and distorted brows a cold sweat like that of death began
to flow.

The light, for the third time quenched, for the third time shone again
and dispelled the dark.

"Ah! " exclaimed Lope, beholding him who was now his opponent, in other
days his best friend, astounded like himself, like himself pale and
motionless, "God does not mean to permit this combat, for it is a
fratricidal contest; because a duel between us is an offence to heaven
in whose sight we have sworn a hundred times eternal friendship. " And
saying this he threw himself into the arms of Alonso, who clasped him in
his own with unspeakable strength and fervor.


III.

Some moments passed during which both youths indulged in every
endearment of friendship and love. Alonso spoke first and, in accents
touched by the scene which we have just related, exclaimed, addressing
his comrade:

"Lope, I know that you love Dona Ines; perhaps not as much as I, but you
love her. Since a duel between us is impossible, let us agree to place
our fate in her hands. Let us go and seek her, let her decide with free
choice which of us shall be the happy one, which the wretched. Her
decision shall be respected by both, and he who does not gain her favor
shall to-morrow go forth with the King of Toledo and shall seek the
comfort of forgetfulness in the excitement of war. "

"Since you wish it, so let it be," replied Lope.

And arm in arm the two friends took their way toward the cathedral
beneath whose shadow, in a palace of which there are now no remains,
dwelt Dona Ines de Tordesillas.

It was early dawn, and as some of the kindred of Dona Ines, among them
her brothers, were to march the coming day with the royal army, it was
not impossible that early in the morning they could gain admittance to
her palace.

Inspired by this hope they arrived, at last, at the base of the Gothic
tower of the church, but on reaching that point a peculiar noise
attracted their attention and, stopping in one of the angles, concealed
among the shadows of the lofty buttresses that support the walls, they
saw, to their amazement, a man emerging from a window upon the balcony
of their lady's apartments in the palace. He lightly descended to the
ground by the help of a rope and, finally, a white figure, Dona Ines
undoubtedly, appeared upon the balcony and, leaning over the fretted
parapet, exchanged tender phrases of farewell with her mysterious lover.

The first motion of the two youths was to place their hands on their
sword-hilts, but checking themselves, as though struck by a common
thought, they turned to look on one another, each discerning on the
other's face a look of astonishment so ludicrous that both broke forth
into loud laughter, laughter which, rolling on from echo to echo in the
silence of the night, resounded through the square even to the palace.

Hearing it, the white figure vanished from the balcony, a noise of
slamming doors was heard, and then silence resumed her reign.

On the following day, the queen, seated on a most sumptuous dais, saw
defile past her the hosts who were marching to the war against the
Moors. At her side were the principal ladies of Toledo. Among them was
Dona Ines de Tordesillas on whom this day, as ever, all eyes were bent.
But it seemed to her that they wore a different expression from that to
which she was accustomed. She would have said that in all the curious
looks cast upon her lurked a mocking smile.

This discovery could not but disquiet her, remembering, as she did, the
noisy laughter which, the night before, she had thought she heard at a
distance in one of the angles of the square, while she was closing her
balcony and bidding adieu to her lover; but when she saw among the ranks
of the army marching below the dais, sparks of fire glancing from their
brilliant armor, and a cloud of dust enveloping them, the two reunited
banners of the houses of Carrillo and Sandoval; when she saw the
significant smile which the two former rivals, on saluting the queen,
directed toward herself, she comprehended all. The blush of shame
reddened her face and tears of chagrin glistened in her eyes.




THE WHITE DOE


In a small town of Aragon, about the end of the thirteenth century or a
little later, there lived retired in his seigniorial castle a renowned
knight named Don Dionis, who, having served his king in the war against
the infidels, was then taking his ease, giving himself up to the merry
exercise of hunting, after the wearisome hardships of war.

It chanced once to this cavalier, engaged in his favorite diversion,
accompanied by his daughter whose singular beauty, of the blond type
extraordinary in Spain, had won her the name of White Lily, that as the
increasing heat of the day began to tell upon them, absorbed in pursuing
a quarry in the mountainous part of his estate, he took for his
resting-place during the hours of the siesta a glen through which ran a
rivulet leaping from rock to rock with a soft and pleasant sound.

