[Illustration: EL PVENTE DEL CVERVO
[See page 127.]
LEGENDS
OF THE
CITY OF MEXICO
COLLECTED BY
THOMAS A. JANVIER
MEMBER OF
THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, LONDON
ILLUSTRATED WITH SIX PICTURES BY
WALTER APPLETON CLARK
AND BY PHOTOGRAPHS OF PLACE
[Illustration: logo]
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BOOKS BY
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HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.
Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published January, 1910.
_Printed in the United States of America._
TO
C. A. J.
WITHOUT WHOSE HELP THIS BOOK
COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
LEGEND OF DON JUAN MANUEL 1
LEGEND OF THE OBEDIENT DEAD NUN 6
LEGEND OF THE PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO 11
LEGEND OF THE MULATA DE CÓRDOBA 15
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL MUERTO 22
LEGEND OF THE ALTAR DEL PERDON 30
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO 39
LEGEND OF THE ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO 43
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA QUEMADA 52
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA CRUZ VERDE 59
LEGEND OF THE MUJER HERRADA 64
LEGEND OF THE ACCURSED BELL 69
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA 84
LEGEND OF THE LIVING SPECTRE 96
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LOS PARADOS 108
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA JOYA 112
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA MACHINCUEPA 116
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DEL PUENTE DEL CUERVO 127
LEGEND OF LA LLORONA 134
NOTES
PAGE
DON JUAN MANUEL 141
ALTAR DEL PERDON 145
ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO 149
LA CRUZ VERDE 149
MUJER HERRADA 150
ACCURSED BELL 153
CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA 156
LIVING SPECTRE 159
LA LLORONA 162
ILLUSTRATIONS
DRAWINGS BY WALTER APPLETON CLARK
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DEL PUENTE DEL CUERVO _Frontispiece_
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DEL PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO _Facing p._ 14
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO " 40
LEGEND OF THE MUJER HERRADA " 66
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA " 88
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LOS PARADOS " 108
PHOTOGRAPHS OF PLACE
CAPILLA DE LA ESPIRACIÓN _Facing p._ 4
LA CRUZ VERDE " 60
HOME OF DOÑA MARÍA " 110
HOUSE OF DON JUAN MANUEL " 142
DOORWAY, HOUSE OF DON JUAN MANUEL " 144
NO. 7 PUERTA FALSA DE SANTO DOMINGO " 152
WHERE THE DEAD MAN WAS CONFESSED " 156
INTRODUCTION
These legends of the City of Mexico are of my finding, not of my
making. They are genuine folk-stories. Each one of them is a true
folk-growth from some obscure curious or tragical ancient matter that,
taking hold upon the popular imagination, has had built up from it
among the people a story satisfying to the popular heart.
Many of them simply are historical traditions gone wrong: being rooted
in substantial facts which have been disguised by the fanciful
additions, or distorted by the sheer perversions, of successive
generations of narrators through the passing centuries. Others of them
have for their kernel some unaccounted-for strange happening that,
appealing to the popular mind for an explanation, has been explained
variously by various imaginative people of varying degrees of
perception and of intelligence: whose diverse elucidations of the
same mystery eventually have been patched together into a single
story--that betrays its composite origin by the inconsistencies and
the discrepancies in which it abounds. A few of them--starting
out boldly by exalting some commonplace occurrence into a
marvel--practically are cut from the whole cloth. All of them--and
most obviously the most incredible of them--have the quality that
gives to folk-stories in general their serious value: they reflect
accurately the tone of thought, and exhibit more or less clearly
the customs and the conditions, of the time to which they belong.
Among the older people of the City of Mexico, alike the lettered and
the unlettered, they still are cherished with a warm affection and
are told with a lively relish--to which is added, among the common
people, a lively faith. The too-sophisticated younger generation,
unhappily, is neglectful and even scornful of them. Soon, as oral
tradition, they will be lost.
Most fortunately, the permanent preservation in print of these
legends--and of many more of the same sort--long since was assured.
Because of the serious meaning that is in them, as side-lights on
history and on sociology, they have been collected seriously by
learned antiquarians--notably by Don Luis González Obregón and by Don
Manuel Rivera Cambas--who have searched and sifted them; and who have
set forth, so far as it could be discovered, their underlying germs of
truth. By the poets--to whom, naturally, they have made a strong
appeal--they have been preserved in a way more in keeping with their
fanciful essence: as may be seen--again to cite two authors of
recognized eminence--in the delightful metrical renderings of many of
them by Don Vicente Riva Palacio, and in the round threescore of them
that Don Juan de Dios Peza has recast into charming verse. By other
writers of distinction, not antiquarians nor poets, various
collections of them have been made--of which the best is the
sympathetic work of Don Angel R. de Arellano--in a purely popular
form. By the playwrights have been made from the more romantic of
them--as the legend of Don Juan Manuel--perennially popular plays. By
minor writers, in prose and in verse, their tellings and retellings
are without end.
