-Xiv- · III

The road was difficult and wound in a spiral around the mountain; on either side, the grapevines, heavy with foliage, leaned over it as though to erase it. On the summit, an elongated building yellowed in the light of the setting sun, with a tower on the left, and on the right a ruined dovecote, now roofless. It was the ancestral mansion of Limioso, once a rocky stronghold, an eagle’s aerie perched upon the steep, shadowy slope of the solitary hill, behind which, on the horizon, rose the majestic peak of inaccessible Mount Leiro. Throughout the whole surrounding country, and perhaps in the entire province, no ancient house was known of older or nobler lineage, nor to whose name the peasants added with greater respect the title of Pazo, palace, reserved for hidalgo dwellings.

From quite nearby, the Pazo of Limioso seemed uninhabited, which heightened the melancholy impression produced by its dismantled dovecote. On every side were signs of neglect and ruin: nettles choked the sort of courtyard or small square before the house; panes were not lacking in the window-frames for the plausible reason that no such window-frames existed, and even a shutter, torn from its hinges, hung askew like a rag on a worn-out garment. Up to the ground-floor gratings, eaten away with rust, crept parasitic creepers, and garlands of withered, stunted ivy trailed between the gaping joints of the masonry. The great gate stood wide open, like the door of one who fears no thieves; but at the dull thud of the horses’ hooves upon the grassy floor of the courtyard, asthmatic barking responded, and a mastiff and two pointers rushed toward the visitors, wasting through their jaws what little vigor they had left, for none of those creatures possessed more than a shaggy coat over a framework of bones ready to poke through at the slightest mischance. The mastiff was literally unable to accomplish the exertion of barking: his legs shook under him, and his tongue protruded a span between teeth yellowed and worn down by age. The pointers were pacified by the voice of the master of Ulloa, with whom they had hunted a thousand times; not so the mastiff, determined no doubt to die at his post, whom only the appearance of his master, the young gentleman of Limioso, could silence.

Who in the mountains does not know that direct descendant of Galician paladins and noblemen, that indefatigable huntsman, that staunch traditionalist? Ramonciño Limioso was at that time scarcely more than twenty-six years of age, but already his moustaches, his eyebrows, his hair, and all his features wore a melancholy gravity and a dignity somewhat comical to anyone beholding him for the first time. His sorrowful, arched brows lent him a vague resemblance to portraits of Quevedo; his lean neck cried aloud for a ruff, and instead of the staff he held in his hand, fancy readily bestowed upon him a cup-hilted rapier. Wherever that lanky figure was encountered, with that threadbare coat and those trousers bagged at the knees with occasional patches, no one could doubt that, despite his impoverished appearance, Ramón Limioso was a true gentleman from the cradle—as the peasants said—and not made with fisticuffs, like others.

He showed himself such even in his manner of helping Nucha down from her donkey, in the gallant naturalness with which he offered her, not his arm, but in the old-fashioned style, two fingers of his left hand upon which the lady of Ulloa might rest the palm of her right. And with the propriety befitting a minuet step, the pair walked forward into the Pazo of Limioso adelante, mounting the exterior stone staircase that led to the cloister, not without danger of tumbling down it, so worm-eaten and worn were the venerable steps. The cloister roof was completely riddled with holes; through the tiles and rafters one could see innumerable patches of sky-blue velvet; swallow fledglings chirped softly in their nests, sheltered in the most favourable spot behind the Limioso coat of arms, carved in crude relief on the capital of every pillar—three fish swimming in a lake, and a lion supporting a cross. Matters were worse when they entered the anteroom. Many years had passed since woodworm and antiquity had finished off the floorboards; and as the means of the Limiosos were evidently insufficient to lay a new floor, they had contented themselves with tossing a few loose planks across the joists and beams; and along this perilous pathway the young master crossed calmly, without ceasing to offer his fingers to Nucha, while she dared not ask for firmer support. Each plank upon which they set foot tipped and swayed, revealing below the black depth of the cellar with its vats draped in cobwebs. Dauntlessly they crossed the abyss and entered the parlour, which at least possessed a nailed floor, though broken in many places and nearly everywhere reduced to fine powder by the boring of insects.

Nucha stopped dead in astonishment. In one corner of the room, half buried under a great heap of wheat, stood a magnificent piece of furniture, a bargueño inlaid with tortoiseshell and ivory; on the walls, from the dark varnish of old, smoke-blackened paintings, there stood out here and there the contorted leg of a martyred saint, the crupper of a horse, or the chubby face of a cherub; opposite the corner of wheat rose a dais upholstered in Cordovan leather, which still retained its rich colour and deep gilding; before the dais, arranged in a semicircle, stood splendid carved chairs, also with leather seats; and between the wheat and the dais, seated on tallos (blocks of rough oak trunk, such as the poorest peasants use), two old women—withered, pale, erect, and dressed in the Carmelite habit—were spinning!

Never had the lady of Moscoso imagined that she would see spinning done anywhere outside novels or fairy tales, unless by peasant women, and the sight of those two Byzantine statues produced a strange impression upon her, so motionless did they appear in the rigid folds of their garments, wielding the distaff and spindle, and suspending their labour simultaneously when she entered. In the name of these two statues—who were the paternal aunts of the young gentleman of Limioso—he had paid his visit to Nucha; their father, paralytic and bedridden, also lived in the Pazo, but nobody ever laid eyes upon him; his existence was like a myth, a legend of the mountains. The two old women rose and stretched out their arms to Nucha with a movement so simultaneous that she knew not which to attend to, and at the same moment on both cheeks she felt an icy kiss, a kiss given without lips and accompanied by the graze of lifeless skin. She felt her hands seized by other hands stripped of flesh, withered, mummified, and desiccated; she realized that they were guiding her toward the dais, offering her one of the carved armchairs, and scarcely had she sat down when she perceived with terror that the seat was giving way, sinking beneath her; each piece of the chair fell apart without a creak or resistance; and with the instinct of a pregnant woman, she sprang to her feet, leaving that last relic of the Limiosos’ splendour to collapse upon the floor forever...

They departed from the leaky Pazo when night was already falling, and without exchanging a word, without perhaps being able to account for it to themselves, they kept silence all the way home, weighed down by the inexplicable sadness of things that pass away.