It might have been a matter of some two hours that Don Dionis had
lingered in that delectable retreat, reclining on the delicate grass in
the shade of a black-poplar grove, talking affably with his huntsmen
about the incidents of the day, while they related one to another more
or less curious adventures that had befallen them in their hunting
experiences, when along the top of the highest ridge and between
alternating murmurs of the wind which stirred the leaves on the trees,
he began to perceive, each time more near, the sound of a little bell
like that of the leader of a flock.

In truth, it was really that, for very soon after the first hearing of
the bell, there came leaping over the thick undergrowth of lavender and
thyme, descending to the opposite bank of the rivulet, nearly a hundred
lambs white as snow, and behind them appeared their shepherd with his
pointed hood drawn over his brows to protect him from the vertical rays
of the sun and with his shoulder-bag swung from the end of a stick.

"Speaking of remarkable adventures," exclaimed on seeing him one of the
huntsmen of Don Dionis, addressing his lord, "here is Esteban, the
shepherd-lad, who has been now for some time more of a fool than God
made him, which was fool enough. He can give us an amusing half-hour by
relating the cause of his continual frights. "

"But what is it that happens to this poor devil? " exclaimed Don Dionis
with an air of piqued curiosity.

"A mere trifle," continued the huntsman in a jesting tone. "The case is
this--that without having been born on Good Friday, or bearing a
birthmark of the cross, or, so far as one can infer from his regular
Christian habits, binding himself to the Devil, he finds himself, not
knowing why or whence, endowed with the most marvellous faculty that any
man ever possessed, unless it be Solomon, who, they say, understood even
the language of birds. "

"And with what does this remarkable faculty have to do? "

"It has to do," pursued the huntsman, "as he affirms, and he swears and
forswears it by all that is most sacred, with a conspiracy among the
deer which course through these mountains not to leave him in peace, the
drollest thing about it being that on more than one occasion he has
surprised them in the act of contriving the pranks they were going to
play on him and after those tricks had been carried through he has
overheard the noisy bursts of laughter with which they applaud them. "

While the huntsman was thus speaking, Constanza, as the beautiful
daughter of Don Dionis was named, had drawn near the group of sportsmen
and, as she appeared curious to hear the strange experience of Esteban,
one of them ran on to the place where the young shepherd was watering
his flock and brought him into the presence of his lord, who, to dispel
the perturbation and evident embarrassment of the poor peasant, hastened
to greet him by name, accompanying the salutation with a benevolent
smile.

Esteban was a boy of nineteen or twenty years, robust in build, with a
small head sunken between his shoulders, little blue eyes, a wavering,
stupid glance like that of albinos, a flat nose, thick, half open lips,
low forehead, complexion fair but tanned by the sun, and hair which fell
partly over his eyes and partly around his face, in rough red locks like
the mane of a sorrel nag.

Such, more or less exactly, was Esteban in point of physique. In respect
to his character, it could be asserted without fear of denial on his own
part or on that of any one who knew him, that he was an entirely honest,
simple-hearted lad, though, like a true peasant, a little suspicious and
malicious.

As soon as the shepherd had recovered from his confusion, Don Dionis
again addressed him and, in the most serious tone in the world, feigning
an extraordinary interest in learning the details of the event to which
his huntsman had referred, put to him a multitude of questions to which
Esteban began to reply evasively, as if desirous of escaping any
discussion of the subject.

Constrained, nevertheless, by the demands of his lord and the entreaties
of Constanza, who seemed most curious and eager that the shepherd should
relate his astounding adventures, he decided to talk freely, but not
without casting a distrustful glance about him as though fearing to be
overheard by others than those present, and scratching his head three
or four times in the effort to connect his recollections or find the
thread of his narrative, before at last he thus began:

"The fact is, my lord, that as a priest of Tarazona to whom, not long
ago, I went for help in my troubles, told me, wits don't serve against
the Devil, but mum! finger on lip, many good prayers to Saint
Bartholomew--who, none better, knows his knaveries--and let him have his
sport; for God, who is just, and sits up thereon high, will see that all
comes right in the end.

