Chapter IV

So he lived for a period of several years, in divine bliss, when one afternoon he thought he noticed that some one was prowling about his house, and later he surprised a man fitting his eye to the key-hole of one of the garden-doors.

“There are robbers about,” he said. And he determined to inform the nearest town, where there was a brace of civil guards.

“Where are you going?” asked his wife.

“To the town.”

“What for?”

“To inform the civil guards that I suspect some one is prowling about our house.”

When his wife heard that, she paled slightly. He, giving her a kiss, continued:

“I am going on foot, for it is not far. Good-bye till I come again.”

On passing through the court-yard to reach the gate, he stepped into the stable a moment, looked his horse over and, patting him, said:

“Good-bye, old fellow, good-bye; to-day you shall rest, for yesterday I put you to your paces.”

The horse, who was accustomed to go out every day with his master, whinnied sadly on hearing him depart.

When Andrés was about to leave the premises, the dog began to frolic for joy.

“No, you are not coming with me,” he exclaimed, speaking as if the dog would understand. “When you go to the town, you bark at the boys and chase the hens, and some fine day somebody will give you such a blow that you will have no spirit left to go back for another. Don’t let him out until I am gone,” he continued, addressing a servant, and he shut the gate that the dog might not follow him.

He had taken the turn in the road before he ceased hearing the prolonged howls.

He went to the town, despatched his business, had a pleasant half-hour with the _alcalde_, chatting of this and that, and returned home. On reaching the neighborhood of his estate, he was greatly surprised that the dog did not come out to welcome him, the dog that on other occasions, as if aware of his movements, would meet him half way down the road.--He whistles--no response! He enters the outer gates. Not a servant! “What the deuce is the meaning of this?” he exclaims disquieted, and proceeds to the house.

Arrived, he enters the court. The first sight that meets his eyes is the dog stretched in a pool of blood at the stable door. A few pieces of cloth scattered over the ground, some threads still hanging from his jaws, covered with crimson foam, witness that he made a good defence and that in the defence he had received the wounds so thick upon him.

Andrés calls him by his name; the dying dog half opens his eyes, tries in vain to get upon his feet, feebly wags his tail, licks the hand that caresses him, and dies.

“My horse! where is my horse?” then exclaimed Andrés with a voice hoarse and stifled by emotion, as he saw the stall empty and the halter broken.

He dashes thence like a madman; he calls his wife,--no answer; his servants,--nothing. Beside himself, he rushes over the whole house,--vacant, abandoned. Again he goes out to the street, sees the hoof-marks of his horse, his own,--no doubt of it,--for he knows, or thinks he knows, even the tracks of his cherished animal.

“I understand it all,” he says, as if illumined by a sudden idea. “The robbers have taken advantage of my absence to accomplish their design, and they are carrying off my wife to exact of me for her ransom a great sum of money. Money! my blood, my soul’s salvation, would I give for her.--My poor dog!” he exclaims, returning to look at him, and then he starts forth running like a man out of his wits, following the direction of the hoof-prints.

And he ran, he ran without resting for an instant after those tracks; one hour, two, three.

“Have you seen,” he asked of everybody, “a man on horseback with a woman on the crupper?”

“Yes,” they answered.

“Which way did they go?”

“That way.”

And Andrés would gather fresh force and keep on running.

The night commenced to fall. To the same question he had ever the same reply; and he ran, and he ran, until at last he discerned a village, and near the entrance, at the foot of a cross which marked the point where the road divided into two, he saw a group of people, laborers, old men, boys, who were regarding with curiosity something that he could not distinguish.

He arrives, puts the same question as ever, and one of the group says:

“Yes, we have had sight of that pair; look! for a clearer trace see the horse that carried them, who fell here ruptured with running.”

Andrés turns his eyes in the direction they indicated, and indeed sees his horse, his beloved horse, which some men of the place were preparing to flay for the sake of its hide. He could scarcely resist his grief, but recovering himself, he turned again to the thought of his wife.

“And tell me,” he exclaimed impetuously; “how you failed to render aid to that woman in distress.”

