The church was illuminated with astonishing brilliancy. The flood of
light which spread from the altars through all its compass sparkled on
the rich jewels of the ladies who, kneeling on the velvet cushions
placed before them by their pages and taking their prayer-books from the
hands of their duennas, formed a brilliant circle around the
choir-screen. Grouped just behind them, on foot, wrapped in bright-lined
cloaks garnished with gold-lace, with studied carelessness letting
glimpses of their red and green crosses be seen, in one hand the hat,
whose plumes kissed the carpet, the other hand resting upon the polished
hilt of a rapier or caressing the handle of an ornate dagger, the four
and twenty knights, with a large proportion of the highest nobility of
Seville, seemed to form a wall for the purpose of protecting their
daughters and their wives from contact with the populace. This, swaying
back and forth at the rear of the nave, with a murmur like that of a
surging sea, broke out into a joyous acclaim, accompanied by the
discordant sounds of the timbrels and tambourines, at the appearance of
the archbishop, who, after seating himself, surrounded by his
attendants, near the High Altar under a scarlet canopy, thrice blessed
the assembled people.
It was time for the mass to begin.
There passed, nevertheless, several minutes without the appearance of
the celebrant. The throng commenced to stir about impatiently; the
knights exchanged low-toned words with one another, and the archbishop
sent one of his attendants to the sacristy to inquire the cause of the
delay.
“Master Pérez has been taken ill, very ill, and it will be impossible
for him to come to the Midnight Mass.”
This was the word brought back by the attendant.
The news spread instantly through the multitude. It would be impossible
to depict the dismay which it caused; suffice it to say that such a
clamor began to arise in the church that the prefect sprang to his feet,
and the police came in to enforce silence, mingling with the
close-pressed, surging crowd.
At that moment, a man with unpleasant features, thin, bony, and
cross-eyed, too, hurriedly made his way to the place where the prelate
was sitting.
“Master Pérez is sick,” he said. “The ceremony cannot begin. If it is
your pleasure, I will play the organ in his absence; for neither is
Master Pérez the first organist of the world, nor at his death need this
instrument be left unused for lack of skill.”
The archbishop gave a nod of assent, and already some of the faithful,
who recognized in that strange personage an envious rival of the
organist of Santa Inés, were breaking out in exclamations of
displeasure, when suddenly a startling uproar was heard in the portico.
“Master Pérez is here! Master Pérez is here!”
At these cries from the press in the doorway, every one looked around.
Master Pérez, his face pallid and drawn, was in fact entering the
church, brought in a chair about which all were contending for the honor
of carrying it upon their shoulders.
The commands of the physicians, the tears of his daughter had not been
able to keep him in bed.
“No,” he had said. “This is the end, I know it, I know it, and I would
not die without visiting my organ, and this night above all, Christmas
Eve. Come, I wish it, I command it; let us go to the church.”
His desire had been fulfilled. The people carried him in their arms to
the organ-loft, and the mass began.
At that instant the cathedral clock struck twelve.
The introit passed, and the Gospel, and the offertory, and then came the
solemn moment in which the priest, after having blessed the Sacred
Wafer, took it in the tips of his fingers and began to elevate it.
A cloud of incense, rolling forth in azure waves, filled the length and
breadth of the church; the little bells rang out with silvery
vibrations, and Master Pérez placed his quivering hands upon the keys of
the organ.
The hundred voices of its metal tubes resounded in a prolonged, majestic
chord, which died away little by little, as if a gentle breeze had
stolen its last echoes.
To this opening chord, that seemed a voice lifted from earth to heaven,
responded a sweet and distant note, which went on swelling and swelling
in volume until it became a torrent of pealing harmony.
It was the song of the angels, which, traversing the ethereal spaces,
had reached the world.
Then there began to be heard a sound as of far-off hymns entoned by the
hierarchies of seraphim, a thousand hymns at once, melting into one,
which, nevertheless, was no more than accompaniment to a strange
melody,--a melody that seemed to float above that ocean of mysterious
echoes as a strip of fog above the billows of the sea.
One anthem after another died away; the movement grew simpler; now there
were but two voices, whose echoes blended; then one alone remained,
sustaining a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The priest bowed
his face, and above his gray head, across an azure mist made by the
smoke of the incense, appeared to the eyes of the faithful the uplifted
Host. At that instant the thrilling note which Master Pérez was holding
began to swell and swell until an outburst of colossal harmony shook the
church, in whose corners the straitened air vibrated and whose stained
glass shivered in its narrow Moorish embrasures.
From each of the notes forming that magnificent chord a theme was
developed,--some near, some far, these keen, those muffled, until one
would have said that the waters and the birds, the winds and the woods,
men and angels, earth and heaven, were chanting, each in its own tongue,
an anthem of praise for the Redeemer’s birth.
The multitude listened in amazement and suspense. In all eyes were
tears, in all spirits a profound realization of the divine.
The officiating priest felt his hands trembling, for the Holy One whom
they upheld, the Holy One to whom men and archangels did reverence, was
God, was very God, and it seemed to the priest that he had beheld the
heavens open and the Host become transfigured.
The organ still sounded, but its music was gradually sinking away, like
a tone dropping from echo to echo, ever more remote, ever fainter with
the remoteness, when suddenly a cry rang out in the organ-loft, shrill,
piercing, the cry of a woman.
The organ gave forth a strange, discordant sound, like a sob, and then
was still.
The multitude surged toward the stair leading up to the organ-loft, in
whose direction all the faithful, startled out of their religious
ecstasy, were turning anxious looks.
“What has happened?” “What is the matter?” they asked one of another,
and none knew what to reply, and all strove to conjecture, and the
confusion increased, and the excitement began to rise to a height which
threatened to disturb the order and decorum fitting within a church.
“What was it?” asked the great ladies of the prefect who, attended by
his officers, had been one of the first to mount to the loft, and now,
pale and showing signs of deep grief, was making his way to the
archbishop, waiting in anxiety, like all the rest, to know the cause of
that disturbance.
“What has occurred?”
“Master Pérez has just died.”
In fact, when the foremost of the faithful, after pressing up the
stairway, had reached the organ-loft, they saw the poor organist fallen
face down upon the keys of his old instrument, which was still faintly
murmuring, while his daughter, kneeling at his feet, was vainly calling
to him amid sighs and sobs.