MASTER PÉREZ THE ORGANIST
In Seville, in the very portico of Santa Inés, and while, on Christmas Eve, I
was waiting for the Midnight Mass to begin, I heard this tradition from a lay-
sister of the convent.
As was natural, after hearing it, I waited impatiently for the ceremony to
commence, eager to be present at a miracle.
Nothing could be less miraculous, however, than the organ of Santa Inés,
and nothing more vulgar than the insipid motets with which that night the
organist regaled us.
On going out from the mass, I could not resist asking the lay-sister
mischievously:
"How does it happen that the organ of Master Pérez is so unmusical at
present?"
"Why!" replied the old woman. "Because it isn't his."
"Not his? What has become of it?"
"It fell to pieces from sheer old age, a number of years ago."
"And the soul of the organist?"
"It has not appeared again since the new organ was set up in place of his
own."
If anyone of my readers, after perusing this history, should be moved to ask
the same question, now he knows why the notable miracle has not continued
into our own time.
I.
"Do you see that man with the scarlet cloak and the white plume in his hat,
—the one who seems to wear on his waistcoat all the gold of the galleons of
the Indies,—that man, I mean, just stepping down from his litter to give his
hand to the lady there, who, now that she is out of hers, is coming our way,
preceded by four pages with torches? Well, that is the Marquis of Moscoso,
suitor to the widowed Countess of Villapineda. They say that before setting his
eyes upon this lady, he had asked in marriage the daughter of a man of large
fortune, but the girl's father, of whom the rumor goes that he is a bit of a
miser,—but hush! Speaking of the devil—do you see that man coming on foot
under the arch of San Felipe, all muffled up in a dark cloak and attended by a
single servant carrying a lantern? Now he is in front of the outer shrine"Do you notice, as his cloak falls back while he salutes the image, the
embroidered cross that sparkles on his breast?
"If it were not for this noble decoration, one would take him for a shop-
keeper from Culebras street. Well, that is the father in question. See how the
people make way for him and lift their hats.
"Everybody in Seville knows him on account of his immense fortune. That
one man has more golden ducats in his chests than our lord King Philip
maintains soldiers, and with his merchantmen he could form a squadron equal
to that of the Grand Turk——
"Look, look at that group of stately cavaliers! Those are the four and
twenty knights. Aha, aha! There goes that precious Fleming, too, whom, they
say, the gentlemen of the green cross have not challenged for heresy yet,
thanks to his influence with the magnates of Madrid. All he comes to church
for is to hear the music. But if Master Pérez does not draw from him with his
organ tears as big as fists, then sure it is that his soul isn't under his doublet,
but sizzles in the Devil's frying-pan. Alack, neighbor! Trouble, trouble! I fear
there is going to be a fight. I shall take refuge in the church; for, from what I
see, there will be hereabouts more blows than Pater Nosters. Look, look! The
Duke of Alcalá's people are coming round the corner of San Pedro's square,
and I think I spy the Duke of Medinasidonia's men in Dueñas alley. Didn't I
tell you?
"Now they have caught sight of each other, now the two parties stop short,
without breaking their order, the groups of bystanders dissolve, the police,
who on these occasions get pounded by both sides, slip away, even the prefect,
staff of office and all, seeks the shelter of the portico,—and yet they say that
there is law to be had.
"For the poor——
"There, there! already shields are shining through the dark. Our Lord Jesus
of All Power deliver us! Now the blows are beginning. Neighbor, neighbor!
this way—before they close the doors. But hush! What is this? Hardly have
they begun when they leave off. What light is that? Blazing torches! A litter!
It's His Reverence the Bishop.
"The most holy Virgin of Protection, on whom this very instant I was
calling in my heart, brings him to my aid. Ah! But nobody knows what I owe
to that Blessed Lady,—how richly she pays me back for the little candles that I
burn to her every Saturday.—See him! How beautiful he is with his purple
vestments and his red cardinal's cap! God preserve him in his sacred chair as
many centuries as I wish to live myself! If it were not for him, half Seville
would have been burned up by this time with these quarrels of the dukes. Seethem, see them, the great hypocrites, how they both press close to the litter of
the prelate to kiss his ring! How they drop behind and, mingling with his
household attendants, follow in his train! Who would dream that those two
who appear on such good terms, if within the half hour they should meet in a
dark street—that is, the dukes themselves—God deliver me from thinking
them cowards; good proof have they given of valor, warring more than once
against the enemies of Our Lord; but the truth remains, that if they should seek
each other—and seek with the wish to find—they would find each other,
putting end once for all to these continuous scuffles, in which those who really
do the fighting are their kinsmen, their friends and their servants.
"But come, neighbor, come into the church, before it is packed full. Some
nights like this it is so crowded that there is not room left for a grain of wheat.
The nuns have a prize in their organist. When has the convent ever been in
such high favor as now? I can tell you that the other sisterhoods have made
Master Pérez magnificent offers, but there is nothing strange about that, for the
Lord Archbishop himself has offered him mountains of gold to entice him to
the cathedral,—but he, not a bit of it! He would sooner give up his life than his
beloved organ. You don't know Master Pérez? True enough, you are a
newcomer in this neighborhood. Well, he is a saint; poor, but the most
charitable man alive. With no other relative than his daughter and no other
friend than his organ, he devotes all his life to watching over the innocence of
the one and patching up the registers of the other. Mind that the organ is old.
But that counts for nothing, he is so handy in mending it and caring for it that
its sound is a marvel. For he knows it so perfectly that only by touch,—for I
am not sure that I have told you the poor gentleman is blind from his birth.
And how patiently he bears his misfortune! When people ask him how much
he would give to see, he replies: 'Much, but not as much as you think, for I
have hopes.' 'Hopes of seeing?' 'Yes, and very soon,' he adds, smiling like an
angel. 'Already I number seventy-six years; however long my life may be,
soon I shall see God.'
"Poor dear! And he will see Him, for he is humble as the stones of the
street, which let all the world trample on them. He always says that he is only
a poor convent organist, when the fact is he could give lessons in harmony to
the very chapel master of the Cathedral, for he was, as it were, born to the art.
