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 “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 they recognize 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 I
would 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?”
 A CITY SQUARE, TOLEDO

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 folly make thee
laugh?”
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.
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 cry.
The 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.
 THE RAY OF MOONSHINE
I DO not know whether this is history which seems like a tale, or a tale
which seems like history; what I can affirm is that in its core it contains a
truth, a truth supremely sad, which in all likelihood I, with my imaginative
tendencies, will be one of the last to take to heart.
Another with this idea would perhaps have made a book of melancholy
philosophy. I have written this legend that those who see nothing of its deep
meaning may at least derive from it a moment of entertainment.

I.

He was noble, he had been born amid the clash of arms, and yet the
sudden blare of a war trumpet would not have caused him to lift his head an
instant or turn his eyes an inch away from the dim parchment in which he
was reading the last song of a troubadour.
Those who desired to see him had no need to look for him in the
spacious court of his castle, where the grooms were breaking in the colts,
the pages teaching the falcons to fly, and the soldiers employing their
leisure days in sharpening on stones the iron points of their lances.
“Where is Manrico? Where is your lord?” his mother would sometimes
ask.
“We do not know,” the servants would reply. “Perchance he is in the
cloister of the monastery of the Peña, seated on the edge of a tomb,
listening to see if he may
 THE BRIDGE OF TOLEDO

surprise some word of the conversation of the dead; or on the bridge

watching the river-waves chasing one another under its arches, or curled up
in the fissure of some rock counting the stars in the sky, following with his
eyes a cloud, or contemplating the will-o’-the-wisps that flit like
exhalations over the surface of the marshes. Wherever he is, it is where he
has least company.”
In truth, Manrico was a lover of solitude, and so extreme a lover that
sometimes he would have wished to be a body without a shadow, because
then his shadow would not follow him everywhere he went.
He loved solitude, because in its bosom he would invent, giving free rein
to his imagination, a phantasmal world, inhabited by wonderful beings,
daughters of his weird fancies and his poetic dreams; for Manrico was a
poet,—so true a poet that never had he found adequate forms in which to
utter his thoughts nor had he ever imprisoned them in words.
He believed that among the red coals of the hearth there dwelt fire-spirits
of a thousand hues which ran like golden insects along the enkindled logs or
danced in a luminous whirl of sparks on the pointed flames, and he passed
long hours of inaction seated on a low stool by the high Gothic chimney-
place, motionless, his eyes fixed on the fire.
He believed that in the depths of the waves of the river, among the
mosses of the fountain and above the mists of the lake there lived
mysterious women, sibyls, nymphs, undines, who breathed forth laments
and sighs, or sang and laughed in the monotonous murmur of the water, a
murmur to which he listened in silence, striving to translate it.
In the clouds, in the air, in the depths of the groves, in the clefts of the
rocks, he imagined that he perceived forms, or heard mysterious sounds,
forms of supernatural beings, indistinct words which he could not
comprehend.
Love! He had been born to dream love, not to feel it. He loved all
women an instant, this one because she was golden-haired, that one because
she had red lips, another because in walking she swayed as a river-reed.
Sometimes his delirium reached the point of his spending an entire night
gazing at the moon, which floated in heaven in a silvery mist, or at the stars,
which twinkled afar off like the changing lights of precious stones. In those
long nights of poetic wakefulness, he would exclaim: “If it is true, as the
Prior of the Peña has told me, that it is possible those points of light may be
worlds, if it is true that people live on that pearly orb which rides above the
clouds, how beautiful must the women of those luminous regions be! and I
shall not be able to see them, and I shall not be able to love them! What
must their beauty be! And what their love!”
Manrico was not yet so demented that the boys would run after him, but
he was sufficiently so to talk and gesticulate to himself, which is where
madness begins.

II.