While the oral transmission of the legends among the common
people--by heightening always the note of the marvellous--has tended
to improve them, the bandying about in print to which they have been
subjected has worked a change in them that distinctly is for the
worse. In their written form they have acquired an artificiality that
directly is at odds with their natural simplicity; while the sleeking
of their essential roughnesses, and the abatement of their equally
essential inconsistencies and contradictions, has weakened precisely
the qualities which give to them their especial character and their
peculiar charm.
The best versions of them, therefore, are those which are current
among the common people: who were the makers of them in the beginning;
who--passing them from heart to lip and from lip to heart again
through the centuries--have retained in them the subtle pith that
clearly distinguishes a built-up folk-story from a story made by one
mind at a single melting; whose artless telling of them--abrupt,
inconsequent, full of repetitions and of contradictions--preserves the
full flavor of their patchwork origin; and, most important of all,
whose simple-souled faith in their verity is of the selfsame spirit
in which they were made. These are the versions which I have tried
here to reproduce in feeling and in phrase.
* * * * *
My first winter in Mexico, twenty-five years ago, was spent in
Monterey; and there, in a small way, my collection of Mexican
folk-lore was begun. My gathering at that time consisted mainly of
superstitious beliefs--omens, house-charms, the evil eye, the unlucky
day--but it included a version of the story of La Llorona essentially
identical with the version, here given, that I later found current in
the City of Mexico. The sources from which I drew in Monterey were
three or four old, and old-fashioned, women with whom my wife
established such friendly relations as to win them into freely
confidential talk with her; the most abundant yield coming from a
kindly old Doña Miguelita (she was given always the affectionate
diminutive), who was attached loosely as a sort of brevet grandmother
to the family with whom we were lodged. Had I been alone I should not
have been able to extract any information from these old people. It
would have been impossible to convince them that such matters could
be regarded with anything but contempt by a man.
In like manner, later, from a most valuable source in the City of
Mexico, my information was to be had only at second-hand. This source
was our dear Joséfa Correa, who during four successive winters at once
was our washer-woman and our friend. Joséfa's semi-weekly visits gave
us always a warm pleasure; and her talk--of which she was no
miser--gave us always much of interest to ponder upon: she being a
very wise old woman, with views of life that were broad and sound. As
she was precisely of the class in which the folk-stories of the city
originated, she was the best of authorities for the current popular
versions of them: but always was it through my wife that her tellings
of them came to me. Various other old women, encountered casually,
similarly were put under contribution by my wife for my purposes. One
of the most useful was a draggled old seller of rebozos; another, of
equal value, was a friendly old body whom we fell in with at a railway
station while waiting through two hours for a vagrant train. To me all
of these women would have been sealed books; I could have got nothing
from them without my wife's help.
For that help, and for the help that she has given me in searching and
in collating my authorities for the Legends and for the Notes relating
to them, I am very grateful to her.
To my friend and fellow-lover of things ancient and marvellous,
Gilberto Cano, I am under signal obligations. In addition to his nice
appreciation and his wide knowledge of such matters, this excellent
man--twenty-four years ago, and later--was the best waiter at the
Hôtel del Café Anglais. (It is gone, now, that admirable little hotel
over which the brave Monsieur Gatillon so admirably presided--and the
City of Mexico distinctly is the worse for its loss.) Our
acquaintance, that had its beginning in my encounters with him in his
professional capacity, soon ripened into a real friendship--still
enduring--along the line of similarity of tastes. His intelligent
answers to my questions about one or another of the many old buildings
which attracted our attention in the course of our walks about the
city--then all new to us--early impressed upon me a serious respect
for his antiquarian attainments; and this respect was increased when,
after making a hesitant offer of them that I accepted eagerly, he lent
to us several excellent books treating of the ancient matters in which
we were interested: explaining, modestly, that these books were his
own; and that he had bought them in order that he might acquire an
accurate knowledge of the city in which he had been born and in which
for all his life he had lived. As my own knowledge grew, I found that
in every instance he had answered my questions correctly; and the
books which he had lent to me were certified to, later, by my erudite
friend Don José María Vigil, Director of the Biblioteca Nacional, as
standard authorities--and I bought copies of all of them to add to the
collection of Mexicana that I then was beginning to form.
Gilberto was so obliging as to spend several afternoons in our
quarters--coming to us in the dull time between luncheon and dinner
when his professional duties were in abeyance--that I might write at
his dictation some of the many folk-traditions with which his mind was
stored. Like our dear Joséfa, he was an absolute authority on the
current popular versions, and he seemed to share her faith in them;
but he told them--because of his substantial knowledge of Mexican
history--more precisely than she told them, and with an appreciative
understanding of their antiquarian interest that was quite beyond her
grasp.
He was a small man, our Gilberto, with a low and gentle voice, and a
manner that was gentle also--both in the literal and in the finer
sense of the word. In the thrilling portions of his stories he would
lean forward, his voice would deepen and gather earnestness, his
bright brown eyes would grow brighter, and his gestures--never
violent, and always appropriate--would enlarge the meaning of his
words. With the instinct of a well-bred man he invariably addressed
himself to my wife; and through his discourse ran a constant refrain
of "and so it was, Señorita"--_pues si, Señorita_--that made a point
of departure for each fresh turn in the narrative, and at the same
time gave to what he was telling an air of affirmative finality.