“And didn’t we aid her!” said another of the circle. “Didn’t I sell them another saddle-horse so that they might press on their way with all the speed that seemed so important to them!”

“But,” interrupted Andrés, “that woman was stolen away by force; that man is a bandit, who, regardless of her tears and her laments, drags her I know not whither.”

The sly rustics exchanged glances and compassionate smiles.

“Not so, _señorito_! what tales are you telling us?” slowly continued the man with whom he was talking. “Stolen away by force! But how if it were she herself who said with the greatest earnestness: ‘Quick, quick, let us flee from this district! I shall not be at rest until it is out of my sight forever.’”

Andrés comprehended all; a cloud of blood passed before his eyes--eyes which shed no tear, and he fell to the earth prone as the dead.

He went mad; in a few days, he died.

There was an autopsy; no organic trouble was found. Ah! if it were possible to dissect the soul, how many deaths similar to this would be explained!

* * * * *

“And did he actually die of that?” exclaimed the youth, who was still playing with the charms that hung from his watch chain, as I finished my story.

I glanced at him as if to say: “Does it seem to you so little?” He continued with a certain air of profundity: “Strange! I know what it is to suffer; when in the last races my Herminia stumbled, killed the jockey and broke a leg, the misfortune of that animal vexed me horribly; but, frankly, not so much as that--not so much as that.”

I was still regarding him with astonishment, when I heard a melodious and slightly veiled voice, the voice of the girl with the azure eyes.

“Strange, indeed! I love my Medoro dearly,” she said, dropping a kiss on the snout of the sluggish and blear-eyed lap-dog, who gave a little grunt, “but if he should die, or somebody should kill him, I do not believe that I would go mad nor anything like it.”

My astonishment was passing into stupefaction; these people had not understood me, nor wished to understand me.

Finally I turned to the gentleman who was taking tea, for at his years he might be expected to be somewhat more reasonable.

“And you? how does it seem to you?” I asked.

“I will tell you,” he replied. “I am married; I loved my wife; I have, it seems to me, a regard for her still; there came up between us a domestic unpleasantness, that by its publicity forced me to demand satisfaction; a duel followed; I had the good luck to wound my adversary, an excellent fellow, as full of jest and wit as any man alive, with whom I am still in the habit of taking coffee occasionally in the Iberia. Since then I have ceased to live with my wife, and have devoted myself to travel.--When I am in Madrid, I stay with her as a friend visiting a friend; and all this has taken place without any violent passions, without any great emotions, without any extraordinary sufferings. After this slight sketch of my character and of my life, what shall I say to you about these phenomenal explosions of feeling except that all this seems to me strange, very strange?”

When he had finished speaking, the blonde girl and the young man who was making love to her looked over together an album of Gabarni’s caricatures. In those few moments the elder gentleman treated himself with exquisite enjoyment to his third cup of tea.

When I called to mind that on hearing the outcome of my story they all had said--_Strange!_--I for my part exclaimed to myself--_Natural!_

WITHERED LEAVES

The sun had set. The wheeling masses of cloud were hastening to heap themselves one above another in the distant horizon. The cold wind of autumn evenings was whirling the withered leaves about my feet.

I was sitting by the side of a road [the road to the cemetery] where ever there return fewer than those who go.

I do not know of what I was thinking, if, indeed, I was just then thinking of anything at all. My soul was trembling on the point of soaring into space, as the bird trembles and flutters its wings before taking flight.

There are moments in which, thanks to a series of abstractions, the spirit withdraws from its environment and, self-absorbed, analyzes and comprehends the mysterious phenomena of the inner life of man.

There are other moments in which the soul slips free from the flesh, loses its personality, mingles with the elements of nature, relates itself to their mode of being and translates their incomprehensible language.

In one of these latter moments was I, when, alone and in the midst of a clear tract of level ground, I heard talking near me.

The speakers were two withered leaves, and this, a little more or less exact, was their strange dialogue:

“Whence comest thou, sister?”

“I come from riding on the whirlwind, enveloped in the cloud of dust and of withered leaves, our companions, all the length of the interminable plain. And thou?”

“I drifted for a time with the current of the river, until the strong south wind snatched me up from the mud and reeds of the bank.”