"Resolved on this course I had decided never again to say a word to any
one about it,--no, not for anything; but I will do it to-day to satisfy
your curiosity, and in good sooth, if, after all, the Devil calls me to
account and goes to troubling me in punishment for my indiscretion, I
carry the Holy Gospels sewed inside my sheepskin coat, and with their
help, I think that, as at other times, I may make telling use of a
cudgel. "

"But, come! " exclaimed Don Dionis, out of patience with the digressions
of the shepherd, which it seemed would never end, "let the whys and
wherefores go, and come directly to the subject. "

"I am coming to it," calmly replied Esteban, and after calling together,
by dint of a shout and a whistle, the lambs of which he had not lost
sight and which were now beginning to scatter over the mountain-side, he
scratched his head again and proceeded thus:

"On the one hand, your own continual hunting trips, and on the other,
the persistency of those trespassers who, what with snare and what with
crossbow, hardly leave a deer alive in twenty days' journey round about,
had, a little time ago, so thinned out the game in these mountains that
you could not find a stag in them, not though you would give one of your
eyes.

"I was speaking of this in the town, seated in the porch of the church,
where after mass on Sunday I was in the habit of joining some laborers
who till the soil in Veraton, when some of them said to me:

"'Well, man, I don't know why it is you fail to run across them, since,
as for us, we can give you our word that we don't once go down to the
ploughed land without coming upon their tracks, and it is only three or
four days since, without going further back, a herd, which, to judge by
their hoof-prints, must have numbered more than twenty, cut down before
its time a crop of wheat belonging to the care-taker of the Virgen del
Romeral. '

"'And in what direction did the track lead? ' I asked the laborers, with
a mind to see if I could fall in with the herd.

"'Toward the Lavender Glen,' they replied.

"This information did not enter one ear to go out at the other; that
very night I posted myself among the poplars. During all its hours I
kept hearing here and there, far off as well as near by, the trumpeting
of the deer as they called one to another, and from time to time I felt
the boughs stirring behind me; but however sharply I looked, the truth
is, I could distinguish nothing.

"Nevertheless, at break of day, when I took the lambs to water, at the
bank of the stream, about two throws of the sling from the place where
we now are, and in so dense a shade of poplars that not even at mid-day
is it pierced by a ray of sunshine, I found fresh deer-tracks, broken
branches, the stream a little roiled and, what is more peculiar, among
the deer-tracks the short prints of tiny feet no larger than the half of
the palm of my hand, without any exaggeration. "

On saying this, the boy, instinctively seeming to seek a point of
comparison, directed his glance to the foot of Constanza, which peeped
from beneath her petticoat shod in a dainty sandal of yellow morocco,
but as the eyes of Don Dionis and of some of the huntsmen who were
about him followed Esteban's, the beautiful girl hastened to conceal it,
exclaiming in the most natural voice in the world:

"Oh, no! unluckily mine are not so tiny, for feet of this size are found
only among the fairies of whom the troubadours sing. "

"But I did not give up with this," continued the shepherd, when
Constanza had finished. "Another time, having concealed myself in
another hiding-place by which, undoubtedly, the deer would have to pass
in going to the glen, at just about midnight sleep overcame me for a
little, although not so much but that I opened my eyes at the very
moment when I perceived the branches were stirring around me. I opened
my eyes, as I have said; I rose with the utmost caution and, listening
intently to the confused murmur, which every moment sounded nearer, I
heard in the gusts of wind something like cries and strange songs,
bursts of laughter, and three or four distinct voices which talked
together with a chatter and gay confusion like that of the young girls
at the village when, laughing and jesting on the way, they return in
groups from the fountain with their water-jars on their heads.

"As I gathered from the nearness of the voices and close-by crackle of
twigs which broke noisily in giving way to that throng of merry maids,
they were just about to come out of the thicket on to a little platform
formed by a jut of the mountain there where I was hid when, right at my
back, as near or nearer than I am to you, I heard a new voice, fresh,
fine and vibrant, which said--believe it, _senores_, it is as true as
that I have to die--it said, clearly and distinctly, these very words:

"'Hither, hither, comrades dear!
That dolt of an Esteban is here! '"

On reaching this point in the shepherd's story, the bystanders could no
longer repress the merriment which for many minutes had been dancing in
their eyes and, giving free rein to their mirth, they broke into
clamorous laughter. Among the first to begin to laugh, and the last to
leave off, were Don Dionis, who, notwithstanding his air of dignity,
could not but take part in the general hilarity, and his daughter
Constanza, who, every time she looked at Esteban, all in suspense and
embarrassment as he was, fell to laughing again like mad till the tears
sprang from her eyes.

