Part 2

Because of the festival that was coming, it was necessary that she should be buried that very night. Therefore they made ready a comfortable grave for her; and they sent to the carpenter for a coffin for her, and the coffin came. And it was then, Señor, that the trouble began. Perhaps, because she was so very tall a lady, the carpenter thought that the measure had not been taken properly. Perhaps, being all so flurried, they really had got the measure wrong. Anyhow, whatever may have set the matter crooked, Sor Teresa would not go into her coffin: and as night was near, and there was no time to make another one, they all of them were at their very wits' end to know what to do. So there they all stood, looking at Sor Teresa; and there Sor Teresa lay, with her holy feet sticking straight out far beyond the end of the coffin; and night was coming in a hurry; and next day would be the festival--and nobody could see how the matter was going to end!

Then a wise old nun came to the Mother Superior and whispered to her: telling her that as in life Sor Teresa had been above all else perfect in obedience, so, probably, would she be perfect in obedience even in death; and advising that a command should be put upon her to fit into her coffin then and there. And the old nun said, what was quite true and reasonable, that even if Sor Teresa did not do what she was told to do, no harm could come of it--as but little time would be lost in making trial with her, and the case would be the same after their failure as it was before. Therefore the Mother Superior agreed to try what that wise old nun advised. And so, Señor--all the community standing round about, and the candle of Nuestro Amo being lighted--the Mother Superior said in a grave voice slowly: "Daughter, as in life thou gavest us always an example of humility and obedience, now I order and command thee, by thy vow of obedience, to retire decorously within thy coffin: that so we may bury thee, and that thou mayest rest in peace!"

And then, Señor, before the eyes of all of them, Sor Teresa slowly began to shrink shorter--to the very letter of the Mother Superior's order and command! Slowly her holy feet drew in from beyond the end of the coffin; and then they drew to the very edge of it; and then they drew over the edge of it; and then they fell down briskly upon the bottom of it with a sanctified and most pious little bang. And so there she was, shrunk just as short as she had been ordered to shrink, fitting into her coffin as cozily as you please! Then they buried her, as I have told you, Señor, in the comfortable grave in the choir that was waiting for her--and there her blessed shrunken bones are lying now.

LEGEND OF THE PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO

This priest who was murdered and thrown over the bridge, Señor, was a very good man, and there was very little excuse for murdering him. Moreover, he belonged to a most respectable family, and so did the gentleman who murdered him, and so did the young lady; and because of all that, and because at the best of times the killing of a priest is sacrilege, the scandal of that murder made a stir in the whole town.

At that time--it was some hundreds of years ago, Señor--there lived in the street that now is called, because of it all, the street of the Puente del Clérigo, a very beautiful young lady who was named Doña Margarita Jáuregui. And she, being an orphan, dwelt with her uncle, this priest: who was named Don Juan de Nava and was a person of rank, being a caballero of the orders of Santiago and Calatrava. In those days there were few houses upon that street, which was the causeway between the City and the Indian town of Tlaltelolco; and for the greater safety of the Spaniards dwelling in the City there was a wide ditch, that this bridge crossed, between them and the Indian town. Long ago, Señor, Tlaltelolco became a part of the City; and the ditch, and the bridge over it, are gone.

Now it happened that at the court of the Viceroy was a noble young Portuguese gentleman, who had great riches and two titles, named Don Duarte de Sarraza; and the Viceroy, who was the Conde de Salvatierra, very much esteemed him because he was of a loyal nature and of good heart. Therefore this noble young gentleman fell in love with Doña Margarita, and she with him; but her uncle, the Padre Don Juan, knowing that Don Duarte was a vicious young man--a gambler, and in other ways what he should not have been--forbade his niece to have anything to do with him. So things rested for a while on those terms, and Don Duarte did not like it at all.

Well, it happened on a night, Señor, that Don Duarte was at the window of Doña Margarita, telling his love for her through the grating; and while he was so engaged he saw Padre Don Juan coming home along the causeway by the light of the stars. Then that wicked young man went to where the bridge was, and when the Padre was come to the bridge he sprang upon him and drove his dagger deep into his skull. The dagger was nailed so fast there, Señor, that he could not drag it loose again; and so he bundled the dead priest over the wall of the bridge and into the water with the dagger still sticking in the skull of him; and then he went his way to his home.

