This story is not a sad one, Señor, like the others. It is a joyful
story of a gentleman and a lady who loved each other, and were
married, and lived in happiness together until they died. And it was
because of his happiness that the gentleman caused to be carved on the
corner of his house, below the balcony on which he saw that day the
sign which gave hope to him, this great green cross of stone that is
there still.
The house with the green cross on it, Señor, stands at the corner of
the Calle de la Cruz Verde--the street, you see, was named for it--and
the Calle de Migueles. It was a fine house in the days when Doña
María's father built it. Now it is old and shabby, and the saint that
once stood in the niche above the cross is gone. But there is an
excellent pulquería there, Señor--it is called La Heroina--where
pulque of the best and the freshest is to be had every morning of
every day the whole year round.
I do not know, Señor, when this matter happened; but I have heard it
told that this gentleman, who was named Don Alvaro de Villadiego y
Manrique, came to Mexico in the train of the Viceroy Don Gastón de
Peralta--so it must have happened a very long while ago.
This Don Alvaro was a very handsome gentleman--tall, and slender, and
fair; and he wore clothes of white velvet worked with gold, and a blue
cap with a white feather; and he rode always a very beautiful Arabian
horse. His hair and his little pointed beard were a golden brown,
Señor; and he was a sight to behold!
[Illustration: LA CRUZ VERDE]
It happened, on a day, that he was taking the air on his Arabian; and
he was wearing--because a festival of some sort was in progress--all
of his fine clothes. So he came prancing down the Calle de Migueles,
and in the balcony of that corner house--the house on which the green
cross now is--he saw a very beautiful young lady, who was most genteel
in her appearance and as white as snow. He fell in love with her on
that very instant; and she--although because of her virtue and good
training she did not show it--on that very instant fell in love with
him. Then he made inquiry and found that her name was Doña María de
Aldarafuente y Segura. Therefore he resolved to marry her. And so,
every day he rode past her balcony and looked up at her with eyes full
of love. As for Doña María, she was so well brought up, and her
parents watched her so narrowly, that it was a long while before she
made any answering sign. And for that reason, Señor, she loved him all
the more tenderly in her heart.
Then it happened, at the end of a long while, that Doña María's mother
fell ill; and so, the watch upon her being less close, Don Alvaro was
able to get to her hands a letter in which he begged that she would
give to him her love. And he told her in his letter that--if she could
not answer it with another letter--she should give him one of two
signs by which he would know her will. If she did not love him, she
was to hang upon the railing of her balcony a cross of dry
palm-leaves--and when he saw that dry cross he would most certainly,
he told her, that day die. But if she did love him, she was to hang a
cross of green palm-leaves upon the railing of her balcony--and when
he saw that green cross he would know, he told her, that she had given
him her true promise of heaven-perfect happiness for all his life
long.
Being a lady, Señor, Doña María let some days go by before she hung on
the railing of her balcony any cross at all--and during those days Don
Alvaro was within no more than a hair's breadth of going mad. And
then--when madness was so close to him that with one single moment
more of waiting his wits would have left him--on a day of days, when
the spring-time sun was shining and all the birds were singing
love-songs together, Don Alvaro saw hanging on the railing of Doña
María's balcony a beautiful bright green cross!
Of course, after that, Señor, things went fast and well. By the
respectable intervention of a cleric--who was the friend of Don
Alvaro, and who also was the friend of Doña María's parents--all the
difficulties were cleared away in a hurry; and only a fortnight after
the green cross was hung on the railing of Doña María's balcony--that
fortnight seemed an endless time to Don Alvaro, but for such a matter
it really was the least that a lady could get ready in--they went
together before the altar, and at the foot of it they vowed to each
other their love. And what is best of all, Señor, is that they kept
faithfully their vow.
Then it was, being gladly married, that Don Alvaro caused the green
cross of stone--so big that it rises to the first floor from the
pavement--to be carved on the corner of the house that thenceforward
they lived in; and it was carved beneath the very balcony where had
hung the green cross of palm-leaves that had given to him Doña María's
true promise of heaven-perfect happiness for all his life long.
