In the epoch to which the account of this incident, no less true than
strange, reverts, the city of Toledo, for those who knew not how to
value the treasures of art which its walls enclose, was, even as now,
no more than a great huddle of houses, old-fashioned, ruinous,
insufferable.
The officers of the French army who, to judge from the acts of vandalism
by which they left in Toledo a sad and enduring memory of their
occupation, counted few artists and archæologists in their number, found
themselves, as goes without the saying, supremely bored in the ancient
city of the Cæsars.
In this frame of mind, the most trifling event which came to break the
monotonous calm of those eternal, unvarying days was eagerly caught up
among the idlers, so that the promotion of one of their comrades to the
next grade, a report of the strategic movement of a flying column, the
departure of an official post or the arrival at the city of any military
force whatsoever, became a fertile theme of conversation and object of
every sort of comment, until something else occurred to take its place
and serve as foundation for new grumblings, criticisms and conjectures.
As was to be expected, among those officers who, according to their
custom, gathered on the following day to take the air and chat a little
in the Zocodover, the dish of gossip was supplied by nothing else than
the arrival of the dragoons, whose leader was left in the former chapter
stretched out at his ease, sleeping off the fatigues of the march. For
upwards of an hour the conversation had been beating about this event,
and already various explanations had been put forward to account for the
non-appearance of the new-comer, whom an officer present, a former
schoolmate, had invited to the Zocodover, when at last, in one of the
side-streets that radiate from the square, appeared our gallant captain,
no longer obscured by his voluminous army-cloak, but sporting a great
shining helmet with a plume of white feathers, a turquoise-blue coat
with scarlet facings, and a magnificent two-handed sword in a steel
scabbard which clanked as it struck the ground in time to his martial
stride and to the keener, sharper clink of his golden spurs.
As soon as his former chum caught sight of him, off he went to meet him
and bid him welcome, followed by almost all the officers who chanced to
be in the group that morning and who had been stirred to curiosity and a
desire to know him by what they had already heard of his original,
extraordinary traits of character.
After the customary close embraces, and the exclamations, compliments
and questions enjoined by etiquette in meetings like this; after
discussing at length and in detail the latest news from Madrid, the
changing fortune of the war, and old friends dead or far away, the
conversation, flitting from one subject to another, came to roost at
last on the inevitable theme, to wit, the hardships of the service, the
dearth of amusements in the city, and the inconveniences of their
lodgings.
Now at this juncture one of the company, who, it would seem, had heard
of the ill grace with which the young officer had resigned himself to
quartering his troop in the abandoned church, said to him with an air of
raillery:
“And speaking of lodgings, what sort of a night did you have in yours?”
“We lacked for nothing,” answered the captain, “and if it is the truth
that I slept but little, the cause of my insomnia is well worth the
pains of wakefulness. A vigil in the society of a charming woman is
surely not the worst of evils.”
“A woman!” repeated his interlocutor, as if wondering at the good
fortune of the new arrival. “This is what they call ending the
pilgrimage and kissing the saint.”
“Perhaps it is some old flame of the Capital who follows him to Madrid
to make his exile more endurable,” added another of the circle.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed the captain, “nothing of the sort. I swear to you,
on the word of a gentleman, I had never seen her before, nor had I
dreamed of finding so gracious a hostess in so bad a hostelry. It is
altogether what one might call a genuine adventure.”
“Tell it! tell it!” chorused the officers who surrounded the captain,
and as he proceeded so to do, all lent the most eager attention, while
he began his story thus:
“I was sleeping last night the sleep of a man who carries in his body
the effects of a thirteen-league ride, when, look you, in the best of my
slumber I was startled wide-awake,--springing up and leaning on my
elbows,--by a horrible uproar, such an uproar that it deafened me for an
instant and left my ears, a full minute after, humming as if a horse-fly
were singing on my cheek.
“As you will have guessed, the cause of my alarm was the first stroke
which I heard of that diabolical _campana gorda_, a sort of bronze
chorister, which the canons of Toledo have placed in their cathedral for
the praiseworthy object of killing the weary with wrath.
“Cursing between my teeth both bell and bell-ringer, I disposed myself,
as soon as that strange and frightful noise had ceased, to take up anew
the thread of my broken dream, when there befell, to pique my
imagination and challenge my senses, a thing of wonder. By the uncertain
moonlight which entered the church through the narrow Moorish window of
the chancel wall, I saw a woman kneeling at the altar.”