“And whither bound?”

“I know not. Doth perchance the wind that driveth me know?”

“Woe is me! Who would have said that we should end like this, faded and withered, dragging ourselves along the ground--we who lived clothed in color and light, dancing in the air?”

“Rememberest thou the beautiful days of our budding--that peaceful morning when, at the breaking of the swollen sheath which had served us for a cradle, we unfolded to the gentle kiss of the sun, like a fan of emeralds?”

“Oh, how sweet it was to be swayed at that height by the breeze, drinking in through every pore the air and the light!”

“Oh, how beautiful it was to watch the flowing water of the river that lapped the twisted roots of the ancient tree which sustained us, that limpid, transparent water, reflecting like a mirror the azure of the sky, so that we seemed to live suspended between two blue abysses!”

“With what delight we used to peep over the green foliage to see ourselves pictured in the tremulous stream!”

“How we would sing together, imitating the murmur of the breeze and following the rhythm of the waves!”

“Brilliant insects would flit about us, spreading their gauzy wings.”

“And the white butterflies and blue dragon-flies, gyrating in strange circles through the air, would alight for a moment on our dentate edges to tell each other the secrets of that mysterious love lasting but an instant and burning up their lives.”

“Each of us was a note in the concert of the groves.”

“Each of us was a tone in their harmony of color.”

“In the silver nights when the moonbeams glided over the mountain tops, dost remember how we would chat in low voices amid the translucent shadows?”

“And we would relate in soft whispers stories of the sylphs who swing in the golden threads that the spiders hang from tree to tree.”

“Until we hushed our murmurous speech to listen enraptured to the plaints of the nightingale, who had chosen our tree for her throne of song.”

“And so sad and so tender were her lamenting strains that, though filled with joy to hear her, the dawn found us weeping.”

“Oh, how sweet were those tears which the dew of night would shed upon us, and which would sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the first gleam of dawn!”

“Then came the jocund flock of linnets to pour into the grove life and sound with the gleeful, gay confusion of their songs.”

“And one enamoured pair hung close to us their round nest of straws and feathers.”

“We served to shelter the little ones from the troublesome rain-drops in the summer tempests.”

“We served as a canopy to shield them from the fierce rays of the sun.”

“Our life passed like a golden dream from which we had no thought there could be an awakening.”

“One beautiful afternoon, when everything around us seemed to smile, when the setting sun was kindling the west and crimsoning the clouds, and from the earth, touched by the evening damp, were rising exhalations of life and the perfumes of flowers, two lovers stayed their steps on the river bank at the foot of our parent tree.”

“Never will that memory fade! She was young, scarcely more than a child, beautiful and pallid. He asked her tenderly, ‘Why weepest thou?’ ‘Forgive this involuntary selfishness,’ she replied, brushing away a tear; ‘I weep for myself; I weep for the life which is slipping from me. When the sky is crowned with sunshine and the earth is clothed with verdure and flowers, and the wind is laden with perfumes, with the songs of birds and with far-off harmonies, and when one loves and feels herself beloved, life is good.’ ‘And why wilt thou not live?’ he insisted, deeply moved, clasping her hands close in his. ‘Because I cannot. When these leaves, which whisper in unison above our heads, fall withered, I, too, shall die, and the wind will some day bear away their dust, and mine--whither, who knoweth?’”

“I heard, and thou did’st hear, and we shuddered and were silent. We must wither! We must die, and be whirled about by the rushing wind! Mute and full of terror we remained even till nightfall. O, how terrible was that night!”

“For the first time the love-lorn nightingale failed at the tryst which she had enchanted with her mournful lays.”

“Soon the birds flew away, and with them their little ones now clothed with plumage, and only the nest remained, rocking slowly and sadly, like the empty cradle of a dead child.”

“And the white butterflies and the blue dragonflies fled, leaving their place to obscure insects which came to eat away our fibre and to deposit in our bosoms their nauseous larvae.”

“Oh, and how we shivered, shrinking from the icy touch of the night frosts!”

“We lost our color and freshness.”

