Who Padre Lecuona was, Señor, and what he did or had done to him in this street that caused his name to be given to it, I do not know. The Padre about whom I now am telling you, who had this strange thing happen to him in this street, was named Lanza; but he was called by everybody Lanchitas—according to our custom of giving such endearing diminutives to the names of those whom we love. He deserved to be loved, this excellent Padre Lanchitas: because he himself loved everybody, and freely gave to all in sickness or in trouble his loving aid. Confessing to him was a pleasure; and his absolution was worth having, because it was given always with the approval of the good God. My own grandfather knew him well, Señor, having known a man who had seen him when he was a boy. Therefore this strange story about him is true.
On a night—and it was a desponding night, because rain was falling and there was a chill wind—Padre Lanchitas was hurrying to the house of a friend of his, where every week he and three other gentlemen of a Friday evening played malilla together. It is a very serious game, Señor, and to play it well requires a large mind. He was late, and that was why he was hurrying.
When he was nearly come to the house of his friend—and glad to get there because of the rain and the cold—he was stopped by an old woman plucking at his wet cloak and speaking to him. And the old woman begged him for God's mercy to come quickly and confess a dying man. Now that is a call, Señor, that a priest may not refuse; but because his not joining them would inconvenience his friends, who could not play at their game of malilla without him, he asked the woman why she did not go to the parish priest of the parish in which the dying man was. And the woman answered him that only to him would the dying man confess; and she begged him again for God's mercy to hurry with her, or the confession would not be made in time—and then the sin of his refusal would be heavy on his own soul when he himself came to die.
So, then, the Padre went with her, walking behind her along the cold dark streets in the mud with the rain falling; and at last she brought him to the eastern end of this street that is called the Callejón del Padre Lecuona, and to the long old house there that faces toward the church of El Carmen and has a hump in the middle on the top of its front wall. It is a very old house, Señor. It was built in the time when we had Viceroys, instead of the President Porfírio; and it has no windows—only a great door for the entering of carriages at one end of it, and a small door in the middle of it, and another small door at the other end. A person who sells charcoal, Señor, lives there now.
It was to the middle door that the woman brought Padre Lanchitas. The door was not fastened, and at a touch she pushed it open and in they went together—and the first thing that the Padre noticed when he was come through the doorway was a very bad smell. It was the sort of smell, Señor, that is found in very old houses of which all the doors and windows have been shut fast for a very long time. But the Padre had matters more important than bad smells to attend to, and all that he did about it was to hold his handkerchief close to his nose. One little poor candle, stuck on a nail in a board, was set in a far corner; and in another corner was a man lying on a mat spread upon the earth floor; and there was nothing else whatever—excepting cobwebs everywhere, and the bad smell, and the old woman, and the Padre himself—in that room.
That he might see him whom he was to confess, Padre Lanchitas took the candle in his hand and went to the man on the mat and pulled aside the ragged and dirty old blanket that covered him; and then he started back with a very cold qualm in his stomach, saying to the woman: "This man already is dead! He cannot confess! And he has the look of having been dead for a very long while!" And that was true, Señor—for what he saw was a dry and bony head, with yellow skin drawn tight over it, having shut eyes deep sunken. Also, the two hands which rested crossed upon the man's breast were no more than the same dry yellow skin shrunk close over shrunken bones! And, seeing such a bad strange sight, the Padre was uneasy and alarmed.
But the woman said back to him with assurance, yet also coaxingly: "This man is going to confess, Padrecito"—and, so speaking, she fetched from its far corner the board with the nail in it, and took the candle from him and set it fast again upon the nail. And then the man himself, in the light and in the shadow, sat up on the mat and began to recite in a voice that had a rusty note in it the Confiteor Deo—and after that, of course, there was nothing for the Padre to do but to listen to him till the end.
What he told, Señor, being told under the seal of confession, of course remained always a secret. But it was known, later, that he spoke of matters which had happened a good two hundred years back—as the Padre knew because he was a great reader of books of history; and that he put himself into the very middle of those matters and made the terrible crime that he had committed a part of them; and that he ended by telling that in that ancient time he had been killed in a brawl suddenly, and so had died unconfessed and unshriven, and that ever since his soul had blistered in hell.
Hearing such wild talk from him, the Padre was well satisfied that the poor man's wits were wandering in his fever—as happens with many, Señor, in their dying time—and so bade him lie quietly and rest himself; and promised that he would come to him and hear his confession later on.
But the man cried out very urgently that that must not be: declaring that by God's mercy he had been given one single chance to come back again out of Eternity to confess his sins and to be shriven of them; and that unless the Padre did hearken then and there to the confession of his sins, and did shrive him of them, this one chance that God's mercy had given him would be lost and wasted—and back he would go forever to the hot torments of hell.
Therefore the Padre—being sure, by that time, that the man was quite crazy in his fever—let him talk on till he had told the whole story of his frightful sinnings; and then did shrive him, to quiet him—just as you promise the moon to a sick, fretful child. And the devil must have been very uneasy that night, Señor, because the good nature of that kind-hearted priest lost to him what by rights was his own!
As Padre Lanchitas spoke the last words of the absolution, the man fell back again on his mat with a sharp crackling sound like that of dry bones rattling; and the woman had left the room; and the candle was sputtering out its very last sparks. Therefore the Padre went out in a hurry through the still open door into the street; and no sooner had he come there than the door closed behind him sharply, as though some one on the inside had pushed against it strongly to shut it fast.
