Part 3

Very possibly, Señor, the Archbishop and the rest of them did not pray hard enough; or, perhaps, Don Tristan's sin of neglect was so serious a matter that a long spell in Purgatory was required of him before he could be suffered to pass on to a more comfortable region and be at ease. At any rate, almost immediately he took to walking at midnight in the little street that for so long he had lived in--always wrapped in a long white shroud that fluttered about him in the night wind loosely, and carrying always a yellow-blazing great candle; and so being a most terrifying personage to encounter as he marched slowly up and down. Therefore everybody who dwelt in that street hurried to move away from it, and Don Tristan had it quite to himself in its desertedness--for which reason, as I have mentioned, the Alley of the Dead Man became its name.

I have been told by my friend the cargador, Señor, and also by several other trustworthy persons, that Don Tristan--though more than three hundred years have passed since the death of him--has not entirely given up his marchings. Certainly, for myself, I do not think that it would be judicious to walk in the Callejón del Muerto at midnight even now.

LEGEND OF THE ALTAR DEL PERDON[2]

This painter, Señor, who by a miracle painted the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy that is to be found in the whole world--the very picture that ever since has adorned the Altar del Perdon in the Cathedral--in the beginning of him was a very bad sinner: being a Fleming, and a Jew, and many other things that he ought not to have been, and therefore straight in the way to pass the whole of Eternity--his wickednesses being so numerous that time would have been wasted in trying to purge him of them in Purgatory--in the hottest torments that the devil his master could contrive. He was a very agreeable young gentleman, of a cheerful and obliging nature, and both witty and interesting in his talkings--for which reason the Viceroy had a great liking for his company and had him often at the Palace to the banquets and the festivals of the court. His name, Señor, was Don Simon Peyrens; and the Viceroy his patron--in whose suite he had come from Spain expressly to beautify the Palace with his paintings--was Don Gastón de Peralta, Marqués de Falces: who was the third Viceroy of the Province, being the successor to the good Don Luis de Velasco when that most worthy gentleman ceased to be a Viceroy and became an angel in the year 1564.

Well, Señor, it happened some years later--in the time of Don Martín Enriquez de Almanza, the fourth Viceroy, with whom Peyrens remained in favor--that the Chapter of the Cathedral, desiring to make splendid the Altar del Perdon, offered in competition to all the painters of Mexico a prize for the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy: which picture was to be placed in the centre of that altar and to be the chief glory of it. And, thereupon, all the painters of Mexico, save only Peyrens, entered into that competition with a reverent and an eager joy. And then it was, Señor, that Peyrens made plain the wickedness that was in him by his irreverent blasphemies. At a banquet at the Palace a very noble gentleman asked him why he alone of all the painters of Mexico--and he the best of all of them--had not entered into the competition; to which that sinful young man answered with a disdainful and impious lightness that the painting of what were called sacred pictures was but foolishness and vanity, and that he for his part could not be tempted to paint one by all the gold in the world!

Talk of that sort, Señor, as you well may imagine, scalded the ears of all who heard it--and in the quarter where the punishment of such sinning was attended to it made an instant stir. In a moment information of that evil young man's utterances was carried to the Archbishop--who at that time was the venerable Fray Alonzo de Montúfar--and in another moment he found himself lodged behind iron bars in a cell in the Inquisition: that blessed constrainer to righteousness, for the comforting of the faithful, that then was proving its usefulness by mowing down the weeds of heresy with a very lively zeal.

Being of an incredible hard-heartedness, neither the threats nor the pleadings of the Familiars of the Holy Office could stir Peyrens from the stand that he had taken. Resolutely he refused to recant his blasphemies; equally resolutely he refused to accept his freedom on the condition that he should paint the picture of Our Lady--and he even went so far, when they brought him the materials for the making of that picture, as to tear the canvas to shreds and rags!

And so the days ran on into weeks, and the weeks into months, and nothing changed in that bad matter: save that the Archbishop, saintly man that he was, began to lose his temper; and that the Familiars of the Holy Office lost their tempers entirely--and were for settling accounts with Peyrens by burning his wickedness out of him with heavenly fire.

