Part 5

This Don Gil was a student of law in Toledo; but his studies were the very last things to which he turned his attention, and the life that he led was the shame of his respectable brother and his excellent mother's despair. Habitually, he broke every law of the Decalogue, and so brazenly that all the city rang with the stories of his evil doings and his crimes. Moreover, he was of a blusterous nature and a born brawler: ready at the slightest contradiction to burst forth with such a torrent of blasphemies and imprecations that his mouth seemed to be a den of snakes and toads and scorpions; and ever quick to snatch his sword out and to get on in a hurry from words to blows. As his nearest approach to good nature was after he had killed some one in a quarrel of his own making, and as even at those favorable times his temper was of a brittleness, he was not looked upon as an agreeable companion and had few friends.

This Don Gil had most intimate relations with the devil, as was proved in various ways. Thus, a wound that he received in one of his duels instantly closed and healed itself; on a night of impenetrable darkness, as he went about his evil doings, he was seen to draw apart the heavy gratings of a window as though the thick iron bars had been silken threads; and a stone that he cast at a man in one of his rages--mercifully not hitting him--remained burning hot in the place where it had fallen for several days. Moreover, it was known generally that in the night time, in a very secret and hidden part of his dwelling, he gave himself up to hideous and most horrible sacrileges in which his master the devil had always a part. And so these facts--and others of a like nature--coming to the knowledge of the Holy Office, it was perceived that he was a sorcerer. Therefore he was marched off--wearing his devil-forged armor, to which fresh curses had come with his use of it--to a cell in the Inquisition; and to make sure of holding him fast until the next auto de fé came round, when he was to be burned properly and regularly, he was bound with a great chain, and the chain was secured firmly to a strong staple in the cell wall.

But the devil, Señor, sometimes saves his own. On a morning, the jailer went as usual to Don Gil's cell with the bread and the water for him; and when he had opened the cell door he saw, as he believed, Don Gil in his armor waiting as usual for his bread and his water: but in a moment he perceived that what he saw was not Don Gil in his armor, but only the accursed armor standing upright full of emptiness; and that the staple was torn out; and that the great chain was broken; and that Don Gil was gone! And then--so much to the horror of the jailer that he immediately went mad of it--the empty armor began slowly to walk up and down the cell!

After that time Don Gil never was seen, nor was he heard of, again on earth; and so on earth, when the time came for burning him at the auto de fé, he had to be burned in effigy. However--as there could be no doubt about the place to which the devil had taken him--everybody was well satisfied that he got his proper personal burning elsewhere.

Then it was, Señor, that the Holy Office most wisely ordered that that devil-possessed and doubly accursed armor should be melted, and refounded into a cross: knowing that the sanctity of that blessed emblem would quiet the curses and would hold the devils still and fast. Therefore that order was executed; and the wisdom of it--which some had questioned, on the ground that devils and curses were unsuitable material to make a cross of--was apparent as soon as the bronze turned fluid in the furnace: because there came from the fiery seething midst of it--to the dazed terror of the workmen--shouts of devil-laughter, and imprecations horrible to listen to, and frightful blasphemies; and to these succeeded, as the metal was being poured into the mould, a wild outburst of defiant remonstrance; and then all this demoniac fury died away--as the metal hardened and became fixed as a cross--at first into half-choked cries of agony, and then into confused lamentations, and at the last into little whimpering moans. Thus the devils and the curses were disposed of: and then the cross--holding them imprisoned in its holy substance--was set up in a little townlet not far from Madrid in which just then a cross happened to be wanted; and there it remained usefully for some hundreds of years.