His father held the same position before him; I did not know the father, but my
mother—God rest her soul!—says that he always had the boy at the organ
with him to blow the bellows. Then the lad developed such talent that, as was
natural, he succeeded to the position on the death of his father. And what a
touch is in his hands, God bless them! They deserve to be taken to Chicarreros
street and there enchased in gold. He always plays well, always, but on a night
like this he is a wonder. He has the greatest devotion for this ceremony of the
Midnight Mass, and when the Host is elevated, precisely at twelve o'clock,which is the moment Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, the tones of
his organ are the voices of angels.
"But, after all, why should I praise to you what you will hear to-night? It is
enough to see that all the most distinguished people of Seville, even the Lord
Archbishop himself, come to a humble convent to listen to him; and don't
suppose that it is only the learned people and those who are versed in music
that appreciate his genius, but the very rabble of the streets. All these groups
that you see arriving with pine-torches ablaze, chorusing popular songs,
broken by rude outcries, to the accompaniment of timbrels, tambourines and
rustic drums, these, contrary to their custom, which is to make disturbance in
the churches, are still as the dead when Master Pérez lays his hands upon the
organ, and when the Host is elevated, you can't hear a fly; great tears roll
down from the eyes of all, and at the end is heard a sound like an immense
sigh, which is nothing else than the expulsion of the breath of the multitude,
held in while the music lasts. But come, come! The bells have stopped ringing,
and the mass is going to begin. Come inside.
"This night is Christmas Eve for all the world, but for nobody more than
for us."
So saying, the good woman who had been acting as cicerone for her
neighbor pressed through the portico of the Convent of Santa Inés, and by dint
of elbowing and pushing succeeded in getting inside the church, disappearing
amid the multitude which thronged the inner spaces near the doors.
II.
The church was illuminated with astonishing brilliancy. The flood of light
which spread from the altars through all its compass sparkled on the rich
jewels of the ladies who, kneeling on the velvet cushions placed before them
by their pages and taking their prayer-books from the hands of their duennas,
formed a brilliant circle around the choir-screen. Grouped just behind them, on
foot, wrapped in bright-lined cloaks garnished with gold-lace, with studied
carelessness letting glimpses of their red and green crosses be seen, in one
hand the hat, whose plumes kissed the carpet, the other hand resting upon the
polished hilt of a rapier or caressing the handle of an ornate dagger, the four
and twenty knights, with a large proportion of the highest nobility of Seville,
seemed to form a wall for the purpose of protecting their daughters and their
wives from contact with the populace. This, swaying back and forth at the rear
of the nave, with a murmur like that of a surging sea, broke out into a joyous
acclaim, accompanied by the discordant sounds of the timbrels and
tambourines, at the appearance of the archbishop, who, after seating himself,
surrounded by his attendants, near the High Altar under a scarlet canopy,
thrice blessed the assembled people It was time for the mass to begin.
There passed, nevertheless, several minutes without the appearance of the
celebrant. The throng commenced to stir about impatiently; the knights
exchanged low-toned words with one another, and the archbishop sent one of
his attendants to the sacristy to inquire the cause of the delay.
"Master Pérez has been taken ill, very ill, and it will be impossible for him
to come to the Midnight Mass."
This was the word brought back by the attendant.
The news spread instantly through the multitude. It would be impossible to
depict the dismay which it caused; suffice it to say that such a clamor began to
arise in the church that the prefect sprang to his feet, and the police came in to
enforce silence, mingling with the close-pressed, surging crowd.
At that moment, a man with unpleasant features, thin, bony, and cross-
eyed, too, hurriedly made his way to the place where the prelate was sitting.
"Master Pérez is sick," he said. "The ceremony cannot begin. If it is your
pleasure, I will play the organ in his absence; for neither is Master Pérez the
first organist of the world, nor at his death need this instrument be left unused
for lack of skill."
The archbishop gave a nod of assent, and already some of the faithful, who
recognized in that strange personage an envious rival of the organist of Santa
Inés, were breaking out in exclamations of displeasure, when suddenly a
startling uproar was heard in the portico.
"Master Pérez is here! Master Pérez is here!"
At these cries from the press in the doorway, every one looked around.
Master Pérez, his face pallid and drawn, was in fact entering the church,
brought in a chair about which all were contending for the honor of carrying it
upon their shoulders.
The commands of the physicians, the tears of his daughter had not been
able to keep him in bed.
"No," he had said. "This is the end, I know it, I know it, and I would not
die without visiting my organ, and this night above all, Christmas Eve. Come,
I wish it, I command it; let us go to the church."
His desire had been fulfilled. The people carried him in their arms to the
organ-loft, and the mass began.
At that instant the cathedral clock struck twelve.
The introit passed, and the Gospel, and the offertory, and then came the solemn moment in which the priest, after having blessed the Sacred Wafer,
took it in the tips of his fingers and began to elevate it.
A cloud of incense, rolling forth in azure waves, filled the length and
breadth of the church; the little bells rang out with silvery vibrations, and
Master Pérez placed his quivering hands upon the keys of the organ.
The hundred voices of its metal tubes resounded in a prolonged, majestic
chord, which died away little by little, as if a gentle breeze had stolen its last
echoes.
To this opening chord, that seemed a voice lifted from earth to heaven,
responded a sweet and distant note, which went on swelling and swelling in
volume until it became a torrent of pealing harmony.
It was the song of the angels, which, traversing the ethereal spaces, had
reached the world.
Then there began to be heard a sound as of far-off hymns entoned by the
hierarchies of seraphim, a thousand hymns at once, melting into one, which,
nevertheless, was no more than accompaniment to a strange melody,—a
melody that seemed to float above that ocean of mysterious echoes as a strip
of fog above the billows of the sea.
One anthem after another died away; the movement grew simpler; now
there were but two voices, whose echoes blended; then one alone remained,
sustaining a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The priest bowed his face,
and above his gray head, across an azure mist made by the smoke of the
incense, appeared to the eyes of the faithful the uplifted Host. At that instant
the thrilling note which Master Pérez was holding began to swell and swell
until an outburst of colossal harmony shook the church, in whose corners the
straitened air vibrated and whose stained glass shivered in its narrow Moorish
embrasures.
From each of the notes forming that magnificent chord a theme was
developed,—some near, some far, these keen, those muffled, until one would
have said that the waters and the birds, the winds and the woods, men and
angels, earth and heaven, were chanting, each in its own tongue, an anthem of
praise for the Redeemer's birth.
The multitude listened in amazement and suspense. In all eyes were tears,
in all spirits a profound realization of the divine.
