"Do you not believe?" continued the custodian: "it is a sacred fact.
Not a week ago, to cite a case, here comes a dandy from Madrid with
his wife. Well, even as they were climbing the stairs they began to
run down the city, the narrow streets, and the dark houses. When they
came to this window and saw those two old towers down yonder on the
plain on the left bank of the Tagus, they asked me what they were, and
I answered, '_Los palacios de Galiana_.' 'Oh! what beautiful palaces!'
they exclaimed, and began to laugh and looked in another direction.
Why? Because they did not know their history. Now, I imagine that
you do not know any better; but you are a stranger, and that makes a
difference. Know, then, that the great emperor Charlemagne came to
Toledo when he was a very young man. King Galafro was reigning then,
and dwelt in that palace. King Galafro had a daughter Galiana, as
beautiful as an angel; and, as Charlemagne was a guest of the king
and saw the princess every day, he fell in love with her with all
his heart, and so did the princess with him. But there was a rival
between them, and this rival was the king of Guadalajara, a Moorish
giant of herculean strength and the courage of a lion. This king, to
see the princess without being seen, had a subterranean passage made
all the way from the city of Guadalajara to the very foundation of the
palace. But what good did it do? The princess could not even bear to
see him, and as often as he came, so often did he return crestfallen;
but not for this did the enamored king stop paying his court. And so
much did he come hanging around that Charlemagne, who was not a man to
be imposed upon, as you can imagine, lost his patience, and to end the
matter challenged him. They fought: it was a terrible struggle, but the
Moor, for all he was a giant, got the worst of it. When he was dead
Charlemagne cut off his head and laid it at the feet of his love, who
approved the delicacy of his offering, became a Christian, gave her
hand to the prince, and went away with him to France, where she was
proclaimed empress."
"And the head of the Moor?"
"You may laugh, but these are sacred facts. Do you see that old
building down there at the highest point of the city? It is the church
of San Ginés. And do you know what is inside of it? Nothing less than
the door of an underground passage which extends three leagues beyond
Toledo. You do not believe it? Listen! At the place where the church
of San Ginés now stands there once was an enchanted palace before the
Moors invaded Spain. No king had ever had the courage to enter it,
and those who might possibly have been so bold did not do it because,
according to the tradition, the first man who crossed that threshold
would be the ruin of Spain. Finally King Roderic, before setting out
for the battle of Guadalete, hoping to find in it some treasures which
would furnish him means to resist the invasion of the Moors, had the
doors broken open and entered, preceded by his warriors, who lighted
the way. After a great deal of trouble to keep their torches lighted
for the furious wind which came through the underground passages,
they reached a mysterious room where they saw a chest which bore the
inscription, 'He who opens me will see miracles.' The king commanded
that it be opened: with incredible difficulty they succeeded in opening
it, but, instead of gold or diamonds, they found only a roll of
linen, on which were painted some armed Moors, with this inscription
underneath: '_Spain will soon be destroyed by these_.' That very night
a violent tempest arose, the enchanted palace fell, and a short time
afterward the Moors entered Spain. You don't seem to believe it?"
"What stuff you are talking! How can I believe it?"
"But this history is connected with another. You know, without doubt,
that Count Julian, the commandant of the fortress of Ceuta, betrayed
Spain and allowed the Moors to pass when he might have barred the way.
But you do not know why Count Julian turned traitor. He had a daughter
at Toledo, and this daughter went every day with a number of her young
friends to bathe in the Tagus. As misfortune willed it, the place
where they went to bathe, which was called _Los Baños de la Cava_, was
near a tower in which King Roderic was accustomed to pass the mid-day
hours. One day Count Julian's daughter, who was called Florinda, tired
of sporting in the water, sat down on the river-bank and said to her
companions, 'Companions, let us see who is the most beautiful.'--'Let
us see!' they cried, and as soon done as said. They seated themselves
around Florinda, and each one revealed her beauty. But Florinda
surpassed them all, and, unfortunately, just at the moment when she
said to the others, 'Look!' King Roderic put his head out of the window
and saw them. Young and dissolute, you may imagine he took fire like a
match, paid his court to the beautiful Florinda, ruined and abandoned
her; and from this followed the fury of the revenge of Count Julian,
the treason, and the invasion."
At this point it seemed that I had listened long enough: I gave the
custodian two _reales_, which he took and put in his pocket with a
dignified air, and, giving a last look at Toledo, I descended.
It was the hour for promenading. The principal street, hardly wide
enough for a carriage to pass through, was full of people; there may
have been a few hundred persons, but they seemed like a great crowd;
it was dusk, the shops were closing, and a few stray lights began to
flicker here and there. I went to get my dinner, but came out quickly,
so as not to lose sight of the promenade. It was night: there was
no other illumination save the moonlight, and one could not see the
faces of the people; I seemed to be in the midst of a procession
of spectres, and was overwhelmed with sadness. "To think that I am
alone!" I said--"that in all this city there is not a soul who knows
me; that if I fall dead at this moment, there would not be a dog to
say, 'Poor man! he was a good fellow!'" I saw joyous young men pass,
fathers of families with their children, husbands or those who had
the air of husbands with beautiful creatures on their arms; every one
had a companion; they laughed and talked, and passed without so much
as looking at me. How wretched I was! How happy I should have been if
a boy, a beggar, or a policeman had come up and said, "It seems to
me that I recognize you, sir"!--"It is impossible, I am a foreigner,
I have never been in Toledo before; but it makes no matter; don't go
away; stay here, and we will talk a while, for I am lonely."