Usually he ended with a few words of comment--enlightening as
exhibiting the popular viewpoint--either upon the matter of his story
or by way of emphasizing its verity.
His tellings ranged widely: from such important legends as those of
Don Juan Manuel and La Llorona--his versions of which are given in my
text--to such minor matters as the encounter of his own brother with a
freakish ghost who carried the bed on which the brother was sleeping
from one part of the house to another. All the knowledge being on his
side, I could give him little guidance--and whatever happened to come
into his head, in the way of the marvellous, at once came out of it
again for my benefit. Some of his stories, while exhaustively
complete, and undeniably logical, were almost startling in their
elemental brevity--as the following: "Once some masons were pulling
down an old house, and in the wall they found many boxes of money.
After that, those masons were rich"! In justice I should add that this
succinct narrative merely was thrown in, as a make-weight, at the end
of a long and dramatic hidden-treasure story--in which a kindly old
ghost-lady, the hider of the treasure, had a leading part.
Because of the intelligent interest that Gilberto took in my
folk-lore collecting, it was a source of keen regret to him that our
meeting had not come a little earlier, only two years earlier, during
the lifetime of his great-aunt: who had known--as he put it
comprehensively--all the stories about the city that ever were told. I
too grieved, and I shall grieve always, because that ancient person
was cut off from earth before I could have the happiness of garnering
the traditionary wisdom with which she was so full charged. But my
grief is softened--and even is tinctured with a warm thankfulness--by
the fact that a great deal of it was saved to me by my fortunate
encounter with her grand-nephew: who so faithfully had treasured in
his heart her ancient sayings; and who so freely--to the winning of my
lasting gratitude--gave them to me for the enrichment of my own store.
NEW YORK, _September 26, 1909_.
LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
LEGEND OF DON JUAN MANUEL[1]
This Don Juan Manuel, Señor, was a rich and worthy gentleman who had
the bad vice of killing people. Every night at eleven o'clock, when
the Palace clock was striking, he went out from his magnificent
house--as you know, Señor, it still is standing in the street that has
been named after him--all muffled in his cloak, and under it his
dagger in his hand.
Then he would meet one, in the dark street, and would ask him
politely: "What is the hour of the night?" And that person, having
heard the striking of the clock, would answer: "It is eleven hours of
the night." And Don Juan Manuel would say to him: "Señor, you are
fortunate above all men, because you know precisely the hour at which
you die!" Then he would thrust with his dagger--and then, leaving the
dead gentleman lying in the street, he would come back again into his
own home. And this bad vice of Don Juan Manuel's of killing people
went on, Señor, for a great many years.
Living with Don Juan Manuel was a nephew whom he dearly loved. Every
night they supped together. Later, the nephew would go forth to see
one or another of his friends; and, still later, Don Juan Manuel would
go forth to kill some man. One night the nephew did not come home. Don
Juan Manuel was uneasy because of his not coming, fearing for him. In
the early morning the city watch knocked at Don Juan Manuel's door,
bringing there the dead body of the nephew--with a wound in the heart
of him that had killed him. And when they told where his body had been
found, Don Juan Manuel knew that he himself--not knowing him in the
darkness--had killed his own nephew whom he so loved.
Then Don Juan Manuel saw that he had been leading a bad life: and he
went to the Father to whom he confessed and confessed all the killings
that he had done. Then the Father put a penance upon him: That at
midnight he should go alone through the streets until he was come to
the chapel of the Espiración (it faces upon the Plazuela de Santo
Domingo, Señor; and, in those days, before it was a gallows); and that
he should kneel in front of that chapel, beneath the gallows; and
that, so kneeling, he should tell his rosary through. And Don Juan
Manuel was pleased because so light a penance had been put upon him,
and thought soon to have peace again in his soul.
But that night, at midnight, when he set forth to do his penance, no
sooner was he come out from his own door than voices sounded in his
ears, and near him was the terrible ringing of a little bell. And he
knew that the voices which troubled him were those of the ones whom he
had killed. And the voices sounded in his ears so wofully, and the
ringing of the little bell was so terrible, that he could not keep
onward. Having gone a little way, his stomach was tormented by the
fear that was upon him and he came back again to his own home.
Then, the next day, he told the Father what had happened, and that he
could not do that penance, and asked that another be put upon him. But
the Father denied him any other penance; and bade him do that which
was set for him--or die in his sin and go forever to hell! Then Don
Juan Manuel again tried to do his penance, and that time got a half of
the way to the chapel of the Espiración; and then again turned
backward to his home, because of those woful voices and the terrible
ringing of that little bell. And so again he asked that he be given
another penance; and again it was denied to him; and again--getting
that night three-quarters of the way to the chapel--he tried to do
what he was bidden to do. But he could not do it, because of the woful
voices and the terrible ringing of the little bell.