Over the Douro, which ran lapping the weatherworn and darkened stones
of the walls of Soria, there is a bridge leading from the city to the old
convent of the Templars, whose estates extended along the opposite bank of
the river.
At the time to which we refer, the knights of the Order had already
abandoned their historic fortresses, but there still remained standing the
ruins of the large round towers of their walls,—there still might be seen, as
in part may be seen to-day, covered with ivy and white morning-glories the
massive arches of their cloister and the long ogive galleries of their courts
of arms through which the wind would breathe soft sighs, stirring the deep
foliage.
 In the orchards and in the gardens, whose paths the feet of the monks
had not trodden for many years, vegetation, left to itself, made holiday,
without fear that the hand of man should mutilate it in the effort to
embellish. Climbing plants crept upward twining about the aged trunks of
the trees; the shady paths through aisles of poplars, whose leafy tops met
and mingled, were overgrown with turf; spear-plumed thistles and nettles
had shot up in the sandy roads, and in the parts of the building which were
bulging out, ready to fall; the yellow crucifera, floating in the wind like the
crested feathers of a helmet, and bell-flowers, white and blue, balancing
themselves, as in a swing, on their long and flexible stems, proclaimed the
conquest of decay and ruin.
It was night, a summer night, mild, full of perfumes and peaceful
sounds, and with a moon, white and serene, high in the blue, luminous,
transparent heavens.
Manrico, his imagination seized by a poetic frenzy, after crossing the
bridge from which he contemplated for a moment the dark silhouette of the
city outlined against the background of some pale, soft clouds massed on
the horizon, plunged into the deserted ruins of the Templars.
It was midnight. The moon, which had been slowly rising, was now at
the zenith, when, on entering a dusky avenue that led from the demolished
cloister to the bank of the Douro, Manrico uttered a low, stifled cry,
strangely compounded of surprise, fear and joy.
In the depths of the dusky avenue he had seen moving something white,
which shimmered a moment and then vanished in the darkness, the trailing
robe of a woman, of a woman who had crossed the path and disappeared
amid the foliage at the very instant when the mad dreamer of absurd,
impossible dreams penetrated into the gardens.
An unknown woman!—In this place!—At this hour! “This, this is the
woman of my quest,” exclaimed Manrico, and he darted forward in pursuit,
swift as an arrow.

III.

He reached the spot where he had seen the mysterious woman disappear
in the thick tangle of the branches. She had gone. Whither? Afar, very far,
he thought he descried, among the crowding trunks of the trees, something
like a shining, or a white, moving form. “It is she, it is she, who has wings
on her feet and flees like a shadow!” he said, and rushed on in his search,
parting with his hands the network of ivy which was spread like a tapestry
from poplar to poplar. By breaking through brambles and parasitical
growths, he made his way to a sort of platform on which the moonlight
dazzled.—Nobody!—“Ah, but by this path, but by this she slips away!” he
then exclaimed. “I hear her footsteps on the dry leaves, and the rustle of her
dress as it sweeps over the ground and brushes against the shrubs.” And he
ran,—ran like a madman, hither and thither, and did not find her. “But still
comes the sound of her footfalls,” he murmured again. “I think she spoke;
beyond a doubt, she spoke. The wind which sighs among the branches, the
leaves which seem to be praying in low voices, prevented my hearing what
she said, but beyond a doubt she fleets by yonder path; she spoke, she
spoke. In what language? I know not, but it is a foreign speech.” And again
he ran onward in pursuit, sometimes thinking he saw her, sometimes that he
heard her; now noticing that the branches, among which she had
disappeared, were still in motion; now imagining that he distinguished in
the sand the prints of her little feet; again firmly persuaded that a special
fragrance which crossed the air from time to time was an aroma belonging
to that woman who was making sport of him, taking pleasure in eluding
him among these intricate growths of briers and brambles. Vain attempt!
He wandered some hours from one spot to another, beside himself, now
pausing to listen, now gliding with the utmost precaution over the herbage,
now in frantic and desperate race.
Pushing on, pushing on through the immense gardens which bordered
the river, he came at last to the foot of the cliff on which rises the hermitage
of San Saturio. “Perhaps from this height I can get my bearings for pursuing
my search across this confused labyrinth,” he exclaimed, climbing from
rock to rock with the aid of his dagger.
He reached the summit whence may be seen the city in the distance and,
curving at his feet, a great part of the Douro, compelling its dark, impetuous
stream onward through the winding banks that imprison it.
Manrico, once on the top of the cliff, turned his gaze in every direction,
till, bending and fixing it at last on a certain point, he could not restrain an
oath.
 The sparkling moonlight glistened on the wake left behind by a boat,
which, rowed at full speed, was making for the opposite shore.
In that boat he thought he had distinguished a white and slender figure, a
woman without doubt, the woman whom he had seen in the grounds of the
Templars, the woman of his dreams, the realization of his wildest hopes. He
sped down the cliff with the agility of a deer, threw his cap, whose tall, full
plume might hinder him in running, to the ground, and freeing himself from
his heavy velvet cloak, shot like a meteor toward the bridge.
He believed he could cross it and reach the city before the boat would
touch the further bank. Folly! When Manrico, panting and covered with
sweat, reached the city gate, already they who had crossed the Douro over
against San Saturio were entering Soria by one of the posterns in the wall,
which, at that time, extended to the bank of the river whose waters mirrored
its gray battlements.