“We lost our pliancy and grace, and what before had been to us like the soft sound of kisses, like the murmur of love words, now became a harsh, dry call, unwelcome, dismal.”

“And at last, dislodged, we flew away.”

“Trodden under foot by the careless passers-by, whirled incessantly from one point to another in the dust and the mire, I accounted myself happy when I could rest for an instant in the deep rut of a road.”

“I have revolved unceasingly in the grip of the turbid stream; and in the course of my long travels I saw, alone, in mourning garb and with clouded brow, gazing absently upon the running waters and the withered leaves which shared and marked their movement, one of those two lovers whose words gave us our first presentment of death.”

“She, too, has lost her hold on life, and perchance will sleep in an open, new-made grave over which I paused a moment.”

“Ah, she sleeps and rests at last; but we, when shall we come to the end of our long journey?”

“Never!--Even now the wind, which has given us a brief repose, blows once more, and I feel myself constrained to rise from the ground and follow. Adieu, sister!”

“Adieu!”

* * * * *

The wind, quiet for a moment, whistled again, and the leaves rose in a whirling confusion, to be lost afar in the darkness of the night.

And then there came to me a thought that I cannot remember and that, even though I were to remember it, I could find no words to utter.

THE SET OF EMERALDS

We were pausing on the Street of San Jerónimo, in front of Durán’s and were reading the title of a book by Mery.

As my attention was called to that extraordinary title, and as I spoke of it to the friend who accompanied me, he, leaning lightly on my arm, exclaimed: “The day could not be more beautiful. Let us take a turn by the Fuente Castellana. While we are walking, I will tell you a story in which I am the principal hero. You will see how, after hearing it, you will not only understand this title, but will find its explanation the easiest thing in the world.”

I had plenty to do; but as I am always glad of an excuse for doing nothing, I accepted the proposition, and my friend began his story as follows:

“Some time ago, one night when I had set out to stroll the streets, without any more definite object,--after having examined all the collections of prints and photographs in the shop-windows, after having chosen in imagination in front of the Savoyard store the bronzes with which I would adorn my house, if I had one, after having made a minute survey, in fine, of all the objects of art and luxury exposed to public view upon the shelves behind the lighted plate-glass, I stopped a moment before Samper’s.

“I do not know how long it was that I remained there, adorning, in fancy, all the pretty women I know, one with a collar of pearls, another with a cross of diamonds, another with ear-rings of amethyst and gold. I was deliberating at that point to whom to offer--who would be worthy of it--a magnificent set of emeralds as rich as it was elegant, which among all the other jewelled ornaments claimed attention for the beauty and clearness of its stones, when I heard at my side the softest, sweetest voice exclaim with an accent which could not fail to put my fancies to flight: ‘What beautiful emeralds!’

“I turned my head in the direction of that voice, a woman’s voice, for only so could it have left such an echo, and I confronted, in fact, a woman supremely beautiful. I could look at her only a moment, and yet her loveliness made on me a profound impression.

“At the door of the jeweller’s shop from which she had come out, there was a carriage. She was accompanied by a lady of mature age, too young to be her mother, too old to be her friend. When both had entered the _coupé_, the horses started, and I stood like a fool staring after her until she was lost to sight.

“‘What beautiful emeralds!’ she had said. The emeralds were indeed superb. That collar, around her snowy neck, would look like a garland of young almond leaves besprent with dew; that brooch upon her bosom, a lotus-flower when it sways on its pulsing wave, crowned with foam. ‘What beautiful emeralds!’ Would she like them, perhaps? And if she would like them, why not have them? She must be rich, a lady of high rank. She has an elegant carriage, and on the door of that carriage I thought I saw a crest. Doubtless in the life of this woman there is some mystery.

“These were the thoughts that agitated my mind after I lost sight of her,--when not even the sound of her carriage wheels came to my ears. And truly there was in her life, apparently so peaceful and enviable, a horrible mystery. I found it out--I will not tell you how.

“Married when a mere child to a profligate who, after squandering his own fortune, had sought a profitable alliance, as the best means of squandering another’s, that woman, a model of wives and mothers, had refused to gratify the least of her caprices that she might save some part of her inheritance for her daughter and that she might maintain in outer appearance the dignity of her house at the height which it had always held in Spanish society.

