Kitabı oku: «Romantic legends of Spain», sayfa 6
“ ‘Have him lift his visor! Have him show his face! Have him show his face!’ the citizens present at the trial began to shout. ‘Have him show his face! We will see if then he dare insult us with his contempt, as he does now hidden in his mail.’
“ ‘Show your face,’ demanded the same member of the tribunal who had before addressed him.
“The warrior remained motionless.
“ ‘I command you by the authority of this council.’
“The same answer.
“ ‘By the authority of this realm.’
“Nor for that.
“Indignation rose to its height, even to the point where one of the guards, throwing himself upon the criminal, whose pertinacious silence was enough to exhaust the patience of a saint, violently opened his visor. A general cry of surprise escaped from those within the hall, who remained for an instant smitten with an inconceivable amazement.
“The cause was adequate.
“The helmet, whose iron visor, as all could see, was partly lifted toward the forehead, partly fallen over the shining steel gorget, was empty, – entirely empty.
“When, the first moment of terror passed, they would have touched it, the armor shivered slightly and, breaking asunder into its various pieces, fell to the floor with a dull, strange clang.
“The greater part of the spectators, at the sight of the new prodigy, forsook the room tumultuously and rushed in terror to the square.
“The news spread with the speed of thought among the multitude who were awaiting impatiently the result of the trial; and such was the alarm, the excitement and the clamor, that no one longer doubted what the popular voice had asserted from the first – that the Devil, on the death of the Count of the Segre, had inherited the fiefs of Bellver.
“At last the tumult subsided, and it was decided to return the miraculous armor to the dungeon.
“When this was so bestowed, they despatched four envoys, who, as representing the perplexed town, should present the case to the royal Count of Urgel and the archbishop. In a few days these envoys returned with the decision of those dignitaries, a decision brief and comprehensive.
“ ‘Let the armor be hanged,’ they said, ‘in the central square of the town; if the Devil occupies it, he will find it necessary to abandon it or to be strangled with it.’
“The people of Bellver, enchanted with so ingenious a solution, again assembled in council, ordered a very high gallows to be erected in the square, and when once more the multitude filled the approaches to the prison, went thither for the armor in a body with all the civic dignity which the importance of the case demanded.
“When this honorable delegation arrived at the massive arch giving entrance to the building, a pallid and distracted man threw himself to the ground in the presence of the astonished bystanders, exclaiming with tears in his eyes:
“ ‘Pardon, señores, pardon!’
“ ‘Pardon! For whom?’ said some, ‘for the Devil, who dwells in the armor of the Count of the Segre?’
“ ‘For me,’ continued with shaking voice the unhappy man in whom all recognized the chief warden of the prison, ‘for me – because the armor – has disappeared.’
“On hearing these words, amazement was painted on the faces of as many as were in the portico; silent and motionless, so they would have remained God knows how long if the following narrative of the terrified keeper had not caused them to gather in groups around him, greedy for every word.
“ ‘Pardon me, señores,’ said the poor warden, ‘and I will conceal nothing from you, however much it may be against me.’
“All maintained silence and he went on as follows:
“ ‘I shall never succeed in giving the reason, but the fact is that the story of the empty armor always seemed to me a fable manufactured in favor of some noble personage whom perhaps grave reasons of public policy did not permit the judges to make known or to punish.
“ ‘I was ever of this belief – a belief in which I could not but be confirmed by the immobility in which the armor remained from the hour when, by the order of the tribunal, it was brought a second time to the prison. In vain, night after night, desiring to surprise its secret, if secret there were, I crept up little by little and listened at the cracks of the iron door of its dungeon. Not a sound was perceptible.
“ ‘In vain I managed to observe it through a small hole made in the wall; thrown upon a little straw in one of the darkest corners, it remained day after day disordered and motionless.
