In a small town of Aragon, about the end of the thirteenth century or a
little later, there lived retired in his seigniorial castle a renowned
knight named Don Dionís, who, having served his king in the war against
the infidels, was then taking his ease, giving himself up to the merry
exercise of hunting, after the wearisome hardships of war.
It chanced once to this cavalier, engaged in his favorite diversion,
accompanied by his daughter whose singular beauty, of the blond type
extraordinary in Spain, had won her the name of White Lily, that as the
increasing heat of the day began to tell upon them, absorbed in pursuing
a quarry in the mountainous part of his estate, he took for his
resting-place during the hours of the siesta a glen through which ran a
rivulet leaping from rock to rock with a soft and pleasant sound.
It might have been a matter of some two hours that Don Dionís had
lingered in that delectable retreat, reclining on the delicate grass in
the shade of a black-poplar grove, talking affably with his huntsmen
about the incidents of the day, while they related one to another more
or less curious adventures that had befallen them in their hunting
experiences, when along the top of the highest ridge and between
alternating murmurs of the wind which stirred the leaves on the trees,
he began to perceive, each time more near, the sound of a little bell
like that of the leader of a flock.
In truth, it was really that, for very soon after the first hearing of
the bell, there came leaping over the thick undergrowth of lavender and
thyme, descending to the opposite bank of the rivulet, nearly a hundred
lambs white as snow, and behind them appeared their shepherd with his
pointed hood drawn over his brows to protect him from the vertical rays
of the sun and with his shoulder-bag swung from the end of a stick.
“Speaking of remarkable adventures,” exclaimed on seeing him one of the
huntsmen of Don Dionís, addressing his lord, “here is Esteban, the
shepherd-lad, who has been now for some time more of a fool than God
made him, which was fool enough. He can give us an amusing half-hour by
relating the cause of his continual frights.”
“But what is it that happens to this poor devil?” exclaimed Don Dionís
with an air of piqued curiosity.
“A mere trifle,” continued the huntsman in a jesting tone. “The case is
this--that without having been born on Good Friday, or bearing a
birthmark of the cross, or, so far as one can infer from his regular
Christian habits, binding himself to the Devil, he finds himself, not
knowing why or whence, endowed with the most marvellous faculty that any
man ever possessed, unless it be Solomon, who, they say, understood even
the language of birds.”
“And with what does this remarkable faculty have to do?”
“It has to do,” pursued the huntsman, “as he affirms, and he swears and
forswears it by all that is most sacred, with a conspiracy among the
deer which course through these mountains not to leave him in peace, the
drollest thing about it being that on more than one occasion he has
surprised them in the act of contriving the pranks they were going to
play on him and after those tricks had been carried through he has
overheard the noisy bursts of laughter with which they applaud them.”
While the huntsman was thus speaking, Constanza, as the beautiful
daughter of Don Dionís was named, had drawn near the group of sportsmen
and, as she appeared curious to hear the strange experience of Esteban,
one of them ran on to the place where the young shepherd was watering
his flock and brought him into the presence of his lord, who, to dispel
the perturbation and evident embarrassment of the poor peasant, hastened
to greet him by name, accompanying the salutation with a benevolent
smile.
Esteban was a boy of nineteen or twenty years, robust in build, with a
small head sunken between his shoulders, little blue eyes, a wavering,
stupid glance like that of albinos, a flat nose, thick, half open lips,
low forehead, complexion fair but tanned by the sun, and hair which fell
partly over his eyes and partly around his face, in rough red locks like
the mane of a sorrel nag.
Such, more or less exactly, was Esteban in point of physique. In respect
to his character, it could be asserted without fear of denial on his own
part or on that of any one who knew him, that he was an entirely honest,
simple-hearted lad, though, like a true peasant, a little suspicious and
malicious.
