THE BEGGAR OF ALCAZAR

THE BEGGAR OF ALCAZAR[5]

By KONRAD BERCOVICI

(From The Century Magazine)

Every Spaniard will tell you that Spain has the most beautiful women in the world. Every man from Andalusia, richly colored, sun-tinted, green-mountained Andalusia, will tell you that Andalusian women are the most beautiful of Spain; for have they not the smoothness and the hue of olive fruit and hair like black silk? And the men of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, old Seville with its crooked streets upon which abut blind walls, whitewashed and high-windowed—Seville, towered and domed by a thousand old churches and cathedrals and palaces built of huge stone mellowed and softened by biting time, Seville with its leisurely coursing river, the Guadalquivir, the great river, named so by the Moors in olden times, but which can be waded across at some times of the year; every Sevillan, prouder of the women of his town than of all the other marvels it contains, will tell you that the women of Seville are the most beautiful of the Province of Andalusia.

And Maria del Alcazar was the most beautiful woman of Seville.

She was the daughter of Don Hermanos, the head keeper of the Alcazar, the old palace of the Moors, planned and executed at the time when the Saracens had glided above the peak of virility and had become softened and fattened from tribute paid by vanquished nations, and effeminate from a long period of peace and the affluence come from plunder.

Maria’s father, Don Hermanos, had obtained the post of keeper in lieu of compensation for injuries he had sustained while fighting the wild tribes of the Spanish possessions in Africa. She was only ten years old when the family moved into one of the little whitewashed huts within the inclosure of the palace destined for the keeper. Black-eyed, with lustrous black hair, fine and silky like ebony filaments falling over her ivory-white neck, full-lipped, with a delicate chin, she was the pride of the family. Her mother, who came from Granada, instilled into her daughter that love for beautiful things and soft colors which had come to her with the blood of Moors that flowed in her veins. And with that she had also given to Maria that sinuous, graceful gait which holds both of the tiger and the angel—an imperceptible glide with slightly bent knees, while the arms sway softly like movements of invisible wings.

The Hermanos family had come to live at the Alcazar from one of the houses in the Triana, the crowded, squalid section across the river, where the poor of Seville live. The hut in which they had lived there was one in an immense yard in which fifty more little houses, leaning one on another, formed an open square; a Casa Vesinante of the neighborhood. There was not much difference between the hut they were occupying in the Alcazar and it, and the mother and the father were frequently complaining about the uncomfortable and dilapidated condition of their new home. But not so Maria. She was not complaining, for she had the Alcazar all to herself. Daily, before the arrival of visitors from all over the world who came to see the old Moorish palace, and in the evenings after they had left, the big palace, with its jewel-studded, mosaic-wrought wings, with its stalactite ceilings, like frozen skies of crystal tears, and the ceramic walls, with the lemon alleys in the gardens and the intoxicating flowers and shrubs, with roses bigger than the full moon and redder than the reddest blood, with cypresses in pools of water and rose-veined marble colonnades and alleys, the whole palace belonged to her. It was hers to roam wherever she pleased, sit wherever she wanted, and dream her dreams. The very greatest treasure of the world was hers. For nowhere, nowhere she knew, was any other palace the like of that to be found in the universe. Roaming daily, she discovered for herself new treasures which were unknown to others. The beautiful marble columns that stuck out underneath the overlaid brick near the bathing-pool of the sultana, the paintings on the walls, which had stupidly been smeared over by careless repairers after the Moors had been driven out of Spain, the carved oak beams inlaid with mother-of-pearl mosaic in what was formerly the dressing room of the harem, and which had lain covered with cement. And panels of wood sawed so finely they were transparent when the light shone through them, and others cut so finely they were like spiderwebs, and which had lain there perhaps for centuries unobserved by any one, were hers to look at, hers alone, undefiled by other eyes, hers to bathe in their lacy softness of color and line.

