It was now a good hour since the peaceful inhabitants of Toledo had
secured with key and bolt the massive doors of their ancient mansions;
the _campana gorda_ of the cathedral was ringing curfew, and from the
summit of the palace, now converted into barracks, was sounding the last
bugle-call for silence, when ten or twelve officers, who had been
gradually assembling in the Zocodover, took the road leading thence to
the monastery where the captain was lodged, impelled more by hope of
draining the promised bottles than by eagerness to make acquaintance
with the marvellous piece of sculpture.
The night had shut down dark and threatening; the sky was covered with
leaden clouds; the wind, whistling along the imprisoning channels of the
narrow, tortuous streets, was shaking the dying flames of the shielded
lamps before the shrines, or making the iron weather-vanes of the towers
whirl about with a shrill creaking.
Scarcely had the officers caught sight of the square where stood the
monastery which served as quarters for their new friend, than he, who
was impatiently looking out for their arrival, sallied forth to meet
them, and after the exchange of a few low-toned sentences, all together
entered the church, within whose dim enclosure the faint gleam of a
lantern was struggling at hopeless odds with the black and heavy
shadows.
“‘Pon my honor!” exclaimed one of the guests, peering about him. “If
this isn’t the last place in the world for a revel!”
“True enough!” said another. “You bring us here to meet a lady, and
scarcely can a man see his hand before his face.”
“And worst of all, it’s so icy cold that we might as well be in
Siberia,” added a third, hugging the folds of his cloak about him.
“Patience, gentlemen, patience!” interposed the host. “A little patience
will set all to rights. Here, my lad!” he continued, addressing one of
his men. “Hunt us up a bit of fuel and kindle a rousing bonfire in the
chancel.”
The orderly, obeying his captain’s directions, commenced to rain
swinging blows on the carven stalls of the choir, and after he had thus
collected a goodly supply of wood, which was heaped up at the foot of
the chancel steps, he took the lantern and proceeded to make an _auto de
fe_ of those fragments carved in richest designs. Among them might be
seen here a portion of a spiral column, there the effigy of a holy
abbot, the torso of a woman, or the misshapen head of a griffin peeping
through foliage.
In a few minutes, a great light which suddenly streamed out through all
the compass of the church announced to the officers that the hour for
the carousal had arrived.
The captain, who did the honors of his lodging with the same
punctiliousness which he would have observed in his own house, turned to
his guests and said:
“We will, if you please, pass to the refreshment room.”
His comrades, affecting the utmost gravity, responded to the invitation
with absurdly profound bows and took their way to the chancel preceded
by the lord of the revel, who, on reaching the stone steps, paused an
instant, and extending his hand in the direction of the tomb, said to
them with the most exquisite courtesy:
“I have the pleasure of presenting you to the lady of my dreams. I am
sure you will grant that I have not exaggerated her beauty.”
The officers turned their eyes toward the point which their friend
designated, and exclamations of astonishment broke involuntarily from
the lips of all.
In the depths of a sepulchral arch lined with black marbles, they saw,
in fact, kneeling before a prayer-stool, with folded palms and face
turned toward the altar, the image of a woman so beautiful that never
did her equal come from sculptor’s hands, nor could desire paint her in
imagination more supremely lovely.
“In truth, an angel!” murmured one.
“A pity that she is marble!” added another.
“Well might--illusion though it be--the neighborhood of such a woman
suffice to keep one from closing eye the whole night through.”
“And you do not know who she is?” others of the group, contemplating the
statue, asked of the captain, who stood smiling, satisfied with his
triumph.
“Recalling a little of the Latin which I learned in my boyhood, I have
been able, at no small pains, to decipher the inscription on the stone,”
he answered, “and by what I have managed to make out, it is the tomb of
a Castilian noble, a famous warrior who fought under the Great Captain.
His name I have forgotten, but his wife, on whom you look, is called
Doña Elvira de Castañeda, and by my hopes of salvation, if the copy
resembles the original, this should be the most notable woman of her
time.”
After these brief explanations, the guests, who did not lose sight of
the principal object of the gathering, proceeded to uncork some of the
bottles and, seating themselves around the bonfire, began to pass the
wine from hand to hand.
In proportion as their libations became more copious and frequent, and
the fumes of the foaming champagne commenced to cloud their brains, the
animation, the uproar and the merriment of the young Frenchmen rose to
such a pitch that some of them threw the broken necks of the empty
bottles at the granite monks carved against the pillars, and others
trolled at the tops of their voices scandalous drinking-songs, while the
rest burst into roars of laughter, clapped their hands in applause or
quarrelled among themselves with angry words and oaths.
The captain sat drinking in silence, like a man distraught, without
moving his eyes from the statue of Doña Elvira.