Out in the street he had expected to find the old woman waiting for him; and he looked about for her everywhere, desiring to tell her that she must send for him when the man's fever left him—that he might return and hear from the man a real confession, and really shrive him of his sins. But the old woman was quite gone. Thinking that she must have slipped past him in the darkness into the house, he knocked at the door lightly, and then loudly; but no answer came to his knocking—and when he tried to push the door open, using all his strength, it held fast against his pushing as firmly as though it had been a part of the stone wall.
So the Padre, having no liking for standing there in the cold and rain uselessly, hurried onward to his friend's house—and was glad to get into the room where his friends were waiting for him, and where plenty of candles were burning, and where it was dry and warm.
He had walked so fast that his forehead was wet with sweat when he took his hat off, and to dry it he put his hand into his pocket for his handkerchief; but his handkerchief was not in his pocket—and then he knew that he must have dropped it in the house where the dying man lay. It was not just a common handkerchief, Señor, but one very finely embroidered—having the letters standing for his name worked upon it, with a wreath around them—that had been made for him by a nun of his acquaintance in a convent of which he was the almoner; and so, as he did not at all like to lose it, he sent his friend's servant to that old house to get it back again. After a good long while, the servant returned: telling that the house was shut fast, and that one of the watch—seeing him knocking at the door of it—had told him that to knock there was only to wear out his knuckles, because no one had lived in that house for years and years!
All of this, as well as all that had gone before it, was so strange and so full of mystery, that Padre Lanchitas then told to his three friends some part of what that evening had happened to him; and it chanced that one of the three was the notary who had in charge the estate of which that very house was a part. And the notary gave Padre Lanchitas his true word for it that the house—because of some entangling law matters—had stood locked fast and empty for as much as a lifetime; and he declared that Padre Lanchitas must be mixing that house with some other house—which would be easy, since all that had happened had been in the rainy dark. But the Padre, on his side, was sure that he had made no mistake in the matter; and they both got a little warm in their talk over it; and they ended by agreeing—so that they might come to a sure settlement—to meet at that old house, and the notary to bring with him the key of it, on the morning of the following day.
So they did meet there, Señor, and they went to the middle door—the one that had opened at a touch from the old woman's hand. But all around that door, as the notary bade Padre Lanchitas observe before they opened it, were unbroken cobwebs; and the keyhole was choked with the dust that had blown into it, little by little, in the years that had passed since it had known a key. And the other two doors of the house were just the same. However, Padre Lanchitas would not admit, even with that proof against him, that he was mistaken; and the notary, smiling at him but willing to satisfy him, picked out the dust from the keyhole and got the key into it and forced back hardly the rusty bolt of the lock—and together they went inside.
Coming from the bright sunshine into that dusky place—lighted only from the doorway, and the door but part way open because it was loose on its old hinges and stuck fast—they could see at first nothing more than that the room was empty and bare. What they did find, though—and the Padre well remembered it—was the bad smell. But the notary said that just such bad smells were in all old shut-up houses, and it proved nothing; while the cobwebs and the closed keyhole did prove most certainly that Padre Lanchitas had not entered that house the night before—and that nobody had entered it for years and years. To what the notary said there was nothing to be answered; and the Padre—not satisfied, but forced to give in to such strong proof that he was mistaken—was about to come away out of the house, and so have done with it. But just then, Señor, he made a very wonderful and horrifying discovery. By that time his eyes had grown accustomed to the shadows; and so he saw over in one corner—lying on the floor close beside where the man had lain whose confession he had taken—a glint of something whitish. And, Señor, it was his very own handkerchief that he had lost!
That was enough to satisfy even the notary; and as nothing more was to be done there they came out, and gladly, from that bad dark place into the sunshine. As for Padre Lanchitas, Señor, he was all mazed and daunted—knowing then the terrible truth that he had confessed a dead man; and, what was worse, that he had given absolution to a sinful soul come hot to him from hell! He held his hat in his hand as he came out from the house—and never did he put it on again: bareheaded he went thenceforward until the end of his days! He was a very good man, and his life had been always a very holy life; but from that time on, till the death of him, he made it still holier by his prayings and his fastings and his endless helpings of the poorest of the poor. At last he died. And it is said, Señor, that in the walls of that old house they found dead men's bones.
Apparitions of dead people, Señor, of course are numerous and frequent. I myself—as on other occasions I have mentioned to you—have seen several spectres, and so have various of my friends. But this spectre of which I now am telling you—that appeared on the Plaza Mayor at noonday, and was seen by everybody—was altogether out of the ordinary: being not in the least a dead person, but a person who wore his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and was alive in them; yet who certainly was walking and talking here on the Plaza Mayor of this City of Mexico in the very self-same moment that he also was walking and talking in a most remote and wholly different part of the world. Therefore—in spite of his wearing his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and being alive in them—it was certain that he was a spectre: because it was certain that his journeying could have been made only on devils' wings. The day on which this marvel happened is known most exactly: because it happened on the day after the day that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had his head murderously split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that gentleman was killed in that bad manner on the 25th of October in the year 1593. Therefore—since everything concerning this most extraordinary happening is known with so great an accuracy—there can be no doubt whatever but that in every particular all that I now am telling you is strictly true.
Because it began in two different places at the same time, it is not easy to say certainly, Señor, which end of this story is the beginning of it; but the beginning of it is this: On a day, being the day that I have just named to you, the sentries on guard at the great doors of the Palace—and also the people who at that time happened to be walking near by on the Plaza Mayor—of a sudden saw an entirely strange sentry pacing his beat before the great doors of the Palace quite in the regular manner: marching back and forth, with his gun on his shoulder; making his turns with a soldierly propriety; saluting correctly those entitled to salutes who passed him; and in every way conducting himself as though he duly had been posted there—but making his marchings and his turnings and his salutings with a wondering look on the face of him, and having the air of one who is all bedazzled and bemazed.
