Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
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Various >> Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
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"Ask what you wish; when it does not suit me to speak I shall be silent."
"Do you come from Madrid?"
"No. It is twenty-five years since I was in the capital, for the first and
last time."
"Do you come from the Holy Land?"
"No; that is not in my line."
"Are you acquainted with a lawyer of Ugijar, called Don Matias de
Quesada?"
"No; I hate lawyers and all people who live by the pen."
"Well, then, how did this document fall into your possession?"
Jaime Olcot was silent.
"I like that! I see you don't want to lie!" exclaimed the Alcalde. "But
there cannot be a doubt that Don Matias de Quesada cheated me as if I were
a Chinese, stealing from me two ounces in gold, and then selling that
document to some one in Melilla or Ceuta. And the fact is, although you
are not a Moor, you look as if you had lived in those countries."
"Don't fatigue yourself, or lose your time guessing further. I will set
your doubts at rest. This lawyer you speak of must have sent the
manuscript to a Spaniard in Ceuta, from whom it was stolen three weeks ago
by the Moor from whose possession it passed into mine."
"Ah! now I see. He must have sent it to a nephew of his who is a musician
in the cathedral of that city--one Bonafacio de Tudela."
"It is very likely."
"What a wretch that Don Matias is! To cheat his gossip in this way! But
see how chance has brought the document back to my hands again!"
"To mine, you would say," observed the stranger.
"To ours!" returned the Alcalde, again filling the glasses. "Why, then, we
are millionaires. We will divide the treasure equally between us, since
you cannot dig in that ground without my permission, nor can I find the
treasure without the help of the document which has fallen into your
possession. That is to say, that chance has made us brothers. From this
day forth you shall live in my house--another glass--and the instant we
have finished breakfast, we will begin to dig."
The conference had reached this point when Dame Torcuata returned from
mass. Her husband told her all that had passed, and presented to her Don
Jaime Olot. The good woman heard with as much fear as joy the news that
the treasure was on the eve of discovery, crossing herself repeatedly on
learning of the treachery and baseness of her gossip, Don Matias de
Quesada, and she looked with terror at the stranger, whose countenance
filled her with a presentiment of coming misfortune.
Knowing, however, that she must give this man his breakfast, she went into
the pantry to take from it the choicest articles it contained--that is to
say, a tenderloin with pickle sauce, and a sausage of the last killing,
saying to herself, however, as she uncovered the jars:
"Time it is that the treasure should be discovered, for whether it is to
be found or not, it has already cost us the thirty-two dollars for the
famous cup of chocolate, the long-standing friendship of our gossip, Don
Matias, these fine slices of meat, that would have made so rich a dish,
dressed with peppers and tomatoes, in the month of August, and the having
so forbidding-looking a stranger as a guest. Accursed be treasures, and
mines, and the devils, and everything that is underground, excepting only
water and the faithful departed!"
XIV.
While Dame Torcuata was making these reflections to herself, as she went,
with a pan in either hand, toward the fire, cries and hisses of women and
children resounded in the street, mingled with other voices in a lower
key, saying:
"Senor Alcalde! Open the door! The city authorities are entering the town
with a troop of soldiers!"
Jaime Olot became yellower than wax when he heard these words, and
clasping his hands together, he said:
"Hide me, Senor Alcalde! Otherwise we shall not find the treasure! The
authorities have come in search of me!"
"In search of you? And why so? Are you a criminal?"
"I knew it!" cried Aunt Torcuata. "From that gloomy face no good could
come. All this is the doing of Lucifer!"
"Quick! quick!" resumed the stranger. Take me out by the back door!"
"Very good, but first give me directions where to find the treasure," said
Uncle Hormiga.
"Senor Alcalde!" the cry was repeated outside the door, "open! The town is
surrounded! It seems it is that man who has been shut up with you for the
last hour they are in search of!"
"Open to the authorities!" an imperious voice now cried, accompanied by a
loud knocking at the door.
"There is no help for it!" said the Alcalde, going to open the door, while
the stranger tried to escape into the yard by the other door.
But the head shepherd and the goat-herd, who were on the alert, cut off
his egress, and they and the soldiers, who had now also entered the room,
seized and bound him securely, although the renegade displayed in the
struggle the strength and agility of a tiger.
