From the time of the strange occurrence which I have just related until
my return to Toledo, there elapsed about a year, during which the memory
of that afternoon was still present to my imagination, at first
constantly and in full detail, then less often, and at last so vaguely
that I even came to believe sometimes that I had been the sport of an
illusive dream.
Nevertheless, scarcely had I arrived at the city which some with good
reason call the Spanish Rome than this recollection beset me anew and
under its spell I set forth in absent-minded fashion to roam the
streets, without determined direction, with no preconceived purpose of
making my way to any special point.
The day was gloomy with that gloom which invades all that one hears and
sees and feels. The sky was the color of lead, and under its melancholy
shadow the houses seemed older, quainter and duskier than ever. The wind
moaned along the tortuous, narrow streets, bearing upon its gusts, like
the lost notes of a mysterious symphony, unintelligible words, the peal
of bells, and echoes of heavy, far-off blows. The damp, chill air froze
the soul with its icy breath.
I wandered for several hours through the most remote and deserted parts
of the city, rapt in a thousand confused imaginings; and, contrary to my
custom, with a gaze all vague and lost in space, nor could my attention
be aroused by any playful detail of architecture, by any monument of an
unknown style, by any marvellous and hidden work of sculpture, by any
one, in short, of those rare features for whose minute examination I had
been wont to pause at every step, at times when only artistic and
antiquarian interests held sway in my mind.
The sky was continually growing darker; the wind was blowing more
strongly and more boisterously; and a fine sleet had begun to fall,
very keen and penetrating, when unwittingly,--for I was still ignorant
of the way--and as if borne thither by an impulse which I could not
resist, an impulse whose occult force had brought me to the spot whither
my thoughts were tending, I found myself in the lonely square which my
readers already know.
On finding myself in that place I sprang to clear consciousness from out
the depths of that lethargy in which I had been sunken, as if awakened
from profound slumber by a violent shock.
I looked about me. All was as I described it--nay, it was more dreary. I
know not whether this gloom was due to the darkness of the sky, the lack
of verdure, or the state of my own spirit, but the truth is that between
the feeling with which I first contemplated that spot and this later
impression there was all the distance which lies between poetic
melancholy and personal bitterness.
For some moments I stood gazing at the sombre convent, now more sombre
than ever to my eyes, and I was already on the point of withdrawing when
my ears were wounded by the sound of a bell, a bell of broken, husky
voice, which was tolling slowly, while in vivid contrast it was
accompanied by something like a little clapper-bell which suddenly began
to revolve with the rapidity of a ringing so sharp and so incessant that
it seemed to have been seized by an attack of vertigo.
Nothing was ever stranger than that edifice, whose black silhouette was
outlined against the sky like that of a cliff bristling with thousands
of freakish points, speaking with tongues of bronze through bells that
seemed moved by the touch of invisible powers, the one weeping with
smothered sobs, the other laughing with shrill, wild outcry, like the
laughter of a madwoman.
At intervals and confused with the bewildering clamor of the bells, I
seemed to hear, too, something like the indistinct notes of an organ and
the words of a sacred, solemn chant.
I changed my intention; and instead of departing I approached the door
of the church and asked one of the ragged beggars squatted on the stone
steps:
“What is going on here?”
“A taking of the veil,” the mendicant answered, interrupting the prayer
which he was muttering between his teeth to resume it later, although
not until he had kissed the bit of copper that I dropped into his hand
as I put my question.
I had never been present at that ceremony, nor had I ever seen the
interior of the convent church. Both considerations impelled me to
enter.
The church was high and dark; its aisles were defined by two rows of
pillars made up of slender columns gathered into sheaves and resting on
broad octagonal bases, while from their rich crowning of capitals sprang
the vaulting of the strong ogee arches. The High Altar was placed at the
further end under a cupola of Renaissance style decorated with great
shield-bearing angels, griffins, a profusion of foliage on the finials,
cornices with gilded moldings and rosettes, and odd, elaborate frescoes.
Bordering the aisles might be seen a countless number of dusky chapels,
in whose recesses were burning a few lamps like stars lost in a cloudy
sky. Chapels there were of Arab architecture, Gothic, rococo; some
enclosed by magnificent iron gratings; some by humble wooden rails; some
submerged in shadow with an ancient marble tomb before the altar; some
brightly lighted, with an image clad in tinsel and surrounded by votive
offerings of silver and wax, together with little bows of gay-colored
ribbon.