Not wishing to have it thought that he had committed that murder, Don Duarte did not go near Doña Margarita for almost a whole year. And then--because his love for her would not suffer him to wait away from her longer--he went in the night-time to meet her once more at her window; and he had in his heart the wicked purpose to make her come out to him, and then to carry her off.

That did not happen--and what did happen is a terrible mystery. All that is known about it is this: Very early in the morning the neighbors living thereabout found Don Duarte dead on the Bridge of the Cleric; and holding him fast, a bony knee on his breast and two bony hands at his throat strangling him, was a skeleton. And the skeleton, Señor, was dressed in a black cassock, such as only clerics wear, and in the skull of it a rusty dagger was nailed fast. Therefore it became generally known that Don Duarte had murdered the Padre Don Juan; and that the skeleton of the Padre Don Juan had killed Don Duarte in just revenge.

LEGEND OF THE MULATA DE CÓRDOBA

It is well known, Señor, that this Mulata of Córdoba, being a very beautiful woman, was in close touch with the devil. She dwelt in Córdoba--the town not far from Vera Cruz, where coffee and very good mangos are grown--and she was born so long ago that the very oldest man now living was not then alive. No one knew who was her father, or who was her mother, or where she came from. So she was called La Mulata de Córdoba--and that was all. One of the wonders of her was that the years passed her without marking her, and she never grew old.

She led a very good life, helping every one who was in trouble, and giving food to the hungry ones; and she dressed in modest clothes simply, and always was most neat and clean. She was a very wicked witch--and beyond that nobody really knew anything about her at all. On the same day, and at the same hour, she would be seen by different people in different places widely apart--as here in the City, and in Córdoba, and elsewhere variously--all in precisely the same moment of time. She also was seen flying through the air, high above the roofs of the houses, with sparks flashing from her black eyes. Moreover, every night the devil visited her: as was known generally, because at night her neighbors observed that through the chinks in the tight-shut doors and windows of her house there shone a bright light--as though all the inside of the house were filled with flames. She went to mass regularly, and at the proper seasons partook of the Sacrament. She disdained everybody; and because of her disdainings it was believed that the master of her beauty was the Lord of Darkness; and that seemed reasonable. Every single one of the young men was mad about her, and she had a train of lovers from which she could pick and choose. All wonders were told of her. She was so powerful, and could work such prodigies, that she was spoken about--just as though she had been the blessed Santa Rita de Cascia--as the Advocate of Impossible Things! Old maids went to her who sought for husbands; poor ladies who longed for jewels and fine dresses that they might go to the court of the Viceroy; miners that they might find silver; old soldiers, set aside for rustiness, to get new commands--so that the saying, "_I_ am not the Mulata of Córdoba!" is the answer when any one asks an impossible favor even now.

How it came about, Señor, no one ever knew. What every one did know was that, on a day, the Mulata was brought from Córdoba here to the City and was cast into the prison of the Holy Office. That was a piece of news that made a stir! Some said that a disdained lover had denounced her to the Inquisition. Others said that the Holy Office had laid hands on her less because she was a witch than because of her great riches--and it was told that when she had been seized ten barrels filled with gold-dust had been seized with her. So talk about the matter was on every tongue.

Many years went by, Señor, and all of that talk was almost forgotten. Then, on a morning, the city was astonished by hearing--no one knew from where--that at the next auto de fé the witch of Córdoba would walk with the unredeemed ones, carrying the flameless green candle and wearing the high bonnet, and would be burned at the burning-place of the Holy Office--it was in front of the church of San Diego, Señor, at the western end of what now is the Alameda--and so would have burned out of her her sins. And before that astonishment was ended, there came another and a greater: when it was told that the witch, before the very eyes of her jailers, had escaped from the prison of the Inquisition and was gone free! All sorts of stories flew about the city. One said, crossing himself, that her friend the devil had helped her to her freedom; another said that Inquisitors also were of flesh and blood, and that she had been freed by her own beauty. Men talked at random--because, neither then nor later, did anybody know what really had happened. But what really did happen, Señor, was this:

