One day he found her in tears and asked her:
“Why dost thou weep?”
[Illustration: A CITY SQUARE, TOLEDO]
She dried her eyes, looked at him searchingly, heaved a sigh and began
to weep anew.
Then, drawing close to Maria, he took her hand, leaned his elbow on the
fretted edge of the Arabic parapet whence the beautiful maiden was
watching the river flow beneath, and again he asked her: “Why dost thou
weep?”
The Tajo, moaning at the tower’s foot, twisted in and out amid the rocks
on which is seated the imperial city. The sun was sinking behind the
neighboring mountains, the afternoon haze was floating, a veil of azure
gauze, and only the monotonous sound of the water broke the profound
stillness.
Maria exclaimed: “Ask me not why I weep, ask me not; for I would not
know how to answer thee, nor thou how to understand. In the souls of us
women are stifling desires which reveal themselves only in a sigh, mad
ideas that cross the imagination without our daring to form them into
speech, strange phenomena of our mysterious nature which man cannot even
conceive. I implore thee, ask me not the cause of my grief; if I should
reveal it to thee, perchance thou wouldst reply with peals of laughter.”
When these words were faltered out, again she bowed the head and again
he urged his questions.
The radiant damsel, breaking at last her stubborn silence, said to her
lover in a hoarse, unsteady voice:
“Thou wilt have it. It is a folly that will make thee laugh, but be it
so. I will tell thee, since thou dost crave to hear.
“Yesterday I was in the temple. They were celebrating the feast of the
Virgin; her image, placed on a golden pedestal above the High Altar,
glowed like a burning coal; the notes of the organ trembled, spreading
from echo to echo throughout the length and breadth of the church, and
in the choir the priests were chanting the _Salve, Regina_.
“I was praying; I was praying, all absorbed in my religious meditations,
when involuntarily I lifted my head, and my gaze sought the altar. I
know not why my eyes from that instant fixed themselves upon the image,
but I speak amiss--it was not on the image; they fixed themselves upon
an object which until then I had not seen--an object which, I know not
why, thenceforth held all my attention. Do not laugh; that object was
the golden bracelet that the Mother of God wears on one of the arms in
which rests her divine Son. I turned aside my gaze and strove again to
pray. Impossible. Without my will, my eyes moved back to the same point.
The altar lights, reflected in the thousand facets of those diamonds,
were multiplied prodigiously. Millions of living sparks, rosy, azure,
green and golden, were whirling around the jewels like a storm of fiery
atoms, like a dizzy round of those spirits of flame which fascinate with
their brightness and their marvellous unrest.
“I left the church. I came home, but I came with that idea fixed in
imagination. I went to bed; I could not sleep. The night passed, a night
eternal with one thought. At dawn my eyelids closed and--believest
thou?--even in slumber I saw crossing before me, dimming in the distance
and ever returning, a woman, a woman dark and beautiful, who wore the
ornament of gold and jewel work; a woman, yes, for it was no longer the
Virgin, whom I adore and at whose feet I bow; it was a woman, another
woman like myself, who looked upon me and laughed mockingly. ‘Dost see
it?’ she appeared to say, showing me the treasure. ‘How it glitters! It
seems a circlet of stars snatched from the sky some summer night. Dost
see it? But it is not thine, and it will be thine never, never. Thou
wilt perchance have others that surpass it, others richer, if it be
possible, but this, this which sparkles so piquantly, so bewitchingly,
never, never.’ I awoke, but with the same idea fixed here, then as now,
like a red-hot nail, diabolical, irresistible, inspired beyond a doubt
by Satan himself.--And what then?--Thou art silent, silent, and dost
hang thy head.--Does not my folly make thee laugh?”
Pedro, with a convulsive movement, grasped the hilt of his sword, raised
his head, which he had, indeed, bent low and said with smothered voice:
“Which Virgin has this jewel?”
“The Virgin of the Sagrario,” murmured Maria.
“The Virgin of the Sagrario!” repeated the youth, with accent of terror.
“The Virgin of the Sagrario of the cathedral!”
And in his features was portrayed for an instant the state of his mind,
appalled before a thought.
“Ah, why does not some other Virgin own it?” he continued, with a tense,
impassioned tone. “Why does not the archbishop bear it in his mitre, the
king in his crown, or the devil between his claws? I would tear it away
for thee, though its price were death or hell. But from the Virgin of
the Sagrario, our own Holy Patroness,--I--I who was born in Toledo!
Impossible, impossible!”
“Never!” murmured Maria, in a voice that scarcely reached the ear.
“Never!”
And she wept again.
Pedro fixed a stupefied stare on the running waves of the river--on the
running waves, which flowed and flowed unceasingly before his
absent-thoughted eyes, breaking at the foot of the tower amid the rocks
on which is seated the imperial city.