What made every one know that he was a stranger in this City was that the uniform which he wore was of a wholly different cut and fabric from that belonging to any regiment at that time quartered here: being, in fact—as was perceived by one of the sentries who had served in the Filipinas—the uniform worn in Manila by the Palace Guard. He was a man of forty, or thereabouts; well set up and sturdy; and he had the assured carriage—even in his bedazzlement and bemazement—of an old soldier who had seen much campaigning, and who could take care of himself through any adventure in which he might happen to land. Moreover, his talk—when the time came for him to explain himself—went with a devil-may-care touch to it that showed him to be a man who even with witches and demons was quite ready to hold his own.
His explanation of himself, of course, was not long in coming: because the Captain of the Guard at once was sent for; and when the Captain of the Guard came he asked the stranger sentry most sharply what his name was, and where he came from, and what he was doing on a post to which he had not been assigned.
To these questions the stranger sentry made answer—speaking with an easy confidence, and not in the least ruffled by the Captain's sharpness with him—that his name was Gil Pérez; that he came from the Filipinas; and that what he was doing was his duty as near as he could come to it: because he had been duly detailed to stand sentry that morning before the Governor's Palace—and although this was not the Governor's Palace before which he had been posted it certainly was a governor's palace, and that he therefore was doing the best that he could do. And to these very curious statements he added—quite casually, as though referring to an ordinary matter of current interest—that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands the evening before.
Well, Señor, you may fancy what a nest of wasps was let loose when this Gil Pérez gave to the Captain of the Guard so incredible an account of himself; and, on top of it, told that the Governor of the Filipinas had been badly killed on the previous evening in islands in the Pacific Ocean thousands and thousands of miles away! It was a matter that the Viceroy himself had to look into. Therefore before the Viceroy—who at that time was the good Don Luis de Velasco—Gil Pérez was brought in a hurry: and to the Viceroy he told over again just the same story, in just the same cool manner, and in just the same words.
Very naturally, the Viceroy put a great many keen questions to him; and to those questions he gave his answers—or said plainly that he could not give any answers—with the assured air of an old soldier who would not lightly suffer his word to be doubted even by a Viceroy; and who was ready, in dealing with persons of less consequence, to make good his sayings with his fists or with his sword.
In part, his explanation of himself was straightforward and satisfactory. What he told about the regiment to which he belonged was known to be true; and equally known to be true was much of what he told—being in accord with the news brought thence by the latest galleon—about affairs in the Filipinas. But when it came to explaining the main matter—how he had been shifted across the ocean and the earth, and all in a single moment, from his guard-mount before the Governor's Palace in Manila to his guard-mount before the Viceroy's Palace in the City of Mexico—Gil Pérez was at a stand. How that strange thing had happened, he said, he knew no more than Don Luis himself knew. All that he could be sure of was that it had happened: because, certainly, only a half hour earlier he had been in Manila; and now, just as certainly, he was in the City of Mexico—as his lordship the Viceroy could see plainly with his own eyes. As to the even greater marvel—how he knew that on the previous evening the Governor of the Filipinas had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands—he said quite freely that he did not in the least know how he knew it. What alone he could be sure of, he said, was that in his heart he did know that Don Gómez had been killed on the previous evening in that bad manner; and he very stoutly asserted that the truth of what he told would be clear to Don Luis, and to everybody, when the news of the killing of Don Gómez had had time to get to Mexico in the ordinary way.
And then Gil Pérez—having answered all of the Viceroy's questions which he could answer, and having said all that he had to say—stood quite at his ease before the Viceroy: with his feet firmly planted, and his right hand on his hip, and his right arm akimbo—and so waited for whatever might happen to be the next turn.
Well, Señor, the one thing of which anybody really could be sure in this amazing matter—and of which, of course, everybody was sure—was that the devil was at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, there seemed to be very good ground for believing that Gil Pérez was in much closer touch with the devil than any good Christian—even though he were an old soldier, and not much in the way of Christianity expected of him—had any right to be. Therefore the Viceroy rid himself of an affair that was much the same to him as a basket of nettles by turning Gil Pérez over to the Holy Office—and off he was carried to Santo Domingo and clapped into one of the strongest cells.
Most men, of course, on finding themselves that way in the clutches of the Inquisition, would have had all the insides of them filled with terror; but Gil Pérez, Señor—being, as I have mentioned, an old campaigner—took it all as it came along to him and was not one bit disturbed. He said cheerfully that many times in the course of his soldiering he had been in much worse places; and added that—having a good roof over his head, and quite fair rations, and instead of marching and fighting only to sit at his ease and enjoy himself—he really was getting, for once in his life, as much of clear comfort as any old soldier had a right to expect would come his way. Moreover, in his dealings with the Familiars of the Holy Office his conduct was exemplary. He stuck firmly to his assertion that—whatever the devil might have had to do with him—he never had had anything to do with the devil; he seemed to take a real pleasure in confessing as many of his sins as he conveniently could remember; and in every way that was open to him his conduct was that of quite as good a Christian as any old soldier reasonably could be expected to be.
