II.

As I have said, many years passed after my leaving Seville without my

forgetting in the least that afternoon whose recollection sometimes

passed over my imagination like a reviving breeze that cools the heated

brow.

When chance brought me again to the great city which is called with so

much reason the Queen of Andalusia, one of the things that most

attracted my attention was the remarkable change effected during my

absence. Great buildings, blocks of houses and entire suburbs had risen

at the magic touch of industry and capital; on every side were

factories, public gardens, parks, shady walks, but unhappily many

venerable monuments of antiquity had disappeared.

I visited again many proud edifices full of historical and artistic

memories; again I wandered and lost my way amid the million turns of the

curious suburb of _Santa Cruz_; I surprised in the course of my strolls

many new buildings which had been erected I know not how; I missed many

old ones which had vanished I know not why; and finally I took my way to

the bank of the river. The river-bank has ever been in Seville the

chosen field for my excursions.

After I had admired the magnificent panorama which offers itself to the

view at the point where the iron bridge connects the opposite shores;

after I had noticed, with absorbed gaze, the myriad details,--palaces

and rows of small white houses; after I had passed in review the

innumerable ships at anchor in the stream, unfurling to the wind their

airy pennants of a thousand colors, and when I heard the confused hum of

the wharves, where everything breathes activity and movement, I

transported myself, following in imagination the river, against its

current, to San Jerónimo.

I remembered that tranquil landscape, reposeful, luminous, where the

rich vegetation of Andalusia displays without cultivation her natural

charms. As if I had been in a boat rowed upstream, again, with memory’s

aid, I saw file by, on one side, the _Cartuja_ [Carthusian convent] with

its groves and its lofty, slender towers; on the other, the _Barrio de

los Humeros_ [the old gypsy quarter], the ancient city walls, half Arab,

half Roman, the orchards with their fences covered with brambles, and

the water-wheels shaded by great, isolated trees, and finally, San

Jerónimo.--On reaching this point in my imagination, those memories that

I still cherished of the famous inn rose before me more vividly than

ever, and I fancied myself present once again at those peasant

merry-makings; I heard the girls singing, as they flew through the air

in the swing; and I saw the groups of village folk wandering over the

meadows, some picnicking, some quarrelling, some laughing, some dancing,

and all in motion, overflowing with youth, vivacity and glee. There was

she, surrounded by her children, now holding herself aloof from the

group of merry girls who were still laughing and singing, and there was

he, tranquil and content with his felicity, looking with tenderness at

the persons whom he loved best in the world, all together about him and

all happy,--his wife, his children, his father, who was there as ten

years ago, seated at the door of his inn, impassively twisting the paper

about his cigarette, without more change than that his head, which then

was gray, would now be white as snow.

A friend who accompanied me in the walk, noting the sort of blissful

revery in which for several moments I had been rapt with these

imaginings, shook me at last by the arm, asking:

“What are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking,” I replied, “of the Tavern of the Cats, and revolving

in my mind all the pleasant recollections I cherish of an afternoon when

I was at San Jerónimo.--This very instant I was ending a love story

which I left there well begun, and I ended it so much to my liking that

I believe there cannot be any other conclusion than that which I have

made for it. And speaking of the Tavern of the Cats,” I continued,

turning to my friend, “when shall we take a day and go there for

luncheon or to enjoy an hour of revel?”

“An hour of revel!” exclaimed my friend, with an expression of

astonishment which I did not at that time succeed in explaining to

myself, “an hour of revel! A very appropriate place it is for that!”

“And why not?” I rejoined, wondering in my turn at his surprise.

“The reason is very simple,” he told me at last, “for at one hundred

paces from the tavern they have laid out the new cemetery” [of San

Fernando].

Then it was I who gazed at him with astonished eyes and remained some

minutes silent before speaking a single word.

We returned to the city, and that day went by, and still more days,

without my being able entirely to throw off the impression which news so

unexpected had made upon me. The more variations I played upon it, still

the love story of the brunette had no conclusion, for what I had

invented before was not conceivable, since I could not make natural a

picture of happiness and mirth with a cemetery for a background.

One afternoon, determined to resolve my doubts, I pleaded a slight

indisposition as an excuse for not accompanying my friend in our

accustomed rambles, and I started out alone for the inn. When I had left

behind me the Macarena gate and its picturesque suburb and had begun to

cross by a narrow footpath that labyrinth of orchards, already I seemed

to perceive something strange in my surroundings.

Whether it was because the afternoon had become a little clouded, or

that the tendency of my mind inclined me to melancholy ideas, the fact

is that I felt cold and sad, and noticed a silence about me which

reminded me of utter solitude, as sleep reminds us of death.

I walked a little without stopping, crossed the orchards to shorten the

distance and came out into the street of San Lázaro, whence already may

be seen in the distance the convent of San Jerónimo.

Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems to me that along the road where

pass the dead even the trees and the vegetation come to take on a

different color. I fancied there, at least, that warm and harmonious

tones were lacking,--no freshness in the groves, no atmosphere in space,

no light upon the earth. The landscape was monotonous; its figures black

and isolated.

