Inquisition, Peyrens was awakened suddenly he knew not how; and as he
wakened he found in his nose a smell so delectable that he thought
that he still was asleep and his nose dreaming it: and for him to have
that thought was quite reasonable, Señor, because it was the pure
fragrance of heaven--to which, of course, human noses are
unaccustomed--that filled the room. Then, as he lay on his pallet
wondering, a shimmering light began to glow softly in the darkness;
and the light constantly grew stronger and stronger until it became a
glorious radiance far brighter than any sunlight; and then in the
midst of that resplendency--yet the heavenly sparkle of her making the
dazzle of it seem like darkness--Our Lady of Mercy herself appeared to
him: and he would have died of the glory of her, had it not been for
the loving kindness that shone upon him assuringly and comfortingly
from her gentle eyes.
Then said to him Our Lady, in a voice sweeter than any earthly music:
"Little son, why dost thou not love me?" And Peyrens--his hard heart
melted by that gentle look and by that sweet voice, and all of his
wickedness cured by that loving kindness--rose from his pallet and
knelt before Our Lady, saying with a deep earnestness: "Queen of
Heaven, I reverence and I love thee with all the heart of me and with
all my soul!" Then, for a time, a serene strange happiness bemazed him
dream-fully--and when his bemazement left him the resplendent presence
was gone. But with him still remained the heavenly radiance that was
brighter than any sunlight, and the heavenly perfume that was sweeter
than spikenard and lilies; and while he pondered all these mysteries,
awe-bound and wondering, again sounded in his ears that heaven-sweet
voice--coming as from a great distance, but with a bell-note
clearness--saying to him gently and lovingly: "Paint now thy picture
of me, little son!"
Quite possibly, Señor, in the hurry of the moment, Our Lady forgot
that Peyrens had no canvas--because in his sinful anger he had
destroyed it--on which to paint the picture that she commanded of him;
but, for myself, I think that she meant to set his wits to work to
find the means by which he could obey her command. At any rate, his
wits did work so well that even as she spoke he saw his way out of his
difficulty; and in an instant--all a-thrill with joyful eagerness to
do Our Lady's bidding, and inspired by the splendor of his vision of
her--he set himself to painting the portrait of her, just as his own
eyes had seen her in her glory, on the oaken door of his cell.
All the night long, Señor--working by the heaven-light that was
brighter than any sunlight, and having in his happy nose the heaven
fragrance that uplifted his soul with the sweetness of it--he painted
as one who painted in a heaven-sent dream. And when the morning came,
and the glimmering daylight took dimly the place of the heaven-light,
he had finished there on the door of his cell the most beautiful
picture of Our Lady--as I said in the beginning--that ever has been
painted in this mortal world: and so it had to be--because, you see,
it is the only picture of her that ever has been painted of her by one
who has beheld her with mortal eyes!
As usually is the case with miracles, Señor, the outcome of this one
was most satisfactory. The Archbishop and the Chapter of the
Cathedral, being brought in haste, instantly felt themselves compelled
to adore that miraculous image; and when they had finished adoring it
they equally felt themselves compelled to declare that Peyrens by his
making of it had earned both his freedom and the prize. Therefore
Peyrens was set at liberty and most richly rewarded; and the pictured
door was taken from its hinges and, being framed in a great frame of
silver, was set upon the Altar del Perdon to be the chief glory of it;
and what was best of all--because it made safe the soul of him for all
Eternity--the Archbishop formally confirmed to Peyrens his
absolution, through Our Lady's loving kindness, from his bad heresy
and from all his other sins.
What became of this Peyrens later, Señor, I have not heard mentioned;
but in regard to the accuracy of all that I have told you about him
there can be no question: because the miracle-picture that he painted
still adorns the Altar del Perdon, and is the chief glory of it--and
there you may see it this very day.
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO
This Alleyway of the Armed One, Señor, got its name because long
ago--before it had any name at all--there lived in it an old man who
went always clad in armor, wearing also his sword and his dagger at
his side; and all that was known about him was that his name was Don
Lope de Armijo y Lara, and that--for all that he lived so meanly in so
mean a street in so mean a quarter of the City--he was a rich
merchant, and that he came from Spain.