Therefore—while he staid on in his cell very contentedly—the Familiars of the Holy Office put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled as to what they should do with him: because it certainly seemed as though the devil, to suit his own devilish purposes, simply had made a convenience of Gil Pérez without getting his consent in the matter; and so it did not seem quite fair—in the face of his protest that he was as much annoyed as anybody was by what the devil had done with him—to put him into a flame-covered sanbenito, and to march him off to be burned for a sorcerer at the next auto de fé. Therefore the Familiars of the Holy Office kept on putting their heads together and puzzling and puzzling as to what they should do with him; and Gil Pérez kept on enjoying himself in his cell in Santo Domingo—and so the months went on and on.
And then, on a day, a new turn was given to the whole matter: when the galleon from the Filipinas arrived at Acapulco and brought with it the proof that every word that Gil Pérez had spoken was true. Because the galleon brought the news that Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas—the crew of the ship that he was on having mutinied—really had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that this bad happening had come to him at the very time that Gil Pérez had named. Moreover, one of the military officers who had come from the Filipinas in the galleon, and up from Acapulco to the City of Mexico with the conducta, recognized Gil Pérez the moment that he laid eyes on him; and this officer said that he had seen him—only a day or two before the galleon's sailing—on duty in Manila with the Palace Guard. And so the fact was settled beyond all doubting that Gil Pérez had been brought by the devil from Manila to the City of Mexico; and, also, that the devil—since only the devil could have done it—had put the knowledge of the murderous killing of Don Gómez into his heart. Wherefore the fact that Gil Pérez was in league with the devil was clear to all the world.
Then the Familiars of the Holy Office for the last time put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled over the matter; and at the end of their puzzling they decided that Gil Pérez was an innocent person, and that he undoubtedly had had criminal relations with the devil and was full of wickedness. Therefore they ordered that, being innocent, he should be set free from his cell in Santo Domingo; and that, being a dangerous character whose influence was corrupting, he should be sent back to Manila in the returning galleon. And that was their decree.
Gil Pérez, Señor, took that disposition of him in the same easy-going way that he had taken all the other dispositions of him: save that he grumbled a little—as was to be expected of an old soldier—over having to leave his comfortably idle life in his snug quarters and to go again to his fightings and his guard-mounts and his parades. And so back he went to the Filipinas: only his return journey was made in a slow and natural manner aboard the galleon—not, as his outward journey had been made, all in a moment on devils' wings.
To my mind, Señor, it seems that there is more of this story that ought to be told. For myself, I should like to know why the Familiars of the Holy Office did not deal a little more severely with a case that certainly had the devil at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, I should like to know what became of Gil Pérez when he got back to Manila in the galleon—and there had to tell over again about his relations with the devil in order to account for his half year's absence from duty without leave. But those are matters which I never have heard mentioned; and what I have told you is all that there is to tell.
Two dead lovers, Señor, stand always in the Calle de los Parados, one at each end of it; and that is why—because they remain steadfastly on parade there, though it is not everybody who happens to see their yellow skeletons on those corners—the street of the Parados is so named.
As you may suppose, Señor, the lovers now being dry skeletons, what brought them there happened some time ago. Just when it happened, I do not know precisely; but it was when an excellent gentleman, who was an officer in the Royal Mint, lived in the fine house that is in the middle of the street on the south side of it, and had living with him a very beautiful daughter whose hair was like spun gold. This gentleman was named Don José de Vallejo y Hermosillo; and his daughter was named (because her mother was of the noble family of Vezca) Doña María Ysabel de Vallejo y Vezca; and she was of great virtue and sweetness, and was twenty-two years old.
All the young men of the City sought her in marriage; but there were two who were more than any of the others in earnest about it. One of these was Don Francisco Puerto y Solis, a lieutenant of dragoons: who had to offer her only his good looks—he was a very handsome gentleman—and the hope of what he might get for himself with his sword. The other one was the Señor Don Antonio Miguel del Cardonal, Conde de Valdecebro—who also was a handsome gentleman, and who owned mills in Puebla of the Angels, and a very great hacienda, and was so rich that it was the whole business of two old notaries to count his gold.
And these two posted themselves every day in the street in which was Doña María's home—one at the corner of the Calle del Reloj, the other at the corner of the Calle de Santa Catarina—that they might look at her when she came forth from her house; and that she might see them waiting to get sight of her, and so know that they loved her. It was the same custom then, Señor, as it is to-day. In that way all of our polite young men make love.
And just as our young ladies nowadays wait and wait and think and think before they make their hearts up, so Doña María waited and thought then—and the time slipped on and on, and neither the Lieutenant nor the Conde knew what was in her mind. Then there happened, Señor, a very dismal thing. A pestilence fell upon the City, and of that pestilence Doña María sickened and died. But it chanced that neither of her lovers was on his corner when they took her out from her house to bury her—you see, Señor, even lovers must eat and sleep sometimes, and they could not be always on their watch for her—and in that way it happened that neither of them knew that she was dead and gone. Therefore they kept on standing on their parade quite as usual—coming steadfastly to their corners day after day, and month after month, and year after year. And although, after a while, they died too, they still stood at their posts—just as though they and Doña María still were alive. And there, on their corners, they have remained until this very day.
It is told, Señor, that once in broad daylight half the City saw those honest waiting skeletons. It was on a day when there was a great festival for the incoming of a new Viceroy, and they were seen by the crowd that waited in the atrium of the church of Santa Catarina to see the procession pass. But that was some hundreds of years ago, Señor. Now, for the most part, it is at night and by moonlight that they are seen. I have not happened to see them myself—but then I do not often go that way.
What this street was called, in very old times, Señor, no one knows: because the dreadful thing that gave to it the name of the Street of the Jewel happened a long, long while ago. It was before the Independence. It was while the Viceroys were here who were sent by the King of Spain.