IV.

Although his hope of overtaking those who had entered by the postern
gate of San Saturio was dissipated, that of tracing out the house which
sheltered them in the city was not therefore abandoned by our hero. With
his mind fixed upon this idea, he entered the town and, taking his way
toward the ward of San Juan, began roaming its streets at hazard.
The streets of Soria were then, and they are to-day, narrow, dark and
crooked. A profound silence reigned in them, a silence broken only by the
distant barking of a dog, the barring of a gate or the neighing of a charger,
whose pawing made the chain which fastened him to the manger rattle in
the subterranean stables.
Manrico, with ear attent to these vague noises of the night, which at
times seemed to be the footsteps of some person who had just turned the
last corner of a deserted street, at others, the confused voices of people who
were talking behind him and whom every moment he expected to see at his
side, spent several hours running at random from one place to another.
At last he stopped beneath a great stone mansion, dark and very old, and,
standing there, his eyes shone with an indescribable expression of joy. In
one of the high ogive windows of what we might call a palace, he saw a ray
of soft and mellow light which, passing through some thin draperies of
rose-colored silk, was reflected on the time-blackened, weather-cracked
wall of the house across the way.
“There is no doubt about it; here dwells my unknown lady,” murmured
the youth in a low voice, without removing his eyes for a second from the
Gothic window. “Here she dwells! She entered by the postern gate of San
Saturio,—by the postern gate of San Saturio is the way to this ward—in this
ward there is a house where, after midnight, there is some one awake—
awake? Who can it be at this hour if not she, just returned from her
nocturnal excursions? There is no more room for doubt; this is her home.”
In this firm persuasion and revolving in his head the maddest and most
capricious fantasies, he awaited dawn opposite the Gothic window where
there was a light all night and from which he did not withdraw his gaze a
moment.
When daybreak came, the massive gates of the arched entrance to the
mansion, on whose keystone was sculptured the owner’s coat of arms,
turned ponderously on their hinges with a sharp and prolonged creaking. A
servitor appeared on the threshold with a bunch of keys in his hand, rubbing
his eyes, and showing as he yawned a set of great teeth which might well
rouse envy in a crocodile.
For Manrico to see him and to rush to the gate was the work of an
instant.
“Who lives in this house? What is her name? Her country? Why has she
come to Soria? Has she a husband? Answer, answer, animal!” This was the
salutation which, shaking him violently by the shoulder, Manrico hurled at
the poor servitor, who, after staring at him a long while with frightened,
stupefied eyes, replied in a voice broken with amazement:
“In this house lives the right honorable Señor don Alonso de
Valdecuellos, Master of the Horse to our lord, the King. He has been
wounded in the war with the Moors and is now in this city recovering from
his injuries.”
“Well! well! His daughter?” broke in the impatient youth. “His daughter,
or his sister, or his wife, or whoever she may be?”
“He has no woman in his family.”
“No woman! Then who sleeps in that chamber there, where all night
long I have seen a light burning?”
 “There? There sleeps my lord Don Alonso, who, as he is ill, keeps his
lamp burning till dawn.”
A thunderbolt, suddenly falling at his feet, would not have given
Manrico a greater shock than these words.

