CHAPTER XI. AMONG THE ARCHIVES.--A LOVE LETTER.

One day, while mousing or, as President Lincoln used to say, browsing among the manuscripts, and musing about the dead and gone heroes, and how times have altered since they rode out like Paladins of romance to tempt Fortune in her high places, I came on a letter which differed from the commonplace documents littered about, and was not emblazoned with the splash of any great seal. It was very yellow and musty, stained in one corner by a blue book thrown on it in the time of President Johnson. It required the daintiest handling. Carefully I unfolded the sheet, almost thick as vellum and in danger of dropping to tatters, and marked a spot once sealed with wax, flaked off long ago. The address was Antonio Eusebio de Cubero, Secretary of Gen. Don Diego de Vargas, Governor of Nueva Mejico. I opened the quaint missive, and lo! a love-letter, dated Seville, November, 1692. It began with stately, sweet salute: “To my own true love and faithful knight, from his Rosita de Castile.” Like the Dantean lovers,

“I turned no further leaf.”

Nearly two centuries the antique billet had lain entombed in this earthy sepulchre; now would I bring it to the light again, and, tenderly folding the sheet, I bore it to the quiet of my own room, for reading at leisure.

This is the way it runs, written in diminutive hand, indistinct at the beginning, now almost illegible. With tender words, not always in correctest spelling, the little Rose of Castile writes to Eusebio Antonio, that her father and big brother wage war in Algeria. She had just learned to sing, with her mandolin, a madrigal, which she quotes at length and will not bear translation. I cannot catch the subtle essence, the exquisite Spanish-Arab perfume and prison it in harsh English. I know nothing in our language so nearly approaching the dainty love-ditty as the song of Burns, which will live till the last lover dies:

“Had we never loved so kindly, Had we never loved so blindly, Never met and never parted, We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

She told how, when the young moon was shining, and the fat, cross duenna was fast asleep, she had crept from her side and out of reach of her snoring, to wander along the Guadalquivir where the citron shade is deepest and the silver lilies shadow singing waters. She was tired of dances and of flattery, and that odious Manuelita, and, lighted only by the moon and the glow-worm, the maiden lingered by the fountain till the bell in the tower rang two. “There, by the bed of sweet basil--dost remember Eusebio caro?”

And what for, lady fair? _Ay de mi!_ Is there a reader so dull as not to know, without telling, ’twas to dream, and to dream, and to dream?

Easy to picture her in graceful youth and all beautiful. The delicate Murillo head; the Andalusian eyes glancing this way and that from the arched window Moresque; shyly she flitted out the barred gate among the myrtles, stepping so lightly she scarcely startled the dove who stirred in her nest; the flower-like face draped by the veiling, envious _rebosa_, held close by the rose-leaf hand; the one bright circlet shining on the taper finger--can you not see her stealing along through the golden orange orchard, the almond’s snow-white glitter? There, with infinite love and longing, with lips waiting to be kissed, she listened to the nightingale’s song to the rose, starting at the silken rustle of her dress; and as the strokes of the bell shook the giant pillars of the cathedral, fleeing like a guilty thing back to the snoring, fat aunt. Only she lingered a moment to look up at the indigo sky and the slim Giralda tower, there by the bed of sweet basil--“dost remember, Eusebio caro?”

Such was the soft Rosita de Castile, and she asks the old question: When dost thou dream of me, dearest? It is a sort of treachery to publish the deep secret, and I beg pardon of the shade of the gentle lady, if it lingers round the hard clay of which these walls are made. O tender love! O fond young heart, that stopped beating nearly two hundred years ago! I fear Don Antonio Eusebio was hardly so true as thou wast. Knights-errant, tilting through the New World, had no such quest as the blameless Sir Galahad, though they pushed the “_pundonor_” to the very verge of nonsense. Cortez set an example which his successors were quick to follow. Under the garb of gallantry, they wedded _paramour_, and with high Castilian pride proclaimed their honor bright when they were ready to fight dragons and die in steel harness full knightly.

You remember, reader dear, Millais’s “Huguenot Lovers”? Of course, you must, for you have often seen it, and even the poor prints retain some hint of the lovely original. In all her long galleries Art has no fairer creation. It is lovelier even than Ary Scheffer’s “Marguerite,” than the fallen “Francesca di Rimini.” The loving arms clinging to the handsome youth; the wistful, upturned face, so anxious, pale and tearful, on the eve of parting, which her fears make sad as St. Bartholomew’s--such charm was in the face of my Rosita de Castile; mine by right of adoption, though she died more than a century before I was born.

