Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish by Various (reader novel .txt) 📕

the Spanish Consul in Tetuan, stating that a Moorish woman called Zama had presented herself before him to make complaint against the Spanish renegade, Ben-Manuza, formerly called Juan Falgueira, who had just sailed for Spain, after having assassinated the Moor, Manos-gordas, the complainant's husband, and robbed him of a certain precious document. For all which reasons, and chiefly on account of the attempt against the life of the friar in the chapel, His Majesty the King strongly urged upon the authorities of Granada the arrest of the criminal and his immediate execution in that city."

Let the reader picture to himself the terror and astonishment with which this narration was listened to by all present, as well as the despair of Uncle Hormiga, who could not now doubt that the document was in the possession of this man condemned to death.

The avaricious Alcalde, then, at the risk of compromising himself still further, called aside Juan Falgueira and held a whispered conversation with him, having previously informed the assemblage that he was going to try to prevail upon the renegade to confess his crime before God and men. What passed between the two PARTNERS, however, was really what follows:

"Gossip!" said Uncle Hormiga, "not Heaven itself could now save you! But you must feel that it would be a pity that that document should be lost. Tell me where you have hidden it."

"Gossip!" responded the Galician, "with that document, or, in other words, with the treasure it represents, I intend to purchase my pardon. Procure for me the royal favor, and I will deliver the document to you; but for the present I shall offer it to the judges to bribe them to declare my sentence null and void by prescription."

"Gossip!" replied Uncle Hormiga, "you are a wise man, and I shall be glad if you succeed in your purpose. But if you fail, for God's sake do not carry to the tomb a secret which will profit no one!"

"Be certain, I shall take it with me!" answered Juan Falgueira. "I must have my revenge upon the world in some way."

"Let us proceed!" here cried the constable, putting an end to this strange conference.

And the condemned man, being chained and handcuffed, the officers of justice and the soldiers proceeded with him in the direction of the city of Guadix, whence they were to conduct him to Granada.

"The devil! the devil!" the wife of Uncle Hormiga Juan Gomez kept repeating to herself for an hour afterward, as she returned the tenderloin and the sausage to their respective jars. "My curse upon all treasures--past, present, and to come!"


XV.

Needless to say that Uncle Hormiga found no means of procuring Juan Falgueira's pardon, nor did the judges condescend to listen seriously to the offers which the latter made them of delivering to them a treasure on condition that they should relinquish the prosecution against him; nor did the terrible Galician consent to disclose the hiding-place of the document nor the whereabouts of the treasure to the bold Alcalde of Aldeire--who, with this hope, had the face to visit him in the chapel in the prison of Granada.

Juan Falgueira, then, was hanged on the Friday preceding Good Friday, in the Paseo del Triumfo, and Uncle Hormiga, on his return to Aldeire, on Palm Sunday, fell ill with typhoid fever, the disease running its course so quickly that on Wednesday of Holy Week he confessed himself and made his will and expired on the morning of Easter Saturday.

But before his death he wrote a letter to Don Matias de Quesada, reproaching him with his treachery and dishonesty (which had caused the deaths of three persons), and forgiving him like a Christian, on condition that he should return to Dame Torcuata the thirty-two dollars for the cup of chocolate.

This dreadful letter reached Ugijar simultaneously with the news of the death of Uncle Juan Gomez, both which events, coming together, affected the old lawyer to such a degree that he never recovered his spirits again, and he died shortly afterward, having written in his last hour a terrible letter, full of reproaches and maledictions, to his nephew, the Chapel-master of Ceuta, accusing him of having deceived and robbed him, and of being the cause of his death.

To the reading of this just and tremendous accusation was due, it is said, the stroke of apoplexy that sent Don Bonifacio to the tomb.

So that the suspicion, merely, of the existence of a hidden treasure was the cause of five deaths, and of many other misfortunes, matters remaining in the end as hidden and mysterious as they were in the beginning, since Dame Torcuata, who was the only person in the world who knew the history of the fatal document, took good care never to mention it thereafter in the whole course of her life, thinking, as she did, that it had all been the work of the devil, and the necessary consequence of her husband's dealings with the enemies of the Church and the Throne.


BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS By Fernan Caballero Translated by Mary J. Serrano.


BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS


CHAPTER I.