“ ‘One night, at last, pricked by curiosity and wishing to convince myself that this object of terror had nothing mysterious about it, I lighted a lantern, went down to the dungeons, drew their double bolts and, not taking the precaution to shut the doors behind me, so firm was my belief that all this was no more than an old wives’ tale, entered the cell. Would I had never done it! Scarcely had I taken a few steps when the light of my lantern went out of itself and my teeth began to chatter and my hair to rise. Breaking the profound silence that encompassed me, I had heard something like a sound of metal pieces which stirred and clanked in fitting themselves together in the gloom.
“ ‘My first movement was to throw myself toward the door to bar the passage, but on grasping its panels I felt upon my shoulders a formidable hand, gauntleted, which, after jerking me violently aside, flung me upon the threshold. There I remained until the next morning when my subordinates found me unconscious and, on reviving, only able to recollect that after my fall I had seemed to hear, confusedly, a sounding tread accompanied by the clatter of spurs, which little by little grew more distant until it died away.’
“When the warden had finished, profound silence reigned, on which there followed an infernal outbreak of lamentations, shouts and threats.
“It was with difficulty that the more temperate could control the populace, who, infuriated at this last turn of affairs, demanded with fierce outcry the death of the inquisitive author of their new disappointment.
“At last the tumult was quieted and the people began to lay plans for a fresh capture. This attempt, too, had a satisfactory outcome.
“At the end of a few days, the armor was again in the power of its foes. Now that the formula was known and the help of Saint Bartholomew secured, the thing was no longer very difficult.
“But yet something remained to be done; in vain, after conquering it, they hanged it from a gallows; in vain they exercised the utmost vigilance for the purpose of giving it no opportunity to escape by way of the upper world. But as soon as two fingers’ breadth of light fell on the scattered pieces of armor, they fitted themselves together and, clinkity clank, made off again to resume their raids over mountain and plain, which was a blessing indeed.
“This was a story without an end.
“In so critical a state of affairs, the people divided among themselves the pieces of the armor that, perchance for the hundredth time, had come into their possession, and prayed the pious hermit, who had once before enlightened them with his counsel, to decide what they should do with it.
“The holy man ordained a general fast. He buried himself for three days in the depths of a cavern that served him as a retreat and at their end bade them melt the diabolical armor and with this and some hewn stones from the castle of the Segre, erect a cross.
“The work was carried through, although not without new and fearful prodigies which filled with terror the souls of the dismayed inhabitants of Bellver.
“As soon as the pieces thrown into the flames began to redden, long and deep groans seemed to come out of the great blaze, within whose circle of fuel the armor leapt as if it were alive and felt the action of the fire. A whirl of sparks red, green and blue danced on the points of the spiring flames and twisted about hissing, as if a legion of devils, mounted on these, would fight to free their lord from that torment.
“Strange, horrible, was the process by which the incandescent armor lost its form to take that of a cross.
“The hammers fell clanging with a frightful uproar upon the anvil, where twenty sturdy smiths beat into shape the bars of boiling metal that quivered and groaned beneath the blows.
“Already the arms of the sign of our redemption were outspread, already the upper end was beginning to take form, when the fiendish, glowing mass writhed anew, as if in frightful convulsion, and enfolding the unfortunate workmen, who struggled to free themselves from its deadly embrace, glittered in rings like a serpent or contracted itself in zigzag like lightning.
“Incessant labor, faith, prayers and holy water succeeded, at last, in overcoming the infernal spirit, and the armor was converted into a cross.
“This cross it is you have seen to-day, the cross in which the Devil who gives it its name is bound. Before it the young people in the month of May place no clusters of lilies, nor do the shepherds uncover as they pass by, nor the old folk kneel; the strict admonitions of the priest scarcely prevent the boys from stoning it.
“God has closed His ears to all supplications offered Him in its presence. In the winter, packs of wolves gather about the juniper which overshadows it to rush upon the herds; banditti wait in its shade for travellers whose slain bodies they bury at its foot, and when the tempest rages, the lightnings deviate from their course to meet, hissing, at the head of this cross and to rend the stones of its pedestal.”