In those days there lived in this fine house at the corner of the Calle de Mesones and what since then has been called the Calle de la Joya—it is at the northwest corner, Señor, and a biscuit-bakery is on the lower floor—a very rich Spanish merchant: who was named Don Alonso Fernández de Bobadilla, and who was a tall and handsome man, and gentle-mannered, and at times given to fits of rage. He was married to a very rich and a very beautiful lady, who was named Doña Ysabel de la Garcide y Tovar; and she was the daughter of the Conde de Torreleal. This lady was of an ardent and a wilful nature, but Don Alonso loved her with a sincerity and humored her in all her whims and wants. When they went abroad together—always in a grand coach, with servants like flies around them—the whole City stood still and stared!
Doña Ysabel was not worthy of her husband's love: and so he was told one day, by whom there was no knowing, in a letter that was thrown from the street into the room where he was sitting, on the ground floor. It was his office of affairs, Señor. It is one of the rooms where the biscuits are baked now. In that letter he was bidden to watch with care his wife's doings with the Licenciado Don José Raul de Lara, the Fiscal of the Inquisition—who was a forlorn little man (hombrecillo) not at all deserving of any lady's love—and Don Alonso did watch, and what came of his watching was a very terrible thing.
He pretended, Señor, that he had an important affair with the Viceroy that would keep him at the Palace until far into the night; and so went his way from his home in the early evening—but went no farther than a dozen paces from his own door. There, in the dark street, huddled close into a doorway, his cloak around him—it was a night in winter—he waited in the creeping cold. After a time along came some one—he did not know who, but it was the Licenciado—and as he drew near to the house Doña Ysabel came out upon her balcony, and between them there passed a sign. Then, in a little while, the door of Don Alonso's house was opened softly and the Licenciado went in; and then, softly, the door was shut again.
Presently, Don Alonso also went in, holding in his hand his dagger. What he found—and it made him so angry that he fell into one of his accustomed fits of rage over it—was the Licenciado putting on the wrist of his wife a rich golden bracelet. When they saw him, Señor, their faces at once went white—and their faces remained white always: because Don Alonso, before the blood could come back again, had killed the two of them with his dagger—and they were white in death! Then Don Alonso did what gave to this street the name of the Street of the Jewel. From Doña Ysabel's wrist he wrenched loose the bracelet, and as he left the house he pinned it fast with his bloody dagger to the door.
In that way things were found the next morning by the watch; and the watch, suspecting that something wrong had happened—because to see a bracelet and a bloody dagger in such a place was unusual—called the Alcalde to come and look into the matter; and the Alcalde, coming, found Doña Ysabel and the Licenciado lying very dead upon the floor. So the street was called the Calle de la Joya, and that is its name.
Don Alonso, Señor, was worried by what he had done, and became a Dieguino—it is the strict order of the Franciscans. They go barefoot—and it was in the convent of the Dieguinos, over there at the western end of the Alameda, that he ended his days.
Naturally, Señor, this matter which gave its name to the Calle de la Machincuepa created a scandal that set all the tongues in the City to buzzing about it: every one, of course, blaming the young lady—even though she did it to win such vast riches—for committing so publicly so great an impropriety; but some holding that a greater blame attached to the Marqués, her uncle, for punishing her—no matter how much she deserved punishment—by making her inheritance depend upon so strange and so outrageous a condition; and some even saying that the greatest blame of all rested upon the Viceroy: because he did not forbid an indecorum that was planned to—and that did—take place in the Plaza Mayor directly in front of his Palace, and so beneath his very nose. For myself, Señor, I think that the young lady deserved more blame than anybody: because she was free to make her own choice in the matter, and that she chose riches rather than propriety very clearly proved—though that, to be sure, was known before she did her choosing—that she had a bad heart. As the Viceroy who did not forbid that young lady to do what she did do was the Duque de Linares—who, as you know, Señor, took up the duties of his high office in the year 1714—you will perceive that the curious event about which I now am telling you occurred very nearly two full centuries ago.
At that time there lived in the street that ever since that time has been called the Street of the Machincuepa a very rich and a very noble Spanish gentleman whose name was Don Mendo Quiroga y Saurez, and whose title was Marqués del Valle Salado. In his beginning he was neither rich nor noble, and not even of good blood: having been begotten by an unknown father and born of an unknown mother; and having in his young manhood gone afloat out of Spain as a common sailor to seek his fortune on the sea. What he did upon the sea was a matter that his teeth guarded his tongue from talking about in his later years: but it was known generally that—while in appearance he and his ship had been engaged in the respectable business of bringing slaves from Africa to the colonies—his real business had been that of a corsair; and that on his murdering piracies the corner-stone of his great fortune had been laid.
Having in that objectionable manner accumulated a whole ship-load of money, and being arrived at an age when so bustling a life was distasteful to him, he came to Mexico; and, being come here, he bought with his ship-load of money the Valle Salado: and there he set up great salt-works out of which he coined more gold—knowing well how to grease the palms of those in the Government who could be of service to him—than could be guessed at even in a dream. Therefore it was known with certainty that he possessed a fortune of precisely three millions and a half of dollars—which is a greater sum, Señor, than a hundred men could count in a whole month of summer days. And of his millions he sent to the King such magnificent presents that the King, in simple justice to him, had to reward him; and so the King made him a marqués—and he was the Marqués del Valle Salado from that time on.
