Although his hope of overtaking those who had entered by the postern
gate of San Saturio was dissipated, that of tracing out the house which
sheltered them in the city was not therefore abandoned by our hero. With
his mind fixed upon this idea, he entered the town and, taking his way
toward the ward of San Juan, began roaming its streets at hazard.
The streets of Soria were then, and they are to-day, narrow, dark and
crooked. A profound silence reigned in them, a silence broken only by
the distant barking of a dog, the barring of a gate or the neighing of a
charger, whose pawing made the chain which fastened him to the manger
rattle in the subterranean stables.
Manrico, with ear attent to these vague noises of the night, which at
times seemed to be the footsteps of some person who had just turned the
last corner of a deserted street, at others, the confused voices of
people who were talking behind him and whom every moment he expected to
see at his side, spent several hours running at random from one place to
another.
At last he stopped beneath a great stone mansion, dark and very old,
and, standing there, his eyes shone with an indescribable expression of
joy. In one of the high ogive windows of what we might call a palace, he
saw a ray of soft and mellow light which, passing through some thin
draperies of rose-colored silk, was reflected on the time-blackened,
weather-cracked wall of the house across the way.
“There is no doubt about it; here dwells my unknown lady,” murmured the
youth in a low voice, without removing his eyes for a second from the
Gothic window. “Here she dwells! She entered by the postern gate of San
Saturio,--by the postern gate of San Saturio is the way to this ward--in
this ward there is a house where, after midnight, there is some one
awake--awake? Who can it be at this hour if not she, just returned from
her nocturnal excursions? There is no more room for doubt; this is her
home.”
In this firm persuasion and revolving in his head the maddest and most
capricious fantasies, he awaited dawn opposite the Gothic window where
there was a light all night and from which he did not withdraw his gaze
a moment.
When daybreak came, the massive gates of the arched entrance to the
mansion, on whose keystone was sculptured the owner’s coat of arms,
turned ponderously on their hinges with a sharp and prolonged creaking.
A servitor appeared on the threshold with a bunch of keys in his hand,
rubbing his eyes, and showing as he yawned a set of great teeth which
might well rouse envy in a crocodile.
For Manrico to see him and to rush to the gate was the work of an
instant.
“Who lives in this house? What is her name? Her country? Why has she
come to Soria? Has she a husband? Answer, answer, animal!” This was the
salutation which, shaking him violently by the shoulder, Manrico hurled
at the poor servitor, who, after staring at him a long while with
frightened, stupefied eyes, replied in a voice broken with amazement:
“In this house lives the right honorable Señor don Alonso de
Valdecuellos, Master of the Horse to our lord, the King. He has been
wounded in the war with the Moors and is now in this city recovering
from his injuries.”
“Well! well! His daughter?” broke in the impatient youth. “His daughter,
or his sister, or his wife, or whoever she may be?”
“He has no woman in his family.”
“No woman! Then who sleeps in that chamber there, where all night long I
have seen a light burning?”
“There? There sleeps my lord Don Alonso, who, as he is ill, keeps his
lamp burning till dawn.”
A thunderbolt, suddenly falling at his feet, would not have given
Manrico a greater shock than these words.