At the end of that period--by which time everybody was dead who knew what was inside of it--the cross was asked for by the Prior of a little convent in that townlet near Madrid, who desired it that he might have it refounded into a bell; and as the Prior was a worthy person, and as he really needed a bell, his request was granted. So they made out of the cross a very beautiful bell: having on one side of it the two-headed eagle; and having on the other side of it a calvario; and having at the top of it, for its hanging, two imperial lions supporting a cross-bar in the shape of a crown. Then it was hung in the tower of the little convent; and the Prior, and all the Brothers with him, were very much pleased. But that worthy Prior, and those equally worthy Brothers, were not pleased for long, Señor: because the curses and the devils all were loose again--and their chance to do new wickednesses had come!

On a night of blackness, without any warning whatever, the whole of the townlet was awakened by the prodigious clangor of a bell furiously ringing. In an instant--seeking the cause of this disturbance--everybody came out into the night's blackness: the Señor Cura, the Señor Alcalde, the alguaciles, the Prior, the Brothers, all the townsfolk to the very last one. And when they had looked about them they found that the cause of the disturbance was the new bell of the convent: which was ringing with such an excessive violence that the night's blackness was corrupted with its noise.

Terror was upon everyone; and greater terror was upon every one when it was found out that the door of the bell-tower was locked, and that the bell was ringing of its lone self: because the bad fact then became evident that only devils could have the matter in hand. The Señor Alcalde alone--being a very valiant gentleman, and not much believing in devils--was not satisfied with that finding. Therefore the Señor Alcalde caused the door to be unlocked and, carrying a torch with him, entered the bell-tower; and there he found the bell-rope crazily flying up and down as though a dozen men were pulling it, and nobody was pulling it--which sight somewhat shook his nerves. However, because of his valorousness, he only stopped to cross himself; and then he went on bravely up the belfry stair. But what he saw when he was come into the belfry fairly brought him to a stand. For there was the bell ringing tempestuously; and never a visible hand was near it; and the only living thing that he found in the belfry was a great black cat with its tail bushed out and its fur bristling--which evil animal for a moment leered at him malignantly, with its green eyes gleaming in the torch-light, and then sprang past him and dashed down the stair.

Then the Señor Alcalde, no longer doubting that the bell was being rung by devils, and himself not knowing how to manage devils, called down from the belfry to the Señor Cura to come up and take charge of the matter: whereupon the Señor Cura, holding his courage in both hands, did come up into the belfry, bringing his hisopo with him, and fell to sprinkling the bell with holy water--which seemed to him, so far as he could see his way into that difficult tangle, the best thing that he could do. But his doing it, of course, was the very worst thing that he could have done: because, you see, Señor, the devils were angered beyond all endurance by being scalded with the holy water (that being the effect that holy water has upon devils) and so only rang the bell the more furiously in their agony of pain. Then the Señor Alcalde and the Señor Cura perceived that they could not quiet the devils, and decided to give up trying to. Therefore they came down from the belfry together--and they, and everybody with them, went away through the night's blackness crossing themselves, and were glad to be safe again in their homes.

The next day the Señor Alcalde made a formal inquest into the whole matter: citing to appear before him all the townsfolk and all the Brothers, and questioning them closely every one. And the result of this inquest was to make certain that the bell-ringer of the convent had not rung the bell; nor had any other of the Brothers rung it; nor had any of the townsfolk rung it. Therefore the Señor Alcalde, and with him the Señor Cura--whose opinion was of importance in such a matter--decided that the devil had rung it: and their decision was accepted by everybody, because that was what everybody from the beginning had believed.

Therefore--because such devilish doings affected the welfare of the whole kingdom--a formal report of all that had happened was submitted to the Cortes; and the Cortes, after pondering the report seriously, perceived that the matter was ecclesiastical and referred it to the Consejo of the Inquisition; and the members of the Consejo, in due course, ordered that all the facts should be digested and regularized and an opinion passed upon them by their Fiscal.

