Romantic legends of Spain

Only all these changes of fortune, only all these special circumstances could have resulted in a building so individual, so full of contrasts, of poetry and of memories as the one which on that afternoon presented itself to my view and which to-day I have essayed, albeit in vain, to describe by words.

I had drawn it in part on one of the leaves of my sketch-book. The sun was scarcely gilding the highest spires of the city, the evening breeze was beginning to caress my brow, when rapt in the ideas that suddenly had assailed me on contemplating the silent remains of other eras more poetic than the material age in which we live, suffocating in its utter prose, I let my pencil slip from my fingers and gave over the drawing, leaning against the wall at my back and yielding myself up completely to the visions of imagination. Of what was I thinking? I do not know that I can tell. I clearly saw epoch succeeding epoch, walls falling and other walls rising in their stead. I saw men or, rather, women giving place to other women, and the first and those who came after changing into dust and flying like dust upon the air, a puff of wind bearing away beauty, – beauty which had been wont to call forth secret sighs, to engender passions, to be the source of ecstasies; then – what know I? – all confused of thought, I saw many things jumbled together, – boudoirs of cunning work, with clouds of perfume and beds of flowers, strait and dreary cells with prayer-stool and crucifix, at the foot of the crucifix an open book, and upon the book a skull; stern and stately halls, hung with tapestries and adorned with trophies of war; and many women passing and still repassing before my gaze, tall nuns pale and thin, brown concubines with reddest lips and blackest eyes; great dames of faultless profile, high bearing and majestic gait.

All these things I saw; and many more of those which, though visioned, cannot be remembered; of those so immaterial that it is impossible to confine them in the narrow compass of a word, – when suddenly I gave a bound upon my seat and, passing my hand over my eyes to convince myself that I was not still dreaming, leaping up as if moved by a nerve-spring, I fastened my gaze on one of the lofty turrets of the convent. I had seen – there is no room for doubt – perfectly had I seen a hand of transcendent whiteness, which, reaching out from one of the apertures of those turrets mortared like chess-boards, had waved several times as if greeting me with a mute and loving sign. And it was I whom it greeted; there was no possibility of a mistake; I was alone, utterly alone in the square.

In vain I waited till night, nailed to that spot and without removing my eyes for an instant from the turret; fruitlessly I often returned to take up my watch again on the dark stone which had served me for seat that afternoon when I saw appear the mysterious hand, already the object of my dreams by night and wildest fantasies by day. I beheld it nevermore.

And finally came the hour when I must depart from Toledo, leaving there, as a useless and ridiculous burden, all the illusions which in its bosom had been raised in my mind. I turned with a sigh to put my papers together in my portfolio; but before securing them there, I wrote another date, the second, the one which I know as the Date of the Hand. As I wrote it, I noticed for a moment the earlier, that of the Window, and could not but smile at my own folly.

From the time of the strange occurrence which I have just related until my return to Toledo, there elapsed about a year, during which the memory of that afternoon was still present to my imagination, at first constantly and in full detail, then less often, and at last so vaguely that I even came to believe sometimes that I had been the sport of an illusive dream.

Nevertheless, scarcely had I arrived at the city which some with good reason call the Spanish Rome than this recollection beset me anew and under its spell I set forth in absent-minded fashion to roam the streets, without determined direction, with no preconceived purpose of making my way to any special point.

The day was gloomy with that gloom which invades all that one hears and sees and feels. The sky was the color of lead, and under its melancholy shadow the houses seemed older, quainter and duskier than ever. The wind moaned along the tortuous, narrow streets, bearing upon its gusts, like the lost notes of a mysterious symphony, unintelligible words, the peal of bells, and echoes of heavy, far-off blows. The damp, chill air froze the soul with its icy breath.