Therefore—being so very rich, and a marqués—his sea-murderings of his younger days, and his sea-stealings that made the corner-stone of his great fortune, were the very last things which his teeth suffered his tongue to talk about: and he lived with a great magnificence a life that caused much scandal, and he was generally esteemed and respected, and because of his charities he was beloved by all the poor.
As old age began to creep upon this good gentleman, Señor, and with it the infirmities that came of his loose way of living, he found himself in the world lonely: because, you see—never having perceived any necessity for marrying—he had no wife to care for him, nor children whose duty it was to minister to his needs. Therefore—his brother in Spain about that time dying, and leaving a daughter behind him—he brought from Spain his dead brother's daughter, whom he put at the head of his magnificent household, and equally confided himself in his infirmity to her care. And, that she might be repaid for her care of him, he heaped upon her every possible luxury and splendor that his great riches could procure.
The name of this young lady, Señor, was Doña Paz de Quiroga; and the position to which she was raised by Don Mendo's munificence—and all the more because she was raised to it from the depths of poverty—was very much to her mind. Doña Paz was of a great beauty that well became the rich clothing and the rich jewels that her uncle lavished upon her; and what with her beauty, and her finery, and her recognized nobility as the lawful inheritor of her uncle's title, she knew herself to be—and made no bones of asserting herself to be—the very greatest lady at the Viceroy's court. She was of a jealous and rancorous disposition, and very charitable, and excessively selfish, and her pride was beyond all words. Every one of the young men in the City immediately fell in love with her; and she won also the respect of the most eminent clerics and the homage of the very greatest nobles of the court. So nice was her sense of her own dignity that even in the privacy of her own household her conduct at all times was marked by a rigorous elegance; and in public she carried herself with a grave stateliness that would have befitted a queen.
But this young lady had a bad heart, Señor, as I have already mentioned; and toward Don Mendo, to whom she owed everything, she did not behave well at all. So far from ministering to him in his infirmities, she left him wholly to the care of hired servants; when she made her rare visits to his sick-room she carried always a scented kerchief, and held it to her nose closely—telling him that the smell of balsams and of plasters was distasteful to her; and never, by any chance whatever, did she give him one single kind look or kind word. As was most natural, Don Mendo did not like the way that Doña Paz treated him: therefore, in the inside of him, he made his mind up that he would pay her for it in the end. And in the end he did pay her for it: as she found out when, on a day, that worthy old man was called to go to heaven and they came to read his will.
Doña Paz listened to the reading of the will with the greatest satisfaction, Señor, until the reading got to the very end of it: because Don Mendo uniformly styled her his beloved niece—which somewhat surprised her—and in plain words directed that every one of his three millions and a half of dollars should be hers. But at the very end of the will a condition was made that had to be fulfilled before she could touch so much as a tlaco of her great inheritance: and that condition was so monstrous—and all the more monstrous because Doña Paz was so rigorously elegant in all her doings, and so respectful of her own dignity—that the mere naming of it almost suffocated her with fright and shame.
And, really, Señor, that Doña Paz felt that way about it is not be wondered at, because what Don Mendo put at the very end of his will was this: "So to Paz, my beloved niece, I leave the whole of my possessions; but only in case that she comply precisely with the condition that I now lay upon her. And the condition that I now lay upon her is this: That, being dressed in her richest ball dress, and wearing her most magnificent jewels, she shall go in an open coach to the Plaza Mayor at noonday; and that, being come to the Plaza Mayor, she shall walk to the very middle of it; and that there, in the very middle of it, she shall bow her head to the ground; and that then, so bowing, she shall make the turn which among the common people of Mexico is called a 'machincuepa.' And it is my will that if my beloved niece Paz does not comply precisely with this condition, within six months from the day on which I pass out of life, then the whole of my possessions shall be divided into two equal parts: of which one part shall belong to the Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced, and the other part shall belong to the Convent of San Francisco; and of my possessions my beloved niece Paz shall have no part at all. And this condition I lay upon my beloved niece Paz that, in the bitterness of the shame of it, she may taste a little of the bitterness with which her cruelties have filled my dying years."
Well, Señor, you may fancy the state that that most proud and most dignified young lady was in when she knew the terms on which alone her riches would come to her! And as to making her mind up in such a case, she found it quite impossible. On the one side, she would say to herself that what was required of her to win her inheritance would be done, and done with, in no more than a moment; and that then and always—being rich beyond dreaming, and in her own right a marquésa—she would be the greatest lady in the whole of New Spain. And then, on the other side, she would say to herself that precisely because of her great wealth and her title she would be all the more sneered at for descending to an act so scandalous; and that if she did descend to that act she would be known as the Marquésa de la Machincuepa to the end of her days. And what to do, Señor, she did not know at all. And as time went on and on, and she did not do anything, the Mercedarios and the Franciscanos—being always more and more sure that they would share between them Don Mendo's great fortune—talked pleasantly about new altars in their churches and new comforts in their convents: and as they talked they rubbed their hands.
And so it came to the very last day of the six months that Don Mendo had given to Doña Paz in which to make her mind up; and the morning hours of that day went slipping past, and of Doña Paz the crowds that filled the streets and the Plaza Mayor saw nothing; and the Mercedarios and the Franciscanos all had smiling faces—being at last entirely certain that Don Mendo's millions of dollars would be theirs.