On a day, the chief Inquisitor went into the prison of the Mulata that he might reason her to repentance. And, being come into her prison--it was a long and lofty chamber that they had put her into, Señor, not one of the bad small cells--he stopped short in amazement: beholding before him, drawn with charcoal on the wall of the chamber, a great ship that lacked not a single rope nor a single sail nor anything whatever that a ship requires! While he stood gazing at that ship, wondering, the Mulata turned to him and looked strangely at him out of her wicked black eyes, and said in a tone of railing: "Holy Father, what does this ship need to make it perfect?" And to that he answered: "Unhappy woman! It is thou who needest much to make thee perfect, that thou mayest be cleansed of thy sins! As for this ship, it is in all other ways so wholly perfect that it needs only to sail." Then said the Mulata: "That it shall do--and very far!" and there was on her face as she spoke to him a most wicked smile. With astonishment he looked at her, and at the ship. "How can that be possible!" he asked. "In this manner!" she answered--and, as she spoke, she leaped lightly from the floor of the prison to the deck of the ship, up there on the wall, and stood with her hand upon the tiller at the ship's stern.

Then happened, Señor, a very wonderful marvel! Suddenly the sails of the ship filled and bellied out as though a strong wind were blowing; and then, before the eyes of the Inquisitor, the ship went sailing away along the wall of the chamber--the Mulata laughing wickedly as she swung the tiller and steered it upon its course! Slowly it went at first, and then more and more rapidly, until, being come to the wall at the end of the chamber, it sailed right on into and through the solid stone and mortar--the Mulata still laughing wickedly as she stood there steering at the ship's stern! And then the wall closed whole and solid again behind the ship, and only a little echoing sound of that wicked laughter was heard in the chamber--and the ship had vanished, and the Mulata was out of her prison and gone!

The Inquisitor, Señor, who had seen this devil's miracle, immediately lost all his senses and became a madman and was put into a mad-house: where, till death gave peace to him, he raved always of a beautiful woman in a great ship that sailed through stone walls and across the solid land. As for the Mulata, nothing more ever was heard of her. But it was generally known that her master the devil had claimed her for his own.

This story is entirely true, Señor--as is proved by the fact that the Inquisition building, in which all these wonders happened, still is standing. It is the Escuela de Medicina, now.

LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL MUERTO

It is an unwise thing, Señor, and there also is wickedness in it, to make a vow to the Blessed Virgin--or, for that matter, to the smallest saint in the whole calendar--and not to fulfil that vow when the Blessed Virgin, or the saint, as the case may be, has performed punctually all that the vow was made for: and so this gentleman of whom I now am speaking found out for himself, and most uncomfortably, when he died with an unfulfilled vow on his shoulders--and had to take some of the time that he otherwise would have spent pleasantly in heaven among the angels in order to do after he was dead what he had promised to do, and what he most certainly ought to have done, while he still was alive.

The name of this gentleman who so badly neglected his duty, Señor, was Don Tristan de Alculer; and he was a humble but honorable Spanish merchant who came from the Filipinas to live here in the City of Mexico; and he came in the time when the Viceroy was the Marqués de Villa Manrique, and most likely as the result of that Viceroy's doings and orderings: because the Marqués de Villa Manrique gave great attention to enlarging the trade with the East through the Filipinas--as was found out by the English corsairs, so that Don Francisco Draco, who was the greatest pirate of all of them, was able to capture a galleon laden almost to sinking with nothing but silver and gold.

With Don Tristan, who was of an elderliness, came his son to help him in his merchanting; and this son was named Tristan also, and was a most worthy young gentleman, very capable in the management of mercantile affairs. Having in their purses but a light lining, their commerce at its beginning was of a smallness; and they took for their home a mean house in a little street so poor and so deserted that nobody had taken the trouble to give a name to it: the very street that ever since their time has been called the Alley of the Dead Man--because of what happened as the result of Don Tristan's unfulfilled vow. That they were most respectable people is made clear by the fact that the Archbishop himself--who at that period was the illustrious Don Fray García de Santa María Mendoza--was the friend of them; and especially the friend of Don Tristan the elder, who frequently consulted with him in regard to the state of his soul.