And there the green cross still is, Señor; and the name of the street,
as I have told you, is the Calle de la Cruz Verde--which of course
proves that this story is true.
LEGEND OF LA MUJER HERRADA[5]
I do not know when this matter happened, Señor; but my grandfather,
who told me about it, spoke as though all three of them--the priest,
and the blacksmith, and the woman--had lived a long while before his
time. However, my grandfather said that the priest and the woman, who
was his housekeeper, pretty certainly lived in a house--it is gone
now, Señor--that was in the street that is called the Puerta Falsa de
Santo Domingo. And he said that the blacksmith certainly did live in a
house in the Calle de las Rejas de la Balvanera--because he himself
had seen the house, and had seen the farrier's knife and the pincers
cut on the stone arching above the door. Therefore you perceive,
Señor, that my grandfather was well acquainted with these people, and
that this story is true.
The priest was a secular, Señor, not belonging to any Order; and he
and the blacksmith were compadres together--that is to say, they were
close friends. It was because the blacksmith had a great liking for
his compadre, and a great respect for him, that from time to time he
urged him to send away the housekeeper; but his compadre always had
some pleasant excuse to make about the matter, and so the blacksmith
would be put off. And things went on that way for a number of years.
Now it happened, on a night, that the blacksmith was wakened out of
his sleep by a great pounding at the door of his house; and when he
got up and went to his door he found standing there two blacks--they
were men whom he never had laid eyes on--and with them was a she mule
that they had brought to be shod. The blacks made their excuses to him
politely for waking him at that bad hour: telling him that the mule
belonged to his compadre, and had been sent to him to be shod in the
night and in a hurry because his compadre of a sudden had occasion to
go upon a journey, and that he must start upon his journey very early
on the morning of the following day. Then the blacksmith, looking
closely at the mule, saw that she really was the mule of his
compadre; and so, for friendship's sake, he shod her without more
words. The blacks led the mule away when the shoeing was finished;
and, as they went off into the night with her, they fell to beating
her so cruelly with heavy sticks that the blacksmith talked to them
with great severity. But the blacks kept on beating the mule, and even
after they were lost in the darkness the blacksmith continued to hear
the sound of their blows.
[Illustration: LA MVJER HERRADA]
In some ways this whole matter seemed so strange to the blacksmith
that he wanted to know more about it. Therefore he got up very early
in the morning and went to his compadre's house: meaning to ask him
what was the occasion of this journey that had to be taken in such a
hurry, and who those strange blacks were who so cruelly had beaten his
meritorious mule. But when he was come to the house he had to wait a
while before the door was opened; and when at last it did open, there
was his compadre half asleep--and his compadre said that he was not
going on any journey, and that most certainly he had not sent his mule
to be shod. And then, as he got wider awake, he began to laugh at
the blacksmith because of the trick that had been put upon him; and
that the woman might share in the joke of it--they all were great
friends together--he knocked at the door of her room and called to
her. But the woman did not answer back to him; and when he knocked
louder and louder she still gave no sign.
Then he, and the blacksmith too, became anxious about the woman; and
together they opened the door and went into the room. And what they
saw when they were come into the room, Señor, was the most terrible
sight that ever was seen in this world! For there, lying upon her bed,
was that unhappy woman looking all distraught and agonized; and nailed
fast to the feet and to the hands of her were the very same iron shoes
that the blacksmith--who well knew his own forge-work--had nailed fast
to the hoofs of the mule! Moreover, upon her body were the welts and
the bruises left there when the blacks had beaten the mule with their
cruel blows. And the woman, Señor, was as dead as she possibly could
be. So they knew that what had happened was a divine punishment, and
that the blacks were two devils who had changed the woman into a mule
and so had taken her to be shod.