The officiating priest felt his hands trembling, for the Holy One whom they
upheld, the Holy One to whom men and archangels did reverence, was God,
was very God, and it seemed to the priest that he had beheld the heavens open
and the Host become transfigured. The organ still sounded, but its music was gradually sinking away, like a
tone dropping from echo to echo, ever more remote, ever fainter with the
remoteness, when suddenly a cry rang out in the organ-loft, shrill, piercing, the
cry of a woman.
The organ gave forth a strange, discordant sound, like a sob, and then was
still.
The multitude surged toward the stair leading up to the organ-loft, in
whose direction all the faithful, startled out of their religious ecstasy, were
turning anxious looks.
"What has happened?" "What is the matter?" they asked one of another,
and none knew what to reply, and all strove to conjecture, and the confusion
increased, and the excitement began to rise to a height which threatened to
disturb the order and decorum fitting within a church.
"What was it?" asked the great ladies of the prefect who, attended by his
officers, had been one of the first to mount to the loft, and now, pale and
showing signs of deep grief, was making his way to the archbishop, waiting in
anxiety, like all the rest, to know the cause of that disturbance.
"What has occurred?"
"Master Pérez has just died."
In fact, when the foremost of the faithful, after pressing up the stairway,
had reached the organ-loft, they saw the poor organist fallen face down upon
the keys of his old instrument, which was still faintly murmuring, while his
daughter, kneeling at his feet, was vainly calling to him amid sighs and sobs.
III.
"Good evening, my dear Doña Baltasara. Are you, too, going to-night to
the Christmas Eve Mass? For my part, I was intending to go to the parish
church to hear it, but after what has happened—'where goes John? With all
the town.' And the truth, if I must tell it, is that since Master Pérez died, a
marble slab seems to fall on my heart whenever I enter Santa Inés.—Poor dear
man! He was a saint. I assure you that I keep a piece of his doublet as a relic,
and he deserves it, for by God and my soul it is certain that if our Lord
Archbishop would stir in the matter, our grandchildren would see the image of
Master Pérez upon an altar. But what hope of it? 'The dead and the gone are
let alone.' We're all for the latest thing now-a-days; you understand me. No?
You haven't an inkling of what has happened? It's true we are alike in this,—
from house to church, and from church to house, without concerning ourselves
about what is said or isn't said—except that I, as it were, on the wing, a word
here, another there, without the least curiosity whatever, usually run across any news that may be going. Well, then! It seems to be settled that the organist
of San Román, that squint-eye, who is always throwing out slurs against the
other organists, that great sloven, who looks more like a butcher from the
slaughter-house than a professor of music, is going to play this Christmas Eve
in place of Master Pérez. Now you must know, for all the world knows and it
is a public matter in Seville, that nobody was willing to attempt it. Not even
his daughter, though she is herself an expert, and after her father's death
entered the convent as a novice. And naturally enough; accustomed to hear
those marvellous performances, any other playing whatever must seem poor to
us, however much we would like to avoid comparisons. But no sooner had the
sisterhood decided that, in honor of the dead and as a token of respect to his
memory, the organ should be silent to-night, than—look you!—here comes
along our modest friend, saying that he is ready to play it. Nothing is bolder
than ignorance. It is true the fault is not so much his as theirs who have
consented to this profanation, but so goes the world. I say, it's no trifle—this
crowd that is coming. One would think nothing had changed since last year.
The same great people, the same magnificence, the same pushing in the
doorway, the same excitement in the portico, the same throng in the church.
Ah, if the dead should rise, he would die again rather than hear his organ
played by hands like those. The fact is, if what the people of the neighborhood
have told me is true, they are preparing a fine reception for the intruder. When
the moment comes for placing the hand upon the keys, there is going to break
out such a racket of timbrels, tambourines and rustic drums that nothing else
can be heard. But hush! there's the hero of the occasion just going into the
church. Jesus! what a showy jacket, what a fluted ruff, what a high and mighty
air! Come, come, the archbishop arrived a minute ago, and the mass is going
to begin. Come; it looks as though this night would give us something to talk
about for many a day."
With these words the worthy woman, whom our readers recognize by her
disconnected loquacity, entered Santa Inés, opening a way through the press,
as usual, by dint of shoving and elbowing.
Already the ceremony had begun.
The church was as brilliant as the year before.
The new organist, after passing through the midst of the faithful who
thronged the nave, on his way to kiss the ring of the prelate, had mounted to
the organ-loft, where he was trying one stop of the organ after another with a
solicitous gravity as affected as it was ridiculous.
Among the common people clustered at the rear of the church was heard a
murmur, muffled and confused, sure augury of the coming storm which would
not be long in breaking."He's a clown, who doesn't know how to do anything, not even to look
straight," said some.
"He's an ignoramus, who after having made the organ in his own parish
church worse than a rattle comes here to profane Master Pérez's," said others.
And while one was throwing off his coat so as to beat his drum to better
advantage, and another was trying his timbrels, and the clatter was increasing
more and more, only here and there could one be found to defend in lukewarm
fashion that alien personage, whose pompous and pedantic bearing formed so
strong a contrast to the modest manner and kindly courtesy of the dead Master
Pérez.
At last the looked-for moment came, the solemn moment when the priest,
after bowing low and murmuring the sacred words, took the Host in his hands.
The little bells rang out, their chime like a rain of crystal notes; the translucent
waves of incense rose, and the organ sounded.
At that instant a horrible din filled the compass of the church, drowning the
first chord.
Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, all the instruments of the populace raised
their discordant voices at once, but the confusion and the clang lasted but a
few seconds. All at once as the tumult had begun, so all at once it ceased.
The second chord, full, bold, magnificent, sustained itself, still pouring
from the organ's metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible, sonorous
harmony.
Celestial songs like those that caress the ear in moments of ecstasy, songs
which the spirit perceives but the lip cannot repeat; fugitive notes of a far-off
melody, which reach us at intervals, sounding in the bugles of the wind; the
rustle of leaves kissing one another on the trees with a murmur like rain; trills
of larks which rise warbling from among the flowers like a flight of arrows to
the clouds; nameless crashes, overwhelming as the thunders of a tempest; a
chorus of seraphim without rhythm or cadence, unknown harmony of heaven
which only the imagination understands; soaring hymns, that seem to mount to
the throne of God like a fountain of light and sound—all this was expressed by
the organ's hundred voices, with more vigor, more mystic poetry, more weird
coloring than had ever been known before.