So a number of prospering years passed on, Señor, and then, on a time, Don Tristan the son went down to the coast to make some buyings: and it was in the bad season, and the fever seized him so fiercely that all in a moment the feet and half the legs of him fairly were inside of death's door. Then it was that Don Tristan, being in sore trouble because of his son's desperate illness, made the vow that I am telling you about. He made it to the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe; and he vowed to her that if she would save his son alive to him from the fever he would walk on his bare feet from his own house to her Sanctuary, and that there in her Sanctuary he would make his thanks to her from the deep depths of his soul. And the Blessed Virgin, being full of love and of amiability, was pleased to listen to the prayer of Don Tristan, and to believe the vow that went along with it: wherefore she caused the fever immediately to leave the sick Don Tristan--and presently home he came to his father alive and well.

But Don Tristan, having got from the Blessed Virgin all that he had asked of her, did not give to her what he had promised to give to her in return. Being by that time an aged gentleman, and also being much afflicted with rheumatism, the thought of taking a walk of near to three miles barefoot was most distasteful to him. And so he put his walk off for a week or two--saying to himself that the Blessed Virgin would not be in any hurry about the matter; and then he put it off for another week or two; and in that way--because each time that he was for keeping his vow shivers would come in his old feet at dread of being bare and having cold earth under them, and trembles would come in his old thin legs at dread of more rheumatism--the time slipped on and on, and the Blessed Virgin did not get her due.

But his soul was not easy inside of him, Señor--and it could not be, because he was playing fast and loose with it--and so he laid the whole matter before his friend the Archbishop: hoping that for friendship's sake the Archbishop would be so obliging as to dispense him from his vow. For myself, Señor, I cannot but think that the Archbishop--for all that his position put him in close touch with heavenly matters, and gave him the right to deal with them--was not well advised in his action. At any rate, what he did was to tranquillize Don Tristan by telling him that the Blessed Virgin was too considerate to hold him to a contract that certainly would lay him up with a bad attack of rheumatism; and that even--so wearied out would he be by forcing his old thin legs to carry him all that distance--might be the death of him. And so the upshot of it was that the Archbishop, being an easy-going and a very good-natured gentleman, dispensed Don Tristan from his vow.

But a vow, Señor, is a vow--and even an Archbishop cannot cast one loose from it; and so they all found out on this occasion, and in a hurry--because the Blessed Virgin, while never huffed over trifles, does not let the grass grow under her feet when her anger justly is aroused.

Only three days after Don Tristan had received his dispensation--to which, as the event proved, he was not entitled--the Archbishop went on the twelfth of the month, in accordance with the custom observed in that matter, to celebrate mass at the Villa de Guadalupe in Our Lady's Sanctuary. The mass being ended, he came homeward on his mule by the causeway to the City; and as he rode along easily he was put into a great surprise by seeing Don Tristan walking toward him, and by perceiving that he was of a most dismal dead paleness and that his feet were bare. For a moment Don Tristan paused beside the Archbishop--whose mule had stopped short, all in a tremble--and clasped his hand with a hand that was of an icy coldness; then he passed onward--saying in a dismal voice, rusty and cavernous, that for his soul's saving he was fulfilling the vow that he had made to her Ladyship: because the knowledge had come to him that if this vow were not accomplished he certainly would spend the whole of Eternity blistering in hell! Having thus explained matters, not a word more did Don Tristan have to say for himself; nor did he even look backward, as he walked away slowly and painfully on his bare old feet toward Our Lady's shrine.

The Archbishop trembled as much as his mule did, Señor, being sure that strange and terrible things were about him; and when the mule a little came out of her fright and could march again, but still trembling, he went straight to Don Tristan's house to find out--though in his heart he knew what his finding would be--the full meaning of this awesome prodigy. And he found at Don Tristan's house what he knew in his heart he would find there: and that was Don Tristan, the four lighted death-candles around him, lying on his bed death-struck--his death-white cold hands clasped on his breast on the black pall covering him, and on his death-white face the very look that was on it as he went to the keeping of his unkept vow! Therefore the Archbishop was seized with a hot and a cold shuddering, and his teeth rattled in the head of him; and straightway he and all who were with him--perceiving that they were in the presence of a divine mystery--fell to their knees in wondering awe of what had happened, and together prayed for the peace of Don Tristan's soul.