V.

“I must find her, I must find her; and if I find her, I am almost certain I
shall recognize her. How?—I cannot tell—but recognize her I must. The
echo of her footstep, or a single word of hers which I may hear again; the
hem of her robe, only the hem which I may see again would be enough to
make me sure of her. Night and day I see floating before my eyes those
folds of a fabric diaphanous and whiter than snow, night and day there is
sounding here within, within my head, the soft rustle of her raiment, the
vague murmur of her unintelligible words.—What said she?—What said
she? Ah, if I might only know what she said, perchance—but yet without
knowing it, I shall find her—I shall find her—my heart tells me so, and my
heart deceives me never.—It is true that I have unavailingly traversed all the
streets of Soria, that I have passed nights upon nights in the open air, a
corner-post; that I have spent more than twenty golden coins in persuading
duennas and servants to gossip; that I gave holy water in St. Nicholas to an
old crone muffled up so artfully in her woollen mantle that she seemed to
me a goddess; and on coming out, after matins, from the collegiate church,
in the dusk before the dawn, I followed like a fool the litter of the
archdeacon, believing that the hem of his vestment was that of the robe of
my unknown lady—but it matters not—I must find her, and the rapture of
possessing her will assuredly surpass the labors of the quest.
“What will her eyes be? They should be azure, azure and liquid as the
sky of night. How I delight in eyes of that color! They are so expressive, so
dreamy, so—yes,—no doubt of it; azure her eyes should be, azure they are,
assuredly;—and her tresses black, jet black and so long that they wave upon
the air—it seems to me I saw them waving that night, like her robe, and
they were black—I do not deceive myself, no; they were black.
“And how well azure eyes, very large and slumbrous, and loose tresses,
waving and dark, become a tall woman—for—she is tall, tall and slender,
like those angels above the portals of our basilicas, angels whose oval faces
the shadows of their granite canopies veil in mystic twilight.
“Her voice!—her voice I have heard—her voice is soft as the breathing
of the wind in the leaves of the poplars, and her walk measured and stately
like the cadences of a musical instrument.
“And this woman, who is lovely as the loveliest of my youthful dreams,
who thinks as I think, who enjoys what I enjoy, who hates what I hate, who
is a twin spirit of my spirit, who is the complement of my being, must she
not feel moved on meeting me? Must she not love me as I shall love her, as
I love her already, with all the strength of my life, with every faculty of my
soul?
“Back, back to the place where I saw her for the first and only time that I
have seen her. Who knows but that, capricious as myself, a lover of solitude
and mystery like all dreamy souls, she may take pleasure in wandering
among the ruins in the silence of the night?”
Two months had passed since the servitor of Don Alonso de
Valdecuellos had disillusionized the infatuated Manrico, two months in
every hour of which he had built a castle in the air only for reality to shatter
with a breath; two months during which he had sought in vain that unknown
woman for whom an absurd love had been growing in his soul, thanks to his
still more absurd imaginations; two months had flown since his first
adventure when now, after crossing, absorbed in these ideas, the bridge
which leads to the convent of the Templars, the enamored youth plunged
again into the intricate pathways of the gardens.

VI.