Illumed by the ruddy splendor of the bonfire, and seen across the misty
veil which wine had drawn before his vision, the marble image sometimes
seemed to him to be changing into an actual woman; it seemed to him
that her lips parted, as if murmuring a prayer, that her breast heaved
as if with stifled sobs, that her palms were pressed together with more
energy, and finally, that rosy color crept into her cheeks, as if she
were blushing before that sacrilegious and repugnant scene.
The officers, noting the gloomy silence of their comrade, roused him
from the trance into which he had fallen, and thrusting a cup into his
hands, exclaimed in noisy chorus:
“Come, give us a toast, you, the only man that has failed of it
to-night!”
The young host took the cup, rose and, lifting it on high, turned to
face the statue of the warrior kneeling beside Doña Elvira and said:
“I drink to the Emperor, and I drink to the success of his arms, thanks
to which we have been able to penetrate even to the heart of Castile and
to court, at his own tomb, the wife of a conqueror of Cerñiola.”
The officers drank the toast with a storm of applause, and the captain,
keeping his balance with some difficulty, took a few steps toward the
sepulchre.
“No,” he continued, always addressing, with the stupid smile of
intoxication, the statue of the warrior. “Don’t suppose that I have a
grudge against you for being my rival. On the contrary, old lad, I
admire you for a patient husband, an example of meekness and long
suffering, and, for my part, I wish to be generous, too. You should be a
tippler, since you are a soldier, and it shall not be said that I left
you to die of thirst in the sight of twenty empty bottles. Drink!”
And with these words he raised the cup to his lips and, after wetting
them with the liquor which it contained, flung the rest into the marble
face, bursting into a boisterous peal of laughter to see how the wine
splashed down over the tomb from the carven beard of the motionless
warrior.
“Captain,” exclaimed at that point one of his comrades in a tone of
raillery, “take heed what you do. Bear in mind that these jests with the
stone people are apt to cost dear. Remember what happened to the Fifth
Hussars in the monastery of Poblet. The story goes that the warriors of
the cloister laid hand to their granite swords one night and gave plenty
of occupation to those merry fellows who had amused themselves by
adorning them with charcoal mustaches.”
The young revellers received this report with roars of laughter, but the
captain, heedless of their mirth, continued, his mind fixed ever on the
same idea.
“Do you think that I would have given him the wine, had I not known that
he would swallow at least as much as fell upon his mouth? Oh, no! I do
not believe like you that these statues are mere blocks of marble as
inert to-day as when hewed from the quarry. Undoubtedly the artist, who
is always a god, gives to his work a breath of life which is not
powerful enough to make the figure move and walk, but which inspires it
with a strange, incomprehensible life, a life which I do not fully
explain to myself, but which I feel, especially when I am a little
drunk.”
“Magnificent!” exclaimed his comrades. “Drink and continue!”
The officer drank and, fixing his eyes upon the image of Doña Elvira,
went on with mounting excitement:
“Look at her! Look at her! Do you not note those changing flushes of her
soft, transparent flesh? Does it not seem that beneath this delicate
alabaster skin, azure-veined and tender, circulates a fluid of
rose-colored light? Would you wish more life, more reality?”
“Oh, but yes, by all means,” said one of those who was listening. “We
would have her of flesh and bone.”
“Flesh and bone! Misery and corruption!” exclaimed the captain. “I have
felt in the course of an orgy my lips burn, and my head. I have felt
that fire which runs boiling through the veins like the lava of a
volcano, that fire whose dim vapors trouble and confuse the brain and
conjure up strange visions. Then the kiss of these material women burned
me like a red-hot iron, and I thrust them from me with displeasure, with
horror and with loathing; for then, as now, I needed for my fevered
forehead a breath of the sea-breeze, to drink ice and to kiss snow, snow
tinted by mellow light, snow illumined by a golden ray of sunshine,--a
woman white, beautiful and cold, like this woman of stone who seems to
allure me with her ethereal grace, to sway like a flame--who challenges
me with parted lips, offering me a wealth of love. Oh, yes, a kiss! Only
a kiss of thine can calm the fire which is consuming me.”
“Captain!” exclaimed some of the officers, on seeing him start toward
the statue as if beside himself, his gaze wild and his steps reeling.
“What mad foolery would you commit? Enough of jesting! Leave the dead in
peace.”
The young host did not even hear the warnings of his friends;
staggering, groping his way, he reached the tomb and approached the
statue of Doña Elvira, but as he stretched out his arms to clasp it, a
cry of horror resounded through the temple. With blood gushing from
eyes, mouth and nostrils, he had fallen prone, his face crushed in, at
the foot of the sepulchre.
The officers, hushed and terrified, dared not take one step forward to
his aid.
At the moment when their comrade strove to touch his burning lips to
those of Doña Elvira, they had seen the marble warrior lift its hand
and, with a frightful blow of the stone gauntlet, strike him down.