“People tell of some women’s great sacrifices. I believe that, considering their peculiar organization, there is none comparable with the sacrifice of an ardent desire in which vanity and coquetry are concerned.

“From the time when I penetrated the mystery of her life, all my aspirations, through one of these freakish enthusiasms of my character, were reduced to this only,--to get possession of that marvellous set of jewels and to give it to her in such a way that she could not refuse it, nor even know from whose hand it might have come.

“Among other difficulties which I at once encountered in the realization of my idea, assuredly not the least was that I had not money, neither much nor little, to buy the gems.

“Yet I did not despair.

“‘Where shall I look for money?’ I said to myself, and I remembered the marvels of _The Thousand and One Nights_; those cabalistic words at whose echo the earth opened and revealed hidden treasures; those rods of such rare virtue that, when rocks were smitten by them, there bubbled from the clefts not a spring of water, which was a small miracle, but rubies, topazes, pearls and diamonds.

“Being ignorant of the words and not knowing where to find a rod, I decided at last to write a book and sell it. To get money out of the rock of a publisher is nothing short of miraculous; but I did it.

“I wrote a book of original quality, which few people liked, as only one person could understand it; for the rest it was merely a collection of phrases.

From the painting by F. Goya]

“The book was entitled _The Set of Emeralds_, and I signed it with my initials only.

“Since I am not Victor Hugo, nor anybody of the sort, I need not tell you that I did not get for my novel what the author of _Notre Dame de Paris_ had for his latest; but what with one thing and another I gathered together a sufficient sum to begin my plan of campaign.

“The emeralds in question would be worth from fourteen to fifteen thousand dollars, and toward the purchase I now counted up the respectable sum of one hundred and fifty. It was necessary, then, to game.

“I gamed; and I gamed with such good sense and good fortune that in a single night I won what I needed.

“Apropos of gambling, I have made an observation in which every day has confirmed me more and more. If one puts down his money with the full expectation of winning, he wins. One must not approach the green table with the hesitancy of a man who is going to try his luck, but with the coolness of him who comes to take his own. For myself, I can assure you that I should have been as much surprised to lose that night as if a substantial bank had refused me money on a check with Rothschild’s signature.

“The next day I went to Samper’s. Will you believe that in throwing down upon the jeweller’s counter that handful of many-colored notes, those notes which represented for me at least a year of pleasure, many beautiful women, a journey to Italy, and champagne and cigars at discretion, that I wavered a moment? Then don’t believe it. I threw them down with the same nonchalance--do I say nonchalance?--with the same satisfaction with which Buckingham, breaking the thread on which they were strung, strewed with pearls the carpet of his beloved’s palace.

“I bought the jewels and carried them to my lodgings. You can picture nothing more glorious than that set of emeralds. No wonder the women sigh now and then as they pass in front of those shops which present to their eyes such glittering temptations; no wonder that Mephistopheles selected a collar of precious stones as the object most likely to seduce Marguerite. I, man that I am, could have wished for an instant to live in the Orient and be one of those fabulous monarchs who wreathe their brows with a coil of gold and gems, that I might adorn myself with those magnificent emerald leaves and diamond flowers.

“A gnome, to buy a kiss from a sylph, would not have been able to find among the immense treasures hoarded in the avaricious heart of the earth and known to those elves alone, an emerald larger, clearer, more beautiful than that which sparkled, fastening a knot of rubies, in the centre of the diadem.

“Now that I had the gems, I began to think out a way of placing them in possession of the woman for whom they were intended.

“At the end of several days, I prevailed upon one of her maids--thanks to the money that I still had left--to promise me that she, when unobserved, would place the set in the jewel-box; and to assure myself that she should not, by her conduct, betray the source of the gift, I gave her what money was left over, several hundred dollars, on condition that she, as soon as she had put the emeralds in the place agreed upon, should leave the capital and remove to Barcelona. This, in fact, she did.