True, she had to come into the hut late in the night and lie down on the bed within the squalid hut. But long before sunrise she would take her blanket and run out into the palace to sleep on the marble couch of the sultana, which faced the fountain of the Room of the Ambassadors; where once the sultan of the Saracens received the representatives of other nations, dressed in glittering silken garments, while black, nude, oiled slaves piled soft cushions under the guests and offered them refreshments in golden trays and from long silver vases.

The family had not been there long before all the keepers and the people in the neighborhood loved Maria. Shortly after their instalment, their daughter became known as “Maria del Alcazar.” Not because people felt that she belonged to the Alcazar, but that the Alcazar belonged to her. She could tell such beautiful stories of the things she saw. She kept them all entranced when she spoke of the palace and its beauties. No one referred to her as the daughter of Hermanos the keeper. She was Maria del Alcazar to the neighbors, Maria del Alcazar to the priest, as well as to the working-men continually busy restoring and fixing what should better be left as it was.

And after a few years the reputation of Maria’s beauty spread far and wide, as spreads a river after it has gone out from its bed. And many were the young men who, dressed in their best velvet, pale blue and dark brown, costumes, with wide-brimmed flamenco hats in their hands, now came to visit the Alcazar after their afternoon siesta, paying their good pesetas for the hope of catching a glimpse of Maria. They loitered and looked interested in the walls and gardens and trees and pools and fountains, but their long-lashed eyes were continually watching for an apparition. And many of them carried their guitars under their coats to begin their courting then and there should occasion present itself. The whole young malehood of Triana, remembering her as a child, would come to bid buenos dias to her father, with the hope of catching a glimpse of his daughter.

But during the day Maria was busy helping her mother. She had no interest in the Alcazar during that time. It belonged to strangers who came from all the corners of the world, to tread with unsympathetic feet the ground she considered holy and defile with their eyes and harsh voices, whispering, and pointing to one another the walls and the gardens she loved so much. It was only after they had gone that the Alcazar belonged to Maria, and after they had gone, all had to go. And so, reluctantly, the young men of Triana turned their backs and slowly shuffled out of the palace after the keeper had called out the evening hour. They would then remain outside the gate, waiting yet, pining for a glimpse before sighing deeply and departing slowly to their homes. And the young women of Triana bitterly clamored that because of Maria they were themselves unsung and unwooed by the young men of the neighborhood.

All this was happening unknown to Maria, for she lived not in this world. And after the late autumn had shaken the leaves of the crooked, brown-trunked olive trees in the garden and made the ceramic walls colder than they had ever been, she was the undisputed owner, the only one to enjoy the marvels of the Alcazar all to herself. While the winter rains were beating down upon the town of Seville, thus keeping away the visitors, Maria was happy. She grew and developed very fast, looking more and more like one of the Moorish sultanas who had for centuries queened over the palace. She imagined herself to be one of them, never thinking of sultans; as if the place had never been peopled by any others but women. For there seemed to be no trace of any male residence there. The delicate tracery of the rooms and the alcoves, every nook and corner, seemed to her to have been erected by delicate and whimsical hands of angels who had first dreamed about all this on some huge canvas which they had embroidered upon.

And yet work was going on continually, repairing here and there, and reconstructing. It seemed to her outrageous that the hands of men should have any right to touch such divinely delicate dreams in wood and stone. More than once she spoke angrily to the architect who was directing the work, telling him again and again the old Moorish legend current to this day all through Andalusia, that the Alcazar was never built, but appeared one day, called thither by the magic wand of some great magician in the employ of the sultan.

II

One afternoon early in the spring, when the buds in the lemon trees had begun to burst and had spread their little sweet-sour blossoms all over the place, Jose, the bullfighter, a lad who had already won his first spurs in the bull-ring of Seville—Jose who had been one of her neighbors while they were living in Triana, stopped on his way to the ring to see Don Hermanos. He had been attracted by tales of the beauty of Maria del Alcazar, and had for a long time tried to see her without succeeding. But dressed in the costume of the matador, with a gold-laced black cap on his head, and a colored, spangled coat over the narrow, red-velvet breeches, tightened at the knees over the white stockings with green tassels, Don Jose felt he could dare make the attempt to see her. He braved bulls; why should he step back from meeting a woman?

