A Ray of Moonshine · II

Although his hope of catching up with those who had entered through the San Saturio wicket gate had vanished, our hero did not on that account lose the hope of finding out which house in the city could be harboring them. Fixed on this idea, he penetrated into the town, and heading toward the San Juan neighborhood, began to wander at random through its streets.

The streets of Soria were then, and still are, narrow, dark, and tortuous; a profound silence reigned in them, a silence interrupted only now by the distant barking of a dog, now by the murmur of a closing door, now by the neighing of a steed that, pawing the ground, made the chain rattle that fastened it to the manger in the subterranean stables.

Manrique, with his ear attentive to these noises of the night—which at times seemed to him the footsteps of someone who had already turned the last corner of a deserted alley, at others, the confused voices of people talking behind his back and whom he expected to see by his side at any moment—walked for some hours, running at random from one place to another.

At last, he stopped at the foot of a dark and very ancient stone mansion; as he stopped, his eyes shone with an indescribable expression of joy. In one of the high ogival windows of what we might call a palace, a ray of mild and soft light could be seen, which, passing through some light rose-colored silk curtains, was reflected on the blackened and cracked wall of the house opposite.

“There is no doubt; here lives my unknown fair,” murmured the youth in a low voice and without taking his eyes for a single moment from the gothic window; “here she lives. She entered through the San Saturio wicket gate... through the San Saturio wicket gate one comes to this neighborhood... in this neighborhood there is a house where past midnight there are still people awake... Awake? Who besides her, returning from her nocturnal excursions, could be awake at this hour?... There’s no question about it; this is her house.”

In this firm persuasion, and turning over in his head the craziest and most fantastic imaginations, he awaited the dawn facing the gothic window, from which the light did not fail all night, nor did he look away from it for a single moment.

When day broke, the massive doors of the arch that gave entrance to the mansion, and upon whose keystone the armorial bearings of its owner could be seen sculptured, turned heavily on their hinges with a prolonged and shrill squeak. A squire appeared on the threshold with a bunch of keys in his hand, rubbing his eyes and displaying as he yawned a set of teeth capable of making a crocodile envious.

To see him and to hurl himself at the door, for Manrique, was all the work of an instant.

“Who lives in this house? What is her name? Where is she from? Why has she come to Soria? Does she have a husband? Answer, answer, animal.” This was the greeting that, shaking his arm violently, he addressed to the poor squire, who, after staring at him for a good length of time with frightened and stupid eyes, answered him in a voice broken by surprise:

“In this house lives the most honorable gentleman Don Alonso de Valdecuellos, chief huntsman to our lord the king, who, wounded in the war against the Moors, finds himself in this city recovering from his fatigues.”

“But what about his daughter?” interrupted the youth impatiently; “and his daughter, or his sister, or his wife, or whatever she is?”

“He has no woman with him.”

“He has none!... Then who sleeps there in that room where all night long I have seen a light burning?”

“There? There sleeps my lord Don Alonso, who, as he is ill, keeps his lamp lit until dawn.”

A thunderbolt falling unexpectedly at his feet would not have caused him more astonishment than these words caused him.

“I must find her, I must find her; and if I find her, I am almost certain that I will recognize her... By what?... That is what I cannot say... but I shall recognize her. The echo of her footstep or a single word of hers that I hear again; the edge of her dress, a single edge that I see again, will be enough for me to achieve it. Night and day I am seeing those folds of a diaphanous and snow-white fabric floating before my eyes; night and day the rustle of her dress, the confused murmur of her unintelligible words are sounding right here inside my head... What did she say?... what did she say? Ah! if I could know what she said, perhaps... but even without knowing it I will find her... I will find her; my heart tells me so, and my heart never deceives me. True it is that I have already walked in vain through all the streets of Soria; that I have spent night after night in the open air, acting as a lamppost on a corner; that I have spent more than twenty gold doubloons making duennas and squires chatter; that I have offered holy water in San Nicolás to an old woman, muffled up with such art in her serge mantle that she seemed a deity to me; and upon leaving the Collegiate Church one night of matins, I have followed like a fool the archdeacon’s litter, believing that the hem of his cassock was that of my unknown fair’s dress; but it matters not... I must find her, and the glory of possessing her will surely exceed the labor of seeking her.”