“Judge for yourself what must have been the surprise of her mistress when, after noticing her sudden disappearance and suspecting that perhaps she had fled from the house with something stolen, she found in the jewel-box the magnificent set of emeralds. Who had divined her thought? Who had been able to surmise that she still, from time to time, remembered those gems with a sigh?

“The weeks and the months passed on. I knew that she kept my gift; I knew that great efforts had been made to discover whence it came; and yet I had never seen her adorned with it.--Did she scorn the offering? ‘Ah!’ I said, ‘if she knew all the merit of that gift! if she knew that its desert is scarcely surpassed by the gift of that lover who pawned his cloak in winter to buy a nosegay! Does she perhaps think that it comes from the hands of some great personage who will one day present himself, if admitted, to claim its price? What a mistake she makes!’

“One night when there was to be a royal ball I stationed myself at the door of the palace and, lost in the crowd, waited for her carriage that I might see her. When it arrived and, the footman opening the door, she appeared in radiant beauty, a murmur of admiration went up from among the pressing multitude. The women beheld her with envy; the men with longing; from me there broke a low, involuntary cry. She was wearing the set of emeralds.

“That night I went to bed without my supper; I do not remember whether it was because emotion had taken away my appetite or because I had no money. In either case, I was happy. In my dreams I thought I heard the music of the ball and saw her crossing before my eyes, flashing sparks of a thousand colors, until I dreamed even that I was dancing with her.

“The romance of the emeralds had been conjectured, since they had been talked about when they first appeared in the cabinet, by some ladies of rank.

“Now that the set had been seen, there was no longer room for doubt, and idle tongues began to comment on the affair. She enjoyed a spotless reputation. Notwithstanding the dissipation of her husband and his neglect of her, calumny could never reach to the height on which her virtue had placed her; but yet, on this occasion, there began to stir that little breath of gossip from which, according to Don Basilio, scandal begins.

“On a day when I chanced to be in a circle of young men, the conversation fell on the famous emeralds, and finally a coxcomb said, as if settling the matter:

“There is no need of discussion. These jewels have as vulgar an origin as all such presents in this world of ours. The time has gone by when invisible spirits placed marvellous gifts under the pillows of lovely ladies, and the man who makes a present of this value makes it with the hope of a recompense--and this recompense, who knows that it was not given in advance?”

“The words of that idiot roused my wrath, and all the more because they found response in those who heard them. Yet I controlled myself. What right had I to go to the defence of that woman?

“Not a quarter of an hour had passed when I had opportunity to contradict this man who had insulted her. I do not know exactly what the point was on which I contradicted him; what I can assure you of is that I did it with so much sharpness, not to say rudeness, that out of our dispute grew a quarrel. That is what I was seeking.

“My friends, knowing my disposition, wondered, not only that I should have sought a duel for so trifling a cause, but at my firm refusal to give or receive explanations of any kind.

“I fought, I do not know whether to say with good fortune or not, for although on firing I saw my adversary sway an instant and fall to the ground, a second after I felt my ears buzzing and my eyes clouding over. I was wounded, too, and seriously, in the breast.

“They carried me, already in a burning fever, to my mean lodging. There I know not how many days went by, while I called aloud I know not on whom; undoubtedly on her. I would have had courage to suffer in silence all my life for one look of gratitude on the brink of the grave; but to die without leaving her even a memory of me!

“These ideas were tormenting my imagination one wakeful, fevered night, when I saw the curtains of my alcove part and in the opening appeared a woman. I thought that I was dreaming; but no. That woman approached my bed, that poor, hot bed on which I was tossing in pain, and lifting the veil which covered her face, disclosed a tear trembling on her long, dark lashes. It was she!

“I started up with frightened eyes, I started up and--at that moment I arrived in front of Durán’s bookstore--”

“What!” I exclaimed, interrupting my friend on hearing that change of tone. “Then you were not wounded and in bed?”

“In bed!--ah! what the deuce! I had forgotten to tell you that all this is what I was thinking as I came from the jewelry shop of Samper,--where in sober truth I saw the set of emeralds and heard, on the lips of a beautiful woman, the exclamation which I have mentioned to you,--to the _Carrera de San Jerónimo_, where a thrust from the elbow of a porter roused me from my revery in front of Durán’s, in whose window I observed a book by Mery with this title, _Histoire de ce qui n’est pas arrivé_, ‘The Story of that which did not happen.’ Do you understand it now?”