The officers exchanged glances of mingled astonishment and incredulity;
the captain, without heeding the impression his narrative was making,
continued as follows:
“It could not enter into man’s heart to conceive that nocturnal,
phantasmal vision, vaguely outlined in the twilight of the chapel, like
those virgins painted in colored glass that you have sometimes seen,
from afar off, stand out, white and luminous, across the shadowy
stretch of the cathedrals.
“Her oval face, on which one saw stamped the seal, delicate and
spiritual, of emaciation, her harmonious features full of a gentle,
melancholy sweetness, her intense pallor, the perfect lines of her
slender figure, her reposeful, noble posture, her robe of flowing white,
brought to my memory the women of whom I used to dream when I was still
little more than a child. Chaste, celestial images, illusive objects of
the wandering love of youth!
“I believed myself the sport of an hallucination and not withdrawing my
eyes from her for an instant, I scarcely dared breathe, fearing that a
breath might dissolve the enchantment.
“She remained motionless.
“The fancy crossed my mind, on seeing her so shining, so transparent,
that this was no creature of the earth, but a spirit, that, once more
assuming for an instant the veil of human form, had descended in the
moonbeam, leaving in the air behind it the azure track which slanted
from the high window to the foot of the opposite wall, breaking the deep
gloom of that dusky, mysterious recess.”
“But--” interrupted his former schoolmate, who, inclined at the outset
to make fun of the story, had at last grown closely attentive--“how came
that woman there? Did you not speak to her? Did she not explain to you
her presence in that place?”
“I decided not to address her, because I was sure that she would not
answer me, nor see me, nor hear me.”
“Was she deaf?”
“Was she blind?”
“Was she dumb?” exclaimed simultaneously three or four of those who were
listening to the story.
“She was all at once,” finally declared the captain after a moment’s
pause, “for she was---- marble.”
On hearing this remarkable _dénouement_ of so strange an adventure, the
bystanders burst into a noisy peal of laughter, while one of them said
to the narrator of this curious experience, who alone remained quiet and
of grave deportment:
“We will make a complete thing of it. As for this sort of ladies, I have
more than a thousand, a regular seraglio, in _San Juan de los Reyes_, a
seraglio which from this time on I put quite at your service, since, it
would seem, a woman of stone is the same to you as a woman of flesh.”
“Oh, no!” responded the captain, not nettled in the slightest by the
laughter of his companions. “I am sure that they cannot be like mine.
Mine is a true Castilian dame of high degree, who by a miracle of
sculpture appears not to have been buried in a sepulchre, but still,
body and soul, to kneel upon the lid of her own tomb, motionless, with
hands joined in attitude of prayer, drowned in an ecstasy of mystic
love.”
“You are so plausible that you will end by making us believe in the
fable of Galatea.”
“For my part, I admit that I had always supposed it nonsense, but since
last night I begin to comprehend the passion of the Greek sculptor.”
“Considering the peculiar circumstances of your new lady, I presume you
would have no objection to presenting us. As for me, I vow that already
I am dead with longing to behold this paragon. But--what the devil!--one
would say that you do not wish to introduce us. Ha, ha, ha! It would be
a joke indeed if we should find you jealous.”
“Jealous!” the captain hastened to reply. “Jealous--of men, no; but yet
see to what lengths my madness reaches. Close beside the image of this
woman is a warrior, also of marble, an august figure, as lifelike as
herself,--her husband, without doubt. Well, then! I am going to make a
clean breast of it, jeer at my folly as you may,--if I had not feared
being taken for a lunatic, I believe I should have broken him to pieces
a hundred times over.”
A fresh and yet more riotous outburst of laughter from the officers
greeted this original revelation on the part of the eccentric lover of
the marble lady.
“We will take no refusal. We must see her,” cried some.
“Yes, yes, we must know if the object of such devotion is as unique as
the passion itself,” added others.
“When shall we come together to take a drink in the church where you
lodge?” demanded the rest.
“Whenever you please; this very evening, if you like,” replied the young
captain, regaining his usual debonair expression, dispelled for an
instant by that flash of jealousy. “By the way, along with the baggage I
have brought as many as two dozen bottles of champagne, genuine
champagne, what was left over from a present given to our
brigadier-general, who, as you know, is a distant relative of mine.”
“Bravo! Bravo!” shouted the officers with one voice, breaking into
gleeful exclamations.
“We will drink the wine of our native land!”
“And we will sing one of Ronsard’s songs!”
“And we will talk of women, apropos of the lady of our host.”
“And so--good-bye till evening!”
“Till evening!”