I wandered for several hours through the most remote and deserted parts of the city, rapt in a thousand confused imaginings; and, contrary to my custom, with a gaze all vague and lost in space, nor could my attention be aroused by any playful detail of architecture, by any monument of an unknown style, by any marvellous and hidden work of sculpture, by any one, in short, of those rare features for whose minute examination I had been wont to pause at every step, at times when only artistic and antiquarian interests held sway in my mind.

The sky was continually growing darker; the wind was blowing more strongly and more boisterously; and a fine sleet had begun to fall, very keen and penetrating, when unwittingly, – for I was still ignorant of the way – and as if borne thither by an impulse which I could not resist, an impulse whose occult force had brought me to the spot whither my thoughts were tending, I found myself in the lonely square which my readers already know.

On finding myself in that place I sprang to clear consciousness from out the depths of that lethargy in which I had been sunken, as if awakened from profound slumber by a violent shock.

I looked about me. All was as I described it – nay, it was more dreary. I know not whether this gloom was due to the darkness of the sky, the lack of verdure, or the state of my own spirit, but the truth is that between the feeling with which I first contemplated that spot and this later impression there was all the distance which lies between poetic melancholy and personal bitterness.

For some moments I stood gazing at the sombre convent, now more sombre than ever to my eyes, and I was already on the point of withdrawing when my ears were wounded by the sound of a bell, a bell of broken, husky voice, which was tolling slowly, while in vivid contrast it was accompanied by something like a little clapper-bell which suddenly began to revolve with the rapidity of a ringing so sharp and so incessant that it seemed to have been seized by an attack of vertigo.

Nothing was ever stranger than that edifice, whose black silhouette was outlined against the sky like that of a cliff bristling with thousands of freakish points, speaking with tongues of bronze through bells that seemed moved by the touch of invisible powers, the one weeping with smothered sobs, the other laughing with shrill, wild outcry, like the laughter of a madwoman.

At intervals and confused with the bewildering clamor of the bells, I seemed to hear, too, something like the indistinct notes of an organ and the words of a sacred, solemn chant.

I changed my intention; and instead of departing I approached the door of the church and asked one of the ragged beggars squatted on the stone steps:

“What is going on here?”

“A taking of the veil,” the mendicant answered, interrupting the prayer which he was muttering between his teeth to resume it later, although not until he had kissed the bit of copper that I dropped into his hand as I put my question.

I had never been present at that ceremony, nor had I ever seen the interior of the convent church. Both considerations impelled me to enter.

The church was high and dark; its aisles were defined by two rows of pillars made up of slender columns gathered into sheaves and resting on broad octagonal bases, while from their rich crowning of capitals sprang the vaulting of the strong ogee arches. The High Altar was placed at the further end under a cupola of Renaissance style decorated with great shield-bearing angels, griffins, a profusion of foliage on the finials, cornices with gilded moldings and rosettes, and odd, elaborate frescoes. Bordering the aisles might be seen a countless number of dusky chapels, in whose recesses were burning a few lamps like stars lost in a cloudy sky. Chapels there were of Arab architecture, Gothic, rococo; some enclosed by magnificent iron gratings; some by humble wooden rails; some submerged in shadow with an ancient marble tomb before the altar; some brightly lighted, with an image clad in tinsel and surrounded by votive offerings of silver and wax, together with little bows of gay-colored ribbon.

The fantastic light which illuminated all the church, whose structural confusion and artistic disorder were entirely in keeping with the rest of the convent, tended to enhance its effect of mystery. From the lamps of silver and copper, suspended from the vaulting, from the altar-candles, from the narrow ogive windows and Moorish casements of the walls, were shed rays of a thousand diverse hues, – white, stealing in from the street by little skylights in the cupola; red, spreading their glow from the great wax-candles before the shrines; green, blue, and a hundred other diverse tints making their way through the stained glass of the rose-windows. All these lustres, insufficient to flood that sacred place with adequate light, seemed at certain points to blend in strife, while others stood out, clear patches of brightness, over against the veiled, dim depths of the chapels. Despite the solemnity of the rite which was there taking place, but few of the faithful were in attendance. The ceremony had commenced some time ago and was now nearing its close. The priests who officiated at the High Altar were, at that moment, enveloped in a cloud of azure incense which swayed slowly through the air, as they descended the carpeted steps to take their way to the choir where the nuns were heard intoning a psalm.