The constable of the court, who had under his command a clerk and twenty
foot-soldiers, meantime told the Alcalde the causes of and reasons for
this noisy arrest.
"This man," he said, "with whom you have been shut up I don't know why--
talking of I don't know what--is the famous Galician, Juan Falgueira, who,
fifteen years ago, robbed and murdered a party of gentlemen, whose
muleteer he was, in a certain hamlet of Granada, and who escaped from the
chapel on the eve of the day appointed for his execution, dressed in the
habit of the friar who was administering to him the consolations of
religion, and whom he left there half-strangled. The king himself--whom
Heaven preserve--received, a fortnight ago, a letter from Ceuta, signed by
a Moor named Manos-gordas, saying that Juan Falgueira, after long
residence in Oran and other points in Africa, was about to embark for
Spain, and that it would be an easy matter to seize him in Aldeire in El
Cenet, where it was his intention to purchase a Moorish tower and to
devote himself to mining. At the same time a communication was received by
the government from the Spanish Consul in Tetuan, stating that a Moorish
woman called Zama had presented herself before him to make complaint
against the Spanish renegade, Ben-Manuza, formerly called Juan Falgueira,
who had just sailed for Spain, after having assassinated the Moor,
Manos-gordas, the complainant's husband, and robbed him of a certain
precious document. For all which reasons, and chiefly on account of the
attempt against the life of the friar in the chapel, His Majesty the King
strongly urged upon the authorities of Granada the arrest of the criminal
and his immediate execution in that city."
Let the reader picture to himself the terror and astonishment with which
this narration was listened to by all present, as well as the despair of
Uncle Hormiga, who could not now doubt that the document was in the
possession of this man condemned to death.
The avaricious Alcalde, then, at the risk of compromising himself still
further, called aside Juan Falgueira and held a whispered conversation
with him, having previously informed the assemblage that he was going to
try to prevail upon the renegade to confess his crime before God and men.
What passed between the two PARTNERS, however, was really what follows:
"Gossip!" said Uncle Hormiga, "not Heaven itself could now save you! But
you must feel that it would be a pity that that document should be lost.
Tell me where you have hidden it."
"Gossip!" responded the Galician, "with that document, or, in other words,
with the treasure it represents, I intend to purchase my pardon. Procure
for me the royal favor, and I will deliver the document to you; but for
the present I shall offer it to the judges to bribe them to declare my
sentence null and void by prescription."
"Gossip!" replied Uncle Hormiga, "you are a wise man, and I shall be glad
if you succeed in your purpose. But if you fail, for God's sake do not
carry to the tomb a secret which will profit no one!"
"Be certain, I shall take it with me!" answered Juan Falgueira. "I must
have my revenge upon the world in some way."
"Let us proceed!" here cried the constable, putting an end to this strange
conference.
And the condemned man, being chained and handcuffed, the officers of
justice and the soldiers proceeded with him in the direction of the city
of Guadix, whence they were to conduct him to Granada.
"The devil! the devil!" the wife of Uncle Hormiga Juan Gomez kept
repeating to herself for an hour afterward, as she returned the
tenderloin and the sausage to their respective jars. "My curse upon
all treasures--past, present, and to come!"
XV.
Needless to say that Uncle Hormiga found no means of procuring Juan
Falgueira's pardon, nor did the judges condescend to listen seriously to
the offers which the latter made them of delivering to them a treasure on
condition that they should relinquish the prosecution against him; nor did
the terrible Galician consent to disclose the hiding-place of the document
nor the whereabouts of the treasure to the bold Alcalde of Aldeire--who,
with this hope, had the face to visit him in the chapel in the prison of
Granada.
Juan Falgueira, then, was hanged on the Friday preceding Good Friday, in
the Paseo del Triumfo, and Uncle Hormiga, on his return to Aldeire, on
Palm Sunday, fell ill with typhoid fever, the disease running its course
so quickly that on Wednesday of Holy Week he confessed himself and made
his will and expired on the morning of Easter Saturday.
But before his death he wrote a letter to Don Matias de Quesada,
reproaching him with his treachery and dishonesty (which had caused the
deaths of three persons), and forgiving him like a Christian, on condition
that he should return to Dame Torcuata the thirty-two dollars for the cup
of chocolate.