As soon as the shepherd had recovered from his confusion, Don Dionís
again addressed him and, in the most serious tone in the world, feigning
an extraordinary interest in learning the details of the event to which
his huntsman had referred, put to him a multitude of questions to which
Esteban began to reply evasively, as if desirous of escaping any
discussion of the subject.
Constrained, nevertheless, by the demands of his lord and the entreaties
of Constanza, who seemed most curious and eager that the shepherd should
relate his astounding adventures, he decided to talk freely, but not
without casting a distrustful glance about him as though fearing to be
overheard by others than those present, and scratching his head three
or four times in the effort to connect his recollections or find the
thread of his narrative, before at last he thus began:
“The fact is, my lord, that as a priest of Tarazona to whom, not long
ago, I went for help in my troubles, told me, wits don’t serve against
the Devil, but mum! finger on lip, many good prayers to Saint
Bartholomew--who, none better, knows his knaveries--and let him have his
sport; for God, who is just, and sits up thereon high, will see that all
comes right in the end.
“Resolved on this course I had decided never again to say a word to any
one about it,--no, not for anything; but I will do it to-day to satisfy
your curiosity, and in good sooth, if, after all, the Devil calls me to
account and goes to troubling me in punishment for my indiscretion, I
carry the Holy Gospels sewed inside my sheepskin coat, and with their
help, I think that, as at other times, I may make telling use of a
cudgel.”
“But, come!” exclaimed Don Dionís, out of patience with the digressions
of the shepherd, which it seemed would never end, “let the whys and
wherefores go, and come directly to the subject.”
“I am coming to it,” calmly replied Esteban, and after calling together,
by dint of a shout and a whistle, the lambs of which he had not lost
sight and which were now beginning to scatter over the mountain-side, he
scratched his head again and proceeded thus:
“On the one hand, your own continual hunting trips, and on the other,
the persistency of those trespassers who, what with snare and what with
crossbow, hardly leave a deer alive in twenty days’ journey round about,
had, a little time ago, so thinned out the game in these mountains that
you could not find a stag in them, not though you would give one of your
eyes.
“I was speaking of this in the town, seated in the porch of the church,
where after mass on Sunday I was in the habit of joining some laborers
who till the soil in Veratón, when some of them said to me:
“‘Well, man, I don’t know why it is you fail to run across them, since,
as for us, we can give you our word that we don’t once go down to the
ploughed land without coming upon their tracks, and it is only three or
four days since, without going further back, a herd, which, to judge by
their hoof-prints, must have numbered more than twenty, cut down before
its time a crop of wheat belonging to the care-taker of the Virgen del
Romeral.’
“‘And in what direction did the track lead?’ I asked the laborers, with
a mind to see if I could fall in with the herd.
“‘Toward the Lavender Glen,’ they replied.
“This information did not enter one ear to go out at the other; that
very night I posted myself among the poplars. During all its hours I
kept hearing here and there, far off as well as near by, the trumpeting
of the deer as they called one to another, and from time to time I felt
the boughs stirring behind me; but however sharply I looked, the truth
is, I could distinguish nothing.
“Nevertheless, at break of day, when I took the lambs to water, at the
bank of the stream, about two throws of the sling from the place where
we now are, and in so dense a shade of poplars that not even at mid-day
is it pierced by a ray of sunshine, I found fresh deer-tracks, broken
branches, the stream a little roiled and, what is more peculiar, among
the deer-tracks the short prints of tiny feet no larger than the half of
the palm of my hand, without any exaggeration.”
On saying this, the boy, instinctively seeming to seek a point of
comparison, directed his glance to the foot of Constanza, which peeped
from beneath her petticoat shod in a dainty sandal of yellow morocco,
but as the eyes of Don Dionís and of some of the huntsmen who were
about him followed Esteban’s, the beautiful girl hastened to conceal it,
exclaiming in the most natural voice in the world:
“Oh, no! unluckily mine are not so tiny, for feet of this size are found
only among the fairies of whom the troubadours sing.”