When the organist came down from the loft, the crowd which pressed up to
the stairway was so great, and their eagerness to see and praise him so intense,
that the prefect, fearing, and not without reason, that he would be suffocated
among them all, commanded some of the police to open, by their staves, a
path for him that he might reach the High Altar where the prelate waited his
arrival."You perceive," said the archbishop, when the musician was brought into
his presence, "that I have come all the way from my palace hither only to hear
you. Will you be as cruel as Master Pérez, who would never save me the
journey by playing the Midnight Mass in the cathedral?"
"Next year," responded the organist, "I promise to give you that pleasure,
for not all the gold of the earth would induce me to play this organ again."
"And why not?" interrupted the prelate.
"Because," replied the organist, striving to repress the agitation revealed in
the pallor of his face,—"because it is old and poor, and one cannot express on
it all that one would."
The archbishop retired, followed by his attendants. One by one, the litters
of the great folk went filing away, lost to sight in the windings of the
neighboring streets; the groups of the portico melted, as the faithful dispersed
in different directions; and already the lay-sister who acted as gate-keeper was
about to lock the vestibule doors, when there appeared two women, who, after
crossing themselves and muttering a prayer before the arched shrine of Saint
Philip, went their way, turning into Dueñas alley.
"What would you have, my dear Doña Baltasara?" one of them was
saying. "That's the way I'm made. Every fool has his fancy. The barefooted
Capuchins might assure me that it was so and I wouldn't believe it in the least.
That man cannot have played what we have just been hearing. A thousand
times have I heard him in San Bartolomé, his parish church, from which the
priest had to send him away for his bad playing,—enough to make you stop
your ears with cotton. Besides, all you need is to look at his face, which, they
say, is the mirror of the soul. I remember, poor dear man, as if I were seeing
him now,—I remember Master Pérez's look when, on a night like this, he
would come down from the organ loft, after having entranced the audience
with his marvels. What a gracious smile, what a happy glow on his face! Old
as he was, he seemed like an angel. But this fellow came plunging down the
stairs as if a dog were barking at him on the landing, his face the color of the
dead, and—come now, my dear Doña Baltasara, believe me, believe me with
all your soul. I suspect a mystery in this."
With these last words, the two women turned the corner of the street and
disappeared.
We count it needless to inform our readers who one of them was.
IV.
Another year had gone by. The abbess of the convent of Santa Inés and the
daughter of Master Pérez, half hidden in the shadows of the church choir, weretalking in low tones. The peremptory voice of the bell was calling from its
tower to the faithful, and occasionally an individual would cross the portico,
silent and deserted now, and after taking the holy water at the door, would
choose a place in a corner of the nave, where a few residents of the
neighborhood were quietly waiting for the Midnight Mass to begin.
"There, you see," the mother superior was saying, "your fear is excessively
childish. There is nobody in the church. All Seville is trooping to the cathedral
to-night. Play the organ and play it without the least uneasiness. We are only
the sisterhood here. Well? Still you are silent, still your breaths are like sighs.
What is it? What is the matter?"
"I am—afraid," exclaimed the girl, in a tone of the deepest agitation.
"Afraid? Of what?"
"I don't know—of something supernatural. Last night, see, I had heard you
say that you earnestly wished me to play the organ for the mass and, pleased
with this honor, I thought I would look to the stops and tune it, so as to give
you a surprise to-day. I went into the choir—alone—I opened the door which
leads to the organ-loft. At that moment the clock of the cathedral struck the
hour—what hour, I do not know. The peals were exceedingly mournful, and
many—many. They kept on sounding all the time that I stood as if nailed to
the threshold, and that time seemed to me a century.
"The church was empty and dark. Far away, in the hollow depth, there
gleamed, like a single star lost in the sky of night, a feeble light, the light of
the lamp which burns on the High Altar. By its faint rays, which only served to
make more visible all the deep horror of the darkness, I saw—I saw—mother,
do not disbelieve it—I saw a man who, in silence and with his back turned
toward the place where I stood, was running over the organ-keys with one
hand, while he tried the stops with the other. And the organ sounded, but it
sounded in a manner indescribable. It seemed as if each of its notes were a sob
smothered within the metal tube which vibrated with its burden of compressed
air, and gave forth a muffled tone, almost inaudible, yet exact and true.
"And the cathedral clock kept on striking, and that man kept on running
over the keys. I heard his very breathing.
"The horror of it had frozen the blood in my veins. In my body I felt an icy
chill and in my temples fire. Then I longed to cry out, but could not. That man
had turned his face and looked at me,—no, not looked at me, for he was blind.
It was my father."
"Bah, sister! Put away these fancies with which the wicked enemy tries to
trouble weak imaginations. Pray a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria to the
archangel Saint Michael, captain of the celestial hosts, that he may aid you toresist the evil spirits. Wear on your neck a scapulary which has been touched
to the relics of Saint Pacomio, our advocate against temptations, and go, go in
power to the organ-loft. The mass is about to begin, and the faithful are
growing impatient. Your father is in heaven, and thence, instead of giving you
a fright, he will descend to inspire his daughter in this solemn service which
he so especially loved."
The prioress went to occupy her seat in the choir in the centre of the
sisterhood. The daughter of Master Pérez opened the door of the loft with
trembling hand, sat down at the organ, and the mass began.
The mass began, and continued without any unusual occurrence until the
consecration. Then the organ sounded, and at the same time came a scream
from the daughter of Master Pérez.
The mother superior, the nuns, and some of the faithful rushed up to the
organ-loft.
"Look at him! look at him!" cried the girl, fixing her eyes, starting from
their sockets, upon the organ-bench, from which she had risen in terror,
clinging with convulsed hands to the railing of the organ-loft.
All eyes were fixed upon the spot to which her gaze was turned. No one
was at the organ, yet it went on sounding—sounding as the archangels sing in
their raptures of mystic ecstasy.
"Didn't I tell you so a thousand times, my dear Doña Baltasara—didn't I
tell you so? There is a mystery here. What? You were not at the Christmas Eve
Mass last night? But, for all that, you must know what happened. Nothing else
is talked about in all Seville. The archbishop is furious, and with good reason.