In a happy moment I remembered that at Madrid I had received a letter
of introduction to a Toledan gentleman. I hurried to the hotel, took
out my letter, and was at once shown to his house. The gentleman was
at home and received me courteously. It was such a pleasure to hear my
own name again that I could have thrown my arms around his neck. He was
Antonio Gamero, the author of a highly esteemed _History of Toledo_. We
spent the evening together. I asked him a hundred things; he told me a
thousand, and read me some splendid passages from his book, which made
me better acquainted with Toledo than I should otherwise have been in a
month's residence there.
The city is poor, and worse than poor: it is dead; the rich have
abandoned it for Madrid; the men of genius have followed the rich; it
has no commerce; the manufacture of cutlery, the only industry which
flourishes, provides a livelihood for some hundreds of families, but
not for the city; popular education is neglected; the people are lazy
and miserable.
But they have not lost their ancient character of nobility. Like all
the peoples of great declining cities, they are proud and chivalrous;
they abhor baseness, deal justice with their own hands, when they
can, to assassins and thieves and murderers; and, although the poet
Zorilla, in one of his ballads, has bluntly called them a silly
people, they are not so; they are alert and bold. They combine the
seriousness of the Spaniards of the North with the vivacity of the
Spaniards of the South; they hold the middle ground between the
Castilian and the Andalusian; they speak the language with refinement,
with a greater variety of inflexion than the people of Madrid, and
with greater precision than the people of Cordova and Seville; they
love poetry and music; they are proud to number among their great men
the gentle Garcilaso de la Vega, the reformer of Spanish poetry, and
the illustrious Francisco de Rojas, the author of the _Garcia del
Castañar_; and they take pride in welcoming within their walls artists
and students from all the countries in the world who come to study the
history of three nations and the monuments of three civilizations.
But, whatever its people may be, Toledo is dead; the city of Wamba,
of Alfonso the Brave, and of Padilla is nothing but a tomb. Since
Philip II. took from it the crown of the capital, it has been steadily
declining, and is still declining, and it is consuming itself little by
little, solitary on the summit of its gloomy mountain, like a skeleton
abandoned on a rock in the midst of the waves of the sea.
I returned to the hotel shortly before midnight. Although the moon was
shining brightly--for on moonlight nights they do not illuminate the
streets, although the light of that silvery orb does not penetrate
those narrow ways--I was obliged to grope my way along like a thief.
With my head full, as it was, of fantastic ballads which describe the
streets of Toledo traversed at night by cavaliers muffled in their
cloaks, singing under the windows of their ladies, fighting and killing
one another, climbing into palaces and stealing the maidens away, I
imagined I should hear the tinkle of guitars, the clashing of swords,
and the cries of the dying. Nothing of the kind: the streets were
deserted and silent and the windows dark, and one heard faintly from
time to time at the corners and crossways the light step of some one
passing or a fugitive whisper, the source of which one could in no way
discover. I reached the hotel without harming any fair Toledan, which
might have caused me some annoyance, and also without having any holes
made in my stomach, which was undoubtedly a consolation.
The morning of the next day I visited the beautiful building of the
hospital of San Cruz, the church of _Nuestra Señora del Transito_, an
ancient synagogue, the ruins of an amphitheatre and of an arena where
naval battles were fought in Roman times, and the famous manufactory
of arms, where I bought a beautiful dagger with a silver handle and a
blade covered with arabesques, which at this moment lies on my table,
and when I shut my eyes and take it in my hand I seem to be still
there, in the courtyard of the factory, a mile out of Toledo, under
the mid-day sun, surrounded by a group of soldiers, and enveloped in a
cloud of smoke from their cigarettes. I remember that as I was walking
back to Toledo, as I was crossing a bit of country solitary as a
desert and silent as the Catacombs, a terrible voice cried out, "Away
with the foreigner!"
The voice came from the city. I stopped--I was the foreigner, that cry
was directed at me, and my blood curdled; the solitude and silence of
the place increased my fear. I started forward and the voice cried
again, "Away with the foreigner!"
"Is it a dream?" I exclaimed, stopping again, "or am I awake? Who is
shouting? Where is he? Why does he do it?"
I started on again, and the voice came the third time, "Away with the
foreigner!"
I stopped the third time, and when, all disturbed, I cast my eyes
around, I saw a boy sitting on the ground, who looked at me with a
laugh and said, "He is a crazy man, who thinks he is living in the time
of the War of Independence. Look, sir! that is the insane asylum."
And he pointed out the place on a hill among the outermost houses of
Toledo. I drew a long breath which would have blown out a torch.
In the evening I left Toledo, regretting that I had not time to see
once and again all that was ancient and wonderful in it: this regret
was tempered, however, by my ardent desire for Andalusia, which had
not allowed me a moment's peace. But how long I saw Toledo before my
eyes! How long I remembered and dreamed of those headlong rocks, those
enormous walls, those dark streets, that fantastic appearance of a
mediæval city! Even to-day I review the picture with a sort of sombre
pleasure and grave melancholy, and with this picture before me my mind
wanders back in a thousand strange thoughts among distant times and
marvellous events.