“Good evening, my dear Doña Baltasara. Are you, too, going to-night to
the Christmas Eve Mass? For my part, I was intending to go to the parish
church to hear it, but after what has happened--‘where goes John? With
all the town.’ And the truth, if I must tell it, is that since Master
Pérez died, a marble slab seems to fall on my heart whenever I enter
Santa Inés.--Poor dear man! He was a saint. I assure you that I keep a
piece of his doublet as a relic, and he deserves it, for by God and my
soul it is certain that if our Lord Archbishop would stir in the matter,
our grandchildren would see the image of Master Pérez upon an altar.
But what hope of it? ‘The dead and the gone are let alone.’ We’re all
for the latest thing now-a-days; you understand me. No? You haven’t an
inkling of what has happened? It’s true we are alike in this,--from
house to church, and from church to house, without concerning ourselves
about what is said or isn’t said--except that I, as it were, on the
wing, a word here, another there, without the least curiosity whatever,
usually run across any news that may be going. Well, then! It seems to
be settled that the organist of San Román, that squint-eye, who is
always throwing out slurs against the other organists, that great
sloven, who looks more like a butcher from the slaughter-house than a
professor of music, is going to play this Christmas Eve in place of
Master Pérez. Now you must know, for all the world knows and it is a
public matter in Seville, that nobody was willing to attempt it. Not
even his daughter, though she is herself an expert, and after her
father’s death entered the convent as a novice. And naturally enough;
accustomed to hear those marvellous performances, any other playing
whatever must seem poor to us, however much we would like to avoid
comparisons. But no sooner had the sisterhood decided that, in honor of
the dead and as a token of respect to his memory, the organ should be
silent to-night, than--look you!--here comes along our modest friend,
saying that he is ready to play it. Nothing is bolder than ignorance. It
is true the fault is not so much his as theirs who have consented to
this profanation, but so goes the world. I say, it’s no trifle--this
crowd that is coming. One would think nothing had changed since last
year. The same great people, the same magnificence, the same pushing in
the doorway, the same excitement in the portico, the same throng in the
church. Ah, if the dead should rise, he would die again rather than hear
his organ played by hands like those. The fact is, if what the people of
the neighborhood have told me is true, they are preparing a fine
reception for the intruder. When the moment comes for placing the hand
upon the keys, there is going to break out such a racket of timbrels,
tambourines and rustic drums that nothing else can be heard. But hush!
there’s the hero of the occasion just going into the church. Jesus! what
a showy jacket, what a fluted ruff, what a high and mighty air! Come,
come, the archbishop arrived a minute ago, and the mass is going to
begin. Come; it looks as though this night would give us something to
talk about for many a day.”
With these words the worthy woman, whom our readers recognize by her
disconnected loquacity, entered Santa Inés, opening a way through the
press, as usual, by dint of shoving and elbowing.
Already the ceremony had begun.
The church was as brilliant as the year before.
The new organist, after passing through the midst of the faithful who
thronged the nave, on his way to kiss the ring of the prelate, had
mounted to the organ-loft, where he was trying one stop of the organ
after another with a solicitous gravity as affected as it was
ridiculous.
Among the common people clustered at the rear of the church was heard a
murmur, muffled and confused, sure augury of the coming storm which
would not be long in breaking.
“He’s a clown, who doesn’t know how to do anything, not even to look
straight,” said some.
“He’s an ignoramus, who after having made the organ in his own parish
church worse than a rattle comes here to profane Master Pérez’s,” said
others.
And while one was throwing off his coat so as to beat his drum to better
advantage, and another was trying his timbrels, and the clatter was
increasing more and more, only here and there could one be found to
defend in lukewarm fashion that alien personage, whose pompous and
pedantic bearing formed so strong a contrast to the modest manner and
kindly courtesy of the dead Master Pérez.
At last the looked-for moment came, the solemn moment when the priest,
after bowing low and murmuring the sacred words, took the Host in his
hands. The little bells rang out, their chime like a rain of crystal
notes; the translucent waves of incense rose, and the organ sounded.
At that instant a horrible din filled the compass of the church,
drowning the first chord.
Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, all the instruments of the populace
raised their discordant voices at once, but the confusion and the clang
lasted but a few seconds. All at once as the tumult had begun, so all at
once it ceased.
The second chord, full, bold, magnificent, sustained itself, still
pouring from the organ’s metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible,
sonorous harmony.
Celestial songs like those that caress the ear in moments of ecstasy,
songs which the spirit perceives but the lip cannot repeat; fugitive
notes of a far-off melody, which reach us at intervals, sounding in the
bugles of the wind; the rustle of leaves kissing one another on the
trees with a murmur like rain; trills of larks which rise warbling from
among the flowers like a flight of arrows to the clouds; nameless
crashes, overwhelming as the thunders of a tempest; a chorus of seraphim
without rhythm or cadence, unknown harmony of heaven which only the
imagination understands; soaring hymns, that seem to mount to the throne
of God like a fountain of light and sound--all this was expressed by the
organ’s hundred voices, with more vigor, more mystic poetry, more weird
coloring than had ever been known before.
* * * * *
When the organist came down from the loft, the crowd which pressed up
to the stairway was so great, and their eagerness to see and praise him
so intense, that the prefect, fearing, and not without reason, that he
would be suffocated among them all, commanded some of the police to
open, by their staves, a path for him that he might reach the High Altar
where the prelate waited his arrival.
“You perceive,” said the archbishop, when the musician was brought into
his presence, “that I have come all the way from my palace hither only
to hear you. Will you be as cruel as Master Pérez, who would never save
me the journey by playing the Midnight Mass in the cathedral?”
“Next year,” responded the organist, “I promise to give you that
pleasure, for not all the gold of the earth would induce me to play this
organ again.”
“And why not?” interrupted the prelate.
“Because,” replied the organist, striving to repress the agitation
revealed in the pallor of his face,--“because it is old and poor, and
one cannot express on it all that one would.”
The archbishop retired, followed by his attendants. One by one, the
litters of the great folk went filing away, lost to sight in the
windings of the neighboring streets; the groups of the portico melted,
as the faithful dispersed in different directions; and already the
lay-sister who acted as gate-keeper was about to lock the vestibule
doors, when there appeared two women, who, after crossing themselves and
muttering a prayer before the arched shrine of Saint Philip, went their
way, turning into Dueñas alley.
“What would you have, my dear Doña Baltasara?” one of them was saying.
“That’s the way I’m made. Every fool has his fancy. The barefooted
Capuchins might assure me that it was so and I wouldn’t believe it in
the least. That man cannot have played what we have just been hearing. A
thousand times have I heard him in San Bartolomé, his parish church,
from which the priest had to send him away for his bad playing,--enough
to make you stop your ears with cotton. Besides, all you need is to look
at his face, which, they say, is the mirror of the soul. I remember,
poor dear man, as if I were seeing him now,--I remember Master Pérez’s
look when, on a night like this, he would come down from the organ loft,
after having entranced the audience with his marvels. What a gracious
smile, what a happy glow on his face! Old as he was, he seemed like an
angel. But this fellow came plunging down the stairs as if a dog were
barking at him on the landing, his face the color of the dead, and--come
now, my dear Doña Baltasara, believe me, believe me with all your soul.
I suspect a mystery in this.”
With these last words, the two women turned the corner of the street and
disappeared.
We count it needless to inform our readers who one of them was.