A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde (simple ebook reader TXT) π
On and on he went, till he reached the outskirts of the wood, and there he saw an immense multitude of men toiling in the bed of a dried-up river. They swarmed up the crag like ants. They dug deep pits in the ground and went down into them. Some of them cleft the rocks with great axes; others grabbled in the sand.
They tore up the cactus by its roots, and trampled on the scarlet blossoms. They hurried about, calling to each other, and no man was idle.
From the darkness of a cavern Death and Avarice watched them, and Death said, 'I am weary; give me a third of them and let me go.' But Avarice shook her head. 'They are my servants,' she answered.
And Death said to her, 'What hast thou in thy hand?'
'I have three grains of corn,' she answered; 'what is that to thee?'
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blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy
perfume.
The little Princess herself walked up and down the terrace with her
companions, and played at hide and seek round the stone vases and
the old moss-grown statues. On ordinary days she was only allowed
to play with children of her own rank, so she had always to play
alone, but her birthday was an exception, and the King had given
orders that she was to invite any of her young friends whom she
liked to come and amuse themselves with her. There was a stately
grace about these slim Spanish children as they glided about, the
boys with their large-plumed hats and short fluttering cloaks, the
girls holding up the trains of their long brocaded gowns, and
shielding the sun from their eyes with huge fans of black and
silver. But the Infanta was the most graceful of all, and the most
tastefully attired, after the somewhat cumbrous fashion of the day.
Her robe was of grey satin, the skirt and the wide puffed sleeves
heavily embroidered with silver, and the stiff corset studded with
rows of fine pearls. Two tiny slippers with big pink rosettes
peeped out beneath her dress as she walked. Pink and pearl was her
great gauze fan, and in her hair, which like an aureole of faded
gold stood out stiffly round her pale little face, she had a
beautiful white rose.
From a window in the palace the sad melancholy King watched them.
Behind him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated,
and his confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his
side. Sadder even than usual was the King, for as he looked at the
Infanta bowing with childish gravity to the assembling counters, or
laughing behind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who
always accompanied her, he thought of the young Queen, her mother,
who but a short time beforeβso it seemed to himβhad come from the
gay country of France, and had withered away in the sombre
splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after the
birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom
twice in the orchard, or plucked the second yearβs fruit from the
old gnarled fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-grown courtyard. So great had been his love for her that he had
not suffered even the grave to hide her from him. She had been
embalmed by a Moorish physician, who in return for this service had
been granted his life, which for heresy and suspicion of magical
practices had been already forfeited, men said, to the Holy Office,
and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier in the black
marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her in on
that windy March day nearly twelve years before. Once every month
the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his
hand, went in and knelt by her side calling out, βMi reina! Mi
reina!β and sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in
Spain governs every separate action of life, and sets limits even
to the sorrow of a King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands
in a wild agony of grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the
cold painted face.
To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the
Castle of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and
she still younger. They had been formally betrothed on that
occasion by the Papal Nuncio in the presence of the French King and
all the Court, and he had returned to the Escurial bearing with him
a little ringlet of yellow hair, and the memory of two childish
lips bending down to kiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage.
Later on had followed the marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a
small town on the frontier between the two countries, and the grand
public entry into Madrid with the customary celebration of high
mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than usually solemn
auto-da-fe, in which nearly three hundred heretics, amongst whom
were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular arm to
be burned.
Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought, of
his country, then at war with England for the possession of the
empire of the New World. He had hardly ever permitted her to be
out of his sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have
forgotten, all grave affairs of State; and, with that terrible
blindness that passion brings upon its servants, he had failed to
notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please
her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered.
When she died he was, for a time, like one bereft of reason.
Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated
and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he
was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the
little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in
Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having
caused the Queenβs death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that
he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle
in Aragon. Even after the expiration of the three years of public
mourning that he had ordained throughout his whole dominions by
royal edict, he would never suffer his ministers to speak about any
new alliance, and when the Emperor himself sent to him, and offered
him the hand of the lovely Archduchess of Bohemia, his niece, in
marriage, he bade the ambassadors tell their master that the King
of Spain was already wedded to Sorrow, and that though she was but
a barren bride he loved her better than Beauty; an answer that cost
his crown the rich provinces of the Netherlands, which soon after,
at the Emperorβs instigation, revolted against him under the
leadership of some fanatics of the Reformed Church.
His whole married life, with its fierce, fiery-coloured joys and
the terrible agony of its sudden ending, seemed to come back to him
to-day as he watched the Infanta playing on the terrace. She had
all the Queenβs pretty petulance of manner, the same wilful way of
tossing her head, the same proud curved beautiful mouth, the same
wonderful smileβvrai sourire de France indeedβas she glanced up
now and then at the window, or stretched out her little hand for
the stately Spanish gentlemen to kiss. But the shrill laughter of
the children grated on his ears, and the bright pitiless sunlight
mocked his sorrow, and a dull odour of strange spices, spices such
as embalmers use, seemed to taintβor was it fancy?βthe clear
morning air. He buried his face in his hands, and when the Infanta
looked up again the curtains had been drawn, and the King had
retired.
She made a little moue of disappointment, and shrugged her
shoulders. Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday.
What did the stupid State-affairs matter? Or had he gone to that
gloomy chapel, where the candles were always burning, and where she
was never allowed to enter? How silly of him, when the sun was
shining so brightly, and everybody was so happy! Besides, he would
miss the sham bull-fight for which the trumpet was already
sounding, to say nothing of the puppet-show and the other wonderful
things. Her uncle and the Grand Inquisitor were much more
sensible. They had come out on the terrace, and paid her nice
compliments. So she tossed her pretty head, and taking Don Pedro
by the hand, she walked slowly down the steps towards a long
pavilion of purple silk that had been erected at the end of the
garden, the other children following in strict order of precedence,
those who had the longest names going first.
A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as toreadors,
came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a
wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering
his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain,
led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was
placed on a raised dais above the arena. The children grouped
themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to
each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing
at the entrance. Even the Duchessβthe Camerera-Mayor as she was
calledβa thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not
look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill
smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin
bloodless lips.
It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the
Infanta thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought
to see at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of
Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobbyhorses brandishing long javelins with gay
streamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on foot
waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightly
over the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull himself,
he was just like a live bull, though he was only made of wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running round
the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams of
doing. He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got so
excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace
handkerchiefs and cried out: Bravo toro! Bravo toro! just as
sensibly as if they had been grown-up people. At last, however,
after a prolonged combat, during which several of the hobbyhorses
were gored through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the
young Count of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and
having obtained permission from the Infanta to give the coup de
grace, he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with
such violence that the head came right off, and disclosed the
laughing face of little Monsieur de Lorraine, the son of the French
Ambassador at Madrid.
The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead
hobbyhorses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow
and black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a
French posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian
puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of Sophonisba on the
stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose.
They acted so well, and their gestures were so extremely natural,
that at the close of the play the eyes of the Infanta were quite
dim with tears. Indeed some of the children really cried, and had
to be comforted with sweetmeats, and the Grand Inquisitor himself
was so affected that he could not help saying to Don Pedro that it
seemed to him intolerable that things made simply out of wood and
coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires, should be so
unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.
An African juggler followed, who brought in a large flat basket
covered with a red cloth, and having placed it in the centre of the
arena, he took from his turban a curious reed pipe, and blew
through it. In a few moments the cloth began to move, and as the
pipe grew shriller and shriller two green and gold snakes put out
their strange wedge-shaped heads and rose slowly up, swaying to and
fro with the music as a plant sways in the water. The children,
however, were rather frightened at
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