As it happened, Señor, a great opportunity for such wholesome purifying of him was imminent: because at that time the preparations were being made for the very first auto de fé that ever was celebrated in Mexico, and all the City was on tiptoe of joyful expectation of it. Therefore everybody was looking forward with a most pleased interest to seeing that criminally stiff-necked painter--properly clad in a yellow coat with a red cross on the back and on the front of it--walking with the condemned ones; and then, on the brasero that had been set up in the market-place, to seeing him and his sins together burned to ashes; and then to seeing those sin-tainted ashes carried to the outskirts of the City and scattered pollutingly on the muddy marsh.

However, Señor, none of those interesting and edifying things happened: because Our Lady of Mercy--and it was just like the good-nature of her to do so--took a hand in the affair, and by the working of a loving miracle made everything come out smoothly and well.

On a night, as he lay sleeping on his pallet in his cell in the Inquisition, Peyrens was awakened suddenly he knew not how; and as he wakened he found in his nose a smell so delectable that he thought that he still was asleep and his nose dreaming it: and for him to have that thought was quite reasonable, Señor, because it was the pure fragrance of heaven--to which, of course, human noses are unaccustomed--that filled the room. Then, as he lay on his pallet wondering, a shimmering light began to glow softly in the darkness; and the light constantly grew stronger and stronger until it became a glorious radiance far brighter than any sunlight; and then in the midst of that resplendency--yet the heavenly sparkle of her making the dazzle of it seem like darkness--Our Lady of Mercy herself appeared to him: and he would have died of the glory of her, had it not been for the loving kindness that shone upon him assuringly and comfortingly from her gentle eyes.

Then said to him Our Lady, in a voice sweeter than any earthly music: "Little son, why dost thou not love me?" And Peyrens--his hard heart melted by that gentle look and by that sweet voice, and all of his wickedness cured by that loving kindness--rose from his pallet and knelt before Our Lady, saying with a deep earnestness: "Queen of Heaven, I reverence and I love thee with all the heart of me and with all my soul!" Then, for a time, a serene strange happiness bemazed him dream-fully--and when his bemazement left him the resplendent presence was gone. But with him still remained the heavenly radiance that was brighter than any sunlight, and the heavenly perfume that was sweeter than spikenard and lilies; and while he pondered all these mysteries, awe-bound and wondering, again sounded in his ears that heaven-sweet voice--coming as from a great distance, but with a bell-note clearness--saying to him gently and lovingly: "Paint now thy picture of me, little son!"

Quite possibly, Señor, in the hurry of the moment, Our Lady forgot that Peyrens had no canvas--because in his sinful anger he had destroyed it--on which to paint the picture that she commanded of him; but, for myself, I think that she meant to set his wits to work to find the means by which he could obey her command. At any rate, his wits did work so well that even as she spoke he saw his way out of his difficulty; and in an instant--all a-thrill with joyful eagerness to do Our Lady's bidding, and inspired by the splendor of his vision of her--he set himself to painting the portrait of her, just as his own eyes had seen her in her glory, on the oaken door of his cell.

All the night long, Señor--working by the heaven-light that was brighter than any sunlight, and having in his happy nose the heaven fragrance that uplifted his soul with the sweetness of it--he painted as one who painted in a heaven-sent dream. And when the morning came, and the glimmering daylight took dimly the place of the heaven-light, he had finished there on the door of his cell the most beautiful picture of Our Lady--as I said in the beginning--that ever has been painted in this mortal world: and so it had to be--because, you see, it is the only picture of her that ever has been painted of her by one who has beheld her with mortal eyes!

As usually is the case with miracles, Señor, the outcome of this one was most satisfactory. The Archbishop and the Chapter of the Cathedral, being brought in haste, instantly felt themselves compelled to adore that miraculous image; and when they had finished adoring it they equally felt themselves compelled to declare that Peyrens by his making of it had earned both his freedom and the prize. Therefore Peyrens was set at liberty and most richly rewarded; and the pictured door was taken from its hinges and, being framed in a great frame of silver, was set upon the Altar del Perdon to be the chief glory of it; and what was best of all--because it made safe the soul of him for all Eternity--the Archbishop formally confirmed to Peyrens his absolution, through Our Lady's loving kindness, from his bad heresy and from all his other sins.

What became of this Peyrens later, Señor, I have not heard mentioned; but in regard to the accuracy of all that I have told you about him there can be no question: because the miracle-picture that he painted still adorns the Altar del Perdon, and is the chief glory of it--and there you may see it this very day.

LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO

This Alleyway of the Armed One, Señor, got its name because long ago--before it had any name at all--there lived in it an old man who went always clad in armor, wearing also his sword and his dagger at his side; and all that was known about him was that his name was Don Lope de Armijo y Lara, and that--for all that he lived so meanly in so mean a street in so mean a quarter of the City--he was a rich merchant, and that he came from Spain.

Into his poor little house no one ever got so much as the tip of his nose, and he lived alone there in great mystery. In spite of his riches, he had not even one servant; and he himself bought his own victuals and cooked them with his own hands. Always he was seen armed to the teeth [_armado hasta los dientes_] when he went abroad. Under his mean robe was a full suit of armor, and in his belt was a long dagger and a broad and very long sword; also, when at night he went out on strange errands, he carried a great pike. Therefore, presently, people spoke of him not as Don Lope but as El Armado--and so he was called.

That he was a wicked person was known generally. He was very charitable to the poor. Every morning he went to pray in the church of San Francisco; and he remained praying there for hours at a time, kneeling upon his knees. Also, at the proper seasons, he partook of the Sacrament. Some said that through the shut windows of his house, in the night-time, they had heard the sound of his scourgings as he made penance for his sins.

[Illustration: EL CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO]

In the darkness of the darkest of nights--when there was no moon, and especially when a dismal drizzling rain was falling--he would be seen to come out from his house in all his armor and go stealing away in the direction of the Plazuela de Mixcalco. He would disappear into the shadows, and not come back again until midnight had passed. Then he would be heard, in his shut house, counting his money. For a long while that would go on--counting, counting, counting--there was no end to the clinking of silver coin. Then, when all his money was counted, would be heard the sound of scourging, together with most lamentable and complaining groanings. And, at the end of all, would come a heavy clanking--as of a great iron cover falling heavily upon a chest of iron. After that there would be no sign of life about the house until the morning--when the Armed One would come forth from it and go to San Francisco to pray.

The life of that man was a bad mystery, Señor, that many wished to uncover by denouncing him to justice; but the uncovering came of its own accord, and was a greater mystery still! On a morning, all the neighbors saw the Armed One hanging dead--hanging dead from his own balcony by a cord! No one knew what to think; but most thought that he had hung himself there in fear that denouncement of his crimes would be made and that justice would have its hold upon him. When the Alcalde came, and made search in his house, a very great sum of money was found; and, also, were found many skulls of men who certainly must have perished at his hands.

It is a most curious matter, Señor. I cannot see my way through it. But the house is gone.

LEGEND OF THE ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO[3]

This gentleman who for love's sake, Señor, conquered his coldness and his laziness and became all fire and energy, was named Don Juan Gutiérrez Rubín de Celis. He was a caballero of the Order of Santiago--some say that he wore also the habit of Calatrava--and the colonel of the regiment of the Tres Villas. He was of a lovable nature, and ostentatious and arrogant, and in all his ways dilatory and apathetic to the very last degree. So great were his riches that not even he himself knew the sum of them: as you will understand when I tell you that on an occasion of state--it was the entry into the City in the year 1716 of the new Viceroy, the Marqués de Valero--pearls to the value of thirty thousand pesos were used in the mere trimming of his casacón.

Being of an age to take part so nobly in that noble ceremony, he must have been a gentleman well turned of forty, Señor, when the matters whereof I now am telling you occurred: of which the beginning--and also the middle and the ending, because everything hinged upon it--was his falling most furiously in love with a very beautiful young lady; and his falling in love in that furious fashion was the very first sign of energy that in all his lifetime, until that moment, he had shown. The name of this beautiful young lady with whom he fell in love so furiously was Doña Sara de García Somera y Acuña; and she was less than half as old as he was, but possessed of a very sensible nature that made her do more thinking than is done usually by young ladies; and she was of a noble house, and a blood relative of the Viceroy's: for which reason the Viceroy--who by that time was Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte--was much interested in the whole affair.

The love-making of this so notoriously lazy gentleman did not at all go upon wheels, Señor: because Doña Sara set herself--as was her habit when dealing with any matter of importance--to thinking about it very seriously; and the more that she thought about it the more she made her mind up that so dull and so apathetic a gentleman--who, moreover, was old enough to be her father--would not in the least be the sort of husband that she desired. But also, because of her good sense, she perceived that much was to be said in favor of entering into wedlock with him: because his rank and his great wealth made him one of the most important personages in the Vice-Kingdom; and, moreover, for all that he was old enough to be her father, he still was a very personable man. And so she thought very hard in both directions, and could not in either direction make up her mind.