I, too, moved toward that spot with the intent of peering through the double gratings which isolated the choir from the rest of the church. It seemed borne in upon me that I must know the face of that woman of whom I had seen only – and for one instant – the hand; and opening my eyes to their widest extent and dilating the pupils in the effort to give them greater power and penetration, I strained my gaze on to the deepest recesses of the choir. Fruitless attempt; across the interwoven irons, little or nothing could be seen. Some white and black phantoms moving amidst a gloom against which fought in vain the inadequate radiance of a few tall wax candles; a long line of lofty, crocketed sedilia, crowned with canopies, beneath which might be divined, veiled by the dusk, the indistinct figures of nuns clad in long flowing robes; a crucifix illuminated by four candles and standing out against the dark background of the picture as those points of high light which, on the canvases of Rembrandt, make the shadows more palpable; this was the utmost that could be discerned from the place where I stood.

The priests, covered with their gold-bordered copes, preceded by acolytes who bore a silver cross and two great candles, and followed by others who swung censers that shed perfume all about, advancing through the throng of the faithful who kissed their hands and the hems of their vestments, finally reached the choir-screen.

Up to this moment I had not been able to distinguish, amid the other vague phantoms, that of the maiden who was about to consecrate herself to Christ.

Have you never seen, in those last instants of twilight, a shred of mist rise from the waters of a river, the surface of a fen, the waves of the sea, or the deep heart of a mountain tarn, – a shred of mist that floats slowly in the void, and now looks like a woman moving, walking, trailing her gown behind her, now like a white veil fastening the tresses of an invisible sylph, now a ghost which rises in the air hiding its yellow bones beneath a winding-sheet against which is still seen outlined its angular shape? Such was the hallucination I experienced in beholding draw near the screen, as if detaching herself from the sombre depth of the choir, that white, tall, most lightly moving form.

The face I could not see. She had placed herself exactly in front of the candles which lit up the crucifix; and their gleam, making a halo about her head, had left the rest obscure, bathing her in a wavering shadow.

Profound silence reigned; all eyes were fixed on her, and the final act of the ceremony began.

The abbess, murmuring some unintelligible words, words which in their turn the priests repeated with deep and hollow voice, caught from the virgin’s brow the enwreathing crown of blossoms and flung it far away. – Poor flowers! They were the last she was to wear, that woman, sister of the flowers even as all women are.

Then the abbess despoiled her of her veil, and her fair tresses poured in a golden cascade down her back and shoulders, which they were suffered to cover but an instant, for at once there began to be heard, in the midst of that profound silence reigning among the faithful, a sharp, metallic clickity-click which set the nerves twitching, and first the magnificent waves of hair fell from the forehead they had shaded, and then those flowing locks that the fragrant air must have kissed so many times slipped over her bosom and dropped upon the floor.

Again the abbess fell to murmuring the unintelligible words; the priest repeated them; and once more all was silence in the church. Only from time to time were heard, afar off, sounds like long-drawn, dreadful moans. It was the wind complaining as it broke upon the edges of the battlements and towers, and shuddering as it passed the colored panes of the ogive windows.

She was motionless, motionless and pallid as a maiden of stone wrenched from the niche of a Gothic cloister.

And they despoiled her of the jewels which covered her arms and throat, and finally they divested her of her wedding robe, that raiment which seemed to have been wrought that a lover might break its clasps with a hand trembling for bliss and passion.