The shepherd-lad, for his part, although without heeding the effect his
story had produced, seemed disturbed and restless, and while the great
folk laughed to their hearts' content at his simple tale, he turned his
face from one side to the other with visible signs of fear and as if
trying to descry something beyond the intertwined trunks of the trees.

"What is it, Esteban, what is the matter? " asked one of the huntsmen,
noting the growing disquietude of the poor boy, who now was fixing his
frightened eyes on the laughing daughter of Don Dionis, and again gazing
all around him with an expression of astonishment and dull dismay:

"A very strange thing is happening to me," exclaimed Esteban. "When,
after hearing the words which I have just repeated, I quickly sat
upright to surprise the person who had spoken them, a doe white as snow
leaped from the very copse in which I was hidden and, taking a few
prodigious bounds over the tops of the evergreen oaks and mastic trees,
sped away, followed by a herd of deer of the natural color; and these,
like the white one who was guiding them, did not utter the cries of deer
in flight, but laughed with great peals of laughter, whose echo, I could
swear, is sounding in my ears at this moment. "

"Bah, bah, Esteban! " exclaimed Don Dionis, with a jesting air, "follow
the counsels of the priest of Tarazona; do not talk of your adventures
with the joke-loving deer, lest the Devil bring it to pass that in the
end you lose the little sense you have, and since now you are provided
with the gospels and know the prayer of Saint Bartholomew, return to
your lambs which are beginning to scatter through the glen. If the evil
spirits tease you again, you know the remedy--_Pater Noster_ and a big
stick. "

The shepherd, after putting away in his pouch a half loaf of white bread
and a piece of boar's meat, and in his stomach a mighty draught of wine,
which, by order of his lord, one of the grooms gave him, took leave of
Don Dionis and his daughter and had scarcely gone four steps when he
began whirling his sling, casting stones from it to gather the lambs
together.

As, by this time, Don Dionis observed that, what with one diversion and
another, the hours of heat were now passed and the light afternoon
breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the poplars and to freshen
the fields, he gave orders to his retinue to make ready the horses which
were grazing loose in the grove hard by; and when everything was
prepared, he signalled to some to slip the leashes, and to others to
blow the horns and, sallying forth in a troop from the poplar-grove,
took up the interrupted chase.


II.

Among the huntsmen of Don Dionis was one named Garces, the son of an old
servitor of the house and therefore held in high regard by the family.

Garces was of about the age of Constanza, and from early boyhood had
been accustomed to anticipate the least of her wishes and to divine and
gratify the lightest of her whims.

He amused himself in his moments of leisure in sharpening with his own
hand the pointed arrows of her ivory crossbow; he broke in the colts for
her mounts; he trained her favorite hounds in the arts of the chase and
tamed her falcons for which he bought at the fairs of Castile red hoods
embroidered with gold.

But as for the other huntsmen, the pages and the common folk in the
service of Don Dionis, the delicate attentions of Garces and the marks
of esteem with which his superiors distinguished him had caused them to
hold him in a sort of general dislike, even to the point of saying, in
their envy, that all his assiduous efforts to anticipate the caprices of
his mistress revealed the character of a flatterer and a sycophant. Yet
there were not wanting those who, more keen-sighted or malicious than
the rest, believed that they detected in the young retainer's devotion
signs of an ill-dissembled passion.

If this were really so, the secret love of Garces had more than abundant
excuse in the incomparable charms of Constanza. He must needs have had a
breast of stone, and a heart of ice, who could remain unmoved day after
day at the side of that woman, peerless in her beauty and her bewitching
graces.

The Lily of the Moncayo they called her for twenty leagues around, and
well she merited this soubriquet, for she was so exquisite, so white and
so delicately flushed that it would seem that God had made her, like the
lilies, of snow and gold.

