Over the Douro, which ran lapping the weatherworn and darkened stones of
the walls of Soria, there is a bridge leading from the city to the old
convent of the Templars, whose estates extended along the opposite bank
of the river.
At the time to which we refer, the knights of the Order had already
abandoned their historic fortresses, but there still remained standing
the ruins of the large round towers of their walls,--there still might
be seen, as in part may be seen to-day, covered with ivy and white
morning-glories the massive arches of their cloister and the long ogive
galleries of their courts of arms through which the wind would breathe
soft sighs, stirring the deep foliage.
In the orchards and in the gardens, whose paths the feet of the monks
had not trodden for many years, vegetation, left to itself, made
holiday, without fear that the hand of man should mutilate it in the
effort to embellish. Climbing plants crept upward twining about the aged
trunks of the trees; the shady paths through aisles of poplars, whose
leafy tops met and mingled, were overgrown with turf; spear-plumed
thistles and nettles had shot up in the sandy roads, and in the parts of
the building which were bulging out, ready to fall; the yellow
crucifera, floating in the wind like the crested feathers of a helmet,
and bell-flowers, white and blue, balancing themselves, as in a swing,
on their long and flexible stems, proclaimed the conquest of decay and
ruin.
It was night, a summer night, mild, full of perfumes and peaceful
sounds, and with a moon, white and serene, high in the blue, luminous,
transparent heavens.
Manrico, his imagination seized by a poetic frenzy, after crossing the
bridge from which he contemplated for a moment the dark silhouette of
the city outlined against the background of some pale, soft clouds
massed on the horizon, plunged into the deserted ruins of the Templars.
It was midnight. The moon, which had been slowly rising, was now at the
zenith, when, on entering a dusky avenue that led from the demolished
cloister to the bank of the Douro, Manrico uttered a low, stifled cry,
strangely compounded of surprise, fear and joy.
In the depths of the dusky avenue he had seen moving something white,
which shimmered a moment and then vanished in the darkness, the trailing
robe of a woman, of a woman who had crossed the path and disappeared
amid the foliage at the very instant when the mad dreamer of absurd,
impossible dreams penetrated into the gardens.
An unknown woman!--In this place!--At this hour! “This, this is the
woman of my quest,” exclaimed Manrico, and he darted forward in pursuit,
swift as an arrow.