To have missed going to Santa Inés—to have missed being present at the
miracle! And for what? To hear a charivari, a rattle-go-bang, for people who
heard it tell me that what the inspired organist of San Bartolomé did in the
cathedral was just that. I told you so. The squint-eye could never have played
that divine music of last year, never. There is mystery about all this, a mystery
that is, in truth, the soul of Master Pérez."
THE EMERALD EYES
For a long time I have desired to write something with this title. Now that
the opportunity has come, I have inscribed it in capital letters at the top of the
page and have let my pen run at will.
I believe that I have seen eyes like those I have painted in this legend. Itmay have been in my dreams, but I have seen them. Too true it is that I shall
not be able to describe them as they were, luminous, transparent as drops of
rain slipping over the leaves of the trees after a summer shower. At all events,
I count upon the imagination of my readers to understand me in what we
might call a sketch for a picture which I will paint some day.
I.
"The stag is wounded—he is wounded; no doubt of it. There are traces of
his blood on the mountain shrubs, and in trying to leap one of those mastic
trees his legs failed him. Our young lord begins where others end. In my forty
years as huntsman I have not seen a better shot. But by Saint Saturio, patron of
Soria, cut him off at these hollies, urge on the dogs, blow the horns till your
lungs are empty, and bury your spurs in the flanks of the horses. Do you not
see that he is going toward the fountain of the Poplars, and if he lives to reach
it we must give him up for lost?"
The glens of the Moncayo flung from echo to echo the braying of the horns
and barking of the unleashed pack of hounds; the shouts of the pages
resounded with new vigor, while the confused throng of men, dogs and horses
rushed toward the point which Iñigo, the head huntsman of the Marquises of
Almenar, indicated as the one most favorable for intercepting the quarry.
But all was of no avail. When the fleetest of the greyhounds reached the
hollies, panting, its jaws covered with foam, already the deer, swift as an
arrow, had cleared them at a single bound, disappearing among the thickets of
a narrow path which led to the fountain.
"Draw rein! draw rein, every man!" then cried Iñigo. "It was the will of
God that he should escape."
And the troop halted, the horns fell silent and the hounds, at the call of the
hunters, abandoned, snarling, the trail.
At that moment, the lord of the festival, Fernando de Argensola, the heir of
Almenar, came up with the company.
"What are you doing?" he exclaimed, addressing his huntsman,
astonishment depicted on his features, anger burning in his eyes. "What are
you doing, idiot? Do you see that the creature is wounded, that it is the first to
fall by my hand, and yet you abandon the pursuit and let it give you the slip to
die in the depths of the forest? Do you think perchance that I have come to kill
deer for the banquets of wolves?"
"Señor," murmured Iñigo between his teeth, "it is impossible to pass this
point."
"Impossible! And why?""Because this path," continued the huntsman, "leads to the fountain of the
Poplars, the fountain of the Poplars in whose waters dwells an evil spirit. He
who dares trouble its flow pays dear for his rashness. Already the deer will
have reached its borders; how will you take it without drawing on your head
some fearful calamity? We hunters are kings of the Moncayo, but kings that
pay a tribute. A quarry which takes refuge at this mysterious fountain is a
quarry lost."
"Lost! Sooner will I lose the seigniory of my fathers, sooner will I lose my
soul into the hands of Satan than permit this stag to escape me, the only one
my spear has wounded, the first fruits of my hunting. Do you see him? Do you
see him? He can still at intervals be made out from here. His legs falter, his
speed slackens; let me go, let me go! Drop this bridle or I roll you in the dust!
Who knows if I will not run him down before he reaches the fountain? And if
he should reach it, to the devil with it, its untroubled waters and its
inhabitants! On, Lightning! on, my steed! If you overtake him, I will have the
diamonds of my coronet set in a headstall all of gold for you."
Horse and rider departed like a hurricane.
Iñigo followed them with his eyes till they disappeared in the brush. Then
he looked about him: all like himself remained motionless, in consternation.
The huntsman exclaimed at last:
"Señores, you are my witnesses. I exposed myself to death under his
horse's hoofs to hold him back. I have fulfilled my duty. Against the devil
heroism does not avail. To this point comes the huntsman with his crossbow;
beyond this, it is for the chaplain with his holy water to attempt to pass."
II.
"You are pale; you go about sad and gloomy. What afflicts you? From the
day, which I shall ever hold in hate, on which you went to the fountain of the
Poplars in chase of the wounded deer, I should say an evil sorceress had
bewitched you with her enchantments.
"You do not go to the mountains now preceded by the clamorous pack of
hounds, nor does the blare of your horns awake the echoes. Alone with these
brooding fancies which beset you, every morning you take your crossbow only
to plunge into the thickets and remain there until the sun goes down. And
when night darkens and you return to the castle, white and weary, in vain I
seek in the game-bag the spoils of the chase. What detains you so long far
from those who love you most?"
While Iñigo was speaking, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts,
mechanically cut splinters from the ebony bench with his hunting knife.After a long silence, which was interrupted only by the click of the blade
as it slipped over the polished wood, the young man, addressing his servant as
if he had not heard a single word, exclaimed:
"Iñigo, you who are an old man, you who know all the haunts of the
Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes pursuing wild beasts and in your
wandering hunting trips have more than once stood on its summit, tell me,
have you ever by chance met a woman who dwells among its rocks?"
"A woman!" exclaimed the huntsman with astonishment, looking closely
at him.
"Yes," said the youth. "It is a strange thing that has happened to me, very
strange. I thought I could keep this secret always; but it is no longer possible.
It overflows my heart and begins to reveal itself in my face. Therefore I am
going to tell it to you. You will help me solve the mystery which enfolds this
being who seems to exist only for me, since no one knows her or has seen her,
or can give me any account of her."
The huntsman, without opening his lips, drew forward his stool to place it
near the ebony bench of his lord from whom he did not once remove his
affrighted eyes. The youth, after arranging his thoughts, continued thus:
"From the day on which, notwithstanding your gloomy predictions, I went
to the fountain of the Poplars, and crossing its waters recovered the stag which
your superstition would have let escape, my soul has been filled with a desire
for solitude.
"You do not know that place. See, the fountain springs from a hidden
source in the cavity of a rock, and falls in trickling drops through the green,
floating leaves of the plants that grow on the border of its cradle. These drops,
which on falling glisten like points of gold and sound like the notes of a
musical instrument, unite on the turf and murmuring, murmuring with a sound
like that of bees humming about the flowers, glide on through the gravel, and
form a rill and contend with the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and
leap and flee and run, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until
they fall into a lake. Into the lake they fall with an indescribable sound.