This dreadful letter reached Ugijar simultaneously with the news of the
death of Uncle Juan Gomez, both which events, coming together, affected
the old lawyer to such a degree that he never recovered his spirits again,
and he died shortly afterward, having written in his last hour a terrible
letter, full of reproaches and maledictions, to his nephew, the
Chapel-master of Ceuta, accusing him of having deceived and robbed him,
and of being the cause of his death.
To the reading of this just and tremendous accusation was due, it is said,
the stroke of apoplexy that sent Don Bonifacio to the tomb.
So that the suspicion, merely, of the existence of a hidden treasure was
the cause of five deaths, and of many other misfortunes, matters remaining
in the end as hidden and mysterious as they were in the beginning, since
Dame Torcuata, who was the only person in the world who knew the history
of the fatal document, took good care never to mention it thereafter in
the whole course of her life, thinking, as she did, that it had all been
the work of the devil, and the necessary consequence of her husband's
dealings with the enemies of the Church and the Throne.
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS
By Fernan Caballero
Translated by Mary J. Serrano.
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS
CHAPTER I.
Although the villages of the sierras of Andalusia, owing to their
elevation, enjoy in summer a milder temperature than those of the plains,
during the middle hours of the day the sun reflected from the rocks that
abound in this mountainous region, produces a dry and ardent heat, which
is more transitory, indeed, but also more irritating than that of the
plains. The chief sufferers from its ardors are the wandering reapers,
who, after finishing the labors of the harvest in their own province, go
in search of work to the provinces where the harvest has not yet been
gathered in. The greater number of the reapers of the province of Granada
go to the sierra of Ronda, where they are welcomed, and where their
toilsome labors are well rewarded, so that they are able to lay by some
money, unless indeed sickness, that scourge of the poor, prostrates them
and consumes their earnings or terminates their existence.
In a more pious age a small hospital for poor strangers was established in
Bornos, which is one of the villages that, like a fringe, border the slope
of the sierra; an hospital which remained closed in winter, but which in
summer received many of the poor reapers who were prostrated by the
intense heat, and who had no home or family in the village.
On a hot summer day, early in the thirties, a woman with a kind and gentle
countenance was seated at the door of her cottage, in the village above
mentioned, engaged in chopping the tomatoes and peppers and crumbling the
bread for the wholesome, nutritious, and savory gazpacho which was to
serve for the family supper; her two children, a boy of seven and a girl
of five, were playing not far from her in the street.
As Bornos is almost entirely surrounded by orchards and orange groves,
planted on the slopes of the tableland on which the village is seated, and
which at this hour are irrigated by the clear and abundant waters of its
springs, every breeze brought with it the perfume of the leaves and the
melodious strains of the birds singing their evening hymn to the sun,
filling the air with coolness, as if kind Mother Nature made of her trees
a fan to cool the brow of her favorite child, man. The front of the house
was already steeped in shadow, while the sun still gilded the irregular
crests of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley that, like
patient camels, supported the load of vines, olive groves, and cornfields
confided to them by man.
The mother, occupied with her task, had not observed that a poorly clad
little boy had joined her children and that they were talking together.
"Who are you?" said the Bornos boy to the stranger; "I have never seen you
before. What is your name?"
"Michael; and yours?"
"Gaspar."
"And my name is Catherine," said the little girl, who desired also to make
the strange boy's acquaintance.
"I know the story of St. Catherine," said the latter.
"Oh, do you? Tell it to us."
The boy recited the following verses:
"To-morrow will be St. Catherine's day,
When to heaven she will ascend and St. Peter will say,
'What woman is that who asks to be let in?'
'I am Catherine,' she will answer, 'and I want to come in.'
'Enter, little dove, in your dove-cote, then.'"
"What a lovely story!" exclaimed the girl. "Don't you know another?"
"Look, Catherine," cried her brother, who was eating roasted beans; "there
is a little dead snail in this bean, a roasted snail."
"Will you give me some beans?" begged the strange child.
"Yes, here are some. Are you very, very fond of roasted beans?"
"Yes, very; but I asked you for them because I am very hungry."
"Why, have you had no dinner?"
"No."
"Nor any breakfast, either?"
"No."
"Mother, mother," cried both the children together, running to their
mother; "this poor little boy hasn't had any dinner or any breakfast, and
he is very hungry; give us some bread for him."