While the hundred and one urchins cried, “There goes Don Jose!” he crossed into the vaulted entrance of the Alcazar and was received at the gate by Don Hermanos, who had been attracted by the outside noise.

“What great honor!” bowed Maria’s father, shaking the decoration dangling on his breast.

“The honor indeed is mine,” answered Don Jose, bowing profoundly. “For, if you recall, we have been neighbors in Triana. And my mother has repeatedly spoken of Doña Hermanos, your wife, and of Señorita Maria.”

“May I lead you through the Alcazar, if you want to see it?” Don Hermanos asked, while the other keepers had gathered about him and were looking at the handsome young matador with great admiration.

“I shall follow you with pleasure,” Jose answered.

And throwing a handful of copper and silver to the urchins following him, he walked rhythmically behind Don Hermanos, while the other keepers were complimenting upon his recent exploits.

Jose was just a little over twenty, with the brown young eyes matured from facing danger and death, although only a thin down covered his long upper lip. He was not very tall, but so well proportioned that he looked taller than he really was. He was even then only a short hour from one of the battles in the great bull-ring.

“It is curious,” he said wistfully to Don Hermanos, catching up with him and putting an arm familiarly on his shoulder, much to the envy of the other keepers who followed behind, “but I have never been in the Alcazar, and had thought of coming only after an Englishman with whom I had become acquainted had spoken to me so enthusiastically about its beauties. To live near such beauty and never see it!”

Don Hermanos was now showing him the oak-beamed and mosaic ceiling of the reception hall.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed the bull-fighter, with ecstasy.

From the other end of the hall Maria was coming from the garden. She had been dreaming by herself when she heard the approaching noise of the heavily shod feet of the keepers coming in her direction, and wondered what it could be, since it was not yet the season for tourists. Shy, like a curious young doe, she glided noiselessly into the presence of the group. She was wrapped in an old green shawl, and her bare feet were in white, soft-soled slippers. Her hair, which she had just washed in the sultana’s fountain, was hanging loosely over her ivory-white neck and shoulders. She made as if to retrace her steps when she saw Don Jose, but Jose was much too quick, the very instant of her appearance he had called out:

“There goes Señorita Maria. How beautiful she has grown! There goes Señorita Maria! How wonderful she has grown! Of course she does not remember me any more,” he added petulantly and uncovered his head, bowing elegantly.

“Come over, Maria,” her father called. “It is Jose. You certainly do remember him, although you have never seen him in this garb.”

Maria slowly approached the group and curtsied ceremoniously before the young man.

“What beauty!” exclaimed the bull-fighter, brutally and frankly looking the girl in the face, as only a Spaniard would.

It made Maria tremble from head to foot to be looked at in that way. But she answered promptly:

“Of course I do remember Doña Gloria’s son. And I recollect having been told that he was occasionally fighting bulls in the small pueblos.”

“He is fighting in the rings of Seville and Madrid now,” Don Hermanos corrected her. “See his matador costume.”

Maria looked at the young man, and then with a loud laugh she suddenly rushed past him and disappeared, faun-like, before he had had time to turn, for he was looking at Don Hermanos while he was spoken of.

Don Hermanos showed the bull-fighter the other great halls of the Alcazar, but Jose was not half as interested as before. He was continually looking elsewhere through the open portals and gates, through the openings of the narrow alleys and subterranean halls.

“This used to be the great dancing hall of the sultan. This is the dais upon which the bayaderes danced. And, further, on the other side, upon this black-veined marble block, many a beautiful slave has lost her head if she had been unfaithful to the sultan, or if such was his pleasure.”

