The Green Eyes · I

For a long time I had been wanting to write something with this title.

Today, an opportunity having presented itself, I have set it in large letters on the first sheet of paper, and then I have let my pen fly at will.

I believe I have seen eyes like the ones I have painted in this legend. I do not know if in dreams, but I have seen them. Surely I will not be able to describe them as they truly were, luminous, transparent as the raindrops that slip down the leaves of the trees after a summer storm. In any case, I rely on the imagination of my readers to make myself understood in this what we might call a sketch of a painting that I shall paint one day.

“Wounded goes the stag... wounded he goes; there is no doubt. The trail of blood can be seen among the brambles of the mountain, and upon leaping one of those mastic bushes his legs faltered... Our young master begins where others finish... in forty years as a huntsman I have not seen a better strike... But by San Saturio, patron saint of Soria! cut off his path through those evergreen oaks, urge on the hounds, blow into those horns until your lungs give out, and sink a quarter of iron into the horses’ flanks: do you not see that he is heading toward the fountain of the poplars, and if he reaches it before dying we can give him up for lost?”

The ravines of Moncayo echoed from peak to peak with the belling of the horns, the baying of the unleashed pack, and the shouts of the pages resounded with new fury, and the confused throng of men, horses, and hounds headed toward the spot that Iñigo, the head huntsman of the Marquises of Almenar, pointed out as most appropriate to cut off the beast’s path.

But everything was useless. When the most agile of the hounds reached the evergreen oaks panting and with its jaws covered in foam, the stag, swift as an arrow, had already cleared them in a single bound, losing itself among the thickets of a trail leading to the fountain.

“Halt!... Everyone halt!” cried Iñigo then; “it was ordained by God that he should get away.”

And the cavalcade stopped, and the horns fell silent, and the hounds left the trail grumbling at the huntsmen’s voice.

At that moment the hero of the feast joined the retinue, Fernando de Argensola, the firstborn of Almenar.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed, turning to his huntsman, while astonishment painted itself on his features and wrath burned in his eyes. “What are you doing, imbecile? You see that the quarry is wounded, that it is the first to fall by my hand, and you abandon the trail and let it slip away so that it goes to die in the depths of the forest! Do you perhaps think I have come to kill stags for wolf feasts?”

“Sir,” muttered Iñigo between his teeth, “it is impossible to go beyond this point.”

“Impossible! And why?”

“Because that trail,” continued the huntsman, “leads to the fountain of the poplars; the fountain of the poplars, in whose waters dwells an evil spirit. He who dares to muddy its current pays dearly for his audacity. The beast will already have crossed its banks; how will you cross it without bringing down some horrible calamity upon your head? We huntsmen are kings of Moncayo, but kings who pay a tribute. A quarry that takes refuge in that mysterious fountain is a lost quarry.”

“Lost quarry! First I shall lose the lordship of my parents, and first I shall lose my soul at the hands of Satan, before I allow that stag to escape me, the only one my hunting spear has wounded, the first fruits of my hunting excursions... Do you see it?... Do you see it?... It can still be made out at intervals from here... its legs are failing, its run is shortening; let me... let me... let go of that bridle, or I will roll you in the dust... Who knows if I will not give it time to reach the fountain? And should it reach it, to hell with the fountain, its limpidity, and its inhabitants. On! Lightning! On, my horse! If you catch him, I order the diamonds of my jewel set into your golden headstall.”

Horse and rider set off like a hurricane.

Iñigo followed them with his eyes until they were lost in the undergrowth; then he turned his eyes around him; all of them, like him, remained motionless and dismayed.

The huntsman exclaimed at last:

“Gentlemen, you have seen it; I exposed myself to dying beneath the hooves of his horse in order to stop him. I have fulfilled my duty. Valour is of no use against the devil. Here the huntsman goes no further with his crossbow; from here on, let the chaplain try to pass with his holy-water sprinkler.”

“Your complexion is broken; you walk glum and gloomy; what ails you? Since the day, which I shall always consider fateful, when you arrived at the fountain of the poplars in pursuit of the wounded beast, one might say that an evil witch has withered you with her spells.”

You no longer go to the mountains preceded by the noisy pack, nor does the clamor of your horns awaken their echoes. Alone with those brooding thoughts that pursue you, every morning you take up your crossbow to make for the thicket and remain there until the sun hides itself. And when night darkens and you return pale and fatigued to the castle, I search in vain along your bandolier for the spoils of the hunt. What occupies you for such long hours far from those who love you most?

While Iñigo spoke, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts, mechanically whittled splinters from his ebony bench with his hunting knife.

After a long silence, interrupted only by the scraping of the blade sliding over the polished wood, the young man exclaimed, turning to his servant as if he had not heard a single one of his words:

“Iñigo, you who are old; you who know all the lairs of Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes pursuing wild beasts, and in your wandering hunting excursions climbed more than once to its summit, tell me: have you by chance encountered a woman who lives among its rocks?”

“A woman!” exclaimed the huntsman in astonishment, staring intently at him.

“Yes,” said the young man; “it is a strange thing what is happening to me, very strange... I thought I could keep that secret eternally, but it is no longer possible; it overflows in my heart and shows upon my countenance. I am going, then, to reveal it to you... You will help me dispel the mystery that envelops this creature, who seemingly exists only for me, since no one knows her, nor has seen her, nor can give me an account of her.”

The huntsman, without parting his lips, dragged his stool until he placed it next to his master’s bench, from which he did not take his frightened eyes for a moment. The latter, after coordinating his thoughts, continued thus:

“From the day when, despite your fateful predictions, I reached the fountain of the poplars, and crossing its waters recovered the stag that your superstition would have let escape, my soul filled with the desire for solitude.”

You do not know that place. Look, the fountain springs forth hidden in the bosom of a rock, and falls slipping drop by drop among the green and floating leaves of the plants that grow at the edge of its cradle. Those drops, which as they detach themselves shine like points of gold and sound like the notes of an instrument, gather among the lawns, and murmuring, murmuring, with a sound resembling that of bees buzzing around flowers, drift away among the sands, and form a bed, and struggle with the obstacles opposed to their path, and fold back upon themselves and leap, and flee, and run, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a lake. They fall into the lake with an indescribable murmur. Laments, words, names, songs, I know not what I have heard in that murmur when I have sat alone and feverish upon the crag, at whose feet leap the waters of the mysterious fountain to stagnate in a deep pool, whose motionless surface the evening wind scarcely ripples.

All there is grand. Solitude, with its thousand unknown murmurs, dwells in those places and intoxicates the spirit with its ineffable melancholy. In the silver leaves of the poplars, in the hollows of the rocks, in the ripples of the water, the invisible spirits of nature seem to speak to us, recognizing a brother in the immortal spirit of man.

When at the break of dawn you saw me take my crossbow and head for the mountain, it was never to lose myself among its thickets in pursuit of game, no; I would go to sit at the edge of the spring, to seek in its ripples... I know not what, a madness! The day I leaped over it with my Relámpago, I thought I had seen something strange glimmering in its depths... very strange... a woman’s eyes.

Perhaps it was a sunbeam that slithered fugitively among its foam; perhaps one of those flowers that float among the algae of its bosom, and whose calyxes look like emeralds... I know not: I thought I saw a gaze that locked onto mine; a gaze that kindled in my breast an absurd, unattainable desire: that of finding a person with eyes like those.