While matters were in this condition, Señor--Don Juan furiously in love with Doña Sara, and Doña Sara thinking in that sensible way of hers about being temperately in love with Don Juan--something happened that gave a new turn to the whole affair. This thing that happened was that the Viceroy--who was a great friend of Don Juan's; and who, as I have mentioned, was a kinsman of Doña Sara's, and much interested in all that was going forward--appointed Don Juan to be Prior of the Consulado; that is to say, President of the Tribunal of Commerce: which was a most honorable office, in keeping with his rank and his riches; and which also was an office--because all the work of it could be done by deputy, or even left undone--that fitted in with Don Juan's lazy apathy to a hair.

Now at that time, Señor, the building of the Aduana de Santo Domingo was in progress--it ceased to be a custom-house many years ago, Señor; it is occupied by the Secretaría de Comunicaciones now--and it had been in progress, with no great result from the work that laggingly was done on it, for a number of years. The charge of the making of this edifice rested with the Consulado; and, naturally, the new Prior of the Consulado was even more content than had been his predecessors in that office to let the making of it lag on.

Then it was, Señor, that there came into the sensible mind of Doña Sara a notable project for proving whether Don Juan's lazy apathy went to the very roots of him; or whether, at the very roots of him--over and above the energy that he had shown in his furious love for her--he had energy that she could arouse and could set a-going in practically useful ways. And her reasoning was this wise: that if Don Juan could be stirred by her urgence to do useful work with vigor, then was it likely that her urgence would arouse him from all his apathies--and so would recast him into the sort of husband that she desired to have. Therefore Doña Sara told Don Juan that she would marry him only on one condition; and that her condition was that he should finish completely the long-drawn-out building of the Aduana within six months from that very day! And Don Juan, Señor, was so furiously in love with Doña Sara that in the same instant that she gave him her condition he accepted it; and he--who never had done a hand's turn of work in all his lifetime--promised her that he would do the almost impossible piece of work that she had set him to do: and that the Aduana should be finished completely within six months from that very day!

And then all the City was amazed--and so, for that matter, Don Juan himself was--by the fire and the force and the breathless eagerness with which he set himself to the task that Doña Sara had put upon him. In a single moment he had gone to every one of all the architects in the City urging them to take in charge for him that almost impossible piece of building; and in the very next moment--every one of all the architects in the City having made answer to him that what he wanted of them could not even by a miracle be accomplished--he himself took charge of it: and with a furiousness that matched precisely--as Doña Sara perceived with hopeful satisfaction--with the furiousness of his love.

What Don Juan did in that matter, Señor, was done as though in the insides of him were tempests and volcanoes! From the Tierra Caliente he brought up as by magic myriads of negro workmen to do the digging and the heavy carrying; all the quarries around the City he crammed full of stone-cutters; every mason was set to work at wall-laying; every carpenter to making the doors and the windows; every brick-yard to making the tiles for the roof and the floors; every blacksmith to making the locks and the hinges and the window-gratings and the balcony rails. And in the midst of his swarms of laborers Don Juan himself worked harder than all of them put together; and was everywhere at once among them urging them to hurry and to hurry; and to any one of them who showed even the slightest sign of lagging there came from Don Juan's mouth a berating volleying of scorpions and snakes and toads!

In very truth, Señor, such was Don Juan's raging energy that he was as a frenzied person. But it was a frenzy that had no real madness in it: because everything that he did and that he made to be done was directed by a most sensible discretion--so that not a moment of time nor the turn of a hand was wasted, and in every single instant the building grew and grew. And the upshot of it all was that he accomplished just what he had made his whole soul up he would accomplish: within the six months that Doña Sara had given him to do his work in, he did do it--and even with a little time to spare. Three full days before the last of his six months was ended the Aduana was finished to the very least part of its smallest detail; and Don Juan--all aglow over his triumphant fulfilment of Doña Sara's almost impossible condition--carried the key of that perfectly completed vast structure to the Palace, and there placed the key of it in the Viceroy's hands!

Moreover--that all the world might know why it was, and for whom it was, that his great work had been accomplished--Don Juan caused to be carved on a wall of the building a most artfully contrived inscription: that seemed only to give soberly his own name, and the names of the Consules associated with him, and the date of the Aduana's completion; but that was so arranged that the first letters of the five lines of it together made the initials of Doña Sara's name.