And then, Señor, just as the Palace clock was striking the half hour past eleven, the great doors of Don Mendo's house were opened; and out through the doorway came an open coach in which Doña Paz was seated, dressed in her richest ball dress and wearing the most magnificent of her jewels; and Doña Paz, pale as a dead woman, drove through the crowds on the streets and into the crowd on the Plaza Mayor; and then she walked, the crowd making way for her, to the very middle of it—where her servants had laid a rich carpet for her; and there, as the Palace clock struck twelve—complying precisely with Don Mendo's condition—Doña Paz bowed her head to the ground; and then, so bowing, she made the turn which among the common people of Mexico is called a machincuepa! So did Doña Paz win for herself Don Mendo's millions of dollars: and so did come into the soul of her the bitterness of shame that Don Mendo meant should come into it—in reward for the bitterness with which her cruelties had filled his dying years!
What became of this young lady—who so sacrificed propriety in order to gain riches—I never have heard mentioned: but it is certain that the street in which she lived immediately got the name of the Street of the Machincuepa—and the exact truth of every detail of this curious story is attested by the fact that that is its name now.
Perhaps the meaning of this word machincuepa, Señor—being, as Don Mendo said in his will, a word in use among the common people of Mexico—is unknown to you. The meaning of it, in good Spanish, is salto mortal—only it means more. And it was precisely that sort of an excessive somersault—there in the middle of the crowded Plaza Mayor at noonday—that the most proud and the most dignified Doña Paz turned!
As you know, Señor, in the street that is called the Street of the Bridge of the Raven, there nowadays is no bridge at all; also, the house is gone in which this Don Rodrigo de Ballesteros lived with his raven in the days when he was alive. As to the raven, however, matters are less certain. My grand-father long ago told me that more than once, on nights of storm, he had heard that evil bird uttering his wicked caws at midnight between the thunderclaps; and a most respectable cargador of my acquaintance has given me his word for it that he has heard those cawings too. Yet if they still go on it must be the raven's spectre that gives voice to them; because, Señor, while ravens are very long-lived birds, it is improbable that they live—and that much time has passed since these matters happened—through more than the whole of three hundred years.
This Don Rodrigo in his youth, Señor, was a Captain of Arcabuceros in the Royal Army; and, it seems, he fought so well with his crossbowmen at the battle of San Quintin (what they were fighting about I do not know) that the King of Spain rewarded him—when the fighting was all over and there was no more need for his services—by making him a royal commissioner here in Mexico: that he might get rich comfortably in his declining years. It was the Encomienda of Atzcapotzalco that the King gave to him; and in those days Atzcapotzalco was a very rich place, quite away from the City westward, and yielded a great revenue for Don Rodrigo to have the fingering of. Nowadays, as you know, Señor, it is almost a part of the City, because you get to it in the electric cars so quickly; and it has lost its good fortune and is but a dreary little threadbare town.
It was with the moneys which stuck to his fingers from his collectorship—just as the King meant that they should stick, in reward for his good fighting—that Don Rodrigo built for himself his fine house in the street that is now called, because of the bridge that once was a part of it, and because of the raven's doings, the Puente del Cuervo. If that street had another name, earlier, Señor, I do not know what it was.
This Don Rodrigo, as was generally known, was a very wicked person; and therefore he lived in his fine house, along with his raven, in great magnificence—eating always from dishes of solid silver, and being served by pages wearing clothes embroidered with gold. But, for all his riches, he himself was clad as though he were a beggar—and a very dirty beggar at that. Over his jerkin and breeches he wore a long capellar that wrapped him from his neck to his heels loosely; and this capellar had been worn by him through so many years that it was shabby beyond all respectability, and stained with stains of all colors, and everywhere greasy and soiled. Yet on the front of it, upon his breast, he wore the Cross of Santiago that the King had given him; and wearing that cross, as you know, Señor, made him as much of a caballero as the very best. In various other ways the evil that was in him showed itself. He never went to mass, and he made fun openly of all holy things. The suspicion was entertained by many people that he had intimacies with heretics. Such conduct gives a man a very bad name now; but it gave a man a worse name then—and so he was known generally as the Excommunicate, which was the very worst name that anybody could have.
As to the raven, Señor, Don Rodrigo himself named it El Diablo; and that it truly was the devil—or, at least, that it was a devil—no one ever doubted at all. The conduct of that reprobate bird was most offensive. It would soil the rich furnishings of the house; it would tear with its beak the embroidered coverings of the chairs and the silken tapestries; it would throw down and shatter valuable pieces of glass and porcelain; there was no end to its misdeeds. But when Don Rodrigo stormed at his servants about these wreckings—and he was a most violent man, Señor, and used tempestuous language—the servants had only to tell him that the raven was the guilty one to pacify him instantly. "If it is the work of the Devil," he would say without anger, "it is well done!"—and so the matter would pass.
Suddenly, on a day, both Don Rodrigo and the raven disappeared. Their going, in that strange and sudden way, made a great commotion; but there was a greater commotion when the Alcalde—being called to look into the matter—entered the house to search it and found a very horrible thing. In the room that had been Don Rodrigo's bedroom, lying dishonored upon the floor, broken and blood-spattered, was the most holy image; and all about it were lying raven feathers, and they also were spattered with blood. Therefore it was known that the raven-devil and Don Rodrigo had beaten the holy image and had drawn blood from it; and that the great devil, the master of both of them, in penalty for their dreadful act of sacrilege, had snatched them suddenly home to him to burn forever in hell. That was the very proper end of them. Never were they seen again either on sea or land.
Naturally, Señor, respectable people declined to live in a house where there had been such shocking doings. Even the people living in the adjoining houses, feeling the disgrace that was on the neighborhood, moved away from them. And so, slowly, as the years went on, all of those houses crumbled to pieces and fell into ruins which were carted away—and that is why they no longer are there. But it is generally known, Señor, that until Don Rodrigo's house did in that way go out of existence, Don Rodrigo continued to inhabit it; and that the raven continued to bear him company.