Into his poor little house no one ever got so much as the tip of his
nose, and he lived alone there in great mystery. In spite of his
riches, he had not even one servant; and he himself bought his own
victuals and cooked them with his own hands. Always he was seen armed
to the teeth [_armado hasta los dientes_] when he went abroad. Under
his mean robe was a full suit of armor, and in his belt was a long
dagger and a broad and very long sword; also, when at night he went
out on strange errands, he carried a great pike. Therefore, presently,
people spoke of him not as Don Lope but as El Armado--and so he was
called.
That he was a wicked person was known generally. He was very
charitable to the poor. Every morning he went to pray in the church of
San Francisco; and he remained praying there for hours at a time,
kneeling upon his knees. Also, at the proper seasons, he partook of
the Sacrament. Some said that through the shut windows of his house,
in the night-time, they had heard the sound of his scourgings as he
made penance for his sins.
[Illustration: EL CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO]
In the darkness of the darkest of nights--when there was no moon, and
especially when a dismal drizzling rain was falling--he would be seen
to come out from his house in all his armor and go stealing away in
the direction of the Plazuela de Mixcalco. He would disappear into the
shadows, and not come back again until midnight had passed. Then he
would be heard, in his shut house, counting his money. For a long
while that would go on--counting, counting, counting--there was no
end to the clinking of silver coin. Then, when all his money was
counted, would be heard the sound of scourging, together with most
lamentable and complaining groanings. And, at the end of all, would
come a heavy clanking--as of a great iron cover falling heavily upon a
chest of iron. After that there would be no sign of life about the
house until the morning--when the Armed One would come forth from it
and go to San Francisco to pray.
The life of that man was a bad mystery, Señor, that many wished to
uncover by denouncing him to justice; but the uncovering came of its
own accord, and was a greater mystery still! On a morning, all the
neighbors saw the Armed One hanging dead--hanging dead from his own
balcony by a cord! No one knew what to think; but most thought that he
had hung himself there in fear that denouncement of his crimes would
be made and that justice would have its hold upon him. When the
Alcalde came, and made search in his house, a very great sum of money
was found; and, also, were found many skulls of men who certainly
must have perished at his hands.
It is a most curious matter, Señor. I cannot see my way through it.
But the house is gone.
LEGEND OF THE ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO[3]
This gentleman who for love's sake, Señor, conquered his coldness and
his laziness and became all fire and energy, was named Don Juan
Gutiérrez Rubín de Celis. He was a caballero of the Order of
Santiago--some say that he wore also the habit of Calatrava--and the
colonel of the regiment of the Tres Villas. He was of a lovable
nature, and ostentatious and arrogant, and in all his ways dilatory
and apathetic to the very last degree. So great were his riches that
not even he himself knew the sum of them: as you will understand when
I tell you that on an occasion of state--it was the entry into the
City in the year 1716 of the new Viceroy, the Marqués de
Valero--pearls to the value of thirty thousand pesos were used in the
mere trimming of his casacón.
Being of an age to take part so nobly in that noble ceremony, he must
have been a gentleman well turned of forty, Señor, when the matters
whereof I now am telling you occurred: of which the beginning--and
also the middle and the ending, because everything hinged upon it--was
his falling most furiously in love with a very beautiful young lady;
and his falling in love in that furious fashion was the very first
sign of energy that in all his lifetime, until that moment, he had
shown. The name of this beautiful young lady with whom he fell in love
so furiously was Doña Sara de García Somera y Acuña; and she was less
than half as old as he was, but possessed of a very sensible nature
that made her do more thinking than is done usually by young ladies;
and she was of a noble house, and a blood relative of the Viceroy's:
for which reason the Viceroy--who by that time was Don Juan de Acuña,
Marqués de Casafuerte--was much interested in the whole affair.