Although the villages of the sierras of Andalusia, owing to their elevation, enjoy in summer a milder temperature than those of the plains, during the middle hours of the day the sun reflected from the rocks that abound in this mountainous region, produces a dry and ardent heat, which is more transitory, indeed, but also more irritating than that of the plains. The chief sufferers from its ardors are the wandering reapers, who, after finishing the labors of the harvest in their own province, go in search of work to the provinces where the harvest has not yet been gathered in. The greater number of the reapers of the province of Granada go to the sierra of Ronda, where they are welcomed, and where their toilsome labors are well rewarded, so that they are able to lay by some money, unless indeed sickness, that scourge of the poor, prostrates them and consumes their earnings or terminates their existence.

In a more pious age a small hospital for poor strangers was established in Bornos, which is one of the villages that, like a fringe, border the slope of the sierra; an hospital which remained closed in winter, but which in summer received many of the poor reapers who were prostrated by the intense heat, and who had no home or family in the village.

On a hot summer day, early in the thirties, a woman with a kind and gentle countenance was seated at the door of her cottage, in the village above mentioned, engaged in chopping the tomatoes and peppers and crumbling the bread for the wholesome, nutritious, and savory gazpacho which was to serve for the family supper; her two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five, were playing not far from her in the street.

As Bornos is almost entirely surrounded by orchards and orange groves, planted on the slopes of the tableland on which the village is seated, and which at this hour are irrigated by the clear and abundant waters of its springs, every breeze brought with it the perfume of the leaves and the melodious strains of the birds singing their evening hymn to the sun, filling the air with coolness, as if kind Mother Nature made of her trees a fan to cool the brow of her favorite child, man. The front of the house was already steeped in shadow, while the sun still gilded the irregular crests of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley that, like patient camels, supported the load of vines, olive groves, and cornfields confided to them by man.

The mother, occupied with her task, had not observed that a poorly clad little boy had joined her children and that they were talking together.

"Who are you?" said the Bornos boy to the stranger; "I have never seen you before. What is your name?"

"Michael; and yours?"

"Gaspar."

"And my name is Catherine," said the little girl, who desired also to make the strange boy's acquaintance.

"I know the story of St. Catherine," said the latter.

"Oh, do you? Tell it to us."

The boy recited the following verses:

"To-morrow will be St. Catherine's day,
When to heaven she will ascend and St. Peter will say,
'What woman is that who asks to be let in?'
'I am Catherine,' she will answer, 'and I want to come in.'
'Enter, little dove, in your dove-cote, then.'"

"What a lovely story!" exclaimed the girl. "Don't you know another?"

"Look, Catherine," cried her brother, who was eating roasted beans; "there is a little dead snail in this bean, a roasted snail."

"Will you give me some beans?" begged the strange child.

"Yes, here are some. Are you very, very fond of roasted beans?"

"Yes, very; but I asked you for them because I am very hungry."

"Why, have you had no dinner?"

"No."

"Nor any breakfast, either?"

"No."

"Mother, mother," cried both the children together, running to their mother; "this poor little boy hasn't had any dinner or any breakfast, and he is very hungry; give us some bread for him."

"He has had no dinner, you say?" said the good woman, giving the child a piece of bread with that compassionate tenderness which seems innate in women toward children; "have you no parents, then, my child?"

"Yes, but they have no bread to give me."

"Poor little boy! And where are your parents?"

"Over there," answered the boy, pointing in the direction of a lane that ran between garden walls, at right angles with the street.

The good woman, followed by the children, went to the lane.

On the dry grass, with his face turned to the wall, lay a man, miserably clad and apparently lifeless; a handkerchief was tied round his head; near him lay a sickle that had fallen from his nerveless grasp; seated on the ground beside him was a woman, who, with her thin cheek resting on her emaciated hand, was gazing fixedly at him through the tears that rolled down her sad face, as on a rainy day the water trickles down the walls of a deserted ruin. The last rays of the setting sun, lingering in the lane, illumined the melancholy group with a light tender and sorrowful as a farewell glance.

Approaching the stranger, the good woman, whose name was Maria, said to her:

"Senora, what is the matter with your husband?"

"He has a fever that is killing him," answered the stranger, bursting into sobs.

"Holy Mary!" cried the mother of the children compassionately. "And why don't you let people know about it and ask them to help you? Are we living in a heathen land, then?"

"I don't know any one in the place."

"No matter; for a neighborly act, acquaintance isn't necessary. What! Is this poor man to be left alone to die, as if he were among the Moors? Not if I can prevent it."

At this moment a man with a strong, calm, and kind face approached the group.

"Father, father," cried the children, "this man is dying, and this little boy, who is his son, says he has no bread to give him."

"John Joseph," added the mother of the children, "this poor man is lying shelterless here; this is