[Illustration: CAPILLA DE LA ESPIRACIÓN]
Then went he for the last time to the Father to beg for another
penance; and for the last time it was denied to him; and for the last
time he set forth from his house at midnight to go to the chapel of
the Espiración, and in front of it, kneeling beneath the gallows, to
tell his rosary through. And that night, Señor, was the very worst
night of all! The voices were so loud and so very woful that he was in
weak dread of them, and he shook with fear, and his stomach was
tormented because of the terrible ringing of the little bell. But he
pressed on--you see, Señor, it was the only way to save his soul from
blistering in hell through all eternity--until he was come to the
Plazuela de Santo Domingo; and there, in front of the chapel of the
Espiración, beneath the gallows, he knelt down upon his knees and told
his rosary through.
And in the morning, Señor, all the city was astonished, and
everybody--from the Viceroy down to the cargadores--came running to
the Plazuela de Santo Domingo, where was a sight to see! And the sight
was Don Juan Manuel hanging dead on the gallows--where the angels
themselves had hung him, Señor, because of his sins!
LEGEND OF THE OBEDIENT DEAD NUN
It was after she was dead, Señor, that this nun did what she was told
to do by the Mother Superior, and that is why it was a miracle. Also,
it proved her goodness and her holiness--though, to be sure, there was
no need for her to take the trouble to prove those matters, because
everybody knew about them before she died.
My grandmother told me that this wonder happened in the convent of
Santa Brígida when her mother was a little girl; therefore you will
perceive, Señor, that it did not occur yesterday. In those times the
convent of Santa Brígida was most flourishing--being big, and full of
nuns, and with more money than was needed for the keeping of it and
for the great giving of charity that there was at its doors. And now,
as you know, Señor, there is no convent at all and only the church
remains. However, it was in the church that the miracle happened, and
it is in the choir that Sor Teresa's bones lie buried in the coffin
that was too short for her--and so it is clear that this story is
true.
The way of it all, Señor, was this: The Señorita Teresa Ysabel de
Villavicencio--so she was called in the world, and in religion she
still kept her christened name--was the daughter of a very rich
hacendado of Vera Cruz. She was very tall--it was her tallness that
made the whole trouble--and she also was very beautiful; and she went
to Santa Brígida and took the vows there because of an undeceiving in
love. The young gentleman whom she came to know was unworthy of her
was the Señor Carraza, and he was the Librarian to the Doctors in the
Royal and Pontifical University--which should have made him a good
man. What he did that was not good, Señor, I do not know. But it was
something that sent Sor Teresa in a hurry into the convent: and when
she got there she was so devout and so well-behaved that the Mother
Superior held her up to all the other nuns for a pattern--and
especially for her humility and her obedience. Whatever she was told
to do, she did; and that without one single word.
Well, Señor, it happened that the convent was making ready, on a day,
for the great festival of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe; and in the
midst of all the whirring and buzzing Sor Teresa said suddenly--and
everybody was amazed and wonder-struck when she said it--that though
she was helping to make ready for that festival she would not live to
take part in it, because the very last of her hours on earth was
almost come. And a little later--lying on her hard wooden bed and
wearing beneath her habit the wired shirt of a penitent, with all the
community sorrowing around her--Sor Teresa died just as she said she
would die: without there being anything the matter with her at all!
Because of the festival that was coming, it was necessary that she
should be buried that very night. Therefore they made ready a
comfortable grave for her; and they sent to the carpenter for a coffin
for her, and the coffin came. And it was then, Señor, that the trouble
began. Perhaps, because she was so very tall a lady, the carpenter
thought that the measure had not been taken properly. Perhaps, being
all so flurried, they really had got the measure wrong. Anyhow,
whatever may have set the matter crooked, Sor Teresa would not go into
her coffin: and as night was near, and there was no time to make
another one, they all of them were at their very wits' end to know
what to do. So there they all stood, looking at Sor Teresa; and there
Sor Teresa lay, with her holy feet sticking straight out far beyond
the end of the coffin; and night was coming in a hurry; and next day
would be the festival--and nobody could see how the matter was going
to end!
Then a wise old nun came to the Mother Superior and whispered to her:
telling her that as in life Sor Teresa had been above all else perfect
in obedience, so, probably, would she be perfect in obedience even in
death; and advising that a command should be put upon her to fit into
her coffin then and there. And the old nun said, what was quite true
and reasonable, that even if Sor Teresa did not do what she was told
to do, no harm could come of it--as but little time would be lost in
making trial with her, and the case would be the same after their
failure as it was before. Therefore the Mother Superior agreed to try
what that wise old nun advised. And so, Señor--all the community
standing round about, and the candle of Nuestro Amo being lighted--the
Mother Superior said in a grave voice slowly: "Daughter, as in life
thou gavest us always an example of humility and obedience, now I
order and command thee, by thy vow of obedience, to retire decorously
within thy coffin: that so we may bury thee, and that thou mayest rest
in peace!"
And then, Señor, before the eyes of all of them, Sor Teresa slowly
began to shrink shorter--to the very letter of the Mother Superior's
order and command! Slowly her holy feet drew in from beyond the end of
the coffin; and then they drew to the very edge of it; and then they
drew over the edge of it; and then they fell down briskly upon the
bottom of it with a sanctified and most pious little bang. And so
there she was, shrunk just as short as she had been ordered to shrink,
fitting into her coffin as cozily as you please! Then they buried her,
as I have told you, Señor, in the comfortable grave in the choir that
was waiting for her--and there her blessed shrunken bones are lying
now.