But the bull-fighter was not much interested. He suddenly pulled out his heavy gold watch from his pocket, and announced that he had to be on his way to the ring, but that he would return frequently and see at his leisure the wonders and the beauties of the Alcazar, adding, “Of which your daughter Maria is the most beautiful.”

Don Hermanos bowed profoundly. True, he had known Jose when he was the ragged scamp of the Triana, but a bull-fighter is a high personage, and what such a man said about his daughter was not to be disdained.

On the way out, Don Jose asked whether he could not get a drink of water, of which he was in need. Don Hermanos knew that it was a pretext to stop at the house for a few moments. Don Hermanos’s wife received the young bull-fighter, bowing profoundly, patting him, admiring him, wishing him good luck, asking him how his mother was and how his sisters were. But the beautiful Maria was not around.

Jose listened carefully, while the old woman spoke to him and while the men stood about him in admiration, to hear some one breathing behind the curtain that separated the room in two. He listened for a sound behind the door at the top of the stairs that led to the upper rooms from the middle of the lower one. And then his eyes saddened, and he was ready to go, when the Doña Hermanos told him:

“But the water you have asked for, Don Jose? The glass of water is on the table. Have you forgotten you were thirsty?”

He laughed loudly as he stood up and drank the glass.

“Indeed, I have forgotten,” he said.

And then the keepers looked at one another and smiled as they preceded Jose outside, each one patting him familiarly on the shoulder.

“Are they good bulls, the ones you are fighting today, big and fierce?”

“Wonderful animals,” Don Jose answered, “Miuras.”

“Miuras!” they all repeated aloud, with eyes wide open, saying to one another: “Do you hear? Miuras today in the bull-ring of Seville!”

And in the glances they exchanged with one another was all the lore of the bull-ring; for the bulls bred by Count Miura were reputed to be the fiercest of all, having killed many a great matador who had appeared with them in the ring. And it seemed to Don Jose that at that moment he heard from behind the latticed window overhead a deep gasp. His chest broadened, and his heart rose higher as he walked out of the gate, marching with the same rhythm he used coming out from the big door that led into the arena, while music played the matador tune.

III

An hour later Maria was sitting on the marble bench in the garden of the sultana, and had a vision of an immense arena divided in half by a strong shadow, with tiers of stone seats and balconies covered with shawls of a hundred gay colors, and the queen herself sitting in the king’s balcony. A black bull was in the middle of the arena, with head bent low, snorting and bellowing, pawing the sand under him. Don Jose with a red capa hiding the red-hilted spade underneath, was facing the brute.

A moment later her father and the other keepers were attracted to her by a terrific shriek. She was hiding her face in her hands and yelling: “The bull! The bull!” when they neared her.

“That child of yours does not seem to be well,” said a keeper to Don Hermanos after Maria had been led weeping to her home.

But Don Hermanos smiled. He knew what the trouble was. A great matador as a son-in-law was a pleasant prospect for his daughter.

Maria drank a glass of water which was given her by her mother, and seemed to have regained her composure immediately. She went to the mirror to fix her hair, and having looked at herself carefully, she proceeded to dress to go out. She asked her mother to accompany her. No self-respecting Sevillana would ever go out alone. Maria had till then, considering herself a child, always gone about alone. Her mother smiled as she answered:

“Give me time to get ready!”

It took the mother a full hour to get herself ready. On going out into the populated street, cool now because the sun was no longer shedding its straight rays, the two women heard the cry of the barefoot boys in rags selling papers. Don Jose had been wounded severely by the first bull he had fought.

“Quick, Mother!” Maria begged, and dragging the old woman by the hand she began to run in the direction of her old home in the Triana, where she was certain Don Jose would be brought to his mother.

But on arriving there they were told that the Gitanas had moved out from the “Casa” to a more comfortable home, now that Jose was earning so much money. And when the former neighbors heard about the accident that had happened, they left their cooking-pots, and the children left their play in the mud, and howling and running they followed the two women to the home of the matador.