The night was calm and beautiful, the full moon shone high in the
heavens, and the wind sighed with the sweetest of murmurs among the
leaves of the trees.
Manrico arrived at the cloister, swept his glance over the enclosed green
and peered through the massive arches of the arcades. It was deserted.
He went forth, turned his steps toward the dim avenue that leads to the
Douro, and had not yet entered it when there escaped from his lips a cry of
joy.
 He had seen floating for an instant, and then disappearing, the hem of the
white robe, of the white robe of the woman of his dreams, of the woman
whom now he loved like a madman.
He runs, he runs in his pursuit, he reaches the spot where he had seen her
vanish; but there he stops, fixes his terrified eyes upon the ground, remains
a moment motionless, a slight nervous tremor agitates his limbs, a tremor
which increases, which increases, and shows symptoms of an actual
convulsion—and he breaks out at last into a peal of laughter, laughter loud,
strident, horrible.
That white object, light, floating, had again shone before his eyes, it had
even glittered at his feet for an instant, only for an instant.
It was a moonbeam, a moonbeam which pierced from time to time the
green vaulted roof of trees when the wind moved their boughs.
Several years had passed. Manrico, crouched on a settle by the deep
Gothic chimney of his castle, almost motionless and with a vague, uneasy
gaze like that of an idiot, would scarcely take notice either of the
endearments of his mother or of the attentions of his servants.
“You are young, you are comely,” she would say to him, “why do you
languish in solitude? Why do you not seek a woman whom you may love,
and whose love may make you happy?”
“Love! Love is a ray of moonshine,” murmured the youth.
“Why do you not throw off this lethargy?” one of his squires would ask.
“Arm yourself in iron from head to foot, bid us unfurl to the winds your
illustrious banner, and let us march to the war. In war is glory.”
“Glory!—Glory is a ray of moonshine.”
“Would you like to have me recite you a ballad, the latest that Sir
Arnaldo, the Provençal troubadour, has composed?”
“No! no!” exclaimed the youth, straightening himself angrily on his seat,
“I want nothing—that is—yes, I want—I want you should leave me alone.
Ballads—women—glory—happiness—lies are they all—vain fantasies
which we shape in our imagination and clothe according to our whim, and
we love them and run after them—for what? for what? To find a ray of
moonshine.”
Manrico was mad; at least, all the world thought so. For myself, on the
contrary, I think what he had done was to regain his senses.
 THE DEVIL’S CROSS
Whether you believe it or not matters little. My grandfather told it to my
father; my father related it to me, and I now recount it to you, although it
may serve for nothing more than to pass an idle hour.

I.

Twilight was beginning to spread its soft, dim wings over the
picturesque banks of the Segre, when after a fatiguing day’s travel we
reached Bellver, the end of our journey.
Bellver is a small town situated on the slope of a hill, beyond which may
be seen, rising like the steps of a colossal granite amphitheatre, the lofty,
enclouded crests of the Pyrenees.
The white villages that encircle the town, sprinkled here and there over
an undulating plain of verdure, appear from a distance like a flock of doves
which have lowered their flight to quench their thirst in the waters of the
river.
A naked crag, at whose foot the river makes a bend and on whose
summit may still be seen ancient architectural remains, marks the old
boundary line between the earldom of Urgel and the most important of its
fiefs.
At the right of the winding path which leads to this point, going up the
river and following its curves and luxuriant banks, one comes upon a cross.
The stem and the arms are of iron; the circular base on which it rests is
of marble, and the stairway that leads to it of dark and ill-fitted fragments of
hewn stone.
The destructive action of time, which has covered the metal with rust,
has broken and worn away the stone of this monument in whose crevices
grow certain climbing plants, mounting in their interwoven growth until
they crown it, while an old, wide-spreading oak serves it as canopy.
I was some moments in advance of my travelling companions, and
halting my poor beast, I contemplated in silence that cross, mute and simple
expression of the faith and piety of other ages.
 At that instant a world of ideas thronged my imagination,—ideas faint
and fugitive, without definite form, which were yet bound together, as by an
invisible thread of light, by the profound solitude of those places, the deep
silence of the gathering night and the vague melancholy of my soul.
Impelled by a religious impulse, spontaneous and indefinable, I
dismounted mechanically, uncovered, commenced to search my memory
for one of those prayers which I was taught when a child,—one of those
prayers that, later in life, involuntarily escaping from our lips, seem to
lighten the burdened heart and, like tears, relieve sorrow, which takes these
natural outlets.
I had begun to murmur such a prayer, when suddenly I felt myself
violently seized by the shoulders.
I turned my head. A man was standing at my side.
He was one of our guides, a native of the region, who, with an
indescribable expression of terror depicted on his face, strove to drag me
away with him and to cover my head with the hat which I still held in my
hands.
My first glance, half astonishment, half anger, was equivalent to a sharp,
though silent, interrogation.
The poor fellow, without ceasing his efforts to withdraw me from that
place, replied to it with these words which then I could not comprehend but
which had in them an accent of sincerity that impressed me:—“By the
memory of your mother! by that which you hold most sacred in the world,
señorito, cover your head and flee faster than flight itself from that cross.
Are you so desperate that, the help of God not being enough, you call on
that of the Devil?”
I stood a moment looking at him in silence. Frankly, I thought he was a
madman; but he went on with equal vehemence:
“You seek the frontier; well, then, if before this cross you ask that
heaven will give you aid, the tops of the neighboring mountains will rise, in
a single night, to the invisible stars, so that we shall not find the boundary in
all our life.”
I could not help smiling.
“You take it in jest?—You think perhaps that this is a holy cross like the
one in the porch of our church?”
 “Who doubts it?”
“Then you are mistaken out and out, for this cross—saving its divine
association—is accursed; this cross belongs to a demon and for that reason
is called The Devil’s Cross.”
“The Devil’s Cross!” I repeated, yielding to his insistence without
accounting to myself for the involuntary fear which began to oppress my
spirit, and which repelled me as an unknown force from that place. “The
Devil’s Cross! Never has my imagination been wounded with a more
inconsistent union of two ideas so absolutely at variance. A cross! and—the
Devil’s! Come, come! When we reach the town you must explain to me this
monstrous incongruity.”
During this short dialogue our comrades, who had spurred their sorry
nags, joined us at the foot of the cross. I told them briefly what had taken
place: I remounted my hack, and the bells of the parish were slowly calling
to prayer when we alighted at the most out-of-the-way and obscure of the
inns of Bellver.

