Romantic legends of Spain

The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that she had been brought up in his father’s house from her babyhood, and that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands, again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt joyous with a strange and nameless joy – a reflected joy, if I may say so.

He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:

“Too long our separation;Soul of my soul thou art,The Virgin of ConsolationOn the altar of my heart.”

When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.

A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my memory.

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 grandAs 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.

ALL SOULS’ NIGHT

THE gloaming of a misty, melancholy autumn day is succeeded by a cold, dark night. For several hours now, the continuous stir of the town seems to have ceased.

Some near, others far, some with grave and measured beat and others with a quick and tremulous vibration, the bells are swinging in their towers, flinging out upon the air their metallic notes which float and mingle, lessen and die away to yield place to a new rain of sounds pouring continually from the deep brazen throats as from a spring of inexhaustible harmonies.

It is said that joy is contagious, but I believe that sadness is much more so. There are melancholy spirits who succeed in eluding the intoxication of delight that our great popular festivals carry in their atmosphere. It is hard to find one who is able to bear unaffected the icy touch of the atmosphere of sorrow, if this comes to seek us in the privacy of our own fireside, – comes in the wearisome, slow vibration of the bell that is like a grieving voice, uttering its tale of troubles at one’s very ear.

I cannot hear the bells, even when they ring out merry peals as for a festival, without having my soul possessed by a sentiment of inexplicable and involuntary sadness. In the great capitals, by good or evil hap, the confused murmur of the multitude which beats on every sense, full of the noisy giddiness of action, ordinarily drowns the clamor of the bells to such a degree as to make one believe it does not exist. To me at least it seems that on All Souls’ Night, the only night of the year when I hear them, the towers of the Madrid churches, thanks to a miracle, regain their voices, breaking for a few hours only their long silence. Whether it be that my imagination, predisposed to melancholy thoughts, aids in producing this effect, or that the novelty of the sound strikes me the more profoundly; always when I perceive, borne on the wind, the separate notes of this harmony, a strange phenomenon takes place in my senses. I think that I distinguish the different voices of the bells one from another; I think that each of them has its own tone and expresses a special feeling; I think, in fine, that after lending for some time profound attention to the discordant combination of sounds, deep or shrill, dull or silvery, which they breathe forth, I succeed in surprising mysterious words that palpitate upon the air enveloped in its prolonged vibrations.

These words without connection, without meaning, that float in space accompanied by sighs scarcely perceptible and by long sobs, commence to reunite one with another as the vague ideas of a dream combine on waking, and reunited, they form an immense, dolorous poem, in which each bell chants its strophe, and all together interpret by means of symbolic sounds the dumb thought that seethes in the brain of those who harken, plunged in profound meditation.

A bell of hollow, deafening tone, swinging heavily in its lofty tower with ceremonial slowness, that seems to have a mathematical rhythm and moves by some perfect mechanism, says in peals punctiliously adjusted to the ritual:

“I am the empty sound that melts away without having made vibrate a single one of the infinite chords of feeling in the heart of man. I bear in my echoes neither sobs nor sighs. I perform correctly my part in the lugubrious, aerial symphony of grief, my sonorous strokes never falling behind nor going in advance by a single second. I am the bell of the parish church, the official bell of funeral honors. My voice proclaims the mourning of etiquette; my voice laments from the heights of the belfry announcing to the neighborhood the fatality, groan by groan; my voice, which sorrows at so much a sob, releases the rich heir and the young widow from other cares than those of the formalities attending the reading of the will, and the orders for elegant mourning.

“At my peal the artisans of death come out of their atrophy: the carpenter hastens to adorn with gold braid the most comfortable of his coffins; the marble worker strikes in his chisel seeking a new allegory for the ostentatious sepulchre; even the horses of the grotesque hearse, theatre of the last triumph of vanity, proudly shake their antique tufts of flywing-colored plumes, while the pillars of the church are wound about with black baize, the traditional catafalque is set up under the dome, and the choir-master rehearses on the violin a new Dies Irae for the last mass of the Requiem.

“I am the grief of tinsel tears, of paper flowers and of distichs in letters of gold.

“To-day it is my duty to commemorate my fellow-countrymen, the illustrious dead for whom I mourn officially, and on doing this with all the pomp and all the noise befitting their social position, my only regret is that I cannot utter one by one their names, titles and decorations; perchance this new formula would be a comfort to their families.”

“When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away, is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a little clapper-bell.”

“I am,” it says, “the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.

“I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.

“On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden graves – an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as it waves the tall grass that covers them.

“I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.

“To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which, perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the angels sow over the graves of the just.”

The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.

“I am,” says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, “the voice of the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls’ Night, rung by an invisible hand.

“I am the bell of fearsome folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in pain, – the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo only in ardent imaginations.

“At my voice, knights armed with all manner of arms rise from their Gothic sepulchres; monks come forth from the dim vaults in which they are sleeping their last sleep to the foot of their abbey altars; and the cemeteries open their gates little by little to let pass the troops of yellow skeletons that run nimbly to dance in giddy round about the pointed spire which shelters me.

“When my tremendous clamor surprises the credulous old woman before the antique shrine whose lights she tends, she believes that she sees for a moment the spirits of the picture dance amid the vermilion and ochre flames by the glimmer of the dying lantern.

“When my mighty vibrations accompany the monotonous recital of an old-time fable to which the children, grouped about the hearth, listen all absorbed, the tongues of red and blue fire that glide along the glowing logs, and the fiery sparks that leap up against the obscure background of the kitchen, are taken for spirits circling in the air, and the noise of the wind shaking the doors, for the work of souls knocking at the leaded panes of the windows with the fleshless knuckles of their bony hands.

“I am the bell that prays to God for the souls condemned to hell; I am the voice of superstitious terror; I cause not weeping, but rising of the hair, and I carry the chill of fright to the marrow of his bones who harkens to me.”

So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the wind.

Only the daylight and the noises that come up from the heart of the town at the first dawn can put to flight the strange abortions of the mind and the doleful, persistent tolling of the bells, which even in sleep is felt as an exhausting nightmare through the eternal Noche de Difuntos.

1

To the posthumous edition of Becquer’s Works, Señor Correa prefixed an account of the poet’s life. This, brief and often indefinite as it is, remains the authentic biography. It has been partially reproduced in English by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who published in Macmillan’s Magazine, February, 1883, pp. 305-320, a valuable article entitled: A Spanish Romanticist: Gustavo Becquer. Professor Olmsted of Cornell, in his recent class-room edition of selected Legends, Tales and Poems by Becquer (Ginn and Company, Boston, 1907) contributes additional facts gathered from Spanish periodical articles – of which he gives a bibliography – and in conversation with Spaniards who had known the poet.