“You are pale; you go about sad and gloomy. What afflicts you? From the
day, which I shall ever hold in hate, on which you went to the fountain
of the Poplars in chase of the wounded deer, I should say an evil
sorceress had bewitched you with her enchantments.
“You do not go to the mountains now preceded by the clamorous pack of
hounds, nor does the blare of your horns awake the echoes. Alone with
these brooding fancies which beset you, every morning you take your
crossbow only to plunge into the thickets and remain there until the
sun goes down. And when night darkens and you return to the castle,
white and weary, in vain I seek in the game-bag the spoils of the chase.
What detains you so long far from those who love you most?”
While Iñigo was speaking, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts,
mechanically cut splinters from the ebony bench with his hunting knife.
After a long silence, which was interrupted only by the click of the
blade as it slipped over the polished wood, the young man, addressing
his servant as if he had not heard a single word, exclaimed:
“Iñigo, you who are an old man, you who know all the haunts of the
Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes pursuing wild beasts and in your
wandering hunting trips have more than once stood on its summit, tell
me, have you ever by chance met a woman who dwells among its rocks?”
“A woman!” exclaimed the huntsman with astonishment, looking closely at
him.
“Yes,” said the youth. “It is a strange thing that has happened to me,
very strange. I thought I could keep this secret always; but it is no
longer possible. It overflows my heart and begins to reveal itself in my
face. Therefore I am going to tell it to you. You will help me solve the
mystery which enfolds this being who seems to exist only for me, since
no one knows her or has seen her, or can give me any account of her.”
The huntsman, without opening his lips, drew forward his stool to place
it near the ebony bench of his lord from whom he did not once remove his
affrighted eyes. The youth, after arranging his thoughts, continued
thus:
“From the day on which, notwithstanding your gloomy predictions, I went
to the fountain of the Poplars, and crossing its waters recovered the
stag which your superstition would have let escape, my soul has been
filled with a desire for solitude.
“You do not know that place. See, the fountain springs from a hidden
source in the cavity of a rock, and falls in trickling drops through the
green, floating leaves of the plants that grow on the border of its
cradle. These drops, which on falling glisten like points of gold and
sound like the notes of a musical instrument, unite on the turf and
murmuring, murmuring with a sound like that of bees humming about the
flowers, glide on through the gravel, and form a rill and contend with
the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and leap and flee and run,
sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a
lake. Into the lake they fall with an indescribable sound. Laments,
words, names, songs, I know not what I have heard in that sound when I
have sat, alone and fevered, upon the huge rock at whose feet the waters
of that mysterious fountain leap to bury themselves in a deep pool whose
still surface is scarcely rippled by the evening wind.
“Everything there is grand. Solitude with its thousand vague murmurs
dwells in those places and transports the mind with a profound
melancholy. In the silvered leaves of the poplars, in the hollows of the
rocks, in the waves of the water it seems that the invisible spirits of
nature talk with us, that they recognize a brother in the immortal soul
of man.
“When at break of dawn you would see me take my crossbow and go toward
the mountain, it was never to lose myself among the thickets in pursuit
of game. No, I went to sit on the rim of the fountain, to seek in its
waves--I know not what--an absurdity! The day I leaped over it on my
Lightning, I believed I saw glittering in its depths a marvel--truly a
marvel--the eyes of a woman!
“Perhaps it may have been a fugitive ray of sunshine that wound,
serpent like, through the foam; perhaps one of those flowers which float
among the weeds of its bosom, flowers whose calyxes seem to be
emeralds--I do not know. I thought I saw a gaze which fixed itself on
mine, a look which kindled in my breast a desire absurd, impossible of
realization, that of meeting a person with eyes like those.
“In my search, I went to that place day after day.
“At last, one afternoon--I thought myself the plaything of a dream--but
no, it is the truth; I have spoken with her many times as I am now
speaking with you--one afternoon I found, sitting where I had sat,
clothed in a robe which reached to the waters and floated on their
surface, a woman beautiful beyond all exaggeration. Her hair was like
gold; her eyelashes shone like threads of light, and between the lashes
flashed the restless eyes that I had seen--yes; for the eyes of that
woman were the eyes which I bore stamped upon my mind, eyes of an
impossible color, the color----”
“Green!” exclaimed Iñigo, in accents of profound terror, starting with a
bound from his seat.
Fernando, in turn, looked at him as if astonished that Iñigo should
supply what he was about to say, and asked him with mingled anxiety and
joy:
“Do you know her?”
“Oh, no!” said the huntsman. “God save me from knowing her! But my
parents, on forbidding me to go toward those places, told me a thousand
times that the spirit, goblin, demon or woman, who dwells in those
waters, has eyes of that color. I conjure you by that which you love
most on earth not to return to the fountain of the Poplars. One day or
another her vengeance will overtake you, and you will expiate in death
the crime of having stained her waters.”
“By what I love most!” murmured the young man with a sad smile.
“Yes,” continued the elder. “By your parents, by your kindred, by the
tears of her whom heaven destines for your wife, by those of a servant
who watched beside your cradle.”
“Do you know what I love most in this world? Do you know for what I
would give the love of my father, the kisses of her who gave me life,
and all the affection which all the women on earth can hold in store?
For one look, for only one look of those eyes! How can I leave off
seeking them?”
Fernando said these words in such a tone that the tear which trembled on
the eyelids of Iñigo fell silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed
with a mournful accent: “The will of Heaven be done!”