Laments, words, names, songs, I know not what I have heard in that sound
when I have sat, alone and fevered, upon the huge rock at whose feet the
waters of that mysterious fountain leap to bury themselves in a deep pool
whose still surface is scarcely rippled by the evening wind.
"Everything there is grand. Solitude with its thousand vague murmurs
dwells in those places and transports the mind with a profound melancholy. In
the silvered leaves of the poplars, in the hollows of the rocks, in the waves of
the water it seems that the invisible spirits of nature talk with us, that theyrecognize a brother in the immortal soul of man.
"When at break of dawn you would see me take my crossbow and go
toward the mountain, it was never to lose myself among the thickets in pursuit
of game. No, I went to sit on the rim of the fountain, to seek in its waves—I
know not what—an absurdity! The day I leaped over it on my Lightning, I
believed I saw glittering in its depths a marvel—truly a marvel—the eyes of a
woman!
"Perhaps it may have been a fugitive ray of sunshine that wound, serpent
like, through the foam; perhaps one of those flowers which float among the
weeds of its bosom, flowers whose calyxes seem to be emeralds—I do not
know. I thought I saw a gaze which fixed itself on mine, a look which kindled
in my breast a desire absurd, impossible of realization, that of meeting a
person with eyes like those.
"In my search, I went to that place day after day.
"At last, one afternoon—I thought myself the plaything of a dream—but
no, it is the truth; I have spoken with her many times as I am now speaking
with you—one afternoon I found, sitting where I had sat, clothed in a robe
which reached to the waters and floated on their surface, a woman beautiful
beyond all exaggeration. Her hair was like gold; her eyelashes shone like
threads of light, and between the lashes flashed the restless eyes that I had
seen—yes; for the eyes of that woman were the eyes which I bore stamped
upon my mind, eyes of an impossible color, the color——"
"Green!" exclaimed Iñigo, in accents of profound terror, starting with a
bound from his seat.
Fernando, in turn, looked at him as if astonished that Iñigo should supply
what he was about to say, and asked him with mingled anxiety and joy:
"Do you know her?"
"Oh, no!" said the huntsman. "God save me from knowing her! But my
parents, on forbidding me to go toward those places, told me a thousand times
that the spirit, goblin, demon or woman, who dwells in those waters, has eyes
of that color. I conjure you by that which you love most on earth not to return
to the fountain of the Poplars. One day or another her vengeance will overtake
you, and you will expiate in death the crime of having stained her waters."
"By what I love most!" murmured the young man with a sad smile.
"Yes," continued the elder. "By your parents, by your kindred, by the tears
of her whom heaven destines for your wife, by those of a servant who watched
beside your cradle."
"Do you know what I love most in this world? Do you know for what Iwould give the love of my father, the kisses of her who gave me life, and all
the affection which all the women on earth can hold in store? For one look, for
only one look of those eyes! How can I leave off seeking them?"
Fernando said these words in such a tone that the tear which trembled on
the eyelids of Iñigo fell silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed with a
mournful accent: "The will of Heaven be done!"
III.
"Who art thou? What is thy fatherland? Where dost thou dwell? Day after
day I come seeking thee, and see neither the palfrey that brings thee hither, nor
the servants who bear thy litter. Rend once for all the veil of mystery in which
thou dost enfold thyself as in the heart of night. I love thee and, highborn or
lowly, I will be thine, thine forever."
The sun had crossed the crest of the mountain. The shadows were
descending its slope with giant strides. The breeze sighed amid the poplars of
the fountain. The mist, rising little by little from the surface of the lake, began
to envelop the rocks of its margin.
Upon one of these rocks, on one which seemed ready to topple over into
the depths of the waters on whose surface was pictured its wavering image, the
heir of Almenar, on his knees at the feet of his mysterious beloved, sought in
vain to draw from her the secret of her existence.
She was beautiful, beautiful and pallid as an alabaster statue. One of her
tresses fell over her shoulders, entangling itself in the folds of her veil like a
ray of sunlight passing through clouds; and her eyes, within the circle of her
amber-colored lashes, gleamed like emeralds set in fretted gold.
When the youth ceased speaking, her lips moved as for utterance, but only
exhaled a sigh, a sigh soft and sorrowful like that of the gentle wave which a
dying breeze drives among the rushes.
"Thou answerest not," exclaimed Fernando, seeing his hope mocked.
"Wouldst thou have me credit what they have told me of thee? Oh, no! Speak
to me. I long to know if thou lovest me; I long to know if I may love thee, if
thou art a woman——"
—"Or a demon. And if I were?"
The youth hesitated a moment; a cold sweat ran through his limbs; the
pupils of his eyes dilated, fixing themselves with more intensity upon those of
that woman and, fascinated by their phosphoric brilliance, as though demented
he exclaimed in a burst of passion:
"If thou wert, I should love thee. I should love thee as I love thee now, as it
is my destiny to love thee even beyond this life, if there be any life beyond.""Fernando," said the beautiful being then, in a voice like music: "I love
thee even more than thou lovest me; in that I, who am pure spirit, stoop to a
mortal. I am not a woman like those that live on earth. I am a woman worthy
of thee who art superior to the rest of humankind. I dwell in the depths of
these waters, incorporeal like them, fugitive and transparent; I speak with their
murmurs and move with their undulations. I do not punish him who dares
disturb the fountain where I live; rather I reward him with my love, as a mortal
superior to the superstitions of the common herd, as a lover capable of
responding to my strange and mysterious embrace."
While she was speaking, the youth, absorbed in the contemplation of her
fantastic beauty, drawn on as by an unknown force, approached nearer and
nearer the edge of the rock. The woman of the emerald eyes continued thus:
"Dost thou behold, behold the limpid depths of this lake, behold these
plants with large, green leaves which wave in its bosom? They will give us a
couch of emeralds and corals and I—I will give thee a bliss unnamable, that
bliss which thou hast dreamed of in thine hours of delirium, and which no
other can bestow.—Come! the mists of the lake float over our brows like a
pavilion of lawn, the waves call us with their incomprehensible voices, the
wind sings among the poplars hymns of love; come—come!"