Jose’s face was white from the loss of blood. He was lying stretched out on a white bed. A number of friends and the priest and a doctor crowded the room.

“Will he die?” Maria screamed, looking up at the physician.

The man shook his head and put a finger to his mouth.

“No noise, please.”

And then Jose opened his eyes and saw Maria; and his faint lips murmured her name.

Jose did get better; he had not been wounded in any vital part of his body. He was only weak because of the blood he had lost before they had succeeded in driving away the bull that had gored him. Daily, Maria and her mother would come to sit at his bedside and care for him. When the wounds in his upper thighs had healed, it was upon Maria’s shoulder that he first left the bed to sun himself on the balcony. And with that marvelous recuperating power of youth he was able before the summer to appear again in the ring.

Maria sat in a box with her mother watching the first appearance. And the cheering of the crowd as he bowed before the balcony of the queen was deafening. Maria, paler than usual, was not interested in the bull-fight as such. To her it was merely the man she loved who was now facing a formidable brute. It was her man that was in danger—in danger of that black bull, snorting and running wildly about the arena. She could not appreciate the cheers that came, round after round, as Don Jose with graceful fleetness avoided the charging animal by fooling him with the red capa that he held in his hand. She could not understand why he did not use the spade and kill the brute. To her mind every bull was the same that had wounded the man she loved.

The crowd cheered and yelled in appreciation of their idol’s dangerous play. Suddenly there was a great silence. The banderilleros had done their work and distanced themselves from the animal. The matador alone faced him now. He played and enraged the bull for a few minutes, then he poised himself with his spade for the final thrust. But when the bull made a movement, courage failed him, and he stepped aside. And the same crowd that had been cheering so wildly now began to hoot him. The other matadors sprang to his help and began to throw their red capas over the bull. Don Jose shook his head sorrowfully without looking up, and waving his quadrilla aside, he again posed himself before the bull, trying to get him to lower his head. There was silence again. Maria’s heart stood still. And while the crowd was hooting again the matador, who had side-stepped for a second time, her own heart was glad, for he was there yet and alive. Her mother and the mother of the matador were pale with anger and shame. What had happened to Jose? The bugle gave a warning to the matador that he must be quick about his business. His time was up. And this time the matador did not side-step. His thrust was sure and deep, and the crowd cheered wildly, although when the ring had been cleared, the afficianadoes were looking at one another and shaking their heads, as if saying, “The best days of the Gitana are over.” Never before in his short, but glorious, career had he been known to side-step a charging bull.

He did not do much better with the second animal. And it was only because they remembered how severely he had been wounded before that the crowd did not do the usual things on such occasions, throwing the hard cushions underneath them into the arena, and even empty bottles and stones. Even Jose’s mother looked coldly at her son when he returned home with her in the waiting carriage, for the papers were sure to report his lack of courage. Only Maria was happy. He had come out of the fight alive and he had killed the bulls.

The next few weeks took the matador out of the city to fight in other pueblos. It was understood that he was going to marry Maria as soon as he returned from the season’s activities. Left alone, Maria, now the acknowledged fiancée of Don Jose, again took possession of the Alcazar. But everything within it was now filled with Joses. Joses in silken garb. Joses in the center of bull-rings. Joses wounded, Joses side-stepping, and crowds upon tiers and tiers in a large circle. She tried to conjure again the old visions of sultanas and bayaderes dancing in the great halls and in the gardens. And when they did appear, Don Jose was somewhere about them. And she would harshly order her vision figures to disappear, for they all looked at him so longingly. And they were all so much more beautiful than she was.

She would wait trembling with fear the afternoons she knew he had appeared in the distant bull-rings for a telegram that he sent her at the end of every corrida. He gave no details, only telling her that all was well and that he loved her. But in reality things were not as well with him as they had been before. There was great doubt whether he would ever be engaged again to fight in the bull-ring after that season. There was great dissatisfaction with his work. He still gave them great thrills in playing with the bull, but courage generally failed him when he faced the animal with spade in hand. He could not forget that he had been wounded. And he played longer with the animals than he should have done to avoid as long as possible the last moment. And again and again the warning bugle had sounded, the papers reported. Don Hermanos was far from being satisfied with his future son-in-law. Yet all Maria cared was that Jose was alive and untouched by the brutal beasts.