LEGEND OF THE PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO
This priest who was murdered and thrown over the bridge, Señor, was a
very good man, and there was very little excuse for murdering him.
Moreover, he belonged to a most respectable family, and so did the
gentleman who murdered him, and so did the young lady; and because of
all that, and because at the best of times the killing of a priest is
sacrilege, the scandal of that murder made a stir in the whole town.
At that time--it was some hundreds of years ago, Señor--there lived in
the street that now is called, because of it all, the street of the
Puente del Clérigo, a very beautiful young lady who was named Doña
Margarita Jáuregui. And she, being an orphan, dwelt with her uncle,
this priest: who was named Don Juan de Nava and was a person of rank,
being a caballero of the orders of Santiago and Calatrava. In those
days there were few houses upon that street, which was the causeway
between the City and the Indian town of Tlaltelolco; and for the
greater safety of the Spaniards dwelling in the City there was a wide
ditch, that this bridge crossed, between them and the Indian town.
Long ago, Señor, Tlaltelolco became a part of the City; and the ditch,
and the bridge over it, are gone.
Now it happened that at the court of the Viceroy was a noble young
Portuguese gentleman, who had great riches and two titles, named Don
Duarte de Sarraza; and the Viceroy, who was the Conde de Salvatierra,
very much esteemed him because he was of a loyal nature and of good
heart. Therefore this noble young gentleman fell in love with Doña
Margarita, and she with him; but her uncle, the Padre Don Juan,
knowing that Don Duarte was a vicious young man--a gambler, and in
other ways what he should not have been--forbade his niece to have
anything to do with him. So things rested for a while on those terms,
and Don Duarte did not like it at all.
Well, it happened on a night, Señor, that Don Duarte was at the window
of Doña Margarita, telling his love for her through the grating; and
while he was so engaged he saw Padre Don Juan coming home along the
causeway by the light of the stars. Then that wicked young man went to
where the bridge was, and when the Padre was come to the bridge he
sprang upon him and drove his dagger deep into his skull. The dagger
was nailed so fast there, Señor, that he could not drag it loose
again; and so he bundled the dead priest over the wall of the bridge
and into the water with the dagger still sticking in the skull of him;
and then he went his way to his home.
Not wishing to have it thought that he had committed that murder, Don
Duarte did not go near Doña Margarita for almost a whole year. And
then--because his love for her would not suffer him to wait away from
her longer--he went in the night-time to meet her once more at her
window; and he had in his heart the wicked purpose to make her come
out to him, and then to carry her off.
That did not happen--and what did happen is a terrible mystery. All
that is known about it is this: Very early in the morning the
neighbors living thereabout found Don Duarte dead on the Bridge of the
Cleric; and holding him fast, a bony knee on his breast and two bony
hands at his throat strangling him, was a skeleton. And the skeleton,
Señor, was dressed in a black cassock, such as only clerics wear, and
in the skull of it a rusty dagger was nailed fast. Therefore it became
generally known that Don Duarte had murdered the Padre Don Juan; and
that the skeleton of the Padre Don Juan had killed Don Duarte in just
revenge.
LEGEND OF THE MULATA DE CÓRDOBA
It is well known, Señor, that this Mulata of Córdoba, being a very
beautiful woman, was in close touch with the devil. She dwelt in
Córdoba--the town not far from Vera Cruz, where coffee and very good
mangos are grown--and she was born so long ago that the very oldest
man now living was not then alive. No one knew who was her father, or
who was her mother, or where she came from. So she was called La
Mulata de Córdoba--and that was all. One of the wonders of her was
that the years passed her without marking her, and she never grew old.
She led a very good life, helping every one who was in trouble, and
giving food to the hungry ones; and she dressed in modest clothes
simply, and always was most neat and clean. She was a very wicked
witch--and beyond that nobody really knew anything about her at all.
On the same day, and at the same hour, she would be seen by different
people in different places widely apart--as here in the City, and in
Córdoba, and elsewhere variously--all in precisely the same moment of
time. She also was seen flying through the air, high above the roofs
of the houses, with sparks flashing from her black eyes. Moreover,
every night the devil visited her: as was known generally, because at
night her neighbors observed that through the chinks in the tight-shut
doors and windows of her house there shone a bright light--as though
all the inside of the house were filled with flames. She went to mass
regularly, and at the proper seasons partook of the Sacrament. She
disdained everybody; and because of her disdainings it was believed
that the master of her beauty was the Lord of Darkness; and that
seemed reasonable. Every single one of the young men was mad about
her, and she had a train of lovers from which she could pick and
choose. All wonders were told of her. She was so powerful, and could
work such prodigies, that she was spoken about--just as though she had
been the blessed Santa Rita de Cascia--as the Advocate of Impossible
Things! Old maids went to her who sought for husbands; poor ladies
who longed for jewels and fine dresses that they might go to the court
of the Viceroy; miners that they might find silver; old soldiers, set
aside for rustiness, to get new commands--so that the saying, "_I_ am
not the Mulata of Córdoba!" is the answer when any one asks an
impossible favor even now.