The love-making of this so notoriously lazy gentleman did not at all
go upon wheels, Señor: because Doña Sara set herself--as was her habit
when dealing with any matter of importance--to thinking about it very
seriously; and the more that she thought about it the more she made
her mind up that so dull and so apathetic a gentleman--who, moreover,
was old enough to be her father--would not in the least be the sort of
husband that she desired. But also, because of her good sense, she
perceived that much was to be said in favor of entering into wedlock
with him: because his rank and his great wealth made him one of the
most important personages in the Vice-Kingdom; and, moreover, for all
that he was old enough to be her father, he still was a very
personable man. And so she thought very hard in both directions, and
could not in either direction make up her mind.
While matters were in this condition, Señor--Don Juan furiously in
love with Doña Sara, and Doña Sara thinking in that sensible way of
hers about being temperately in love with Don Juan--something happened
that gave a new turn to the whole affair. This thing that happened was
that the Viceroy--who was a great friend of Don Juan's; and who, as I
have mentioned, was a kinsman of Doña Sara's, and much interested in
all that was going forward--appointed Don Juan to be Prior of the
Consulado; that is to say, President of the Tribunal of Commerce:
which was a most honorable office, in keeping with his rank and his
riches; and which also was an office--because all the work of it could
be done by deputy, or even left undone--that fitted in with Don Juan's
lazy apathy to a hair.
Now at that time, Señor, the building of the Aduana de Santo Domingo
was in progress--it ceased to be a custom-house many years ago, Señor;
it is occupied by the Secretaría de Comunicaciones now--and it had
been in progress, with no great result from the work that laggingly
was done on it, for a number of years. The charge of the making of
this edifice rested with the Consulado; and, naturally, the new Prior
of the Consulado was even more content than had been his predecessors
in that office to let the making of it lag on.
Then it was, Señor, that there came into the sensible mind of Doña
Sara a notable project for proving whether Don Juan's lazy apathy went
to the very roots of him; or whether, at the very roots of him--over
and above the energy that he had shown in his furious love for
her--he had energy that she could arouse and could set a-going in
practically useful ways. And her reasoning was this wise: that if Don
Juan could be stirred by her urgence to do useful work with vigor,
then was it likely that her urgence would arouse him from all his
apathies--and so would recast him into the sort of husband that she
desired to have. Therefore Doña Sara told Don Juan that she would
marry him only on one condition; and that her condition was that he
should finish completely the long-drawn-out building of the Aduana
within six months from that very day! And Don Juan, Señor, was so
furiously in love with Doña Sara that in the same instant that she
gave him her condition he accepted it; and he--who never had done a
hand's turn of work in all his lifetime--promised her that he would do
the almost impossible piece of work that she had set him to do: and
that the Aduana should be finished completely within six months from
that very day!
And then all the City was amazed--and so, for that matter, Don Juan
himself was--by the fire and the force and the breathless eagerness
with which he set himself to the task that Doña Sara had put upon
him. In a single moment he had gone to every one of all the architects
in the City urging them to take in charge for him that almost
impossible piece of building; and in the very next moment--every one
of all the architects in the City having made answer to him that what
he wanted of them could not even by a miracle be accomplished--he
himself took charge of it: and with a furiousness that matched
precisely--as Doña Sara perceived with hopeful satisfaction--with the
furiousness of his love.
What Don Juan did in that matter, Señor, was done as though in the
insides of him were tempests and volcanoes! From the Tierra Caliente
he brought up as by magic myriads of negro workmen to do the digging
and the heavy carrying; all the quarries around the City he crammed
full of stone-cutters; every mason was set to work at wall-laying;
every carpenter to making the doors and the windows; every brick-yard
to making the tiles for the roof and the floors; every blacksmith to
making the locks and the hinges and the window-gratings and the
balcony rails. And in the midst of his swarms of laborers Don Juan
himself worked harder than all of them put together; and was
everywhere at once among them urging them to hurry and to hurry; and
to any one of them who showed even the slightest sign of lagging there
came from Don Juan's mouth a berating volleying of scorpions and
snakes and toads!