She rejoiced to the fullest of her soul when he returned. Only Don Hermanos was not satisfied to see him walk about in street clothes instead of the matador uniform, like the others of his profession. Every day after sundown Jose would come to the Alcazar, and Maria would show him the great halls and the gardens and tell him the legends of the place. She had found again the Alcazar now that he was near her. Speaking to him, all the old charm of the palace had returned. She was not even jealous of the sultanas she now conjured from the ceramic walls and from behind the balconies overhead.

As the day of her wedding approached, Don Jose spoke to her.

“How will you ever be able to live within the poor walls of your home after having lived here amid such great beauties?”

Maria laughed and laughed. Don Jose intended to leave Seville and go elsewhere. He had saved quite a goodly amount of money. He had premonitions about his being killed in the ring if he should continue to fight next season. An old sorceress had told him so also. He had different plans. He thought sheep-raising upon the Saragoza Hills pleased him best. He owned there quite a good stretch of land. And there was an old adobe house on top of the hill. He thought it was better to live in seclusion for the next year or so than being hooted and reviled in the bull-ring. Maria was willing to follow him anywhere.

And he told her: “When my feelings change, I will return to the ring.”

“Which I hope you will never do!” Maria exclaimed.

She had no desire to see her husband glorified by the multitude after he had been gored to death in the ring.

IV

It was a great affair, the wedding of Don Jose with Maria del Alcazar. All the retired and active matadors of Seville came to the wedding in their bespangled clothes, for they understood what the populace refused to understand. They knew what premonitions were and how they acted on a matador in the ring. It was easy to cheer and easier to hoot, but bulls carried death on the tips of their horns.

A week later the two newly married were in the Saragoza adobe. It was not much better than the home in which their people had lived in the Triana. Still, Maria thought it was very beautiful. The bare mud walls she decorated with her eyes, which reflected all the beauties they had absorbed. And through them she projected her dreams, the delicate traceries and colorings, and the mosaic and the stalactite of the ceilings. And she was happy. For there were no working-men tearing down and repairing and touching with brutal hands what was about her. And from the top of the hill the olive groves and vineyards and the tall cypress trees that stretched below her were even more beautiful than the gardens in which she had roamed. And the serpentining, snaking river below, shimmering with the blue of the sky in the sunlight, was like the limpid water pools and bathing places of the Alcazar. Indeed, it was more the Alcazar than anything else. And it was hers. No working-men, no visitors, disturbed her.

Jose was busy building sheds for the sheep. And evenings his powerful arms were delicately wrapped about her. He appreciated her love and was flattered that she could be so happy in such poor surroundings. And he wondered what there was in him that she, the most beautiful woman in the world, should be able to stay with him in so desolate a place, away from all the things she had been accustomed to. In his eyes she was not a poor girl, the daughter of a keeper, that he had married. She was Maria del Alcazar, the one raised in surroundings so beautiful there was none the like of them in the world. Evenings, when the work was done, the two lovers would face each other, sitting outside their hut.

And one evening Don Jose said:

“There never happened a better thing to me than to have been gored by a bull.”

To which Maria quietly answered, seizing the hands of the man near her:

“And yet I hate bulls.”

But the courage did not return to Don Jose. Month succeeded month. And after the long winter was over, the first winter they had passed together, he was approached to appear again in the ring. Refusing, he wondered whether the courage would ever return to him again. He hung his head when the man tried to convince him by saying:

“You, who have received the applause of thousands and thousands while so young, should now live in the company of sheep and mules on the top of a hill! You who have received thousands of pesetas for one hour of work, and been glorified by the whole of Spain, should now work so hard with the hope of getting a pittance at the end of the year! And your wife, Don Jose. Don’t forget your wife.”