II.

Rosy and azure flames were curling and crackling all along the huge oak
log which burned in the wide fire-place; our shadows, thrown in wavering
grotesques on the blackened walls, dwindled or grew gigantic according as
the blaze emitted more or less brilliancy; the alderwood cup, now empty,
now full (and not with water), like the buckets of an irrigating wheel, had
been thrice passed round the circle that we formed about the fire, and all
were awaiting impatiently the story of The Devil’s Cross, promised us by
way of dessert after the frugal supper which we had just eaten, when our
guide coughed twice, tossed down a last draught of wine, wiped his mouth
on the back of his hand and began thus:
“It was a long, long time ago, how long I cannot say, but the Moors were
occupying yet the greater part of Spain, our kings were called counts, and
the towns and villages were held in fief by certain lords, who in turn
rendered homage to others more powerful, when that event which I am
about to relate took place.”
After this brief historical introduction, the hero of the occasion remained
silent some few moments, as if to arrange his thoughts, and proceeded thus:
 “Well! the story goes that in that remote time this town and some others
formed part of the patrimony of a noble baron whose seigniorial castle
stood for many centuries upon the crest of a crag bathed by the Segre, from
which it takes its name.
“Some shapeless ruins that, overgrown with wild mustard and moss, may
still be seen upon the summit from the road which leads to this town, testify
to the truth of my story.
“I do not know whether by chance or through some deed of shame it
came to pass that this lord, who was detested by his vassals for his cruelty,
and for his evil disposition refused admission to court by the king and to
their homes by his neighbors, grew weary of living alone with his bad
temper and his cross-bowmen on the top of the rock where his forefathers
had hung their nest of stone.
“Night and day he taxed his wits to find some amusement consonant
with his character, which was no easy matter, since he had grown tired of
making war on his neighbors, beating his servants and hanging his subjects.
“At this time, the chronicles relate, there occurred to him, though
without precedent, a happy idea.
“Knowing that the Christians of other nations were preparing to go forth,
united in a formidable fleet, to a marvellous country in order to reconquer
the sepulchre of our Lord Jesus Christ which was in possession of the
Moors, he determined to join their following.
“Whether he entertained this idea with intent of atoning for his sins,
which were not few, by shedding blood in so righteous a cause; or whether
his object was to remove to a place where his vicious deeds were not
known, cannot be said; but it is true that to the great satisfaction of old and
young, of vassals and equals, he gathered together what money he could,
released his towns, at a heavy price, from their allegiance, and reserving of
his estates no more than the crag of the Segre and the four towers of the
castle, his ancestral seat, disappeared between the night and the morning.
“The whole district drew a long breath, as if awakened from a
nightmare.
“Now no longer clusters of men, instead of fruits, hung from the trees of
their orchards; the young peasant girls no longer feared to go, their jars
upon their heads, to draw water from the wells by the wayside; nor did the
shepherds lead their flocks to the Segre by the roughest secret paths, fearing
at every turn of the steep track to encounter the cross-bowmen of their
dearly beloved lord.
“Thus three years elapsed. The story of the Wicked Count, for by that
name only was he known, had come to be the exclusive possession of the
old women, who in the long, long winter evenings would relate his
atrocities with hollow and fearful voice to the terrified children, while
mothers would affright their naughty toddlers and crying babies by saying:
‘Here comes the Count of the Segre!’ When behold! I know not whether by
day or by night, whether fallen from heaven or cast forth by hell, the
dreaded Count appeared indeed, and, as we say, in flesh and bone, in the
midst of his former vassals.
“I forbear to describe the effect of this agreeable surprise. You can