In very truth, Señor, such was Don Juan's raging energy that he was as
a frenzied person. But it was a frenzy that had no real madness in it:
because everything that he did and that he made to be done was
directed by a most sensible discretion--so that not a moment of time
nor the turn of a hand was wasted, and in every single instant the
building grew and grew. And the upshot of it all was that he
accomplished just what he had made his whole soul up he would
accomplish: within the six months that Doña Sara had given him to do
his work in, he did do it--and even with a little time to spare. Three
full days before the last of his six months was ended the Aduana was
finished to the very least part of its smallest detail; and Don
Juan--all aglow over his triumphant fulfilment of Doña Sara's almost
impossible condition--carried the key of that perfectly completed vast
structure to the Palace, and there placed the key of it in the
Viceroy's hands!
Moreover--that all the world might know why it was, and for whom it
was, that his great work had been accomplished--Don Juan caused to be
carved on a wall of the building a most artfully contrived
inscription: that seemed only to give soberly his own name, and the
names of the Consules associated with him, and the date of the
Aduana's completion; but that was so arranged that the first letters
of the five lines of it together made the initials of Doña Sara's
name.
Don Juan thus having done what Doña Sara had set him to do, and what
every one of all the architects in the City had declared could not be
done even by a miracle, it was evident to the whole world that at the
very roots of him was more blazing energy than would suffice for the
equipment of a half hundred of ordinary men. Wherefore Doña Sara was
well satisfied--her urgence having stirred him to do that great useful
work with such masterful vigor--that her urgence equally would arouse
him from all of his apathies: and so would recast him into the sort of
husband that she desired to have. Therefore Doña Sara immediately
gave to Don Juan her hand in marriage: and as the Aduana still is
standing--and precisely where, faster than a miracle, Don Juan built
it--the Señor has only to look at it, and to read the inscription
showing Doña Sara's initials, to know both the truth of this curious
story and that Doña Sara's choice of a husband was well made.
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA QUEMADA
Not knowing what they are talking about, Señor, many people will tell
you that the Street of the Burned Woman got its name because--in the
times when the Holy Office was helping the goodness of good people by
making things very bad for the bad ones--a woman heretic most properly
and satisfactorily was burned there. Such is not in the least the
case. The Quemadero of the Inquisition--where such sinners were
burned, that their sins might be burned out of them--was nowhere near
the Calle de la Quemada: being at the western end of what now is the
Alameda, in quite a different part of the town. Therefore it is a
mistake to mix these matters: and the real truth is that this
beautiful young lady did herself destroy her own beauty by setting
fire to it; and she did it because she wanted to do it--that in that
way she might settle some doubts which were in her heart. It all
happened in the time of the good Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco: and so
you will perceive, Señor, that this story is more than three hundred
years old.
The name of this beautiful young lady who went to such lengths for her
heart's assuring was Doña Beatrice de Espinosa; and the name of her
father was Don Gonzalo de Espinosa y Guevra--who was a Spanish rich
merchant who came to make himself still richer by his buyings and his
sellings in New Spain. Being arrived here, he took up his abode in a
fine dwelling in the quarter of San Pablo, in the very street that now
is called the Street of the Burned Woman because of what presently
happened there; and if that street was called by some other name
before that cruel happening I do not know what it was.
Doña Beatrice was as beautiful, Señor, as the full moon and the best
of the stars put together; and she was more virtuous than she was
beautiful; and she was just twenty years old. Therefore all the young
gentlemen of the City immediately fell in love with her; and great
numbers of the richest and the noblest of them--their parents, or
other suitable persons, making the request for them--asked her
father's permission to wed her: so that Doña Beatrice might have had
any one of twenty good husbands, had any one of them been to her mind.
However--being a lady very particular in the matter of husbands--not
one of them was to her liking: wherefore her father did as she wanted
him to do and refused them all.
But, on a day, matters went differently. At a great ball given by the
Viceroy in the Palace Doña Beatrice found what her heart had been
waiting for: and this was a noble Italian young gentleman who
instantly--as all the others had done--fell in love with her; and with
whom--as she never before had done with anybody--she instantly fell in
love. The name of this young gentleman was Don Martín Scipoli; and he
was the Marqués de Pinamonte y Frantescello; and he was as handsome as
he was lovable, and of a most jealous nature, and as quarrelsome as it
was possible for anybody to be. Therefore, as I have said, Señor, Doña
Beatrice at once fell in love with him with all the heart of her; and
Don Martín at once fell in love with her also: and so violently that
his jealousy of all her other lovers set off his quarrelsomeness at
such a rate that he did nothing--in his spare time, when he was not
making love to Doña Beatrice--but affront and anger them, so that he
might have the pleasure of finding them at the point of his sword.