How it came about, Señor, no one ever knew. What every one did know
was that, on a day, the Mulata was brought from Córdoba here to the
City and was cast into the prison of the Holy Office. That was a piece
of news that made a stir! Some said that a disdained lover had
denounced her to the Inquisition. Others said that the Holy Office had
laid hands on her less because she was a witch than because of her
great riches--and it was told that when she had been seized ten
barrels filled with gold-dust had been seized with her. So talk about
the matter was on every tongue.
Many years went by, Señor, and all of that talk was almost forgotten.
Then, on a morning, the city was astonished by hearing--no one knew
from where--that at the next auto de fé the witch of Córdoba would
walk with the unredeemed ones, carrying the flameless green candle
and wearing the high bonnet, and would be burned at the burning-place
of the Holy Office--it was in front of the church of San Diego, Señor,
at the western end of what now is the Alameda--and so would have
burned out of her her sins. And before that astonishment was ended,
there came another and a greater: when it was told that the witch,
before the very eyes of her jailers, had escaped from the prison of
the Inquisition and was gone free! All sorts of stories flew about the
city. One said, crossing himself, that her friend the devil had helped
her to her freedom; another said that Inquisitors also were of flesh
and blood, and that she had been freed by her own beauty. Men talked
at random--because, neither then nor later, did anybody know what
really had happened. But what really did happen, Señor, was this:
On a day, the chief Inquisitor went into the prison of the Mulata that
he might reason her to repentance. And, being come into her prison--it
was a long and lofty chamber that they had put her into, Señor, not
one of the bad small cells--he stopped short in amazement: beholding
before him, drawn with charcoal on the wall of the chamber, a great
ship that lacked not a single rope nor a single sail nor anything
whatever that a ship requires! While he stood gazing at that ship,
wondering, the Mulata turned to him and looked strangely at him out of
her wicked black eyes, and said in a tone of railing: "Holy Father,
what does this ship need to make it perfect?" And to that he answered:
"Unhappy woman! It is thou who needest much to make thee perfect, that
thou mayest be cleansed of thy sins! As for this ship, it is in all
other ways so wholly perfect that it needs only to sail." Then said
the Mulata: "That it shall do--and very far!" and there was on her
face as she spoke to him a most wicked smile. With astonishment he
looked at her, and at the ship. "How can that be possible!" he asked.
"In this manner!" she answered--and, as she spoke, she leaped lightly
from the floor of the prison to the deck of the ship, up there on the
wall, and stood with her hand upon the tiller at the ship's stern.
Then happened, Señor, a very wonderful marvel! Suddenly the sails of
the ship filled and bellied out as though a strong wind were blowing;
and then, before the eyes of the Inquisitor, the ship went sailing
away along the wall of the chamber--the Mulata laughing wickedly as
she swung the tiller and steered it upon its course! Slowly it went at
first, and then more and more rapidly, until, being come to the wall
at the end of the chamber, it sailed right on into and through the
solid stone and mortar--the Mulata still laughing wickedly as she
stood there steering at the ship's stern! And then the wall closed
whole and solid again behind the ship, and only a little echoing sound
of that wicked laughter was heard in the chamber--and the ship had
vanished, and the Mulata was out of her prison and gone!
The Inquisitor, Señor, who had seen this devil's miracle, immediately
lost all his senses and became a madman and was put into a mad-house:
where, till death gave peace to him, he raved always of a beautiful
woman in a great ship that sailed through stone walls and across the
solid land. As for the Mulata, nothing more ever was heard of her. But
it was generally known that her master the devil had claimed her for
his own.
This story is entirely true, Señor--as is proved by the fact that the
Inquisition building, in which all these wonders happened, still is
standing. It is the Escuela de Medicina, now.
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL MUERTO
It is an unwise thing, Señor, and there also is wickedness in it, to
make a vow to the Blessed Virgin--or, for that matter, to the smallest
saint in the whole calendar--and not to fulfil that vow when the
Blessed Virgin, or the saint, as the case may be, has performed
punctually all that the vow was made for: and so this gentleman of
whom I now am speaking found out for himself, and most uncomfortably,
when he died with an unfulfilled vow on his shoulders--and had to take
some of the time that he otherwise would have spent pleasantly in
heaven among the angels in order to do after he was dead what he had
promised to do, and what he most certainly ought to have done, while
he still was alive.
The name of this gentleman who so badly neglected his duty, Señor, was
Don Tristan de Alculer; and he was a humble but honorable Spanish
merchant who came from the Filipinas to live here in the City of
Mexico; and he came in the time when the Viceroy was the Marqués de
Villa Manrique, and most likely as the result of that Viceroy's doings
and orderings: because the Marqués de Villa Manrique gave great
attention to enlarging the trade with the East through the
Filipinas--as was found out by the English corsairs, so that Don
Francisco Draco, who was the greatest pirate of all of them, was able
to capture a galleon laden almost to sinking with nothing but silver
and gold.