Here was a hearse moving slowly, covered with mourning draperies,

raising no dust, cracking no whip, without shout to the horses, almost

without movement; further on a man of ill countenance with a spade on

his shoulder, or a priest in long, dark robe, or a group of old men

poorly clad and of repugnant aspect, with extinguished candles in their

hands, who were returning in silence, with lowered heads, and eyes fixed

on the ground. I believed myself transported I know not whither; for all

that I saw reminded me of a landscape whose contours were the same as

ever, but whose colors had been, as it were, blotted out, there being

left of them merely a vague half-tone. The impression that I experienced

can be compared only to that which we feel in those dreams where, by an

inexplicable phenomenon, things are and are not at one and the same

time, and the places in which we believe ourselves to be, partially

transform themselves in an eccentric and impossible fashion.

At last I reached the roadside inn; I recognized it more by the name,

which it still keeps printed in large letters on one of its walls, than

by anything else; for as to the little house itself, it seemed to me

that it had changed even its outlines and its proportions. At once I saw

that it was much more ruinous, that it was forsaken and sad. The shadow

of the cemetery, which rose just beyond it, appeared to fall over it,

enveloping it in a dark covering, like the cloth laid on the face of the

dead. The innkeeper was there, utterly alone. I recognized him as the

same of ten years back; I recognized him I know not why, for in this

time he had aged even to the point of appearing a decrepit old man on

the edge of the grave, whereas when I first saw him he seemed fifty,

abounding in health, satisfaction and vitality.

I sat down at one of the deserted tables; I asked for something to

drink, which the innkeeper brought me, and from one detached remark

after another we fell finally into continuous conversation relating to

that love story of whose last chapter I was still in ignorance, although

I had several times attempted to divine it.

“Everything,” said the poor old man to me, “everything seems to have

conspired against us since the period in which you remember me. You know

how it was with us. Amparo was the delight of our eyes; she had been

reared here from her birth; she was the joy of the house; never could

she miss her own parents, for I loved her like a father; my son had

loved her, too, from his boyhood, first as a brother, afterwards with a

devotion greater yet. They were on the eve of marriage; I was ready to

make over to them the better part of my modest property, for with the

profits of my business it seemed to me that I should have more than

enough to live at ease, when some evil spirit--I know not what--envied

our happiness and destroyed it in a moment. In the first place the

whisper went about that they were going to locate a cemetery on this

side of San Jerónimo; some said close by, others further off, and while

we were all uneasy and anxious, fearing that they might carry out this

project, a greater and more certain trouble fell upon us.

“One day two gentlemen arrived here in a carriage; they put to me

thousands of questions about Amparo whom I had taken in her babyhood

from the foundling hospital; they asked to see the swaddling-clothes

which she wore when she was abandoned and which I had kept, with the

final result that Amparo proved to be the daughter of a very rich

gentleman, who went to law to recover her from us and persisted until he

gained his end. I do not wish even to call to memory the day when they

took her away. She wept like a Magdalen, my son would have made a mad

resistance, I was like one dumfounded, not understanding what was

happening to me. She went. Rather, she did not go, for she loved us too

much to go of her own accord, but they carried her off, and a curse fell

upon the house. My son, after an attack of terrible despair, fell into a

sort of lethargy. I do not know how to express my own state of mind. I

believed that for me the world had ended.

“While these things were going on, they began to lay out the cemetery.

The village-folk fled from this neighborhood. There were no more

festivals, songs and music; all the merriment of this countryside was

over, even as the joy of our souls.

“And Amparo was no happier than we; bred here in the open air, in the

bustle and animation of the inn, brought up to be joyous in poverty,

they plucked her from this life, and she withered, as wither the flowers

gathered in a garden to adorn a drawing-room. My son made incredible

efforts to see her again, to have a moment’s speech with her. All was

in vain; her family did not wish it. At last he saw her, but he saw her

dead. The funeral train passed by here. I knew nothing about it and I

cannot tell why I fell to weeping when I saw her hearse. The heart,

loyal to love, clamored to me:

“‘She is young like Amparo; she, too, must be beautiful; who knows if it

may not be herself?’ And it was. My son followed the train, entered the

enclosure and, when the coffin was opened, uttered a cry and fell

senseless to the ground; and so they brought him back to me. Afterwards

he went mad, and is now a lunatic.”

When the poor old man had reached this point in his narrative, there

entered the inn two gravediggers of sinister bearing and repellent look.

Having finished their task, they had come to take a drink “_to the

health of the dead_,” as one of them said, accompanying the jest with a

silly leer. The innkeeper brushed off a tear with the back of his hand

and went to serve them.

Night was beginning to fall, a dark night and most gloomy. The sky was

black and so was the landscape. From the boughs of the trees still hung,

half rotted, the ropes of the swing swaying in the wind; it reminded me

of a gallows-rope quivering yet after the body of the felon had been

taken down. Only confused noises reached my ears,--the distant barking

of dogs on guard in the orchards; the creaking of a water-wheel,

prolonged, melancholy and shrill like a lament; disconnected, horrible

words of the gravediggers who were plotting in low tones a sacrilegious

robbery--I know not what; my memory has kept of this fantastic scene of

desolation as of that other scene of merriment only a confused

recollection that I cannot reproduce. What I still seem to hear as I

heard it then is this refrain intoned in a plaintive voice, suddenly

disturbing the silence that reigned about:

“The coach of the dead was grand

As it passed our humble door,

But from it beckoned a pallid hand,

And I saw my love once more.”

It was the poor boy, who was locked up in one of the rooms of the inn,

where he passed his days in motionless contemplation of the picture of

his beloved, without speaking a word, scarcely eating, never weeping,

hardly opening his lips save to sing this simple, tender verse enclosing

a poem of sorrow that I then learned to decipher.