"He has had no dinner, you say?" said the good woman, giving the child a
piece of bread with that compassionate tenderness which seems innate in
women toward children; "have you no parents, then, my child?"
"Yes, but they have no bread to give me."
"Poor little boy! And where are your parents?"
"Over there," answered the boy, pointing in the direction of a lane that
ran between garden walls, at right angles with the street.
The good woman, followed by the children, went to the lane.
On the dry grass, with his face turned to the wall, lay a man, miserably
clad and apparently lifeless; a handkerchief was tied round his head; near
him lay a sickle that had fallen from his nerveless grasp; seated on the
ground beside him was a woman, who, with her thin cheek resting on her
emaciated hand, was gazing fixedly at him through the tears that rolled
down her sad face, as on a rainy day the water trickles down the walls of
a deserted ruin. The last rays of the setting sun, lingering in the lane,
illumined the melancholy group with a light tender and sorrowful as a
farewell glance.
Approaching the stranger, the good woman, whose name was Maria, said to
her:
"Senora, what is the matter with your husband?"
"He has a fever that is killing him," answered the stranger, bursting into
sobs.
"Holy Mary!" cried the mother of the children compassionately. "And why
don't you let people know about it and ask them to help you? Are we living
in a heathen land, then?"
"I don't know any one in the place."
"No matter; for a neighborly act, acquaintance isn't necessary. What! Is
this poor man to be left alone to die, as if he were among the Moors? Not
if I can prevent it."
At this moment a man with a strong, calm, and kind face approached the
group.
"Father, father," cried the children, "this man is dying, and this little
boy, who is his son, says he has no bread to give him."
"John Joseph," added the mother of the children, "this poor man is lying
shelterless here; this is pitiful. If you are willing, let us carry him
into the house and send for the doctor."
"Willing? Of course I am willing," answered her husband. "I have never yet
refused my help to any one in need of it, God be praised! There has always
been a corner in my kitchen for the poor, and especially for those who are
looking for a shelter for the night, who are on a journey, or who are
sick; and such food as I had, I have always shared with them! Don't you
know that, wife?"
"Come, then," said the latter; "let us lift him up, John Joseph; I 'll
take hold of him by one arm and his wife can take him by the other."
They did as she said. One of the children took the sickle, another the
hat, the third a small shabby bundle of clothes, and all went toward the
house.
A sheepskin and a pair of sheets were spread over one of the thick reed
mattings which serve the laborers in the farms and vineyards as beds, and
the sick man, who remained sunk in a profound stupor, was placed on it,
while Gasparito, who was told to fly, ran for the doctor. When the latter
came, he pronounced the patient to be dangerously ill, and prescribed
various medicines, which were administered to him with that zeal and
intelligence in caring for the sick that is one of the many prerogatives
of the sex called the fair, but which might with much more propriety be
called the pious sex.
After the medicines had been administered and he had been bled freely, the
patient seemed somewhat better, and sank into what seemed a natural and
beneficent sleep; and then, and not until then, did the family think of
their supper, the refreshing and nutritious gaspacho, and the fruits, so
abundant in the country, and of which the people, frugal, refined, and
elegant, even in their material appetites, are so fond.
CHAPTER II.
It is needless to say that those first called to partake of the mess, as
the master of the house, who had been a soldier, called it, were the
strange woman and her son.
"And what part of the country are you from?" said John Joseph to his
guest, as he offered her a slice of a magnificent watermelon, which
sparkled like a garnet in the light.
"From Treveles, in the Alpujarras," she answered.
"I was there when I served the king," responded John Joseph. "Those are
poor villages. Treveles is a village overhanging the ravine of Poqueira."
"That is true," replied the poor woman, whose sorrowful face brightened a
little at the recollection, so dear to the heart, of the place where she
was born and where her home was.
"And by the same token," continued John Joseph, "you can see from there
the peaks of Mulha Hasem and Veleta, that don't reach the sky because the
Almighty wouldn't let them, and not because they didn't try."
"And why do they call that peak the Veleta, [a weather-vane.] John Joseph?
Is it because it has one on it?"
"If it has, I never saw it."
"It has none now," said the stranger, "but it had one in former times,
when Moors and Christians went fighting one another through the mountains.
It was guarded by an angel who kept it pointed toward Spain, and then the
Christians conquered; but if he neglected his task, the devil came and
made it point toward Barbary, and then the Moors conquered."