Night began to cast her shadows, the moon shimmered on the surface of
the pool, the mist was driven before the rising breeze, the green eyes glittered
in the dusk like the will-o'-the-wisps that run over the surface of impure
waters. "Come, come!" these words were murmuring in the ears of Fernando
like an incantation,—"Come!" and the mysterious woman called him to the
brink of the abyss where she was poised, and seemed to offer him a kiss—a
kiss——
Fernando took one step toward her—another—and felt arms slender and
flexible twining about his neck and a cold sensation on his burning lips, a kiss
of snow—wavered, lost his footing and fell, striking the water with a dull and
mournful sound.
The waves leaped in sparks of light, and closed over his body, and their
silvery circles went widening, widening until they died away on the banks.
THE GOLDEN BRACELET
I.
She was beautiful, beautiful with that beauty which turns a man dizzy;
beautiful with that beauty which in no wise resembles our dream of the angels, and yet is supernatural; a diabolical beauty that the devil perchance gives to
certain beings to make them his instruments on earth.
He loved her—he loved her with that love which knows not check nor
bounds; he loved her with that love which seeks delight and finds but
martyrdom; a love which is akin to bliss, yet which Heaven seems to cast on
mortals for the expiation of their sins.
She was wayward, wayward and unreasonable, like all the women of the
world.
He, superstitious, superstitious and valiant, like all the men of his time.
Her name was Maria Antúnez.
His, Pedro Alfonso de Orellana.
Both were natives of Toledo, and both had their homes in the city which
saw their birth.
The tradition which relates this marvellous event, an event of many years
since, tells nothing more of these two central actors.
I, in my character of scrupulous historian, will not add a single word of my
own invention to describe them further.
II.
One day he found her in tears and asked her:
"Why dost thou weep?"
She dried her eyes, looked at him searchingly, heaved a sigh and began to
weep anew.
Then, drawing close to Maria, he took her hand, leaned his elbow on the
fretted edge of the Arabic parapet whence the beautiful maiden was watching
the river flow beneath, and again he asked her: "Why dost thou weep?"
The Tajo, moaning at the tower's foot, twisted in and out amid the rocks on
which is seated the imperial city. The sun was sinking behind the neighboring
mountains, the afternoon haze was floating, a veil of azure gauze, and only the
monotonous sound of the water broke the profound stillness.
Maria exclaimed: "Ask me not why I weep, ask me not; for I would not
know how to answer thee, nor thou how to understand. In the souls of us
women are stifling desires which reveal themselves only in a sigh, mad ideas
that cross the imagination without our daring to form them into speech,
strange phenomena of our mysterious nature which man cannot even conceive.
I implore thee, ask me not the cause of my grief; if I should reveal it to thee,
perchance thou wouldst reply with peals of laughter."When these words were faltered out, again she bowed the head and again
he urged his questions.
The radiant damsel, breaking at last her stubborn silence, said to her lover
in a hoarse, unsteady voice:
"Thou wilt have it. It is a folly that will make thee laugh, but be it so. I will
tell thee, since thou dost crave to hear.
"Yesterday I was in the temple. They were celebrating the feast of the
Virgin; her image, placed on a golden pedestal above the High Altar, glowed
like a burning coal; the notes of the organ trembled, spreading from echo to
echo throughout the length and breadth of the church, and in the choir the
priests were chanting the Salve, Regina.
"I was praying; I was praying, all absorbed in my religious meditations,
when involuntarily I lifted my head, and my gaze sought the altar. I know not
why my eyes from that instant fixed themselves upon the image, but I speak
amiss—it was not on the image; they fixed themselves upon an object which
until then I had not seen—an object which, I know not why, thenceforth held
all my attention. Do not laugh; that object was the golden bracelet that the
Mother of God wears on one of the arms in which rests her divine Son. I
turned aside my gaze and strove again to pray. Impossible. Without my will,
my eyes moved back to the same point. The altar lights, reflected in the
thousand facets of those diamonds, were multiplied prodigiously. Millions of
living sparks, rosy, azure, green and golden, were whirling around the jewels
like a storm of fiery atoms, like a dizzy round of those spirits of flame which
fascinate with their brightness and their marvellous unrest.
"I left the church. I came home, but I came with that idea fixed in
imagination. I went to bed; I could not sleep. The night passed, a night eternal
with one thought. At dawn my eyelids closed and—believest thou?—even in
slumber I saw crossing before me, dimming in the distance and ever returning,
a woman, a woman dark and beautiful, who wore the ornament of gold and
jewel work; a woman, yes, for it was no longer the Virgin, whom I adore and
at whose feet I bow; it was a woman, another woman like myself, who looked
upon me and laughed mockingly. 'Dost see it?' she appeared to say, showing
me the treasure. 'How it glitters! It seems a circlet of stars snatched from the
sky some summer night. Dost see it? But it is not thine, and it will be thine
never, never. Thou wilt perchance have others that surpass it, others richer, if it
be possible, but this, this which sparkles so piquantly, so bewitchingly, never,
never.' I awoke, but with the same idea fixed here, then as now, like a red-hot
nail, diabolical, irresistible, inspired beyond a doubt by Satan himself.—And
what then?—Thou art silent, silent, and dost hang thy head.—Does not my Pedro, with a convulsive movement, grasped the hilt of his sword, raised
his head, which he had, indeed, bent low and said with smothered voice:
"Which Virgin has this jewel?"
"The Virgin of the Sagrario," murmured Maria.
"The Virgin of the Sagrario!" repeated the youth, with accent of terror.
"The Virgin of the Sagrario of the cathedral!"
And in his features was portrayed for an instant the state of his mind,
appalled before a thought.
"Ah, why does not some other Virgin own it?" he continued, with a tense,
impassioned tone. "Why does not the archbishop bear it in his mitre, the king
in his crown, or the devil between his claws? I would tear it away for thee,
though its price were death or hell. But from the Virgin of the Sagrario, our
own Holy Patroness,—I—I who was born in Toledo! Impossible, impossible!"
"Never!" murmured Maria, in a voice that scarcely reached the ear.
"Never!"
And she wept again.
Pedro fixed a stupefied stare on the running waves of the river—on the
running waves, which flowed and flowed unceasingly before his absent-
thoughted eyes, breaking at the foot of the tower amid the rocks on which is
seated the imperial city.
III.