Nevertheless, among the neighboring gentry it was whispered that the
beautiful Lady of Veraton was not so pure of blood as she was fair, and
that despite her bright tresses and her alabaster complexion, she had
had a gipsy mother. How much truth there was in these rumors no one
could say, for, in fact, Don Dionis had in his youth led an adventurous
life, and after fighting long under the banner of the King of Aragon,
from whom he received among other rewards the fief of the Moncayo, had
gone to Palestine, where he wandered for some years, finally returning
to establish himself in his castle of Veraton with a little daughter
born, doubtless, on foreign soil. The only person who could have told
anything about the mysterious origin of Constanza, having attended Don
Dionis in his travels abroad, was the father of Garces, and he had died
some time since without saying a single word on the subject, not even to
his own son who, at various times and with manifestations of great
interest, had questioned him.

The temperament of Constanza, with its swift alternations from reserve
and melancholy to mirth and glee; the singular vividness of her
imagination; her wild moods; her extraordinary ways; even the
peculiarity of having eyes and eyebrows black as night while her
complexion was white and rosy and her hair as bright as gold, had
contributed to furnish food for the gossip of the countryside; and even
Garces himself, who knew her so intimately, had come to the conclusion
that his liege lady was something apart and did not resemble the rest of
womankind.

Present, as the other huntsmen were, at the narration of Esteban, Garces
was perhaps the only one who listened with genuine curiosity to the
details of the shepherd's incredible adventure; and though he could not
help smiling when the lad repeated the words of the white doe, no sooner
had he left the grove in which they had taken their siesta, than he
began to revolve in his mind the most ridiculous fancies.

"Without doubt this tale of the talking of the deer is a sheer delusion
of Esteban's, who is a perfect simpleton," the young huntsman said to
himself as, mounted on a powerful sorrel, he followed step by step the
palfrey of Constanza, who seemed also somewhat preoccupied and was so
silent and so withdrawn from the group of hunters as scarcely to take
any part in the sport. "Yet who can say that in the story which this
poor fool tells there may not be a grain of truth? " thought on the young
retainer. "We have seen stranger things in the world, and a white doe
may indeed exist, since if we can credit the folk-songs, Saint Hubert,
the patron of huntsmen, had one. Oh, if I could take a white doe alive
for an offering to my lady! "

Thus thinking and dreaming, Garces passed the afternoon; and when the
sun began to descend behind the neighboring hills, and Don Dionis gave
the order to his retinue for the return to the castle, he slipped away
from the company unnoticed and went in search of the shepherd through
the densest and most entangled coverts of the mountain.

Night had almost completely closed in when Don Dionis arrived at the
gates of his castle. Immediately there was placed before him a frugal
collation and he sat down with his daughter at the table.

"And Garces, where is he? " asked Constanza, noticing that her huntsman
was not there to serve her as usual.

"We do not know," the other attendants hastened to reply. "He
disappeared from among us near the glen and we have not seen him since. "

At that instant Garces arrived, all breathless, his forehead still
covered with perspiration, but with the most happy and satisfied
expression imaginable.

"Pardon me, my lady," he exclaimed, addressing Constanza, "pardon me if
I have been wanting a moment in my duty, but there whence I came at my
horse's best speed, there, as here, I was busied only in your service. "

"In my service? " repeated Constanza. "I do not understand what you
mean. "

"Yes, my lady, in your service," repeated the youth, "for I have
ascertained that the white doe really does exist. Besides Esteban, it is
vouched for by various other shepherds, who swear they have seen it more
than once; and with their aid I hope in God and in my patron Saint
Hubert to bring it, living or dead, within three days to you at the
castle. "

"Bah! Bah! " exclaimed Constanza with a jesting air, while the derisive
laughter, more or less dissimulated, of the bystanders chorused her
words. "Have done with midnight hunts and with white does. Bear in mind
that the Devil loves to tempt the simple; and if you persist in
following at his heels, he will make you a laughing-stock like poor
Esteban. "