How he looked we know by the portraits of Velasquez. Tall and stately was he, lithe and sinewy as one skilled in arms, manly sports, and fond of hounds and hunting; a long lean hand, with blazing jewels--one a precious fire-opal, the Girasol of Zimapan; olive skin and heavy brows; eyes like sharp stilettos; peaked beard, curled mustachios, trimmed and perfumed; black dress-coat, silken hose, silver shoe-buckles, spotless neck-ruff; chains and ribbons of honor; golden cross richly broidered on his mantle; jingling spurs, the mark of knighthood--this was Don Antonio Eusebio de Cubero, who thought to swell his fortune and fill the measure of his fame under the royal banner upheld by Governor-General Vargas.

Nor must we forget to name the good long rapier, worn yet in old Spain, where the sword forever stays the scepter. Add to this pictorial dress the graces which wait on youth--refined courtesy and lofty presence, come of the habit of command--and you have the secretary of the hero who went, saw, and conquered Santa Fé for the crown of Spain.

The beloved Eusebio Antonio kept no copy of his vows and promises; but I warrant, when there were none but the angels to hear, they were given--made binding and strong. In fair Seville the young lovers stole from the lights and the dancing, down by the bed of sweet basil to seal their contract with solemn oaths.

“Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeter Than anything on earth.”

The dear Eusebio was lured away from Rosita’s bower to that New World which is the old. Across the sea had floated, faint and far, like dying echoes coming near, stories of a land of wild men and beasts, strange birds, and hissing serpents; of mountains of rock inscribed with mystic hieroglyphs, and terraced pyramids, upholding undying fires--temples the incense of whose altars ascended forever into a sky of speckless sapphire. These were the regions of finest furs, of gold-dust and ivory, of silver, pearls, and precious stones, all to be had for the gathering. Such tales were as singing sirens, as airy hands beckoning in the shadowy distances of dim and unknown shores.

What wonder the young men were fired with the idea of enriching impoverished estates by the plunder of opulent cities, and old men approved their resolution to grasp some portion of this wealth, to march with triumphant banners through the length and breadth of the land, all the while striking stout blows for Holy Cross?

In that age of few books, when writing was a clerkly accomplishment, there had come down from the fathers many traditions of the hero who had wrested the scepter from the hand of Atahualpa on the heights of the Andes. The discoverer of the Mississippi was a century asleep under its rushing waters. They had heard the name and fame of the peerless Englishman--seaman, soldier, courtier, poet, historian--who sought a city of gold on the banks of the Orinoco. Nor could they believe that genius and valor died when the aged paralytic, beggared and heart-broken, laid his head on the block, saying: “It matters little how the head lieth, so that the heart be right,” the noblest head that ever rolled in English dust.

The supernatural swayed men’s minds in those days, and myriads of imaginary foes were to be fought, besides the beasts in their dens and the naked, painted savage. No doubt that Antonio Eusebio de Cubero felt equal to every danger he must face--the perilous voyage, and the many miseries which Rosita’s fears magnified out of all bounds.

The parting for years so weary shook the heart of the little Rose. Better than I can tell, my reader knows it. The lingering clasp of hands, the yearning gaze, the tears, the vows, the prayers; the slow ship (there was no steamer then), with gay pennons and fluttering signals, sailing straight into the sunset, into eternity, away, away out of the world; a fading sail on the flushed water, a speck on the horizon’s edge; he is gone, taking with him her happiness, her smiles, her passionate young heart.

But they would return, those _Caballeros_ on the deck of the “Columella,” heroes every one, bringing the wealth of Pizarro and the glory of Cortez. The thought was cheer and comfort to Rosita in the long, slow waiting--one of the hardest things to be learned in the lesson of loving. Men have a thousand objects to live for--the whole world is theirs, and in their changeful, many-colored life love is only one slender, shining thread; women have nothing but their hearts. He went out to a field of limitless possibilities, filled with the charm of novelty, variety, adventure; she to her maiden bower, her lute, her embroidery, to dream over the love-words till his very name would thrill and send the blood dancing through her veins; to wait through the dull sameness of empty days, dropping one by one into weary, silent nights; to watch the last light against the towers, the last sparkles on the sea, making it a sea of glass mingled with fire, and entreat the Mother of Sorrows with piteous prayers for the wanderer in the vague, far-off country beyond them; to sicken for gracious messages and letters that do not come, and yet be loyal in the belief they have been written, they are somewhere--this is the sweet patience born of woman, the brave, persistent faith, almost a religion.

It is the one who sails away who forgets; the one who stays at home who remembers. He was a false teacher who said Paradise is in the shadow of the crossing of cimeters. You and I know, dear reader, and our little Rose of Seville knew, it is in the shadow of the one we love.