"But, in spite of all the devil could do, we drove them out; yes, and we
would have done it if there had been ten times as many of them!" said the
ex-soldier.
"And were you ever on those peaks?" said the mistress of the house to her
guest.
"I was never there myself," answered the latter; "but my Manuel has been
there a hundred times. Once he went there with an Englishman who wanted to
see them. Between the two peaks there is a ravine that is full of water;
and that is a cauldron that the demons made. From the middle of it come
strange sounds that are caused by the hammering of the demons mending the
cauldron. The whole place is a desert, full of naked rocks, and so awesome
and solitary that the Englishman said it was like the Dead Sea--a sea that
it seems there is in some of those far-off countries."
"Oh, mother! and why did it die?" asked the girl.
"How should I know?" answered the mother.
"Father," said the girl, repeating her question: "why did that sea die?
Did the Moors kill it?"
"What a question!" returned the father, who did not wish to confess his
ignorance of the matter, as his wife had done: "it died because everything
in the world dies, even the seas."
"And is the whole mountain like that?" asked Maria.
"No, for lower down there are trees,--chestnuts, oaks and shrubs, and some
fine apple trees planted by the Moors, whose fruit is sent to Granada to
be sold."
"And I was told," continued John Joseph, "that there are wild goats there
that run faster than water down a hill, that leap like grasshoppers, and
that are so sagacious that they always station one of their number on a
height to keep watch, and when danger is approaching he strikes the rock
with his foot, and then the others scamper off and disappear like a flight
of partridges."
"That is all true," responded the guest; "and there are owls there, too, a
kind of birds with wings and a human face."
"What is that you are saying, Senora?" cried John Joseph, "who ever saw
such birds as those?"
"My Manuel has seen them, and every one who has ever climbed up those
heights; and you must know that the owls and the mountain-goats have been
there ever since the time when Jesus was in the world. He came to those
solitudes, that were then shady meadows in which tame and handsome goats
browsed, watched by their shepherds. The Lord, who was tired, entered a
goat-herd's hut, and asked the goat-herds to prepare a kid for supper for
Himself and St. John and St. Peter, who were with Him. The goat-herds, who
were wicked Moors, said that they had none; but the Lord insisted, and
then what did those heartless wretches do? They killed a cat, cooked it,
and set it on the table. But the Lord, as you may suppose, who sees into
all hearts and knows everything that is going on, however secret it may be
thought, knew perfectly well what the goat-herds had done, and sitting
down at the table He said:
'If you are a kid,
Remain fried.
But if you are a cat,
Jump from the plate.'
"Instantly the animal straightened itself up and ran off. The Lord, to
punish the goat-herds, turned them into owls and their flocks into wild
goats."
At this moment a moan was heard; they all hurried to the sick man's
bedside. His improvement had been only momentary; the fever, caused by a
cerebral attack, had reached its height, and in a few hours terminated his
life, without his having returned to consciousness for a single instant.
It is an easy matter to describe a violent and noisy grief which rebels
against misfortune; but it is not easy to describe a profound, silent,
humble, and resigned grief. The poor widow who had lost everything, even
the strength to work, raised her eyes to heaven, clasped her hands and
bowed her head, while her life, which her chilled heart was unable to
maintain, slowly ebbed away.
She was not sent away by the kind and charitable people who had sheltered
her; but she knew that she would be a heavy burden upon them; and although
she was submissive to the will of the Lord, she prayed to Him to grant her
a speedy and contrite end, as a release from all her sufferings; and the
Lord granted her prayer.
One night she saw with ineffable joy the bed on which she lay surrounded
by kind, devout, and compassionate souls; the house was lighted up; an
altar stood in front of her humble cot, on which she saw the image of our
Lord, to whom she had prayed, with arms opened to those who call upon Him.
Every one brought flowers, those universal interpreters of human feeling,
which enhance the splendor of the most august solemnities and lend poetry
and beauty to the gayest festival; and which, as if they were angels'
gifts, are found, like these, in the hut and in the palace, in royal
gardens and in the fields.
A bell sounded in the distance that with its silvery voice seemed to say:
"Here cometh the Lord, who giveth a peaceful death."
And thus it was; for when the solemn act of receiving the Last Sacrament
was ended, the sick woman raised her eyes, in which a gleam of her lost
happiness shone.
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