The fantastic light which illuminated all the church, whose structural
confusion and artistic disorder were entirely in keeping with the rest
of the convent, tended to enhance its effect of mystery. From the lamps
of silver and copper, suspended from the vaulting, from the
altar-candles, from the narrow ogive windows and Moorish casements of
the walls, were shed rays of a thousand diverse hues,--white, stealing
in from the street by little skylights in the cupola; red, spreading
their glow from the great wax-candles before the shrines; green, blue,
and a hundred other diverse tints making their way through the stained
glass of the rose-windows. All these lustres, insufficient to flood that
sacred place with adequate light, seemed at certain points to blend in
strife, while others stood out, clear patches of brightness, over
against the veiled, dim depths of the chapels. Despite the solemnity of
the rite which was there taking place, but few of the faithful were in
attendance. The ceremony had commenced some time ago and was now nearing
its close. The priests who officiated at the High Altar were, at that
moment, enveloped in a cloud of azure incense which swayed slowly
through the air, as they descended the carpeted steps to take their way
to the choir where the nuns were heard intoning a psalm.
I, too, moved toward that spot with the intent of peering through the
double gratings which isolated the choir from the rest of the church. It
seemed borne in upon me that I must know the face of that woman of whom
I had seen only--and for one instant--the hand; and opening my eyes to
their widest extent and dilating the pupils in the effort to give them
greater power and penetration, I strained my gaze on to the deepest
recesses of the choir. Fruitless attempt; across the interwoven irons,
little or nothing could be seen. Some white and black phantoms moving
amidst a gloom against which fought in vain the inadequate radiance of a
few tall wax candles; a long line of lofty, crocketed sedilia, crowned
with canopies, beneath which might be divined, veiled by the dusk, the
indistinct figures of nuns clad in long flowing robes; a crucifix
illuminated by four candles and standing out against the dark
background of the picture as those points of high light which, on the
canvases of Rembrandt, make the shadows more palpable; this was the
utmost that could be discerned from the place where I stood.
The priests, covered with their gold-bordered copes, preceded by
acolytes who bore a silver cross and two great candles, and followed by
others who swung censers that shed perfume all about, advancing through
the throng of the faithful who kissed their hands and the hems of their
vestments, finally reached the choir-screen.
Up to this moment I had not been able to distinguish, amid the other
vague phantoms, that of the maiden who was about to consecrate herself
to Christ.
Have you never seen, in those last instants of twilight, a shred of mist
rise from the waters of a river, the surface of a fen, the waves of the
sea, or the deep heart of a mountain tarn,--a shred of mist that floats
slowly in the void, and now looks like a woman moving, walking, trailing
her gown behind her, now like a white veil fastening the tresses of an
invisible sylph, now a ghost which rises in the air hiding its yellow
bones beneath a winding-sheet against which is still seen outlined its
angular shape? Such was the hallucination I experienced in beholding
draw near the screen, as if detaching herself from the sombre depth of
the choir, that white, tall, most lightly moving form.
The face I could not see. She had placed herself exactly in front of the
candles which lit up the crucifix; and their gleam, making a halo about
her head, had left the rest obscure, bathing her in a wavering shadow.
Profound silence reigned; all eyes were fixed on her, and the final act
of the ceremony began.
The abbess, murmuring some unintelligible words, words which in their
turn the priests repeated with deep and hollow voice, caught from the
virgin’s brow the enwreathing crown of blossoms and flung it far
away.--Poor flowers! They were the last she was to wear, that woman,
sister of the flowers even as all women are.
Then the abbess despoiled her of her veil, and her fair tresses poured
in a golden cascade down her back and shoulders, which they were
suffered to cover but an instant, for at once there began to be heard,
in the midst of that profound silence reigning among the faithful, a
sharp, metallic clickity-click which set the nerves twitching, and first
the magnificent waves of hair fell from the forehead they had shaded,
and then those flowing locks that the fragrant air must have kissed so
many times slipped over her bosom and dropped upon the floor.
Again the abbess fell to murmuring the unintelligible words; the priest
repeated them; and once more all was silence in the church. Only from
time to time were heard, afar off, sounds like long-drawn, dreadful
moans. It was the wind complaining as it broke upon the edges of the
battlements and towers, and shuddering as it passed the colored panes of
the ogive windows.
She was motionless, motionless and pallid as a maiden of stone wrenched
from the niche of a Gothic cloister.