imagine it better than I can depict it, merely from my telling you that he
returned claiming his forfeited rights; that if he went away evil, he came
back worse; and that if he was poor and without credit before going to the
war, now he could count on no other resources than his desperation, his
lance and a half dozen adventurers as profligate and impious as their
chieftain.
“As was natural, the towns refused to pay tribute, from which at so great
cost they had bought exemption, but the Count fired their orchards, their
farm-houses and their crops.
“Then they appealed to the royal justice of the realm, but the Count
ridiculed the letters mandatory of his sovereign lords; he nailed them over
the sally-port of his castle and hung the bearers from an oak.
“Exasperated, and seeing no other way of salvation, at last they made a
league with one another, commended themselves to Providence and took up
arms; but the Count gathered his followers, called the Devil to his aid,
mounted his rock and made ready for the struggle.
“It began, terrible and bloody. There was fighting with all sorts of
weapons, in all places and at all hours, with sword and fire, on the mountain
and in the plain, by day and by night.
“This was not fighting to live; it was living to fight.
“In the end the cause of justice triumphed. You shall hear how.
“One dark, intensely dark night, when no sound was heard on earth nor a
single star shone in heaven, the lords of the fortress, elated by a recent
victory, divided the booty and, drunk with the fume of the liquors, in the
midst of their mad and boisterous revel intoned sacrilegious songs in praise
of their infernal patron.
“As I have said, nothing was heard around the castle save the echo of the
blasphemies which throbbed out into the black bosom of the night like the
throbbing of lost souls wrapped in the hurricane folds of hell.
“Now the careless sentinels had several times fixed their eyes on the
hamlet which rested in silence and, without fear of a surprise, had fallen
asleep leaning on the thick staves of their lances, when, lo and behold! a
few villagers, resolved to die and protected by the darkness, began to scale
the crag of the Segre whose crest they reached at the very moment of
midnight.
“Once on the summit, that which remained for them to do required little
time. The sentinels passed with a single bound the barrier which separates
sleep from death. Fire, applied with resinous torches to drawbridge and
portcullis, leaped with lightning rapidity to the walls, and the scaling-party,
favored by the confusion and making their way through the flames, put an
end to the occupants of that fortress in the twinkling of an eye.
“All perished.
“When the next day began to whiten the lofty tops of the junipers, the
charred remains of the fallen towers were still smoking, and through their
gaping breaches it was easy to discern, glittering as the light struck it, where
it hung suspended from one of the blackened pillars of the banquet hall, the
armor of the dreaded chieftain whose dead body, covered with blood and
dust, lay between the torn tapestries and the hot ashes, confounded with the
corpses of his obscure companions.
“Time passed. Briers began to creep through the deserted courts, ivy to
climb the dark heaps of masonry, and the blue morning-glory to sway and
swing from the very turrets. The changeful sighs of the breeze, the croaking
of the birds of night, and the soft stir of reptiles gliding through the tall
weeds alone disturbed from time to time the deathly silence of that accursed
place. The unburied bones of its former inhabitants lay white in the
moonlight and still there could be seen the bundled armor of the Count of
the Segre hanging from the blackened pillar of the banquet hall.
“No one dared touch it, but a thousand fables were current concerning it.
It was a constant source of foolish reports and terrors among those who saw
it flashing in the sunlight by day, or thought they heard in the depths of the
night the metallic sound of its pieces as they struck one another when the
wind moved them, with a prolonged and doleful groan.
“Notwithstanding all the stories which were set afloat concerning the
armor and which the people of the surrounding region repeated in hushed
tones one to another, they were no more than stories, and the only positive