Perceiving, because of such a sign being given him, Señor, that he had
committed an error, the master of that house of horror immediately
went out from it--and at once disappeared completely and never was
heard of again. As for the blacksmith, he was so pained by his share
in the matter that always afterward, until the death of him, he was a
very unhappy man. And that is the story of the Iron-shod Woman, Señor,
from first to last.
LEGEND OF THE ACCURSED BELL[6]
This story, Señor--it is about the accursed bell that once was the
clock-bell of the Palace--has so many beginnings that the only way
really to get at the bones of it would be for a number of people, all
talking at once, to tell the different first parts of it at the same
time.
For, you see, the curse that was upon this bell--that caused it to be
brought to trial before the Consejo of the Inquisition, and by the
Consejo to be condemned to have its wicked tongue torn out and to be
banished from Spain to this country--was made up of several curses
which had been in use in other ways elsewhere previously: so that one
beginning is with the Moor, and another with Don Gil de Marcadante,
and another with the devil-forged armor, and still another with the
loosing of all the curses from the cross (wherein for some hundreds of
years they were imprisoned) and the fusing of them into the one great
curse wherewith this unfortunate bell was afflicted--which happened
when that holy emblem was refounded, and with the metal of it this
bell was made.
Concerning the Moor, Señor, I can give you very little information.
All that I know about him is that he had the bad name of Muslef; and
that he was killed--as he deserved to be killed, being an Infidel--by
a Christian knight; and that this knight cut his head off and brought
it home with him as an agreeable memento of the occasion, and was very
pleased with what he had done. Unfortunately, this knight also brought
home with him the Moor's armor--which was of bronze, and so curiously
and so beautifully wrought that it evidently had been forged by
devils, and which was farther charged with devilishness because it had
been worn by an Infidel; and then, still more unfortunately, he
neglected to have the armor purified by causing the devils to be
exorcised out of it by a Christian priest. Therefore, of course, the
devils remained in the armor--ready to make trouble whenever they got
the chance.
How Don Gil de Marcadante came to be the owner of that accursed
devil-possessed armor, Señor, I never have heard mentioned. Perhaps he
bought it because it happened to fit him; and, certainly--he being a
most unusually sinful young gentleman--the curse that was upon it and
the devils which were a part of it fitted him to a hair.
This Don Gil was a student of law in Toledo; but his studies were the
very last things to which he turned his attention, and the life that
he led was the shame of his respectable brother and his excellent
mother's despair. Habitually, he broke every law of the Decalogue, and
so brazenly that all the city rang with the stories of his evil doings
and his crimes. Moreover, he was of a blusterous nature and a born
brawler: ready at the slightest contradiction to burst forth with such
a torrent of blasphemies and imprecations that his mouth seemed to be
a den of snakes and toads and scorpions; and ever quick to snatch his
sword out and to get on in a hurry from words to blows. As his nearest
approach to good nature was after he had killed some one in a quarrel
of his own making, and as even at those favorable times his temper was
of a brittleness, he was not looked upon as an agreeable companion
and had few friends.
This Don Gil had most intimate relations with the devil, as was proved
in various ways. Thus, a wound that he received in one of his duels
instantly closed and healed itself; on a night of impenetrable
darkness, as he went about his evil doings, he was seen to draw apart
the heavy gratings of a window as though the thick iron bars had been
silken threads; and a stone that he cast at a man in one of his
rages--mercifully not hitting him--remained burning hot in the place
where it had fallen for several days. Moreover, it was known generally
that in the night time, in a very secret and hidden part of his
dwelling, he gave himself up to hideous and most horrible sacrileges
in which his master the devil had always a part. And so these
facts--and others of a like nature--coming to the knowledge of the
Holy Office, it was perceived that he was a sorcerer. Therefore he was
marched off--wearing his devil-forged armor, to which fresh curses had
come with his use of it--to a cell in the Inquisition; and to make
sure of holding him fast until the next auto de fé came round, when he
was to be burned properly and regularly, he was bound with a great
chain, and the chain was secured firmly to a strong staple in the cell
wall.