Just a year from the time that the devil had snatched away to hell the two of them—and it was at midnight, and a storm was upon the City—the neighbors heard between the thunder-claps the clock on the Palace striking its twelve strokes; and then, between the next thunder-claps, they heard the raven caw twelve times. Then it became known that the raven nightly took up its post on the parapet of the bridge that was in that street; and that, when his cawing for midnight was ended, he habitually flew up into the balcony of Don Rodrigo's house; and that on the balcony he found Don Rodrigo—a yellow skeleton, and over the bones of it the dirty old capellar—ready and waiting for him. Don Rodrigo's skeleton would be sitting quite at its ease on the balcony; on the railing of the balcony would be perched the raven; and with his dry-bone fingers—making a little clicking sound, like that of castanets—Don Rodrigo would stroke gently the back of that intensely wicked bird. All this would show for a moment while the lightning was flashing; then darkness would come, and a crash of thunder; and after the thunder, in the black silence, the little clicking sound of Don Rodrigo's dry-bone fingers stroking the raven's back gently again would be heard.
And so it all went on, Señor, my grandfather told me, until the house tumbled down with age, and these disagreeable horrors no longer were possible; and it is most reasonably evident—since the street got its name because of them—that they really must have happened, and that they must have continued for a very long time.
As I have mentioned, Señor, my friend the cargador—who is a most respectable and truthful person—declares that sometimes on stormy nights he himself has heard the raven's cawings when the Palace clock has finished its twelve strokes; and from that it would appear that the raven is to be met with in the Puente del Cuervo even now.
As is generally known, Señor, many bad things are met with by night in the streets of the City; but this Wailing Woman, La Llorona, is the very worst of them all. She is worse by far than the vaca de lumbre—that at midnight comes forth from the potrero of San Pablo and goes galloping through the streets like a blazing whirlwind, breathing forth from her nostrils smoke and sparks and flames: because the Fiery Cow, Señor, while a dangerous animal to look at, really does no harm whatever—and La Llorona is as harmful as she can be!
Seeing her walking quietly along the quiet street—at the times when she is not running, and shrieking for her lost children—she seems a respectable person, only odd looking because of her white petticoat and the white reboso with which her head is covered, and anybody might speak to her. But whoever does speak to her, in that very same moment dies!
The beginning of her was so long ago that no one knows when was the beginning of her; nor does any one know anything about her at all. But it is known certainly that at the beginning of her, when she was a living woman, she committed bad sins. As soon as ever a child was born to her she would throw it into one of the canals which surround the City, and so would drown it; and she had a great many children, and this practice in regard to them she continued for a long time. At last her conscience began to prick her about what she did with her children; but whether it was that the priest spoke to her, or that some of the saints cautioned her in the matter, no one knows. But it is certain that because of her sinnings she began to go through the streets in the darkness weeping and wailing. And presently it was said that from night till morning there was a wailing woman in the streets; and to see her, being in terror of her, many people went forth at midnight; but none did see her, because she could be seen only when the street was deserted and she was alone.
Sometimes she would come to a sleeping watchman, and would waken him by asking: "What time is it?" And he would see a woman clad in white standing beside him with her reboso drawn over her face. And he would answer: "It is twelve hours of the night." And she would say: "At twelve hours of this day I must be in Guadalajara!"—or it might be in San Luis Potosí, or in some other far-distant city—and, so speaking, she would shriek bitterly: "Where shall I find my children?"—and would vanish instantly and utterly away. And the watchman would feel as though all his senses had gone from him, and would become as a dead man. This happened many times to many watchmen, who made report of it to their officers; but their officers would not believe what they told. But it happened, on a night, that an officer of the watch was passing by the lonely street beside the church of Santa Anita. And there he met with a woman wearing a white reboso and a white petticoat; and to her he began to make love. He urged her, saying: "Throw off your reboso that I may see your pretty face!" And suddenly she uncovered her face—and what he beheld was a bare grinning skull set fast to the bare bones of a skeleton! And while he looked at her, being in horror, there came from her fleshless jaws an icy breath; and the iciness of it froze the very heart's blood in him, and he fell to the earth heavily in a deathly swoon. When his senses came back to him he was greatly troubled. In fear he returned to the Diputacion, and there told what had befallen him. And in a little while his life forsook him and he died.
What is most wonderful about this Wailing Woman, Señor, is that she is seen in the same moment by different people in places widely apart: one seeing her hurrying across the atrium of the Cathedral; another beside the Arcos de San Cosme; and yet another near the Salto del Agua, over by the prison of Belen. More than that, in one single night she will be seen in Monterey and in Oaxaca and in Acapulco—the whole width and length of the land apart—and whoever speaks with her in those far cities, as here in Mexico, immediately dies in fright. Also, she is seen at times in the country. Once some travellers coming along a lonely road met with her, and asked: "Where go you on this lonely road?" And for answer she cried: "Where shall I find my children?" and, shrieking, disappeared. And one of the travellers went mad. Being come here to the City they told what they had seen; and were told that this same Wailing Woman had maddened or killed many people here also.
Because the Wailing Woman is so generally known, Señor, and so greatly feared, few people now stop her when they meet with her to speak with her—therefore few now die of her, and that is fortunate. But her loud keen wailings, and the sound of her running feet, are heard often; and especially in nights of storm. I myself, Señor, have heard the running of her feet and her wailings; but I never have seen her. God forbid that I ever shall!