The mystic Bridegroom was awaiting the bride. Where? Beyond the doors of death; lifting, undoubtedly, the stone of the sepulchre and calling her to enter, even as the timid bride crosses the threshold of the sanctuary of nuptial love, for she fell to the floor prostrate as a corpse. As if she were clay, the nuns strewed her body with flowers, intoning a most mournful psalm; a murmur went up from amid the multitude, and the priests with their deep and hollow voices commenced the service for the dead, accompanied by those instruments that seem to weep, augmenting the unfathomable fear which the terrible words they pronounce inspire of themselves.

De profundis clamavi a te! chanted the nuns from the depths of the choir with plaintive, lamenting voices.

Dies irae, dies illa! responded the priests in thunderous, awful echo, and therewith the bells pealed slowly, tolling for the dead, and between the peals the metal was heard to vibrate with a strange and dolorous drone.

I was touched; no, not touched – terrified. I believed that I was in presence of the supernatural, that I felt the heart of my own life torn from me, and that vacancy was closing in upon me; I felt that I had just lost something precious, as a father, a mother, or a cherished wife, and I suffered that immeasurable desolation which death leaves behind wheresoever it passes, a desolation nameless, indescribable, to be comprehended only by those who have had it to bear.

I was still rooted to that spot with wildly staring eyes, quaking from head to foot and half beside myself, when the new nun rose from the ground. The abbess robed her in the habit of the order, the sisters took lighted candles in their hands and, forming two long lines, led her in procession back to the further side of the choir.

There, amid the shadows, I saw the sudden glint of a ray of light; the door of the cloister was opened. As she stepped beneath the lintel, the nun turned for the last time toward the altar. The brightness of all the lights suddenly shone upon her, and I could see her face. As I saw it, I had to choke back a cry.

I knew that woman; not that I had ever seen her, but I knew her from the visions of my dreams; she was one of those beings whom the soul foretells or perchance remembers from another better world which, in our descent to this, some of us do not altogether forget.

I took two steps forward; I longed to call to her – to cry out – I know not what – giddiness assailed me; but at that instant the cloister door shut – forever. The silver bells rang blithely, the priests raised a Hosanna, clouds of incense swept through the air, the organ poured forth from a hundred metal mouths a torrent of thunderous harmony, and the bells of the tower began to chime, swinging with a frightful ecstasy.

That mad and clamorous glee made my hair rise on my head. I looked about searching for the parents, family, motherless children of that woman. I found none.

“Perhaps she was alone in the world,” I said, and could not repress a tear.

“God grant thee in the cloister the happiness which He denied thee in the world!” simultaneously exclaimed an old woman by my side, and she sobbed and groaned, clutching the grating.

“Do you know her?” I asked.

“The poor dear! Indeed I knew her. I saw her born and I have nursed her in my arms.”

“And why does she take the veil?”

“Because she found herself alone in the world. Her father and mother died of the cholera on one and the same day, a little more than a year ago. Seeing her an orphan and unprotected, the dean gave her a dowry so that she might enter the sisterhood; and now you see – what else was there to do?”

“And who was she?”

“Daughter of the steward of the Count of C – , whom I served until his death.”

“Where did he live?”

When I heard the name of the street, I could not repress an exclamation of surprise.

A line of light, that line of light which is as swift as thought, running brightly through the obscurity and confusion of the mind, uniting experiences far removed from one another and marvellously binding them together, connected my vague memories and I understood – or believed that I understood – all.

This date, which has no name, I have not written anywhere, – nay; I bear it written there where only I may read it and whence it shall never be erased.

Occasionally in recalling these events, even now in relating them here, I have asked myself: —

Some day in the mysterious hour of twilight, when the breath of the spring zephyr, warm and laden with perfumes, penetrates even into the recesses of the most retired dwellings, bearing there an airy touch of memory, of the world, must not a woman, alone, lost in the dim shades of a Gothic cloister, her cheek upon her hand, her elbow resting on the embrasure of an ogive window, have exhaled a sigh as the recollection of these dates crossed her imagination?

Who knows?

Oh! if she sighed, where might that sigh be?