"My lady," interrupted Garces with a broken voice, concealing as far as
possible the anger which the merry scoffs of his companions stirred in
him, "I have never yet had to do with the Devil and consequently I am
not acquainted with his practices; but, for myself, I swear to you that,
do all he can, he will not make me an object of laughter, for that is a
privilege I know how to tolerate in yourself alone. "

Constanza saw the effect which her mocking had produced on the enamoured
youth, but desiring to test his patience to the uttermost, she continued
in the same tone:

"And what if, on aiming at the doe, she salutes you with another laugh
like that which Esteban heard, or flings it into your very face, and
you, hearing those supernatural peals of merriment, let fall your bow
from your hands, and before you recover from the fright, the white doe
has vanished swifter than lightning--what then? "

"Oh, as for that! " exclaimed Garces, "be sure that if I can speed a
shaft before she is out of bowshot, although she play me more tricks
than a juggler; although she speak to me, not in the language of the
country, but in Latin like the Abbot of Munilla, she will not get off
without an arrow-head in her body. "

At this stage in the conversation, Don Dionis joined in with a forced
gravity through which might be detected the entire irony of his words,
and began to give the now persecuted boy the most original counsels in
the world, in case he should suddenly meet with the demon changed into
a white doe.

At each new suggestion of her father, Constanza fixed her eyes on the
distressed Garces, and broke into extravagant laughter, while his
fellow-servitors encouraged the jesting with glances of intelligence and
ill-disguised delight.

Only with the close of the supper ceased this scene, in which the
credulity of the young hunter was, so to speak, the theme on which the
general mirth played variations, so that when the cloth was removed and
Don Dionis and Constanza had withdrawn to their apartments, and all the
inmates of the castle had gone to rest, Garces remained for a long time
irresolute, debating whether, notwithstanding the jeers of his liege
lord and lady, he would stand firm to his purpose, or absolutely abandon
the enterprise.

"What the devil," he exclaimed, rousing himself from the state of
uncertainty into which he had fallen. "Greater harm than that which has
overtaken me cannot come to pass and if, on the other hand, what Esteban
has told us is true, oh, then, how sweet will be the taste of my
triumph! "

Thus speaking, he fitted a shaft to his crossbow--not without having
made the sign of the cross on the point of the arrow--and swinging it
over his shoulder, he directed his steps toward the postern gate of the
castle to take the mountain path.

When Garces reached the glen and the point where, according to the
instructions of Esteban, he was to lie in wait for the appearance of the
deer, the moon was slowly rising behind the neighboring mountains.

Like a good hunter, well-practised in his craft, he spent a considerable
time, before selecting a suitable place for an ambush, in going to and
fro, scanning the byways and paths thereabouts, the grouping of the
trees, the irregularities of the ground, the curves of the river and the
depth of its waters.

At last, after completing this minute examination of the locality, he
hid himself upon a sloping bank near some black poplars whose high and
interlacing tops cast a dark shadow, and at whose feet grew a clump of
mastic shrubs high enough to conceal a man lying prone on the ground.

The river, which, from the mossy rocks where it rose, came following the
windings of the rugged fief of the Moncayo to enter the glen by a
cascade, thence went gliding on, bathing the roots of the willows that
shaded its bank, or playing with a murmurous ripple among the stones
rolled down from the mountain, until it fell into a pool very near the
point which served the hunter for a hiding-place.

The poplars, whose silvered leaves the wind stirred with the sweetest
rustle, the willows which, leaning over the limpid current, bedewed in
it the tips of their pale branches, and the crowded groups of evergreen
oaks about whose trunks honeysuckles and blue morning-glories clambered
and twined, formed a thick wall of foliage around this quiet river-pool.

The wind, stirring the leafy curtains of living green which spread round
about their floating shadow, let penetrate at intervals a stealthy ray
of light that gleamed like a flash of silver over the surface of the
motionless, deep waters.

Hidden among the bushes, his ear attent to the slightest sound, and his
gaze fixed upon the spot where, according to his calculations, the deer
should come, Garces waited a long time in vain.

Everything about him remained buried in a deep calm.

Little by little, and it might well be that the lateness of the
hour--for it was past midnight--began to weigh upon his lids--might well
be that far-off murmurs of the water, the penetrating scent of the wild
flowers and the caresses of the wind affected his senses with the soft
drowsiness in which all nature seemed to be steeped--the enamoured boy,
who until now had been occupied in revolving in his mind the most
alluring fancies, began to find that his ideas took shape more slowly
and his thoughts drifted into vague and indecisive forms.

