“Genii of the air, dwelling in the luminous ether, enveloped in
raiment of silver mist--come!
“Invisible sylphs, leave the cups of the half-opened lilies and
come in your mother-of-pearl chariots drawn through the air
by harnessed butterflies.
“Nymphs of the fountains, forsake your mossy beds and fall upon
us in little, diamond showers.
“Emerald beetles, fiery glow-worms, sable butterflies, come!
“And come, all ye spirits of night, come humming like a swarm of
lustrous, golden insects.
“Come, for now the moon, protector of mysteries, sparkles in the
fulness of splendor.
“Come, for the moment of marvellous transformation is at hand.
“Come, for those who love you, await you with impatience.”
Garcés, who remained motionless, felt on hearing those mysterious songs
the asp of jealousy stinging his heart, and yielding to an impulse
stronger than his will, bent on breaking once for all the spell that was
fascinating his senses, thrust apart with a tremulous, convulsive hand
the boughs which concealed him, and with a single bound gained the
river-bank. The charm was broken, everything vanished like a vapor and,
looking about him, he neither saw nor heard more than the noisy
confusion with which the timid deer, surprised at the height of their
nocturnal gambols, were fleeing in fright from his presence, hither and
thither, one clearing the thickets with a bound, another gaining at full
speed the mountain path.
“Oh, well did I say that all these things were only delusions of the
Devil,” exclaimed the hunter, “but this time, by good luck, he
blundered, leaving the chief prize in my hands.”
And so, in fact, it was. The white doe, trying to escape through the
grove, had rushed into the labyrinth of its trees and, entangled in a
network of honeysuckles, was striving in vain to free herself. Garcés
aimed his shaft, but at the very instant in which he was going to wound
her, the doe turned toward the hunter and arrested his action with a
cry, saying in a voice clear and sharp: “Garcés, what wouldst thou do?”
The young man hesitated and, after a moment’s doubt, let his bow fall to
the ground, aghast at the mere idea of having been in danger of harming
his beloved. A loud, mocking laugh roused him finally from his stupor.
The white doe had taken advantage of those brief instants to extricate
herself and to flee swift as a flash of lightning, laughing at the trick
played on the hunter.
“Ah, damned offspring of Satan!” he shouted in a terrible voice,
catching up his bow with unspeakable swiftness, “too soon hast thou sung
thy victory; too soon hast thou thought thyself beyond my reach.” And so
saying, he sped the arrow, that went hissing on its way and was lost in
the darkness of the wood, from whose depths there simultaneously came a
shriek followed by choking groans.
“My God!” exclaimed Garcés on hearing those sobs of anguish. “My God! if
it should be true!” And beside himself, hardly aware of what he did, he
ran like a madman in the direction in which he had shot the arrow, the
same direction from which sounded the groans. He reached the place at
last, but on arriving there, his hair stood erect with horror, the words
throbbed vainly in his throat and he had to clutch the trunk of a tree
to save himself from falling to the ground.
Constanza, wounded by his hand, was dying there before his eyes,
writhing in her own blood, among the sharp brambles of the mountain.