“But I did not give up with this,” continued the shepherd, when
Constanza had finished. “Another time, having concealed myself in
another hiding-place by which, undoubtedly, the deer would have to pass
in going to the glen, at just about midnight sleep overcame me for a
little, although not so much but that I opened my eyes at the very
moment when I perceived the branches were stirring around me. I opened
my eyes, as I have said; I rose with the utmost caution and, listening
intently to the confused murmur, which every moment sounded nearer, I
heard in the gusts of wind something like cries and strange songs,
bursts of laughter, and three or four distinct voices which talked
together with a chatter and gay confusion like that of the young girls
at the village when, laughing and jesting on the way, they return in
groups from the fountain with their water-jars on their heads.
“As I gathered from the nearness of the voices and close-by crackle of
twigs which broke noisily in giving way to that throng of merry maids,
they were just about to come out of the thicket on to a little platform
formed by a jut of the mountain there where I was hid when, right at my
back, as near or nearer than I am to you, I heard a new voice, fresh,
fine and vibrant, which said--believe it, _señores_, it is as true as
that I have to die--it said, clearly and distinctly, these very words:
“‘Hither, hither, comrades dear!
That dolt of an Esteban is here!’”
On reaching this point in the shepherd’s story, the bystanders could no
longer repress the merriment which for many minutes had been dancing in
their eyes and, giving free rein to their mirth, they broke into
clamorous laughter. Among the first to begin to laugh, and the last to
leave off, were Don Dionís, who, notwithstanding his air of dignity,
could not but take part in the general hilarity, and his daughter
Constanza, who, every time she looked at Esteban, all in suspense and
embarrassment as he was, fell to laughing again like mad till the tears
sprang from her eyes.
The shepherd-lad, for his part, although without heeding the effect his
story had produced, seemed disturbed and restless, and while the great
folk laughed to their hearts’ content at his simple tale, he turned his
face from one side to the other with visible signs of fear and as if
trying to descry something beyond the intertwined trunks of the trees.
“What is it, Esteban, what is the matter?” asked one of the huntsmen,
noting the growing disquietude of the poor boy, who now was fixing his
frightened eyes on the laughing daughter of Don Dionís, and again gazing
all around him with an expression of astonishment and dull dismay:
“A very strange thing is happening to me,” exclaimed Esteban. “When,
after hearing the words which I have just repeated, I quickly sat
upright to surprise the person who had spoken them, a doe white as snow
leaped from the very copse in which I was hidden and, taking a few
prodigious bounds over the tops of the evergreen oaks and mastic trees,
sped away, followed by a herd of deer of the natural color; and these,
like the white one who was guiding them, did not utter the cries of deer
in flight, but laughed with great peals of laughter, whose echo, I could
swear, is sounding in my ears at this moment.”
“Bah, bah, Esteban!” exclaimed Don Dionís, with a jesting air, “follow
the counsels of the priest of Tarazona; do not talk of your adventures
with the joke-loving deer, lest the Devil bring it to pass that in the
end you lose the little sense you have, and since now you are provided
with the gospels and know the prayer of Saint Bartholomew, return to
your lambs which are beginning to scatter through the glen. If the evil
spirits tease you again, you know the remedy--_Pater Noster_ and a big
stick.”
The shepherd, after putting away in his pouch a half loaf of white bread
and a piece of boar’s meat, and in his stomach a mighty draught of wine,
which, by order of his lord, one of the grooms gave him, took leave of
Don Dionís and his daughter and had scarcely gone four steps when he
began whirling his sling, casting stones from it to gather the lambs
together.
As, by this time, Don Dionís observed that, what with one diversion and
another, the hours of heat were now passed and the light afternoon
breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the poplars and to freshen
the fields, he gave orders to his retinue to make ready the horses which
were grazing loose in the grove hard by; and when everything was
prepared, he signalled to some to slip the leashes, and to others to
blow the horns and, sallying forth in a troop from the poplar-grove,
took up the interrupted chase.