After lingering a little in this dim border-land between waking and
sleeping, at last he closed his eyes, let his crossbow slip from his
hands, and sank into a profound slumber.

* * * * *

It must have been for two or three hours now that the young hunter had
been snoring at his ease, enjoying to the full one of the serenest
dreams of his life, when suddenly he opened his eyes, with a stare, and
half raised himself to a sitting posture, full yet of that stupor with
which one wakes suddenly from profound sleep.

In the breathings of the wind and blended with the light noises of the
night, he thought he detected a strange hum of delicate voices, sweet
and mysterious, which were talking with one another, laughing or
singing, each in its own individual strain, making a twitter as
clamorous and confused as that of the birds awakening at the first ray
of the sun amid the leaves of a poplar grove.

This extraordinary sound was heard for an instant only, and then all was
still again.

"Without doubt, I was dreaming of the absurdities of which the shepherd
told us," exclaimed Garces, rubbing his eyes in all tranquillity, and
firmly persuaded that what he had thought he heard was no more than that
vague impression of slumber which, on awaking, lingers in the
imagination, as the closing cadence of a melody dwells in the ear after
the last trembling note has ceased. And overcome by the unconquerable
languor weighing down his limbs, he was about to lay his head again upon
the turf, when he heard anew the distant echo of those mystic voices,
which to the accompaniment of the soft stir of the air, the water and
the leaves were singing thus:

CHORUS.

"The archer who watched on the top of the tower has laid his heavy
head down on the wall.
The stealthy hunter who was expecting to surprise the deer has been
surprised by sleep.
The shepherd who awaited the day, consulting the stars, sleeps now,
and will sleep till dawn.
Queen of the water-sprites, follow our steps.
Come to swing in the branches of the willows over the surface of
the water.
"Come to intoxicate thyself with the perfume of the violets which
open at dusk.
"Come to enjoy the night, which is the day of the spirits. "

While the sweet notes of that delicious music floated on the air, Garces
remained motionless. After it had melted away, with much caution he
slightly parted the branches and, not without experiencing a certain
shock, saw come into sight the deer, which, moving in a confused group
and sometimes bounding over the bushes with incredible lightness,
stopping as though listening for others, frolicking together, now hiding
in the thicket, now sallying out again into the path, were descending
the mountain in the direction of the river-pool.

In advance of her companions, more agile, more graceful, more sportive,
more joyous than all of them, leaping, running, pausing and running
again so lightly that she seemed not to touch the ground with her feet,
went the white doe, whose wonderful color stood out like a fantastic
light against the dark background of the trees.

Although the young man was inclined to see in his surroundings something
of the supernatural and miraculous, the fact of the case was that, apart
from the momentary hallucination which disturbed his senses for an
instant, suggesting to him music, murmurs and words, there was nothing
either in the form of the deer, nor in their movements, nor in their
short cries with which they seemed to call one to another, that ought
not to be entirely familiar to a huntsman experienced in this sort of
night expeditions.

In proportion as he put away the first impression, Garces began to take
the practical view of the situation and, smiling inwardly at his
credulity and fright, from that instant was intent only on determining,
in view of the route they were following, the point where the deer would
take the water.

Having made his calculation, he gripped his crossbow between his teeth
and, twisting along like a snake behind the mastic shrubs, located
himself about forty paces from his former situation. Once ensconced in
his new ambush, he waited long enough for the deer to be within the
river, that his aim might be the surer. Scarcely had he begun to hear
that peculiar sound which is produced by the violent disturbance of
water, when Garces commenced to lift himself little by little, with the
greatest precaution, resting first on the tips of his fingers, and
afterwards on one knee.

Erect at last, and assuring himself by touch that his weapon was ready,
he took a step forward, craned his neck above the shrubs to command a
view of the pool and aimed the shaft, but at the very moment when he
strained his eyes, together with the cord, in search of the victim whom
he must wound, there escaped from his lips a faint, involuntary cry of
amazement.