But the devil, Señor, sometimes saves his own. On a morning, the
jailer went as usual to Don Gil's cell with the bread and the water
for him; and when he had opened the cell door he saw, as he believed,
Don Gil in his armor waiting as usual for his bread and his water: but
in a moment he perceived that what he saw was not Don Gil in his
armor, but only the accursed armor standing upright full of emptiness;
and that the staple was torn out; and that the great chain was broken;
and that Don Gil was gone! And then--so much to the horror of the
jailer that he immediately went mad of it--the empty armor began
slowly to walk up and down the cell!
After that time Don Gil never was seen, nor was he heard of, again on
earth; and so on earth, when the time came for burning him at the auto
de fé, he had to be burned in effigy. However--as there could be no
doubt about the place to which the devil had taken him--everybody was
well satisfied that he got his proper personal burning elsewhere.
Then it was, Señor, that the Holy Office most wisely ordered that that
devil-possessed and doubly accursed armor should be melted, and
refounded into a cross: knowing that the sanctity of that blessed
emblem would quiet the curses and would hold the devils still and
fast. Therefore that order was executed; and the wisdom of it--which
some had questioned, on the ground that devils and curses were
unsuitable material to make a cross of--was apparent as soon as the
bronze turned fluid in the furnace: because there came from the fiery
seething midst of it--to the dazed terror of the workmen--shouts of
devil-laughter, and imprecations horrible to listen to, and frightful
blasphemies; and to these succeeded, as the metal was being poured
into the mould, a wild outburst of defiant remonstrance; and then all
this demoniac fury died away--as the metal hardened and became fixed
as a cross--at first into half-choked cries of agony, and then into
confused lamentations, and at the last into little whimpering moans.
Thus the devils and the curses were disposed of: and then the
cross--holding them imprisoned in its holy substance--was set up in a
little townlet not far from Madrid in which just then a cross
happened to be wanted; and there it remained usefully for some
hundreds of years.
At the end of that period--by which time everybody was dead who knew
what was inside of it--the cross was asked for by the Prior of a
little convent in that townlet near Madrid, who desired it that he
might have it refounded into a bell; and as the Prior was a worthy
person, and as he really needed a bell, his request was granted. So
they made out of the cross a very beautiful bell: having on one side
of it the two-headed eagle; and having on the other side of it a
calvario; and having at the top of it, for its hanging, two imperial
lions supporting a cross-bar in the shape of a crown. Then it was hung
in the tower of the little convent; and the Prior, and all the
Brothers with him, were very much pleased. But that worthy Prior, and
those equally worthy Brothers, were not pleased for long, Señor:
because the curses and the devils all were loose again--and their
chance to do new wickednesses had come!
On a night of blackness, without any warning whatever, the whole of
the townlet was awakened by the prodigious clangor of a bell
furiously ringing. In an instant--seeking the cause of this
disturbance--everybody came out into the night's blackness: the Señor
Cura, the Señor Alcalde, the alguaciles, the Prior, the Brothers, all
the townsfolk to the very last one. And when they had looked about
them they found that the cause of the disturbance was the new bell of
the convent: which was ringing with such an excessive violence that
the night's blackness was corrupted with its noise.
Terror was upon everyone; and greater terror was upon every one when
it was found out that the door of the bell-tower was locked, and that
the bell was ringing of its lone self: because the bad fact then
became evident that only devils could have the matter in hand. The
Señor Alcalde alone--being a very valiant gentleman, and not much
believing in devils--was not satisfied with that finding. Therefore
the Señor Alcalde caused the door to be unlocked and, carrying a torch
with him, entered the bell-tower; and there he found the bell-rope
crazily flying up and down as though a dozen men were pulling it, and
nobody was pulling it--which sight somewhat shook his nerves.
However, because of his valorousness, he only stopped to cross
himself; and then he went on bravely up the belfry stair. But what he
saw when he was come into the belfry fairly brought him to a stand.
