When a division of the French army, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, took possession of historic Toledo, the officers in command,
not unaware of the danger to which French soldiers were exposed in
Spanish towns by being quartered in separate lodgings, commenced to fit
up as barracks the largest and best edifices of the city.
After occupying the magnificent palace of Carlos V. they appropriated
the City Hall, and when this could hold no more, they began to invade
the pious shade of monasteries, at last making over into stables even
the churches sacred to worship. Such was the state of affairs in the
famous old town, scene of the event which I am about to recount, when
one night, already late, there entered the city, muffled in their dark
army-cloaks and deafening the narrow, lonely streets, from the Gate of
the Sun to the Zocodover, with the clang of weapons and the resounding
beat of the hoofs that struck sparks from the flinty way, one hundred or
so of these tall dragoons, dashing, mettlesome fellows, whom our
grandmothers still tell about with admiration.
The force was commanded by a youthful officer, riding about thirty paces
in advance of his troop and talking in low tones with a man on foot,
who, so far as might be inferred from his dress, was also a soldier.
Walking in front of his interlocutor, with a small lantern in hand, he
seemed to be serving as guide through that labyrinth of obscure, twisted
and intertangled streets.
“In sooth,” said the trooper to his companion, “if the lodging prepared
for us is even such as you picture it, perhaps it would be better to
camp out in the country or in one of the public squares.”
“But what would you, my captain?” answered the guide, who was, in fact,
a sergeant sent on before to make ready for their reception. “In the
palace there is not room for another grain of wheat, much less for a
man; of _San Juan de los Reyes_ there is no use in talking, for there it
has reached such a point that in one of the friars’ cells are sleeping
fifteen hussars. The monastery to which I am taking you was not so bad,
but some three or four days ago there fell upon us, as if out of the
clouds, one of the flying columns that scour the province, and we are
lucky to have prevailed on them to heap themselves up along the
cloisters and leave the church free for us.”
“Ah, well!” exclaimed the officer, after a brief silence, with an air of
resigning himself to the strange quarters which chance had apportioned
him, “an ill lodging is better than none. At all events, in case of
rain,--not unlikely, judging from the massing of the clouds,--we shall
be under cover, and that is something.”
With this the conversation was broken off, and the troopers, preceded by
the guide, took the onward way in silence until they came to one of the
smaller squares, on the further side of which stood out the black
silhouette of the monastery with its Moorish minaret, spired bell-tower,
ogive cupola and dark, uneven roof.
“Here is your lodging!” exclaimed the sergeant at sight of it,
addressing the captain, who, after commanding his troop to halt,
dismounted, caught the lantern from the hands of the guide, and took his
way toward the building designated.
Since the church of the monastery was thoroughly dismantled, the
soldiers who occupied the other parts of the
[Illustration: PALACE OF CARLOS V., TOLEDO]
building had thought that the doors were now a trifle less than useless
and, piece by piece, had wrenched off one to-day, another to-morrow, to
make bonfires for warming themselves by night.
Our young officer, therefore, did not have to delay for turning of keys
or drawing of bolts before penetrating into the heart of the sanctuary.
By the light of the lantern, whose doubtful ray, lost in the heavy
glooms of nave and aisles, threw in giant proportions upon the wall the
fantastic shadow of the sergeant going on before, he traversed the
length and breadth of the church and peered into the deserted chapels,
one by one, until he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the
place, when he ordered his troop to dismount, and set about the
bestowing of that confused crowd of men and horses as best he could.
As we have said, the church was completely dismantled; before the High
Altar were still hanging from the lofty cornices torn shreds of the veil
with which the monks had covered it on abandoning that holy place; at
intervals along the aisles might be seen shrines fastened against the
wall, their niches bereft of images; in the choir a line of light traced
the strange contour of the shadowy larchwood stalls; upon the pavement,
destroyed at various points, might still be distinguished broad burial
slabs filled with heraldic devices, shields and long Gothic
inscriptions; and far away, in the depths of the silent chapels and
along the transepts, were vaguely visible in the dimness, like
motionless white spectres, marble statues which, some extended at full
length and others kneeling on their stony tombs, appeared to be the only
tenants of that ruined structure.
For anyone less spent than the captain of dragoons, who carried in his
body the fatigues of a ride of fourteen leagues, or less accustomed to
seeing these sacrileges as the most natural thing in the world, two
drams of imagination would have sufficed to keep eyes from closing the
whole night long in that dusky, awesome haunt, where the oaths of the
soldiers, who were loudly complaining of their improvised barracks, the
metallic clink of their spurs striking rudely against the once
sepulchral slabs of the pavement, the clatter of the horses as they
pawed impatiently, tossing their heads and rattling the chains which
bound them to the pillars, formed a strange and fearful confusion of
sounds that reverberated through the reaches of the church and was
repeated, ever more weirdly, from echo to echo among the lofty vaults.
But our hero, young though he was, had already become so familiar with
those shiftings of the scene in a soldier’s life, that scarcely had he
assigned places to his men than he ordered a sack of fodder flung down
at the foot of the chancel steps, and rolling himself as snugly as
possible into his cloak, resting his head upon the lowest stair, in five
minutes was snoring with more tranquillity than King Joseph himself in
his palace at Madrid.
The soldiers, making pillows of the saddles, followed his example, and
little by little the murmur of their voices died away.
Half an hour later, nothing was to be heard save the stifled groans of
the wind which entered by the broken ogive windows of the church, the
skurrying flights of night-birds whose nests were built in the stone
canopies above the sculptured figures of the walls, and the tramp, now
near, now far, of the sentry who was pacing up and down the portico,
wound in the wide folds of his military cloak.