With Don Tristan, who was of an elderliness, came his son to help him
in his merchanting; and this son was named Tristan also, and was a
most worthy young gentleman, very capable in the management of
mercantile affairs. Having in their purses but a light lining, their
commerce at its beginning was of a smallness; and they took for their
home a mean house in a little street so poor and so deserted that
nobody had taken the trouble to give a name to it: the very street
that ever since their time has been called the Alley of the Dead
Man--because of what happened as the result of Don Tristan's
unfulfilled vow. That they were most respectable people is made clear
by the fact that the Archbishop himself--who at that period was the
illustrious Don Fray García de Santa María Mendoza--was the friend of
them; and especially the friend of Don Tristan the elder, who
frequently consulted with him in regard to the state of his soul.
So a number of prospering years passed on, Señor, and then, on a time,
Don Tristan the son went down to the coast to make some buyings: and
it was in the bad season, and the fever seized him so fiercely that
all in a moment the feet and half the legs of him fairly were inside
of death's door. Then it was that Don Tristan, being in sore trouble
because of his son's desperate illness, made the vow that I am telling
you about. He made it to the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe; and he vowed
to her that if she would save his son alive to him from the fever he
would walk on his bare feet from his own house to her Sanctuary, and
that there in her Sanctuary he would make his thanks to her from the
deep depths of his soul. And the Blessed Virgin, being full of love
and of amiability, was pleased to listen to the prayer of Don Tristan,
and to believe the vow that went along with it: wherefore she caused
the fever immediately to leave the sick Don Tristan--and presently
home he came to his father alive and well.
But Don Tristan, having got from the Blessed Virgin all that he had
asked of her, did not give to her what he had promised to give to her
in return. Being by that time an aged gentleman, and also being much
afflicted with rheumatism, the thought of taking a walk of near to
three miles barefoot was most distasteful to him. And so he put his
walk off for a week or two--saying to himself that the Blessed Virgin
would not be in any hurry about the matter; and then he put it off for
another week or two; and in that way--because each time that he was
for keeping his vow shivers would come in his old feet at dread of
being bare and having cold earth under them, and trembles would come
in his old thin legs at dread of more rheumatism--the time slipped on
and on, and the Blessed Virgin did not get her due.
But his soul was not easy inside of him, Señor--and it could not be,
because he was playing fast and loose with it--and so he laid the
whole matter before his friend the Archbishop: hoping that for
friendship's sake the Archbishop would be so obliging as to dispense
him from his vow. For myself, Señor, I cannot but think that the
Archbishop--for all that his position put him in close touch with
heavenly matters, and gave him the right to deal with them--was not
well advised in his action. At any rate, what he did was to
tranquillize Don Tristan by telling him that the Blessed Virgin was
too considerate to hold him to a contract that certainly would lay him
up with a bad attack of rheumatism; and that even--so wearied out
would he be by forcing his old thin legs to carry him all that
distance--might be the death of him. And so the upshot of it was that
the Archbishop, being an easy-going and a very good-natured gentleman,
dispensed Don Tristan from his vow.
But a vow, Señor, is a vow--and even an Archbishop cannot cast one
loose from it; and so they all found out on this occasion, and in a
hurry--because the Blessed Virgin, while never huffed over trifles,
does not let the grass grow under her feet when her anger justly is
aroused.
Only three days after Don Tristan had received his dispensation--to
which, as the event proved, he was not entitled--the Archbishop went
on the twelfth of the month, in accordance with the custom observed in
that matter, to celebrate mass at the Villa de Guadalupe in Our Lady's
Sanctuary. The mass being ended, he came homeward on his mule by the
causeway to the City; and as he rode along easily he was put into a
great surprise by seeing Don Tristan walking toward him, and by
perceiving that he was of a most dismal dead paleness and that his
feet were bare. For a moment Don Tristan paused beside the
Archbishop--whose mule had stopped short, all in a tremble--and
clasped his hand with a hand that was of an icy coldness; then he
passed onward--saying in a dismal voice, rusty and cavernous, that for
his soul's saving he was fulfilling the vow that he had made to her
Ladyship: because the knowledge had come to him that if this vow were
not accomplished he certainly would spend the whole of Eternity
blistering in hell! Having thus explained matters, not a word more did
Don Tristan have to say for himself; nor did he even look backward, as
he walked away slowly and painfully on his bare old feet toward Our
Lady's shrine.
The Archbishop trembled as much as his mule did, Señor, being sure
that strange and terrible things were about him; and when the mule a
little came out of her fright and could march again, but still
trembling, he went straight to Don Tristan's house to find out--though
in his heart he knew what his finding would be--the full meaning of
this awesome prodigy. And he found at Don Tristan's house what he knew
in his heart he would find there: and that was Don Tristan, the four
lighted death-candles around him, lying on his bed death-struck--his
death-white cold hands clasped on his breast on the black pall
covering him, and on his death-white face the very look that was on it
as he went to the keeping of his unkept vow! Therefore the Archbishop
was seized with a hot and a cold shuddering, and his teeth rattled in
the head of him; and straightway he and all who were with
him--perceiving that they were in the presence of a divine
mystery--fell to their knees in wondering awe of what had happened,
and together prayed for the peace of Don Tristan's soul.