But Don Jose shook his head and answered:

“Not this year.”

And when the men who had come to engage him left his house, they said to each other: “Many a good matador has become better and more courageous to win the woman he loved, only to become a coward for fear of losing her.”

Maria was happy that he refused. She did not understand why every time these men returned Jose should be so sullen and dark. Oh, were they not happy there on top of the mountain? And were they not living in the most beautiful palace that man had ever built? If it was true the Alcazar had never been built, but had been conjured up by the wand of some great magician, an even greater magician had conjured the greater Alcazar she was living in now. She had always, she realized now, missed something when she had been living in the Alcazar of Seville. Now she knew what she had missed. There were only walls and ceilings. Even the phantoms she conjured were cold despite all the warm colors about them. But there on the Saragoza Hills she had realized and filled out her dream. Draperies, heavy silks came down, called by the magic of her love, and covered everything, and uncovered greater beauties on softer backgrounds.

But Jose walked about sullenly, muttering to himself:

“It was a bad day for me when that bull gored me. It was a bad day for me when that bull gored me.” He missed the applause, the cheering, the excitement. And yet he did not have the courage.

And one day, when he had returned from the village at the foot of the hill, instead of recalling as he had frequently done the beautiful days during which Maria had sat at his bedside, he spoke angrily to her, and she could recognize the smell of aguardiente, burning water, on his breath.

“It was because of you that I was gored by the bull! I was thinking of you instead of the beast before me! You are the cause of my misfortune!”

And suddenly, when she reëntered the hut, the walls appeared as they really were, dirty mud walls. The ceilings which she had enlarged and domed with her eyes, and beamed and wrought with mosaics, appeared to her as they really were, cracked, low, and ugly. The rickety bed which stood in the corner, which had been to her like the richest couch of the most beautiful sultana, was nothing but a squalid heap of rusty iron, rags, and mattresses. The low-burning lamp had lost its mystic quality. It was but an ill-smelling kerosene lamp. All the riches of the adobe were gone. It had been conjured by the magic wand of a sorcerer, and been dispelled by a few ugly words. And so she lay down and wept.

When she awoke in the morning, the squalor of her surroundings was even more appalling. The sheep, which had been so beautiful, were now ugly. And the mountain and the river and the olive groves and the vineyards were nothing but ugly, brown, crooked cripples scorching in the hot sun. It was worse than the Triana mud huts in which she had lived. And Jose himself, Jose himself, what a different man he was! An unwashed, unkempt, rag-clothed stranger, with a hard voice and an evil odor.

A few months later, another group of men came to induce Don Jose to appear again in the bull-ring. He assured them he would do so the following spring.

“But where is Doña Maria, his wife, of whose beauty we have heard so much? The woman we have seen could not have been she, for she looked so much older and anything but beautiful.” The men looked at one another outside.

Indeed, where was she?

For none of them realized that a single year could have changed a woman so much. She wandered about mute, listless. Her eyes were lusterless and her gaze vacant.

And he did get back his courage the following spring. And he again became the favorite of the people. There were pictures of him hanging in every store and every home from one end of Spain to the other. He was piling up great wealth and had furnished a beautiful apartment, more beautiful than he had ever expected to live in, with a profusion of silks and carpets and silver vases and copper urns. He thought Maria had been made unhappy by the poverty of her surroundings, the fool.

It was all in vain. He could not make it as beautiful as the Alcazar. It was squalid, poor, ugly, decrepit tinsel compared with the gold of the palace, and more so when compared with the gold of her dreams, which he had destroyed once forever.

When he had withdrawn from the ring rich and honored, she returned to her father’s home. And before she was thirty, when her father died, unable to leave the Alcazar, she sat outside its gates. Her face withered. The skin of her hands dried up like parchment. She still sits there, wrapped in rags, begging from the tourists.

But after sundown the Alcazar is hers.

FOOTNOTES: