there was an old fellow, Tio Nicolo [Uncle Nicholas] by name, who had
filled the panniers of his mule with snow and ice, and was returning
down the mountain. Being very drowsy, he mounted upon the mule, and soon
falling asleep, went with his head nodding and bobbing about from side
to side, while his sure-footed old mule stepped along the edge of
precipices, and down steep and broken barrancos, just as safe and steady
as if it had been on plain ground. At length Tio Nicolo awoke, and gazed
about him, and rubbed his eyes--and, in good truth, he had reason. The
moon shone almost as bright as day, and he saw the city below him, as
plain as your hand, and shining with its white buildings, like a silver
platter, in the moonshine; but, Lord! Señor, it was nothing like the
city he had left a few hours before! Instead of the cathedral, with its
great dome and turrets, and the churches with their spires, and the
convents with their pinnacles, all surmounted with the blessed cross, he
saw nothing but Moorish mosques, and minarets, and cupolas, all topped
off with glittering crescents, such as you see on the Barbary flags.
Well, Señor, as you may suppose, Tio Nicolo was mightily puzzled at all
this, but while he was gazing down upon the city, a great army came
marching up the mountains, winding along the ravines, sometimes in the
moonshine, sometimes in the shade. As it drew nigh, he saw that there
were horse and foot, all in Moorish armor. Tio Nicolo tried to scramble
out of their way, but his old mule stood stockstill, and refused to
budge, trembling, at the same time, like a leaf,--for dumb beasts,
Señor, are just as much frightened at such things as human beings. Well,
Señor, the hobgoblin army came marching by; there were men that seemed
to blow trumpets, and others to beat drums and strike cymbals, yet never
a sound did they make; they all moved on without the least noise, just
as I have seen painted armies move across the stage in the theatre of
Granada, and all looked as pale as death. At last, in the rear of the
army, between two black Moorish horsemen, rode the Grand Inquisitor of
Granada, on a mule as white as snow. Tio Nicolo wondered to see him in
such company, for the Inquisitor was famous for his hatred of Moors,
and, indeed, of all kinds of Infidels, Jews, and heretics, and used to
hunt them out with fire and scourge. However, Tio Nicolo felt himself
safe, now that there was a priest of such sanctity at hand. So making
the sign of the cross, he called out for his benediction, when, hombre!
he received a blow that sent him and his old mule over the edge of a
steep bank, down which they rolled, head-over-heels, to the bottom! Tio
Nicolo did not come to his senses until long after sunrise, when he
found himself at the bottom of a deep ravine, his mule grazing beside
him, and his panniers of snow completely melted. He crawled back to
Granada sorely bruised and battered, but was glad to find the city
looking as usual, with Christian churches and crosses. When he told the
story of his night’s adventure, every one laughed at him; some said he
had dreamed it all, as he dozed on his mule; others thought it all a
fabrication of his own; but what was strange, Señor, and made people
afterwards think more seriously of the matter, was, that the Grand
Inquisitor died within the year. I have often heard my grandfather, the
tailor, say, that there was more meant by that hobgoblin army bearing
off the resemblance of the priest, than folks dared to surmise.”
“Then you would insinuate, friend Mateo, that there is a kind of Moorish
limbo, or purgatory, in the bowels of these mountains, to which the
padre Inquisitor was borne off.”
“God forbid, Señor! I know nothing of the matter. I only relate what I
heard from my grandfather.”
By the time Mateo had finished the tale, which I have more succinctly
related, and which was interlarded with many comments, and spun out with
minute details, we reached the gate of the Alhambra.
The marvellous stories hinted at by Mateo, in the early part of our
ramble about the Tower of the Seven Floors, set me as usual upon my
goblin researches. I found that the redoubtable phantom, the Belludo,
had been time out of mind a favorite theme of nursery tales and popular
traditions in Granada, and that honorable mention had even been made of
it by an ancient historian and topographer of the place. The scattered
members of one of these popular traditions I have gathered together,
collated them with infinite pains, and digested them into the following
legend; which only wants a number of learned notes and references at
bottom to take its rank among those concrete productions gravely passed
upon the world for Historical Facts.
LEGEND OF THE MOOR’S LEGACY
Just within the fortress of the Alhambra, in front of the royal palace,
is a broad open esplanade, called the Place or Square of the Cisterns,
(la Plaza de los Algibes,) so called from being undermined by reservoirs
of water, hidden from sight, and which have existed from the time of the
Moors. At one corner of this esplanade is a Moorish well, cut through
the living rock to a great depth, the water of which is cold as ice and
clear as crystal. The wells made by the Moors are always in repute, for
it is well known what pains they took to penetrate to the purest and
sweetest springs and fountains. The one of which we now speak is famous
throughout Granada, insomuch that water-carriers, some bearing great
water-jars on their shoulders, others driving asses before them laden
with earthen vessels, are ascending and descending the steep woody
avenues of the Alhambra, from early dawn until a late hour of the
night.
Fountains and wells, ever since the scriptural days, have been noted
gossiping-places in hot climates; and at the well in question there is a
kind of perpetual club kept up during the livelong day, by the invalids,
old women, and other curious do-nothing folk of the fortress, who sit
here on the stone benches, under an awning spread over the well to
shelter the toll-gatherer from the sun, and dawdle over the gossip of
the fortress, and question every water-carrier that arrives about the
news of the city, and make long comments on everything they hear and
see. Not an hour of the day but loitering housewives and idle
maid-servants may be seen, lingering, with pitcher on head or in hand,
to hear the last of the endless tattle of these worthies.
Among the water-carriers who once resorted to this well, there was a
sturdy, strong-backed, bandy-legged little fellow, named Pedro Gil, but
called Peregil for shortness. Being a water-carrier, he was a Gallego,
or native of Gallicia, of course. Nature seems to have formed races of
men, as she has of animals, for different kinds of drudgery. In France
the shoeblacks are all Savoyards, the porters of hotels all Swiss, and
in the days of hoops and hair-powder in England, no man could give the
regular swing to a sedan-chair but a bog-trotting Irishman. So in Spain,
the carriers of water and bearers of burdens are all sturdy little
natives of Gallicia. No man says, “Get me a porter,” but, “Call a
Gallego.”
To return from this digression, Peregil the Gallego had begun business
with merely a great earthen jar which he carried upon his shoulder; by
degrees he rose in the world, and was enabled to purchase an assistant
of a correspondent class of animals, being a stout shaggy-haired donkey.
On each side of this his long-eared aide-de-camp, in a kind of pannier,
were slung his water-jars, covered with fig-leaves to protect them from
the sun. There was not a more industrious water-carrier in all Granada,
nor one more merry withal. The streets rang with his cheerful voice as
he trudged after his donkey, singing forth the usual summer note that
resounds through the Spanish towns: “_Quien quiere agua--agua mas fria
que la nieve?_”--“Who wants water--water colder than snow? Who wants
water from the well of the Alhambra, cold as ice and clear as crystal?”
When he served a customer with a sparkling glass, it was always with a
pleasant word that caused a smile; and if, perchance, it was a comely
dame or dimpling damsel, it was always with a sly leer and a compliment
to her beauty that was irresistible. Thus Peregil the Gallego was noted
throughout all Granada for being one of the civilest, pleasantest, and
happiest of mortals. Yet it is not he who sings loudest and jokes most
that has the lightest heart. Under all this air of merriment, honest
Peregil had his cares and troubles. He had a large family of ragged
children to support, who were hungry and clamorous as a nest of young
swallows, and beset him with their outcries for food whenever he came
home of an evening. He had a helpmate, too, who was anything but a help
to him. She had been a village beauty before marriage, noted for her
skill at dancing the bolero and rattling the castanets; and she still
retained her early propensities, spending the hard earnings of honest
Peregil in frippery, and laying the very donkey under requisition for
junketing parties into the country on Sundays, and saints’ days, and
those innumerable holidays which are rather more numerous in Spain than
the days of the week. With all this she was a little of a slattern,
something more of a lie-abed, and, above all, a gossip of the first
water; neglecting house, household, and everything else, to loiter
slipshod in the houses of her gossip neighbors.
He, however, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, accommodates the
yoke of matrimony to the submissive neck. Peregil bore all the heavy
dispensations of wife and children with as meek a spirit as his donkey
bore the water-jars; and, however he might shake his ears in private,
never ventured to question the household virtues of his slattern spouse.
He loved his children, too, even as an owl loves its owlets, seeing in
them his own image multiplied and perpetuated; for they were a sturdy,
long-backed, bandy-legged little brood. The great pleasure of honest
Peregil was, whenever he could afford himself a scanty holiday, and had
a handful of maravedis to spare, to take the whole litter forth with
him, some in his arms, some tugging at his skirts, and some trudging at
his heels, and to treat them to a gambol among the orchards of the Vega,
while his wife was dancing with her holiday friends in the Angosturas of
the Darro.
It was a late hour one summer night, and most of the water-carriers had
desisted from their toils. The day had been uncommonly sultry; the night
was one of those delicious moonlights which tempt the inhabitants of
southern climes to indemnify themselves for the heat and inaction of the
day, by lingering in the open air, and enjoying its tempered sweetness
until after midnight. Customers for water were therefore still abroad.
Peregil, like a considerate, painstaking father, thought of his hungry
children. “One more journey to the well,” said he to himself, “to earn a
Sunday’s puchero for the little ones.” So saying, he trudged manfully up
the steep avenue of the Alhambra, singing as he went, and now and then
bestowing a hearty thwack with a cudgel on the flanks of his donkey,
either by way of cadence to the song, or refreshment to the animal; for
dry blows serve in lieu of provender in Spain for all beasts of burden.
When arrived at the well, he found it deserted by every one except a
solitary stranger in Moorish garb, seated on a stone bench in the
moonlight. Peregil paused at first and regarded him with surprise, not
unmixed with awe, but the Moor feebly beckoned him to approach. “I am
faint and ill,” said he; “aid me to return to the city, and I will pay
thee double what thou couldst gain by thy jars of water.”
The honest heart of the little water-carrier was touched with compassion
at the appeal of the stranger. “God forbid,” said he, “that I should ask
fee or reward for doing a common act of humanity.” He accordingly helped
the Moor on his donkey, and set off slowly for Granada, the poor Moslem
being so weak that it was necessary to hold him on the animal to keep
him from falling to the earth.
When they entered the city, the water-carrier demanded whither he should
conduct him. “Alas!” said the Moor, faintly, “I have neither home nor
habitation; I am a stranger in the land. Suffer me to lay my head this
night beneath thy roof, and thou shalt be amply repaid.”
Honest Peregil thus saw himself unexpectedly saddled with an infidel
guest, but he was too humane to refuse a night’s shelter to a
fellow-being in so forlorn a plight; so he conducted the Moor to his
dwelling. The children, who had sallied forth open-mouthed as usual on
hearing the tramp of the donkey, ran back with affright when they beheld
the turbaned stranger, and hid themselves behind their mother. The
latter stepped forth intrepidly, like a ruffling hen before her brood
when a vagrant dog approaches.
“What infidel companion,” cried she, “is this you have brought home at
this late hour, to draw upon us the eyes of the inquisition?”
“Be quiet, wife,” replied the Gallego; “here is a poor sick stranger,
without friend or home; wouldst thou turn him forth to perish in the
streets?”
The wife would still have remonstrated, for although she lived in a
hovel, she was a furious stickler for the credit of her house; the
little water-carrier, however, for once was stiffnecked, and refused to
bend beneath the yoke. He assisted the poor Moslem to alight, and spread
a mat and a sheep-skin for him, on the ground, in the coolest part of
the house; being the only kind of bed that his poverty afforded.
In a little while the Moor was seized with violent convulsions, which
defied all the ministering skill of the simple water-carrier. The eye of
the poor patient acknowledged his kindness. During an interval of his
fits he called him to his side, and addressing him in a low voice, “My
end,” said he, “I fear is at hand. If I die, I bequeath you this box as
a reward for your charity”: so saying, he opened his albornoz, or cloak,
and showed a small box of sandal-wood, strapped round his body. “God
grant, my friend,” replied the worthy little Gallego, “that you may live
many years to enjoy your treasure, whatever it may be.” The Moor shook
his head; he laid his hand upon the box, and would have said something
more concerning it, but his convulsions returned with increasing
violence, and in a little while he expired.
The water-carrier’s wife was now as one distracted. “This comes,” said
she, “of your foolish good-nature, always running into scrapes to oblige
others. What will become of us when this corpse is found in our house?
We shall be sent to prison as murderers; and if we escape with our
lives, shall be ruined by notaries and alguazils.”
Poor Peregil was in equal tribulation, and almost repented himself of
having done a good deed. At length a thought struck him. “It is not yet
day,” said he; “I can convey the dead body out of the city, and bury it
in the sands on the banks of the Xenil. No one saw the Moor enter our
dwelling, and no one will know anything of his death.”
So said, so done. The wife aided him; they rolled the body of the
unfortunate Moslem in the mat on which he had expired, laid it across
the ass, and Peregil set out with it for the banks of the river.
As ill luck would have it, there lived opposite to the water-carrier a
barber named Pedrillo Pedrugo, one of the most prying, tattling, and
mischief-making of his gossip tribe. He was a weasel-faced,
spider-legged varlet, supple and insinuating; the famous barber of
Seville could not surpass him for his universal knowledge of the affairs
of others, and he had no more power of retention than a sieve. It was
said that he slept but with one eye at a time, and kept one ear
uncovered, so that even in his sleep he might see and hear all that was
going on. Certain it is, he was a sort of scandalous chronicle for the
quidnuncs of Granada, and had more customers than all the rest of his
fraternity.
This meddlesome barber heard Peregil arrive at an unusual hour at night,
and the exclamations of his wife and children. His head was instantly
popped out of a little window which served him as a look-out, and he saw
his neighbor assist a man in Moorish garb into his dwelling. This was so
strange an occurrence, that Pedrillo Pedrugo slept not a wink that
night. Every five minutes he was at his loophole, watching the lights
that gleamed through the chinks of his neighbor’s door, and before
daylight he beheld Peregil sally forth with his donkey unusually laden.
The inquisitive barber was in a fidget; he slipped on his clothes, and,
stealing forth silently, followed the water-carrier at a distance, until
he saw him dig a hole in the sandy bank of the Xenil, and bury something
that had the appearance of a dead body.
The barber hied him home, and fidgeted about his shop, setting
everything upside down, until sunrise. He then took a basin under his
arm, and sallied forth to the house of his daily customer the alcalde.
The alcalde was just risen. Pedrillo Pedrugo seated him in a chair,
threw a napkin round his neck, put a basin of hot water under his chin,
and began to mollify his beard with his fingers.
“Strange doings!” said Pedrugo, who played barber and newsmonger at the
same time,--“strange doings! Robbery, and murder, and burial all in one
night!”
“Hey!--how!--what is that you say?” cried the alcalde.
“I say,” replied the barber, rubbing a piece of soap over the nose and
mouth of the dignitary, for a Spanish barber disdains to employ a
brush,--“I say that Peregil the Gallego has robbed and murdered a
Moorish Mussulman, and buried him, this blessed night. _Maldita sea la
noche_;--Accursed be the night for the same!”
“But how do you know all this?” demanded the alcalde.
“Be patient, Señor, and you shall hear all about it,” replied Pedrillo,
taking him by the nose and sliding a razor over his cheek. He then
recounted all that he had seen, going through both operations at the
same time, shaving his beard, washing his chin, and wiping him dry with
a dirty napkin, while he was robbing, murdering, and burying the Moslem.
Now it so happened that this alcalde was one of the most overbearing,
and at the same time most griping and corrupt curmudgeons in all
Granada. It could not be denied, however, that he set a high value upon
justice, for he sold it at its weight in gold. He presumed the case in
point to be one of murder and robbery; doubtless there must be a rich
spoil; how was it to be secured into the legitimate hands of the law?
for as to merely entrapping the delinquent--that would be feeding the
gallows; but entrapping the booty--that would be enriching the judge,
and such, according to his creed, was the great end of justice. So
thinking, he summoned to his presence his trustiest alguazil--a gaunt,
hungry-looking varlet, clad, according to the custom of his order, in
the ancient Spanish garb, a broad black beaver turned up at its sides; a
quaint ruff; a small black cloak dangling from his shoulders; rusty
black under-clothes that set off his spare wiry frame, while in his hand
he bore a slender white wand, the dreaded insignia of his office. Such
was the legal bloodhound of the ancient Spanish breed, that he put upon
the traces of the unlucky water-carrier, and such was his speed and
certainty, that he was upon the haunches of poor Peregil before he had
returned to his dwelling, and brought both him and his donkey before the
dispenser of justice.
The alcalde bent upon him one of the most terrific frowns. “Hark ye,
culprit!” roared he, in a voice that made the knees of the little
Gallego smite together,--“hark ye, culprit! there is no need of denying
thy guilt, everything is known to me. A gallows is the proper reward for
the crime thou hast committed, but I am merciful, and readily listen to
reason. The man that has been murdered in thy house was a Moor, an
infidel, the enemy of our faith. It was doubtless in a fit of religious
zeal that thou hast slain him. I will be indulgent, therefore; render up
the property of which thou hast robbed him, and we will hush the matter
up.”
The poor water-carrier called upon all the saints to witness his
innocence; alas! not one of them appeared; and if they had, the alcalde
would have disbelieved the whole calendar. The water-carrier related the
whole story of the dying Moor with the straightforward simplicity of
truth, but it was all in vain. “Wilt thou persist in saying,” demanded
the judge, “that this Moslem had neither gold nor jewels, which were the
object of thy cupidity?”
“As I hope to be saved, your worship,” replied the water-carrier, “he
had nothing but a small box of sandal-wood which he bequeathed to me in
reward for my services.”
“A box of sandal-wood! a box of sandal-wood!” exclaimed the alcalde, his
eyes sparkling at the idea of precious jewels. “And where is this box?
where have you concealed it?”
“An’ it please your grace,” replied the water-carrier, “it is in one of
the panniers of my mule, and heartily at the service of your worship.”
He had hardly spoken the words, when the keen alguazil darted off, and
reappeared in an instant with the mysterious box of sandal-wood. The
alcalde opened it with an eager and trembling hand; all pressed forward
to gaze upon the treasure it was expected to contain; when, to their
disappointment, nothing appeared within, but a parchment scroll, covered
with Arabic characters, and an end of a waxen taper.
When there is nothing to be gained by the conviction of a prisoner,
justice, even in Spain, is apt to be impartial. The alcalde, having
recovered from his disappointment, and found that there was really no
booty in the case, now listened dispassionately to the explanation of
the water-carrier, which was corroborated by the testimony of his wife.
Being convinced, therefore, of his innocence, he discharged him from
arrest; nay, more, he permitted him to carry off the Moor’s legacy, the
box of sandal-wood and its contents, as the well-merited reward of his
humanity; but he retained his donkey in payment of costs and charges.
Behold the unfortunate little Gallego reduced once more to the necessity
of being his own water-carrier, and trudging up to the well of the
Alhambra with a great earthen jar upon his shoulder.
As he toiled up the hill in the heat of a summer noon, his usual
good-humor forsook him. “Dog of an alcalde!” would he cry, “to rob a
poor man of the means of his subsistence, of the best friend he had in
the world!” And then at the remembrance of the beloved companion of his
labors, all the kindness of his nature would break forth. “Ah, donkey of
my heart!” would he exclaim, resting his burden on a stone, and wiping
the sweat from his brow,--“ah, donkey of my heart! I warrant me thou
thinkest of thy old master! I warrant me thou missest the
water-jars--poor beast.”
To add to his afflictions, his wife received him, on his return home,
with whimperings and repinings; she had clearly the vantage-ground of
him, having warned him not to commit the egregious act of hospitality
which had brought on him all these misfortunes; and, like a knowing
woman, she took every occasion to throw her superior sagacity in his
teeth. If her children lacked food, or needed a new garment, she could
answer with a sneer, “Go to your father--he is heir to King Chico of the
Alhambra: ask him to help you out of the Moor’s strong box.”
Was ever poor mortal so soundly punished for having done a good action?
The unlucky Peregil was grieved in flesh and spirit, but still he bore
meekly with the railings of his spouse. At length, one evening, when,
after a hot day’s toil, she taunted him in the usual manner, he lost all
patience. He did not venture to retort upon her, but his eye rested upon
the box of sandal-wood which lay on a shelf with lid half open, as if
laughing in mockery at his vexation. Seizing it up, he dashed it with
indignation to the floor. “Unlucky was the day that I ever set eyes on
thee,” he cried, “or sheltered thy master beneath my roof!”
As the box struck the floor, the lid flew wide open, and the parchment
scroll rolled forth.
Peregil sat regarding the scroll for some time in moody silence. At
length rallying his ideas, “Who knows,” thought he, “but this writing
may be of some importance, as the Moor seems to have guarded it with
such care?” Picking it up therefore, he put it in his bosom, and the
next morning, as he was crying water through the streets, he stopped at
the shop of a Moor, a native of Tangiers, who sold trinkets and
perfumery in the Zacatin, and asked him to explain the contents.
The Moor read the scroll attentively, then stroked his beard and smiled.
“This manuscript,” said he, “is a form of incantation for the recovery
of hidden treasure that is under the power of enchantment. It is said to
have such virtue that the strongest bolts and bars, nay the adamantine
rock itself, will yield before it!”
“Bah!” cried the little Gallego, “what is all that to me? I am no
enchanter, and know nothing of buried treasure.” So saying, he
shouldered his water-jar, left the scroll in the hands of the Moor, and
trudged forward on his daily rounds.
That evening, however, as he rested himself about twilight at the well
of the Alhambra, he found a number of gossips assembled at the place,
and their conversation, as is not unusual at that shadowy hour, turned
upon old tales and traditions of a supernatural nature. Being all poor
as rats, they dwelt with peculiar fondness upon the popular theme of
enchanted riches left by the Moors in various parts of the Alhambra.
Above all, they concurred in the belief that there were great treasures
buried deep in the earth under the tower of the seven floors.
These stories made an unusual impression on the mind of the honest
Peregil, and they sank deeper and deeper into his thoughts as he
returned alone down the darkling avenues. “If, after all, there should
be treasure hid beneath that tower; and if the scroll I left with the
Moor should enable me to get at it!” In the sudden ecstasy of the
thought he had wellnigh let fall his water-jar.