The cathedral of Toledo! Imagine a forest of colossal palm trees of granite,
that by the interlacing of their branches form a gigantic, magnificent arch,
beneath which take refuge and live, with the life genius has lent them, a whole
creation of beings, both fictitious and real.
Imagine an incomprehensible fall of shadow and light wherein the colored
rays from the ogive windows meet and are merged with the dusk of the nave;
where the gleam of the lamps struggles and is lost in the gloom of the
sanctuary.
Imagine a world of stone, immense as the spirit of our religion, sombre as
its traditions, enigmatic as its parables, and yet you will not have even a
remote idea of this eternal monument of the enthusiasm and faith of our
ancestors—a monument upon which the centuries have emulously lavished
their treasures of knowledge, inspiration and the arts.
In the cathedral-heart dwells silence, majesty, the poetry of mysticism, and
a holy dread which guards those thresholds against worldly thoughts and the
paltry passions of earth.
folly make thee laugh?"Consumption of the body is stayed by breathing pure mountain air; atheism
should be cured by breathing this atmosphere of faith.
But great and impressive as the cathedral presents itself to our eyes at
whatsoever hour we enter its mysterious and sacred precinct, never does it
produce an impression so profound as in those days when it arrays itself in all
the splendors of religious pomp, when its shrines are covered with gold and
jewels, its steps with costly carpeting and its pillars with tapestry.
Then, when its thousand silver lamps, aglow, shed forth a flood of light,
when a cloud of incense floats in air, and the voices of the choir, the
harmonious pealing of the organs, and the bells of the tower make the building
tremble from its deepest foundations to its highest crown of spires, then it is
we comprehend, because we feel, the ineffable majesty of God who dwells
within, gives it life with His breath and fills it with the reflection of His glory.
The same day on which occurred the scene we have just described, the last
rites of the magnificent eight-day feast of the Virgin were held in the
cathedral.
The holy festival had attracted an immense multitude of the faithful; but
already they had dispersed in all directions; already the lights of the chapels
and of the High Altar had been extinguished, and the mighty doors of the
temple had groaned upon their hinges as they closed behind the last departing
worshipper, when forth from the depth of shadow, and pale, pale as the statue
of the tomb on which he leant for an instant, while he conquered his emotion,
there advanced a man, who came slipping with the utmost stealthiness toward
the screen of the central chapel. There the gleam of a lamp made it possible to
distinguish his features.
It was Pedro.
What had passed between the two lovers to bring him to the point of
putting into execution an idea whose mere conception had lifted his hair with
horror? That could never be learned.
But there he was, and he was there to carry out his criminal intent. In his
restless glances, in the trembling of his knees, in the sweat which ran in great
drops down his face, his thought stood written.
The cathedral was alone, utterly alone, and drowned in deepest hush.
Nevertheless, there were perceptible from time to time suggestions of dim
disturbance, creakings of wood maybe or murmurs of the wind, or—who
knows?—perchance illusion of the fancy, which in its excited moments hears
and sees and feels what is not; but in very truth there sounded, now here, now
there, now behind him, now even at his side, something like sobs suppressed,something like the rustle of trailing robes, and a muffled stir as of steps that go
and come unceasingly.
Pedro forced himself to hold his course; he reached the grating and
mounted the first step of the chancel. All along the inner wall of this chapel
are ranged the tombs of kings, whose images of stone, with hand upon the
sword-hilt, seem to keep watch night and day over the sanctuary in whose
shade they take their everlasting rest.
"Onward!" he murmured under his breath, and he strove to move and
could not. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the pavement. He lowered his
eyes, and his hair stood on end with horror. The floor of the chapel was made
of wide, dark burial slabs.
For a moment he believed that a cold and fleshless hand was holding him
there with strength invincible. The dying lamps, which sparkled in the hollow
aisles and transepts like lost stars in the dark, wavered before his vision, the
statues of the sepulchres wavered and the images of the altar, all the cathedral
wavered, with its granite arcades and buttresses of solid stone.
"Onward!" Pedro exclaimed again, as if beside himself; he approached the
altar and climbing upon it, he reached the pedestal of the image. All the space
about clothed itself in weird and frightful shapes, all was shadow and
flickering light, more awful even than total darkness. Only the Queen of
Heaven, softly illuminated by a golden lamp, seemed to smile, tranquil,
gracious and serene, in the midst of all that horror.
Nevertheless, that silent, changeless smile, which calmed him for an
instant, in the end filled him with fear, a fear stranger and more profound than
what he had suffered hitherto.
Yet he regained his self-control, shut his eyes so as not to see her, extended
his hand with a spasmodic movement and snatched off the golden bracelet,
pious offering of a sainted archbishop, the golden bracelet whose value
equalled a fortune.
Now the jewel was in his possession; his convulsed fingers clutched it with
superhuman force; there was nothing left save to flee—to flee with it; but for
this it was necessary to open his eyes, and Pedro was afraid to see, to see the
image, to see the kings of the sepulchres, the demons of the cornices, the
griffins of the capitals, the blotches of shadow and flashes of light which, like
ghostly, gigantic phantoms, were moving slowly in the depths of the nave,
now filled with confused noises, unearthly and appalling.
At last he opened his eyes, cast one glance about him, and from his lips
escaped a piercing cryThe cathedral was full of statues, statues which, clothed in strange, flowing
raiment, had descended from their niches and were thronging all the vast
compass of the church, staring at him with their hollow eyes.
Saints, nuns, angels, devils, warriors, great ladies, pages, hermits, peasants
surrounded him on every side and were massed confusedly in the open spaces
and about the altar. Before it there officiated, in presence of the kings who
were kneeling upon their tombs, the marble archbishops whom he had seen
heretofore stretched motionless upon their beds of death, while a whole world
of granite beasts and creeping things, writhing over the paving-stones, twisting
along the buttresses, curled up in the canopies, swinging from the vaulted roof,
quivered into life like worms in a giant corpse, fantastic, distorted, hideous.
He could resist no longer. His brows throbbed with terrible violence; a
cloud of blood darkened his vision; he uttered a second scream, a scream
heart-rending, inhuman, and fell swooning across the altar.
When the sacristans found him crouching on the altar steps the next
morning, he still clutched the golden bracelet in both hands and on seeing
them draw near, he shrieked with discordant yells of laughter:
"Hers! hers!"
The poor wretch had gone mad.