THREE DATES
IN a portfolio which I still treasure, full of idle drawings made during some of my semi-artistic excursions to the city of Toledo, are written three dates.
The events whose memory these figures keep are up to a certain point insignificant.
Nevertheless, by recollecting them I have entertained myself on certain wakeful nights in shaping a novel more or less sentimental or sombre, in proportion as my imagination found itself more or less exalted, and disposed toward the humorous or tragic view of life.
If on the morning following one of these darkling, delirious reveries, I had tried to write out the extraordinary episodes of the impossible fictions which I invented before my eyelids utterly closed, these romances, whose dim dénouement finally floats undetermined on that sea between waking and sleep, would assuredly form a book of preposterous inconsistencies but original and peradventure interesting.
This is not what I am attempting now. These light – one might almost say impalpable – fantasies are in a sense like butterflies which cannot be caught in the hands without there being left between the fingers the golden dust of their wings.
I am going to confine myself, then, to the brief narration of three events which are wont to serve as headings for the chapters of my dream-novels; the three isolated points which I am accustomed to connect in my mind by a series of ideas like a shining thread; the three themes, in short, upon which I play thousands on thousands of variations, amounting to what might be called absurd symphonies of the imagination.
I
There is in Toledo a narrow street, crooked and dim, which guards so faithfully the traces of the hundred generations that have dwelt in it, which speaks so eloquently to the eyes of the artist and reveals to him so many secret points of affinity between the ideas and customs of each century, and the form and special character impressed upon even its most insignificant works, that I would close the entrances with a barrier and place above the barrier a shield with this device:
“In the name of poets and artists, in the name of those who dream and of those who study, civilization is forbidden to touch the least of these bricks with its destructive and prosaic hand.”
At one of the ends of this street, entrance is afforded by a massive arch, flat and dark, which provides a covered passage.
In its keystone is an escutcheon, battered now and corroded by the action of the years; in it grows ivy which, blown by the air, floats above the helmet, that crowns it, like a plumy crest.
Below the vaulting and nailed to the wall is seen a shrine with a sacred picture of blackened canvas and undecipherable design, in frame of gilt rococo, with its lantern hanging by a cord and with its waxen votive offerings.
Leading away from this arch, which enfolds the whole place in its shadow, giving to it an undescribable tint of mystery and sadness, extend on the two sides of the street lines of dusky, dissimilar, odd-looking houses, each having its individual form, size and color. Some are built of rough, uneven stones, without other adornment than a few armorial bearings rudely carved above the portal; others are of brick, with an Arab arch for entrance, two or three Moorish windows opening at caprice in a thick, fissured wall, and a glassed observation turret topped by a lofty weather-vane. Some have a general aspect which does not belong to any order of architecture and yet is a patchwork of all; some are finished models of a distinct and recognized style, some curious examples of the extravagances of an artistic period.
Here are some that boast a wooden balcony with incongruous roof; there are others with a Gothic window freshly whitened and adorned with pots of flowers; and yonder is one with crudely colored tiles set into its door-frame, huge spikes in its panels, and the shafts of two columns, perhaps taken from a Moorish castle, mortised into the wall.
The palace of a grandee converted into a tenement-house; the home of a pundit occupied by a prebendary; a Jewish synagogue transformed into a Christian church; a convent erected on the ruins of an Arab mosque whose minaret is still standing; a thousand strange and picturesque contrasts; thousands on thousands of curious traces left by distinct races, civilizations and epochs epitomized, so to speak, on one hundred yards of ground. All the past is in this one street, – a street built up through many centuries, a narrow, dim, disfigured street with an infinite number of twists where each man in building his house had jutted out or left a corner or made an angle to suit his own taste, regardless of level, height or regularity, – a street rich in uncalculated combinations of lines, with a veritable wealth of whimsical details, with so many, many chance effects that on every visit it offers to the student something new.