On hearing this _dénouement_, I could not repress a shout of laughter. Really I do not know of what Mery’s book may treat, but I now see how, with that title, a million incomparable stories might be written.

THE TAVERN OF THE CATS

In Seville, at the half-way point of the road that runs from the Macarena gate to the convent of San Jerónimo, there is, among other famous taverns, one which, because of its location and the special features that attach to it, may be said to have been, if it is not now, the _real thing_, the most characteristic of all the Andalusian roadside inns.

Picture to yourself a little house, white as the driven snow, under its roof of tiles, some reddish, some deep green, with an endless growth of yellow mustard and sprigs of mignonette springing up among them. A wooden overhang shadows the door, which has on either side a bench of cemented brick. Mortised into the wall, which is broken by various little casements, opened at caprice to give light to the interior, some lower, some higher, one square, another imitating a Moorish arched window with its dividing colonnettes, or a dormer, are seen at regular distances iron spikes and rings for hitching the horses. A vine, full of years, which twists its blackening stems in and out of the sustaining wooden lattice, clothing it with clusters of grapes and broad green leaves, covers like a canopy the guest-hall, that consists of three pine benches, half a dozen rickety rush chairs, and as many as six or seven crippled tables made of ill-joined boards. On one side of the house climbs a honeysuckle, clinging to the cracks in the wall, up to the roof, from whose eaves droop sprays that sway with the wind, like floating curtains of verdure. On the other side runs a fence of wattled twigs, defining the bounds of a little garden that looks like a basket of rushes overflowing with flowers. The tops of two great trees, towering up behind the tavern, form the dark background against which stand out its white chimneys; the decoration is completed by the orchard-plots full of century-plants and blackberries, the broom that grows on the borders of the river, and the Guadalquivir, which flows into the distance, slowly winding its tortuous way between those rural banks to the foot of the ancient convent of San Jerónimo, that peers above the thick olive groves surrounding it and traces the black silhouette of its towers against a transparent, azure sky.

Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures--men, women, children and animals, forming groups that vie with one another in the characteristic and the picturesque; here the innkeeper, round and ruddy, seated in the sun on a low chair, rolling between his hands the tobacco to make a cigarette, with the paper in his mouth; there a huckster of Macarena who sings, rolling up his eyes, to the accompaniment of his guitar, while others beat time by clapping their hands or striking their glasses on the tables; over yonder a group of peasant girls with their gauzy kerchiefs of a million colors, and a whole flower-pot of pinks in their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk at the top of their voices as they push like mad the swing hung between two trees; and the serving-boys of the tavern who come and go with trays of wine-glasses full of manzanilla and with plates of olives; and the group of village people who swarm in the road; two drunken fellows quarrelling with a dandy who is making love, in passing, to a pretty girl; a cock that, proudly spreading out its wings, crows from the thatch of the poultry-yard; a dog that barks at the boys who tease him with sticks and stones; olive-oil boiling and bubbling in the pan where fish is frying; the cracking of the whips of the cab-drivers who arrive in a cloud of dust; a din of songs, castanets, peals of laughter, voices, whistles and guitars, and blows on the tables, and clappings, and crash of breaking pitchers, and thousands of strange, discordant sounds forming a jocund hullabaloo impossible to describe. Fancy all this on a pleasant calm afternoon, the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia where all the days are so beautiful, and you will have an idea of the spectacle that presented itself for the first time to my eyes, when, led by its fame, I came to visit that celebrated tavern.

This was many years ago; ten or twelve, at least. I was there as a stranger, away from my natural environment, and everything about me, from the cut of my clothes to the astonished expression of my face, was out of keeping with that picture of frank and boisterous jollity. It seemed to me that the passers-by turned their heads to stare at me with the dislike with which one regards an intruder.