And they despoiled her of the jewels which covered her arms and throat,
and finally they divested her of her wedding robe, that raiment which
seemed to have been wrought that a lover might break its clasps with a
hand trembling for bliss and passion.
The mystic Bridegroom was awaiting the bride. Where? Beyond the doors of
death; lifting, undoubtedly, the stone of the sepulchre and calling her
to enter, even as the timid bride crosses the threshold of the sanctuary
of nuptial love, for she fell to the floor prostrate as a corpse. As if
she were clay, the nuns strewed her body with flowers, intoning a most
mournful psalm; a murmur went up from amid the multitude, and the
priests with their deep and hollow voices commenced the service for the
dead, accompanied by those instruments that seem to weep, augmenting the
unfathomable fear which the terrible words they pronounce inspire of
themselves.
_De profundis clamavi a te!_ chanted the nuns from the depths of the
choir with plaintive, lamenting voices.
_Dies irae, dies illa!_ responded the priests in thunderous, awful echo,
and therewith the bells pealed slowly, tolling for the dead, and between
the peals the metal was heard to vibrate with a strange and dolorous
drone.
I was touched; no, not touched--terrified. I believed that I was in
presence of the supernatural, that I felt the heart of my own life torn
from me, and that vacancy was closing in upon me; I felt that I had just
lost something precious, as a father, a mother, or a cherished wife, and
I suffered that immeasurable desolation which death leaves behind
wheresoever it passes, a desolation nameless, indescribable, to be
comprehended only by those who have had it to bear.
I was still rooted to that spot with wildly staring eyes, quaking from
head to foot and half beside myself, when the new nun rose from the
ground. The abbess robed her in the habit of the order, the sisters took
lighted candles in their hands and, forming two long lines, led her in
procession back to the further side of the choir.
There, amid the shadows, I saw the sudden glint of a ray of light; the
door of the cloister was opened. As she stepped beneath the lintel, the
nun turned for the last time toward the altar. The brightness of all the
lights suddenly shone upon her, and I could see her face. As I saw it, I
had to choke back a cry.
I knew that woman; not that I had ever seen her, but I knew her from the
visions of my dreams; she was one of those beings whom the soul
foretells or perchance remembers from another better world which, in
our descent to this, some of us do not altogether forget.
I took two steps forward; I longed to call to her--to cry out--I know
not what--giddiness assailed me; but at that instant the cloister door
shut--forever. The silver bells rang blithely, the priests raised a
_Hosanna_, clouds of incense swept through the air, the organ poured
forth from a hundred metal mouths a torrent of thunderous harmony, and
the bells of the tower began to chime, swinging with a frightful
ecstasy.
That mad and clamorous glee made my hair rise on my head. I looked about
searching for the parents, family, motherless children of that woman. I
found none.
“Perhaps she was alone in the world,” I said, and could not repress a
tear.
“God grant thee in the cloister the happiness which He denied thee in
the world!” simultaneously exclaimed an old woman by my side, and she
sobbed and groaned, clutching the grating.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“The poor dear! Indeed I knew her. I saw her born and I have nursed her
in my arms.”
“And why does she take the veil?”
“Because she found herself alone in the world. Her father and mother
died of the cholera on one and the same day, a little more than a year
ago. Seeing her an orphan and unprotected, the dean gave her a dowry so
that she might enter the sisterhood; and now you see--what else was
there to do?”
“And who was she?”
“Daughter of the steward of the Count of C----, whom I served until his
death.”
“Where did he live?”
When I heard the name of the street, I could not repress an exclamation
of surprise.
A line of light, that line of light which is as swift as thought,
running brightly through the obscurity and confusion of the mind,
uniting experiences far removed from one another and marvellously
binding them together, connected my vague memories and I understood--or
believed that I understood--all.
* * * * *
This date, which has no name, I have not written anywhere,--nay; I bear
it written there where only I may read it and whence it shall never be
erased.
Occasionally in recalling these events, even now in relating them here,
I have asked myself:--
Some day in the mysterious hour of twilight, when the breath of the
spring zephyr, warm and laden with perfumes, penetrates even into the
recesses of the most retired dwellings, bearing there an airy touch of
memory, of the world, must not a woman, alone, lost in the dim shades of
a Gothic cloister, her cheek upon her hand, her elbow resting on the
embrasure of an ogive window, have exhaled a sigh as the recollection of
these dates crossed her imagination?
Who knows?
Oh! if she sighed, where might that sigh be?