The cathedral of Toledo! Imagine a forest of colossal palm trees of
granite, that by the interlacing of their branches form a gigantic,
magnificent arch, beneath which take refuge and live, with the life
genius has lent them, a whole creation of beings, both fictitious and
real.
Imagine an incomprehensible fall of shadow and light wherein the
colored rays from the ogive windows meet and are merged with the dusk of
the nave; where the gleam of the lamps struggles and is lost in the
gloom of the sanctuary.
Imagine a world of stone, immense as the spirit of our religion, sombre
as its traditions, enigmatic as its parables, and yet you will not have
even a remote idea of this eternal monument of the enthusiasm and faith
of our ancestors--a monument upon which the centuries have emulously
lavished their treasures of knowledge, inspiration and the arts.
In the cathedral-heart dwells silence, majesty, the poetry of mysticism,
and a holy dread which guards those thresholds against worldly thoughts
and the paltry passions of earth.
Consumption of the body is stayed by breathing pure mountain air;
atheism should be cured by breathing this atmosphere of faith.
But great and impressive as the cathedral presents itself to our eyes at
whatsoever hour we enter its mysterious and sacred precinct, never does
it produce an impression so profound as in those days when it arrays
itself in all the splendors of religious pomp, when its shrines are
covered with gold and jewels, its steps with costly carpeting and its
pillars with tapestry.
Then, when its thousand silver lamps, aglow, shed forth a flood of
light, when a cloud of incense floats in air, and the voices of the
choir, the harmonious pealing of the organs, and the bells of the tower
make the building tremble from its deepest foundations to its highest
crown of spires, then it is we comprehend, because we feel, the
ineffable majesty of God who dwells within, gives it life with His
breath and fills it with the reflection of His glory.
The same day on which occurred the scene we have just described, the
last rites of the magnificent eight-day feast of the Virgin were held in
the cathedral.
The holy festival had attracted an immense multitude of the faithful;
but already they had dispersed in all directions; already the lights of
the chapels and of the High Altar had been extinguished, and the mighty
doors of the temple had groaned upon their hinges as they closed behind
the last departing worshipper, when forth from the depth of shadow, and
pale, pale as the statue of the tomb on which he leant for an instant,
while he conquered his emotion, there advanced a man, who came slipping
with the utmost stealthiness toward the screen of the central chapel.
There the gleam of a lamp made it possible to distinguish his features.
It was Pedro.
What had passed between the two lovers to bring him to the point of
putting into execution an idea whose mere conception had lifted his hair
with horror? That could never be learned.
But there he was, and he was there to carry out his criminal intent. In
his restless glances, in the trembling of his knees, in the sweat which
ran in great drops down his face, his thought stood written.
The cathedral was alone, utterly alone, and drowned in deepest hush.
Nevertheless, there were perceptible from time to time suggestions of
dim disturbance, creakings of wood maybe or murmurs of the wind, or--who
knows?--perchance illusion of the fancy, which in its excited moments
hears and sees and feels what is not; but in very truth there sounded,
now here, now there, now behind him, now even at his side, something
like sobs suppressed, something like the rustle of trailing robes, and a
muffled stir as of steps that go and come unceasingly.
Pedro forced himself to hold his course; he reached the grating and
mounted the first step of the chancel. All along the inner wall of this
chapel are ranged the tombs of kings, whose images of stone, with hand
upon the sword-hilt, seem to keep watch night and day over the sanctuary
in whose shade they take their everlasting rest.
“Onward!” he murmured under his breath, and he strove to move and could
not. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the pavement. He lowered
his eyes, and his hair stood on end with horror. The floor of the chapel
was made of wide, dark burial slabs.
For a moment he believed that a cold and fleshless hand was holding him
there with strength invincible. The dying lamps, which sparkled in the
hollow aisles and transepts like lost stars in the dark, wavered before
his vision, the statues of the sepulchres wavered and the images of the
altar, all the cathedral wavered, with its granite arcades and
buttresses of solid stone.
“Onward!” Pedro exclaimed again, as if beside himself; he approached the
altar and climbing upon it, he reached the pedestal of the image. All
the space about clothed itself in weird and frightful shapes, all was
shadow and flickering light, more awful even than total darkness. Only
the Queen of Heaven, softly illuminated by a golden lamp, seemed to
smile, tranquil, gracious and serene, in the midst of all that horror.
Nevertheless, that silent, changeless smile, which calmed him for an
instant, in the end filled him with fear, a fear stranger and more
profound than what he had suffered hitherto.
Yet he regained his self-control, shut his eyes so as not to see her,
extended his hand with a spasmodic movement and snatched off the golden
bracelet, pious offering of a sainted archbishop, the golden bracelet
whose value equalled a fortune.
Now the jewel was in his possession; his convulsed fingers clutched it
with superhuman force; there was nothing left save to flee--to flee
with it; but for this it was necessary to open his eyes, and Pedro was
afraid to see, to see the image, to see the kings of the sepulchres, the
demons of the cornices, the griffins of the capitals, the blotches of
shadow and flashes of light which, like ghostly, gigantic phantoms, were
moving slowly in the depths of the nave, now filled with confused
noises, unearthly and appalling.
At last he opened his eyes, cast one glance about him, and from his lips
escaped a piercing cry.
The cathedral was full of statues, statues which, clothed in strange,
flowing raiment, had descended from their niches and were thronging all
the vast compass of the church, staring at him with their hollow eyes.
Saints, nuns, angels, devils, warriors, great ladies, pages, hermits,
peasants surrounded him on every side and were massed confusedly in the
open spaces and about the altar. Before it there officiated, in presence
of the kings who were kneeling upon their tombs, the marble archbishops
whom he had seen heretofore stretched motionless upon their beds of
death, while a whole world of granite beasts and creeping things,
writhing over the paving-stones, twisting along the buttresses, curled
up in the canopies, swinging from the vaulted roof, quivered into life
like worms in a giant corpse, fantastic, distorted, hideous.
He could resist no longer. His brows throbbed with terrible violence; a
cloud of blood darkened his vision; he uttered a second scream, a scream
heart-rending, inhuman, and fell swooning across the altar.
When the sacristans found him crouching on the altar steps the next
morning, he still clutched the golden bracelet in both hands and on
seeing them draw near, he shrieked with discordant yells of laughter:
“Hers! hers!”
The poor wretch had gone mad.