Not wishing to attract attention nor choosing that my appearance should be made the butt of mockeries more or less dissembled, I took a seat at one side of the tavern door, called for something to drink, which I did not drink, and when all had forgotten my alien presence, I drew out a sheet of sketching paper from the portfolio which I carried with me, sharpened a pencil, and began to look about for a characteristic figure to copy and preserve as a souvenir of that day.

Soon my eyes fastened on one of the girls forming the merry group around the swing. She was tall, slender, brunette, with sleepy eyes, big and black, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the sketch a group of men, among them one who played lively flourishes on the guitar with much skill, chorused songs that alluded to personal qualities, the secrets of love, the likings of the girls who were sporting about the swing or stories of their jealousy and their disdain,--songs to which these in their turn responded with others no less saucy, piquant and gay.

The slender brunette, quick of wit, whom I had chosen for model, led the singing of the women, composing the quatrains and reciting them to her companions who greeted them with clapping and laughter, while the guitar-player seemed to be the leader of the lads and the one eminent among them all for his cleverness and ready retorts.

For my part, it did not take me long to understand that between these two there was a feeling of affection which betrayed itself in their songs, full of transparent allusions and enamoured phrases.

When I finished my drawing, night was beginning to fall. Already there had been lighted in the tower of the cathedral the two lanterns of the shrine of the bells, and their lustres seemed like fiery eyes from that giant of brick and mortar which dominates all the city. The groups were going, melting away little by little and disappearing up the road in the dim twilight silvered by the moon, that now began to show against the violet dusk of the sky. The girls went singing away together, and their clear, bright voices gradually lessened until they became but a part of the other indistinct and distant sounds that trembled in the air. All was over at once,--the day, the jollity, the animation and the impromptu festival; and of all there remained only an echo in the ear and in the soul, like the softest of vibrations, like a sweet drowsiness such as one experiences on waking from a pleasant dream.

When the last loiterers were gone, I folded my drawing, placed it safely in the portfolio, called the waiter with a hand-clap, paid my trifling account, and was just on the point of departing when I felt myself caught gently by the arm. It was the young guitar-player whom I had noticed before and who while I was drawing had often stared at me with unusual curiosity. I had not observed that, after the fun was over, he approached under some pretext the place where I was sitting in order to see what I was doing that I should be looking so steadily at the woman in whom he seemed to have a special interest.

“_Señorito_,” he said to me in a tone which he strove to soften as much as possible, “I am going to ask you to do me a favor.”

“A favor!” I exclaimed, without comprehending what he could want of me. “Name it, and if it is in my power, count on it as done.”

“Would you give me the picture you have made?” On hearing this, I could not help pausing a moment in perplexity, surprised both by the request, rare enough in itself, and by the tone, which baffled me to determine whether it was one of threat or of entreaty. He must have understood my hesitation, and he immediately hastened to add:

“I beg it of you for the sake of your mother, for the sake of the woman whom you hold dearest in the world, if you hold any dear; ask of me in return all that my poverty affords.”

I did not know how to make my way out of this difficulty, I would almost have preferred that it had come in guise of a quarrel, if so I might have kept the sketch of that woman who had so deeply impressed me; but whether it was the surprise of the moment, or my inability to say no to anything, the fact is that I opened my portfolio, took out the drawing and handed it to him without a word.

To repeat the lad’s expressions of gratitude, his exclamations as he gazed at it anew by the light of the tavern’s metal lamp, the care with which he folded it to put it away securely in his sash, the offers of devotion he made me, and the extravagant praises with which he cried up his good fortune in that he had met one whom he called, in his clipped Andalusian speech, a “reg’lar _señorito_,” would be a task most difficult, not to say impossible. I will only say that, as the night, what with one delay and another, was now fully upon us, he insisted, willy-nilly, on going with me to the Macarena gate; and he laid so much stress on it, that finally I decided that it would be better to take the road together. The way is very short, but while it lasted he managed to tell me from beginning to end all the story of his love.

The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that she had been brought up in his father’s house from her babyhood, and that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands, again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt joyous with a strange and nameless joy--a reflected joy, if I may say so.

He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:

“Too long our separation;
Soul of my soul thou art,
The Virgin of Consolation
On the altar of my heart.”

When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.

A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my memory.