Being a very painstaking person, the Fiscal went at his work with so great an earnestness that for more than a year he was engaged upon it. First he read all that he could find to read about bells in all the Spanish law books, from the _Siete Partidas_ of Alonzo the Wise downward; then he read all that he could find about bells in such law books of foreign countries as were accessible to him; then, in the light of the information so obtained, he digested and regularized the facts of the case presented for his consideration and applied himself to writing his opinion upon them; and then, at last, he came before the Consejo and read to that body his opinion from beginning to end. Through the whole of a long day the Fiscal read his opinion; and through the whole of the next day, and the next, and the next; and at the end of the fourth day he finished the reading of his opinion and sat down. And the opinion of the Fiscal was that the devil had rung the bell.

Then the Consejo, after debating for three days upon what had been read by the Fiscal, gave formal approval to his opinion; and in conformity with it the Consejo came to these conclusions:

1. That the ringing of the bell was a matter of no importance to good Christians.

2. That the bell, being possessed of a devil, should have its tongue torn out: so that never again should it dare to ring of its lone devilish self, to the peril of human souls.

3. That the bell, being dangerous to good Christians, should be banished from the Spanish Kingdom to the Indies, and forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.

Thereupon, that wise sentence was executed. The devil-possessed bell was taken down from the belfry of the little convent, and its wicked tongue was torn out of it; then it was carried shamefully and with insults to the coast; then it was put on board of one of the ships of the flota bound for Mexico; and in Mexico, in due course, it arrived. Being come here, and no orders coming with it regarding its disposition, it was brought from Vera Cruz to the Capital and was placed in an odd corner of one of the corridors of the Palace: and there it remained quietly--everybody being shy of meddling with a bell that was known to be alive with witchcraft--for some hundreds of years.

In that same corner it still was, Señor, when the Conde de Revillagigedo--only a little more than a century ago--became Viceroy; and as soon as that most energetic gentleman saw it he wanted to know in a hurry--being indisposed to let anything or anybody rust in idleness--why a bell that needed only a tongue in it to make it serviceable was not usefully employed. For some time no one could tell him anything more about the bell than that there was a curse upon it; and that answer did not satisfy him, because curses did not count for much in his very practical mind. In the end a very old clerk in the Secretariat gave him the bell's true story; and proved the truth of it by bringing out from deep in the archives an ancient yellowed parchment: which was precisely the royal order, following the decree of the Consejo, that the bell should have its tongue torn out, and forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.

With that order before him, even the Conde de Revillagigedo, Señor, did not venture to have a new tongue put into the bell and to set it to regular work again; but what he did do came to much the same thing. At that very time he was engaged in pushing to a brisk completion the repairs to the Palace--that had gone on for a hundred years languishingly, following the burning of it in the time of the Viceroy Don Gaspar de la Cerda--and among his repairings was the replacement of the Palace clock. Now a clock-bell, Señor, does not need a tongue in it, being struck with hammers from the outside; and so the Conde, whose wits were of an alertness, perceived in a moment that by employing the bell as a clock-bell he could make it useful again without traversing the king's command. And that was what immediately he did with it--and that was how the Palace clock came to have foisted upon it this accursed bell.

But, so far as I have heard, Señor, this bell conducted itself as a clock-bell with a perfect regularity and propriety: probably because the devils which were in it had grown too old to be dangerously hurtful, and because the curse that was upon it had weakened with time. I myself, as a boy and as a young man, have heard it doing its duty always punctually; and no doubt it still would be doing its duty had not the busybodying French seen fit--during the period of the Intervention, when they meddled with everything--to put another bell in the place of it and to have it melted down. What was done with the metal when the bell was melted, Señor, I do not know; but I have been told by an old founder of my acquaintance that nothing was done with it: because, as he very positively assured me, when the bell was melted the metal of it went sour in the furnace and refused to be recast.

If that is true, Señor, it looks as though all those devils in the bell--which came to it from the Moor and from the devil-forged armor and from Don Gil de Marcadante--still had some strength for wickedness left to them even in their old age.

LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA[7]

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.

[Illustration: EL CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECVONA]

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!