result was a constant state of fear that every one tried for his own part to
dissimulate, putting, as we say, a brave face on it.
“If the matter had gone no further, no harm would have been done. But
the Devil, who apparently was not satisfied with his work, began, no doubt
with the permission of God, that so the country might expiate its sins, to
take a hand in the game.
“From that moment the tales, which until then had been nothing more
than vague rumors without any show of truth, began to assume consistency
and to grow from day to day more probable.
“Finally there came nights in which all the village-folk were able to see a
strange phenomenon.
“Amid the shadows in the distance, now climbing the steep, twisting
paths of the crag of the Segre, now wandering among the ruins of the castle,
now seeming to oscillate in the air, mysterious and fantastic lights were
seen gliding, crossing, vanishing and reappearing to recede in different
directions,—lights whose source no one could explain.
“This was repeated for three or four nights during the space of a month
and the perplexed villagers looked in disquietude for the result of those
conventicles, for which certainly they were not kept waiting long. Soon
three or four homesteads in flames, a number of missing cattle, and the dead
bodies of a few travellers, thrown from precipices, alarmed all the region
for ten leagues about.
“Now no doubt remained. A band of evildoers were harboring in the
dungeons of the castle.
“These desperadoes, who showed themselves at first only very rarely
and at definite points of the forest which even to this day extends along the
river, finally came to hold almost all the passes of the mountains, to lie in
ambush by the roads, to plunder the valleys and to descend like a torrent on
the plain where, slaughtering indiscriminately, they did not leave a doll with
its head on.
 “Assassinations multiplied; young girls disappeared and children were
snatched from their cradles despite the lamentations of their mothers to
furnish those diabolical feasts at which, it was generally believed, the
sacramental vessels stolen from the profaned churches were used as goblets.
“Terror took such possession of men’s souls that, when the bell rang for
the Angelus, nobody dared to leave his house, though even there was no
certain security against the banditti of the crag.
“But who were they? Whence had they come? What was the name of
their mysterious chief? This was the enigma which all sought to explain, but
which thus far no one could solve, although it was noticed that from this
time on the armor of the feudal lord had disappeared from the place it had
previously occupied, and afterwards various peasants had affirmed that the
captain of this inhuman crew marched at its head clad in a suit of mail
which, if not the same, was its exact counterpart.
“But in the essential fact, when stripped of that fantastic quality with
which fear augments and embellishes its cherished creations, there was
nothing necessarily supernatural nor strange.
“What was more common in outlaws than the barbarities for which this
band was distinguished or more natural than that their chief should avail
himself of the abandoned armor of the Count of the Segre?
“But the dying revelations of one of his followers, taken prisoner in the
latest affray, heaped up the measure of evidence, convincing the most
incredulous. Less or more in words, the substance of his confession was
this:
“ ‘I belong,’ he said, ‘to a noble family. My youthful irregularities, my
mad extravagances, and finally my crimes drew upon my head the wrath of
my kindred and the curse of my father, who, at his death, disinherited me.
Finding myself alone and without any resources whatever, it was the Devil,
without doubt, who must needs suggest to me the idea of gathering together
some youths in a situation similar to my own. These, seduced by the
promise of a future of dissipation, liberty and abundance, did not hesitate an
instant to subscribe to my designs.
“ ‘These designs consisted in forming a band of young men of gay
temper, unscrupulous and reckless, who thenceforward would live joyously
on the product of their valor and at the cost of the country, until God should
please to dispose of each according to His will, as happens to me this day.
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