What will her eyes be like?... They must be blue, blue and moist like the night sky; I like eyes of that color so much; they are so expressive, so melancholy, so... Yes... there is no doubt; blue they must be, blue they are, surely; and her hair black, very black, and long so that it floats... I think I saw it float that night, along with her dress, and it was black... I am not deceived, no; it was black.

And how well some very large, drowsy blue eyes and loose, floating, dark hair suit a tall woman!... Because... she is tall, tall and slender, like those angels on the portals of our basilicas, whose oval faces the shadows of their granite canopies envelop in a mysterious twilight.

Her voice!... her voice I have heard... her voice is soft like the murmur of the wind in the poplar leaves, and her gait measured and majestic like the cadences of music.

And that woman, who is beautiful as the most beautiful of my adolescent dreams, who thinks as I think, who likes what I like, who hates what I hate, who is a kindred spirit to my spirit, who is the complement of my being, will she not feel moved upon meeting me? Will she not love me as I will love her, as I already love her, with all the strengths of my life, with all the faculties of my soul?

Come, let us go to the place where I saw her the first and only time I have seen her... Who knows if, capricious like me, fond of solitude and mystery, like all dreaming souls, she delights in wandering among the ruins, in the silence of the night?

Two months had elapsed since the squire of Don Alonso de Valdecuellos undeceived the deluded Manrique; two months during which in every hour he had built a castle in the air that reality swept away with a breath; two months during which he had searched in vain for that unknown woman, whose absurd love was growing in his soul thanks to his even more absurd imaginations, when, after crossing, absorbed in these ideas, the bridge that leads to the Templars, the enamored youth got lost among the intricate paths of their gardens.

The night was serene and beautiful, the moon shone in all its fullness at the highest point of the sky, and the wind sighed with a most sweet murmur among the leaves of the trees.

Manrique reached the cloister, cast his gaze around its enclosure, and looked through the massive columns of its arcades... It was deserted.

He left it, directed his steps toward the dark poplar grove that leads to the Duero, and he had not yet entered it when a shout of jubilation escaped his lips.

He had seen the edge of the white dress float for an instant and disappear, the white dress of the woman of his dreams, of the woman he already loved to madness.

He runs, he runs in search of her, he reaches the spot where he saw her vanish; but upon arriving he stops, fixes his terrified eyes on the ground, remains motionless for a while; a slight nervous tremor agitates his limbs, a tremor that grows and grows, presenting the symptoms of a true convulsion, and at last he bursts into a laugh, a loud, strident, horrible laugh.

That white, light, floating thing had shone before his eyes once more; but it had shone at his feet for an instant, no more than an instant.

It was a moonbeam, a moonbeam that penetrated at intervals through the green vault of the trees when the wind moved their branches.

Several years had passed. Manrique, seated in an armchair by the high Gothic hearth of his castle, almost motionless and with a gaze as vague and restless as an idiot’s, scarcely paid attention either to his mother’s caresses or to his servants’ consolations.

“You are young, you are handsome,” she would say to him; “why do you consume yourself in solitude? Why do you not look for a woman to love, and who, loving you, can make you happy?”

“Love!... Love is a moonbeam,” the young man murmured.

“Why do you not awake from this lethargy?” one of his squires said to him; “you dress in iron from head to foot, you command your nobleman’s banner to be unfurled to the wind, and we march to war: in war one finds glory.”

“Glory!... Glory is a moonbeam.”

“Would you have me recite a song, the latest one composed by Master Arnaldo, the Provençal troubadour?”

“No! No!” the young man exclaimed, starting up wrathfully in his chair; “I want nothing... that is, yes, I do want... I want you to leave me alone... Songs... women... glories... happiness... lies, all of them, vain phantoms that we form in our imagination and dress at our whim, and we love them and run after them, what for? What for? To find a moonbeam.”

Manrique was mad; at least, everyone believed him to be so. To me, on the contrary, it seems that what he had done was recover his senses.