Very possibly, Señor, the Archbishop and the rest of them did not pray
hard enough; or, perhaps, Don Tristan's sin of neglect was so serious
a matter that a long spell in Purgatory was required of him before he
could be suffered to pass on to a more comfortable region and be at
ease. At any rate, almost immediately he took to walking at midnight
in the little street that for so long he had lived in--always wrapped
in a long white shroud that fluttered about him in the night wind
loosely, and carrying always a yellow-blazing great candle; and so
being a most terrifying personage to encounter as he marched slowly up
and down. Therefore everybody who dwelt in that street hurried to move
away from it, and Don Tristan had it quite to himself in its
desertedness--for which reason, as I have mentioned, the Alley of the
Dead Man became its name.
I have been told by my friend the cargador, Señor, and also by several
other trustworthy persons, that Don Tristan--though more than three
hundred years have passed since the death of him--has not entirely
given up his marchings. Certainly, for myself, I do not think that it
would be judicious to walk in the Callejón del Muerto at midnight even
now.
LEGEND OF THE ALTAR DEL PERDON[2]
This painter, Señor, who by a miracle painted the most beautiful
picture of Our Lady of Mercy that is to be found in the whole
world--the very picture that ever since has adorned the Altar del
Perdon in the Cathedral--in the beginning of him was a very bad
sinner: being a Fleming, and a Jew, and many other things that he
ought not to have been, and therefore straight in the way to pass the
whole of Eternity--his wickednesses being so numerous that time would
have been wasted in trying to purge him of them in Purgatory--in the
hottest torments that the devil his master could contrive. He was a
very agreeable young gentleman, of a cheerful and obliging nature, and
both witty and interesting in his talkings--for which reason the
Viceroy had a great liking for his company and had him often at the
Palace to the banquets and the festivals of the court. His name,
Señor, was Don Simon Peyrens; and the Viceroy his patron--in whose
suite he had come from Spain expressly to beautify the Palace with his
paintings--was Don Gastón de Peralta, Marqués de Falces: who was the
third Viceroy of the Province, being the successor to the good Don
Luis de Velasco when that most worthy gentleman ceased to be a Viceroy
and became an angel in the year 1564.
Well, Señor, it happened some years later--in the time of Don Martín
Enriquez de Almanza, the fourth Viceroy, with whom Peyrens remained in
favor--that the Chapter of the Cathedral, desiring to make splendid
the Altar del Perdon, offered in competition to all the painters of
Mexico a prize for the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy:
which picture was to be placed in the centre of that altar and to be
the chief glory of it. And, thereupon, all the painters of Mexico,
save only Peyrens, entered into that competition with a reverent and
an eager joy. And then it was, Señor, that Peyrens made plain the
wickedness that was in him by his irreverent blasphemies. At a banquet
at the Palace a very noble gentleman asked him why he alone of all
the painters of Mexico--and he the best of all of them--had not
entered into the competition; to which that sinful young man answered
with a disdainful and impious lightness that the painting of what were
called sacred pictures was but foolishness and vanity, and that he for
his part could not be tempted to paint one by all the gold in the
world!
Talk of that sort, Señor, as you well may imagine, scalded the ears of
all who heard it--and in the quarter where the punishment of such
sinning was attended to it made an instant stir. In a moment
information of that evil young man's utterances was carried to the
Archbishop--who at that time was the venerable Fray Alonzo de
Montúfar--and in another moment he found himself lodged behind iron
bars in a cell in the Inquisition: that blessed constrainer to
righteousness, for the comforting of the faithful, that then was
proving its usefulness by mowing down the weeds of heresy with a very
lively zeal.
Being of an incredible hard-heartedness, neither the threats nor the
pleadings of the Familiars of the Holy Office could stir Peyrens from
the stand that he had taken. Resolutely he refused to recant his
blasphemies; equally resolutely he refused to accept his freedom on
the condition that he should paint the picture of Our Lady--and he
even went so far, when they brought him the materials for the making
of that picture, as to tear the canvas to shreds and rags!
And so the days ran on into weeks, and the weeks into months, and
nothing changed in that bad matter: save that the Archbishop, saintly
man that he was, began to lose his temper; and that the Familiars of
the Holy Office lost their tempers entirely--and were for settling
accounts with Peyrens by burning his wickedness out of him with
heavenly fire.
As it happened, Señor, a great opportunity for such wholesome
purifying of him was imminent: because at that time the preparations
were being made for the very first auto de fé that ever was celebrated
in Mexico, and all the City was on tiptoe of joyful expectation of it.
Therefore everybody was looking forward with a most pleased interest
to seeing that criminally stiff-necked painter--properly clad in a
yellow coat with a red cross on the back and on the front of
it--walking with the condemned ones; and then, on the brasero that had
been set up in the market-place, to seeing him and his sins together
burned to ashes; and then to seeing those sin-tainted ashes carried to
the outskirts of the City and scattered pollutingly on the muddy
marsh.
However, Señor, none of those interesting and edifying things
happened: because Our Lady of Mercy--and it was just like the
good-nature of her to do so--took a hand in the affair, and by the
working of a loving miracle made everything come out smoothly and
well.