For there was the bell ringing tempestuously; and never a visible hand
was near it; and the only living thing that he found in the belfry was
a great black cat with its tail bushed out and its fur
bristling--which evil animal for a moment leered at him malignantly,
with its green eyes gleaming in the torch-light, and then sprang
past him and dashed down the stair.
Then the Señor Alcalde, no longer doubting that the bell was being
rung by devils, and himself not knowing how to manage devils, called
down from the belfry to the Señor Cura to come up and take charge of
the matter: whereupon the Señor Cura, holding his courage in both
hands, did come up into the belfry, bringing his hisopo with him, and
fell to sprinkling the bell with holy water--which seemed to him, so
far as he could see his way into that difficult tangle, the best thing
that he could do. But his doing it, of course, was the very worst
thing that he could have done: because, you see, Señor, the devils
were angered beyond all endurance by being scalded with the holy water
(that being the effect that holy water has upon devils) and so only
rang the bell the more furiously in their agony of pain. Then the
Señor Alcalde and the Señor Cura perceived that they could not quiet
the devils, and decided to give up trying to. Therefore they came down
from the belfry together--and they, and everybody with them, went away
through the night's blackness crossing themselves, and were glad to be
safe again in their homes.
The next day the Señor Alcalde made a formal inquest into the whole
matter: citing to appear before him all the townsfolk and all the
Brothers, and questioning them closely every one. And the result of
this inquest was to make certain that the bell-ringer of the convent
had not rung the bell; nor had any other of the Brothers rung it; nor
had any of the townsfolk rung it. Therefore the Señor Alcalde, and
with him the Señor Cura--whose opinion was of importance in such a
matter--decided that the devil had rung it: and their decision was
accepted by everybody, because that was what everybody from the
beginning had believed.
Therefore--because such devilish doings affected the welfare of the
whole kingdom--a formal report of all that had happened was submitted
to the Cortes; and the Cortes, after pondering the report seriously,
perceived that the matter was ecclesiastical and referred it to the
Consejo of the Inquisition; and the members of the Consejo, in due
course, ordered that all the facts should be digested and regularized
and an opinion passed upon them by their Fiscal.
Being a very painstaking person, the Fiscal went at his work with so
great an earnestness that for more than a year he was engaged upon it.
First he read all that he could find to read about bells in all the
Spanish law books, from the _Siete Partidas_ of Alonzo the Wise
downward; then he read all that he could find about bells in such law
books of foreign countries as were accessible to him; then, in the
light of the information so obtained, he digested and regularized the
facts of the case presented for his consideration and applied himself
to writing his opinion upon them; and then, at last, he came before
the Consejo and read to that body his opinion from beginning to end.
Through the whole of a long day the Fiscal read his opinion; and
through the whole of the next day, and the next, and the next; and at
the end of the fourth day he finished the reading of his opinion and
sat down. And the opinion of the Fiscal was that the devil had rung
the bell.
Then the Consejo, after debating for three days upon what had been
read by the Fiscal, gave formal approval to his opinion; and in
conformity with it the Consejo came to these conclusions:
1. That the ringing of the bell was a matter of no importance
to good Christians.
2. That the bell, being possessed of a devil, should have its
tongue torn out: so that never again should it dare to ring of
its lone devilish self, to the peril of human souls.
3. That the bell, being dangerous to good Christians, should
be banished from the Spanish Kingdom to the Indies, and
forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.
Thereupon, that wise sentence was executed. The devil-possessed bell
was taken down from the belfry of the little convent, and its wicked
tongue was torn out of it; then it was carried shamefully and with
insults to the coast; then it was put on board of one of the ships of
the flota bound for Mexico; and in Mexico, in due course, it arrived.
Being come here, and no orders coming with it regarding its
disposition, it was brought from Vera Cruz to the Capital and was
placed in an odd corner of one of the corridors of the Palace: and
there it remained quietly--everybody being shy of meddling with a bell
that was known to be alive with witchcraft--for some hundreds of
years.