The moon, which had been slowly climbing up the broad horizon, was
motionless, and hung as if suspended in the height of heaven. Her clear
radiance flooded the forest, shimmered on the unquiet surface of the
river, and caused objects to be seen as through an azure gauze.

The deer had disappeared.

In their place, Garces, filled with consternation and almost with
terror, saw a throng of most beautiful women, some of whom were
sportively entering the water, while others were just freeing themselves
from the light garments which as yet concealed from the covetous view
the treasure of their forms.

In those thin, brief dreams of dawn, rich in joyous and luxurious
images,--dreams as diaphanous and celestial as the light which then
begins to shine through the white bed-curtains, never had the
imagination of twenty years sketched with fanciful coloring a scene
equal to that which now presented itself to the eyes of the astonished
Garces.

Having now cast off their robes and their veils of a thousand colors
which, suspended from the trees or thrown carelessly down on the carpet
of turf, stood out against the dim background, the maidens ran hither
and thither through the grove, forming picturesque groups, going in and
out of the water and splashing it in glistening sparks over the flowers
of the margin, like a little shower of dewdrops.

Here, one of them, white as the fleece of a lamb, lifted her fair head
among the green floating leaves of an aquatic plant of which she seemed
the half-opened blossom whose flexible stem, one might imagine, could be
seen to tremble beneath the endless gleaming circles of the waves.

Another, with her hair loose on her shoulders, swung from the branch of
a willow over the river, and her little rose-colored feet made a ray of
silvery light as they grazed the smooth surface. While some remained
couched on the bank, with their blue eyes drowsy, breathing voluptuously
the perfume of the flowers and shivering slightly at the touch of the
fresh breeze, others were dancing in a giddy round, interlacing their
hands capriciously, letting their heads droop back with delicious
abandon, and striking the ground with their feet in harmonious cadence.

It was impossible to follow them in their agile movements, impossible to
take in with a glance the infinite details of the picture they formed,
some running, some gambolling and chasing one another with merry
laughter in and out the labyrinth of trees; others skimming the water
swanlike and cutting the current with uplifted breast; others, diving
into the depths where they remained long before rising to the surface,
bringing one of those wonderful flowers that spring unseen in the bed of
the deep waters.

The gaze of the astonished hunter wandered spellbound from one side to
another, without knowing where to fix itself, until he believed he saw,
seated under swaying boughs which seemed to serve her as a canopy and
surrounded by a group of women, each more beautiful than the rest, who
were aiding her in freeing herself from her delicate vestments, the
object of his secret worship, the daughter of the noble Don Dionis, the
incomparable Constanza.

Passing from one surprise to another, the enamoured youth dared not
credit the testimony of his senses, and thought he was under the
influence of a fascinating, delusive dream.

Still, he struggled in vain to convince himself that all he had seen was
the effect of disordered imagination, for the longer and more
attentively he looked, the more convinced he became that this woman was
Constanza.

He could not doubt; hers were those dusky eyes shaded by the long lashes
that scarcely sufficed to soften the brilliancy of their glance; hers
that wealth of shining hair, which, after crowning her brow, fell over
her white bosom and soft shoulders like a cascade of gold; hers, too,
that graceful neck which supported her languid head, lightly drooping
like a flower weary with its weight of dewdrops; and that fair figure of
which, perchance, he had dreamed, and those hands like clusters of
jasmine, and those tiny feet, comparable only to two morsels of snow
which the sun has not been able to melt and which in the morning lie
white on the greensward.

At the moment when Constanza emerged from the little thicket, all her
beauty unveiled to her lover's eyes, her companions, beginning anew to
sing, carolled these words to the sweetest of melodies.

CHORUS.

"Genii of the air, dwelling in the luminous ether, enveloped in
raiment of silver mist--come!
"Invisible sylphs, leave the cups of the half-opened lilies and
come in your mother-of-pearl chariots drawn through the air
by harnessed butterflies.
"Nymphs of the fountains, forsake your mossy beds and fall upon
us in little, diamond showers.
"Emerald beetles, fiery glow-worms, sable butterflies, come!
"And come, all ye spirits of night, come humming like a swarm of
lustrous, golden insects.
"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.