“I must find her, I must find her; and if I find her, I am almost
certain I shall recognize her. How?--I cannot tell--but recognize her I
must. The echo of her footstep, or a single word of hers which I may
hear again; the hem of her robe, only the hem which I may see again
would be enough to make me sure of her. Night and day I see floating
before my eyes those folds of a fabric diaphanous and whiter than snow,
night and day there is sounding here within, within my head, the soft
rustle of her raiment, the vague murmur of her unintelligible
words.--What said she?--What said she? Ah, if I might only know what she
said, perchance--but yet without knowing it, I shall find her--I shall
find her--my heart tells me so, and my heart deceives me never.--It is
true that I have unavailingly traversed all the streets of Soria, that I
have passed nights upon nights in the open air, a corner-post; that I
have spent more than twenty golden coins in persuading duennas and
servants to gossip; that I gave holy water in St. Nicholas to an old
crone muffled up so artfully in her woollen mantle that she seemed to me
a goddess; and on coming out, after matins, from the collegiate church,
in the dusk before the dawn, I followed like a fool the litter of the
archdeacon, believing that the hem of his vestment was that of the robe
of my unknown lady--but it matters not--I must find her, and the rapture
of possessing her will assuredly surpass the labors of the quest.
“What will her eyes be? They should be azure, azure and liquid as the
sky of night. How I delight in eyes of that color! They are so
expressive, so dreamy, so--yes,--no doubt of it; azure her eyes should
be, azure they are, assuredly;--and her tresses black, jet black and so
long that they wave upon the air--it seems to me I saw them waving that
night, like her robe, and they were black--I do not deceive myself, no;
they were black.
“And how well azure eyes, very large and slumbrous, and loose tresses,
waving and dark, become a tall woman--for--she is tall, tall and
slender, like those angels above the portals of our basilicas, angels
whose oval faces the shadows of their granite canopies veil in mystic
twilight.
“Her voice!--her voice I have heard--her voice is soft as the breathing
of the wind in the leaves of the poplars, and her walk measured and
stately like the cadences of a musical instrument.
“And this woman, who is lovely as the loveliest of my youthful dreams,
who thinks as I think, who enjoys what I enjoy, who hates what I hate,
who is a twin spirit of my spirit, who is the complement of my being,
must she not feel moved on meeting me? Must she not love me as I shall
love her, as I love her already, with all the strength of my life, with
every faculty of my soul?
“Back, back to the place where I saw her for the first and only time
that I have seen her. Who knows but that, capricious as myself, a lover
of solitude and mystery like all dreamy souls, she may take pleasure in
wandering among the ruins in the silence of the night?”
Two months had passed since the servitor of Don Alonso de Valdecuellos
had disillusionized the infatuated Manrico, two months in every hour of
which he had built a castle in the air only for reality to shatter with
a breath; two months during which he had sought in vain that unknown
woman for whom an absurd love had been growing in his soul, thanks to
his still more absurd imaginations; two months had flown since his first
adventure when now, after crossing, absorbed in these ideas, the bridge
which leads to the convent of the Templars, the enamored youth plunged
again into the intricate pathways of the gardens.