Now Doña Beatrice, Señor, was a young lady of a most delicate nature,
and her notions about love were precisely the same as those which are
entertained by the lady angels. Therefore Don Martín's continual
fightings very much worried her: raising in her heart the dread that
so violent a person must be of a coarse and carnal nature; and that,
being of such a nature, his love for her came only from his
beblindment by the outside beauty of her, and was not--as her own love
was--the pure love of soul for soul. Moreover, she was pained by his
being led on by his jealousy--for which there was no just occasion--to
injure seriously, and even mortally, so many worthy young men.
Therefore Doña Beatrice--after much thinking and a great deal of
praying over the matter--made her mind up to destroy her own beauty:
that in that way she might put all jealousies out of the question;
and at the same time prove to her heart's satisfying that Don Martín's
love for her had nothing to do with the outside beauty of her and
truly was the pure love of soul for soul.
And Doña Beatrice, Señor, did do that very thing. Her father being
gone abroad from his home, and all of the servants of the house being
on one excuse or another sent out of it, she brought into her own
chamber a brazier filled with burning coals; and this she set beneath
an image of the blessed Santa Lucía that she had hung upon the wall to
give strength to her in case, in doing herself so cruel an injury, her
own strength should fail. Santa Lucía, as you will remember, Señor,
with her own hands plucked out her own wonderfully beautiful eyes and
sent them on a platter to the young gentleman who had troubled her
devotions by telling her that he could not live without them; and with
them sent the message that, since she had given him the eyes that he
could not live without, he please would let her and her devotions
alone. Therefore it was clear that Santa Lucía was the saint best
fitted to oversee the matter that Doña Beatrice had in hand.
But in regard to her eyes Doña Beatrice did not precisely pattern
herself upon Santa Lucía: knowing that without them she could not see
how Don Martín stood the test that she meant to put him to; and, also,
very likely remembering that Santa Lucía miraculously got her eyes
back again, and got them back even more beautiful than when she lost
them: because, you see, they came back filled with the light of
heaven--where the angels had been taking care of them until they
should be returned. Therefore Doña Beatrice bound a wet handkerchief
over her eyes--that she might keep the sight in them to see how Don
Martín stood his testing; and, also, that she might spare the angels
the inconvenience of caring for them--and then she fanned and fanned
the fire in the brazier until the purring of it made her know that the
coals were in a fierce blaze. And then, Señor, she plunged her
beautiful face down into the very heart of the glowing coals! And it
was at that same instant--though Doña Beatrice, of course, did not
know about that part of the matter--that the Street of the Burned
Woman got its name.
Being managed under the guidance and with the approval of Santa Lucía,
the cruelty that this virtuous young lady put upon her own beauty
could lead only to a good end. Presently, when the bitter pain of her
burning had passed a little, Doña Beatrice bade Don Martín come to
her; and he, coming, found her clad in virgin white and wearing over
her poor burned face a white veil. And then the test that Doña
Beatrice had planned for her heart's assuring was made.
Little by little, Doña Beatrice raised her white veil slowly; and,
little by little, Don Martín saw the face of her: and the face of her
was more shudderingly hideous--her two beautiful eyes perfectly alight
and alive amid that distorted deathliness was what made the shudder of
it--than anything that ever he had dreamed of in his very worst dream!
Therefore, with a great joy and thankfulness, Don Martín immediately
espoused Doña Beatrice: and thence-forward and always--most reasonably
ceasing to love the outside beauty of her--gave her, as she wanted him
to give her, the pure love of soul for soul.
For myself, Señor, I think that the conduct of that young lady was
unreasonable, and that Don Martín had just occasion to be annoyed.