When I was first at Toledo, while I was busying myself in making a few sketch-book notes of San Juan de los Reyes, I had to go through this street every afternoon in order to reach the convent from the little inn, with hotel pretensions, where I lodged.
Almost always I would traverse the street from one end to the other without meeting a single person, without any further sound than my own footfalls disturbing the deep silence, without even catching a chance glimpse, behind balcony-blind, door-screen or casement-lattice, of the wrinkled face of a peering old woman, or the great black eyes of a Toledan girl. Sometimes I seemed to myself to be walking through the midst of a deserted city, abandoned by its inhabitants since ages far remote.
Yet one afternoon, on passing in front of a very ancient, gloomy mansion, in whose lofty, massive walls might be seen three or four windows of dissimilar form, placed without order or symmetry, I happened to fix my attention on one of these. It was formed by a great ogee arch surrounded by a wreath of sharply pointed leaves. The arch was closed in by a light wall, recently built and white as snow. In the middle of this, as if contained in the original window, might be seen a little casement with frame and gratings painted green, with a flower-pot of blue morning-glories whose sprays were clambering up over the granite-work, and with panes of leaded glass curtained by white cloth thin and translucent.
The window of itself, peculiar as it was, would have been enough to arrest the gaze, but the circumstance most effective in fixing my attention upon it was that, just as I turned my head to look at it, the curtain had been lifted for a moment only to fall again, concealing from my eyes the person who undoubtedly was at that same instant looking after me.
I pursued my way preoccupied with the idea of the window, or, rather, the curtain, or, to put it still more clearly, the woman who had raised it, for beyond all doubt only a woman could be peeping out from that window so poetic, so white, so green, so full of flowers, and when I say a woman, be it understood that she is imaged as young and beautiful.
The next afternoon I passed the house, – passed with the same close scrutiny; I rapped down my heels sharply, astonishing the silent street with the clatter of my steps, a clatter that repeated itself in responsive echoes, one after another; I looked at the window and the curtain was raised again.
The plain truth is that behind the curtain I saw nothing at all; but by aid of the imagination I seemed to discern a figure, – the figure, in fact, of a woman.
That day twice or thrice I fell into a muse over my drawing. And on other days I passed the house, and always when I was passing the curtain would be raised again, remaining so till the sound of my steps was lost in the distance and I from afar had looked back at it for the last time.
My sketches were making but little progress. In that cloister of San Juan de los Reyes, in that cloister so mysterious and bathed in so profound a melancholy, – seated on the broken capital of a column, my portfolio on my knees, my elbows on my portfolio, and my head between my hands, – to the music of water which flows there with an incessant murmur, to the rustling of leaves under the evening wind in the wild, forsaken garden, what dreams did I not dream of that window and that woman! I knew her; I knew her name and even the color of her eyes.
I would see her crossing the wide and lonely courts of that most ancient house, rejoicing them with her presence as a sunbeam gilds a pile of ruins. Again I would seem to see her in a garden of very lofty, very shadowy walls, among colossal, venerable trees, such as there ought to be at the back of that sort of Gothic palace where she lived, gathering flowers and seating herself alone on a stone bench and there sighing while she plucked them leaf from leaf thinking on – who knows? Perchance on me. Why say perchance? Assuredly on me. Oh, what dreams, what follies, what poetry did that window awaken in my soul while I abode at Toledo!
But my allotted time for sojourning in that city went by. One day, heavy of heart and pensive of mood, I shut up all my drawings in the portfolio, bade farewell to the world of fancy, and took a seat in the coach for Madrid.
Before the highest of the Toledo towers had faded on the horizon, I thrust my head from the carriage window to see it once more, and remembered the street.
I still held the portfolio under my arm, and on taking my seat again, while we rounded the hill which suddenly hid the city from my eyes, I drew out my pencil and set down a date. It is the first of the three, and the one which I call the Date of the Window.
II
At the end of several months, I again had an opportunity to leave the Capital for three or four days. 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.
