by Jan Potocki
The tinkling of the mule bells woke me early next morning, and I was one of the first to get up. I forgot all about Romati and his princess, and thought only of the pleasure of continuing on our journey, which turned out indeed to be very agreeable; we were not too incommoded by the sun, which was to some degree veiled by clouds, and the muleteers decided to travel the whole day without a break, only stopping at the watering place known as Dos Leones, at the junction of the roads to Segovia and to Madrid. Here there is plenty of shade, and the two lions from which water gushes into the marble trough add considerably to the beauty of the place.
It was midday when we got there, and we had hardly arrived before we saw other travellers approaching on the Segovia road. Riding on the lead mule was a girl who looked about my age, although in fact she was a little older, and the zagal who was leading the mule was also young; he was a handsome seventeen-year-old lad who was well turned-out, even though only wearing what muleteers ordinarily wear. Behind him came a middle-aged lady, who could have been taken for my Aunt Dalanosa, not because she physically resembled her, but because she had precisely the same manner, and in particular the same kindly expression that showed in every feature in just the same way. She was followed in turn by a number of servants.
As we had reached the spot first, we invited the newcomers to partake of the meal which was being laid out under the trees. They accepted, but in a very morose way; the girl seemed especially sad. From time to time she cast tender glances at the young muleteer, who was very assiduous in serving her. The middle-aged lady looked at them with compassion; there were tears in her eyes. I noticed their general air of sadness, and would have liked to have said something to console them, but not knowing how to go about it, I concentrated on my meal.
We set off again; my aunt rode alongside the other lady, and I caught up with the girl. I clearly saw the young zagal touch her hand or her foot as he pretended to adjust her saddle; once he even kissed her foot.
After two hours on the road we arrived at Olmedo, where it was intended we should spend the night. My aunt had chairs placed at the front door of the inn, where she sat down with the other lady. Shortly after she told me to order some chocolate. I went into the inn in pursuit of our servants, and found myself in a room where I could see the young man and the girl holding each other tight and weeping piteously. It was heart-rending to see; I threw my arms round the neck of the young man, and cried so much that I could scarcely breathe. While this was going on, the two ladies had come in, and my aunt, herself very moved, led me out of the room and asked me why I was crying. As I didn’t know the cause of all this weeping, I was unable to tell her. Once she knew that I had been crying without knowing why, she could not help smiling. Meanwhile, the other lady had shut herself in the room with the girl, and we could hear them sobbing; they did not come out at supper time.
The meal was neither merry nor long.
When the dishes had been cleared away, my aunt turned to the older lady and said, ‘Señora, heaven forbid that I should think ill of my neighbour, and especially not of you, for you seem to me to be a kind and Christian person. But, well, I have had the honour to eat with you, and it will certainly be an honour to do so whenever the occasion presents itself; yet here’s my nephew, who saw this young lady embracing this admittedly good-looking muleteer; there’s nothing to reproach him for on that score. And of course I have no right… but, having had the honour to eat with you… and since the journey to Burgos is still before us…’
At this point my aunt became so embarrassed that she would never have been able to finish her sentence, but the other lady broke in at just the right moment. ‘You are quite right, Señora,’ she said, ‘after what you have seen, you are wholly justified in inquiring why I am so tolerant. I have a thousand reasons not to tell you, but I can see that it is my duty to do so.’
The good lady then drew out her handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and spoke as follows:
MARIA DE TORRES’S STORY
I am the daughter of Don Emanuel de Noruña, the oidor of the court of Segovia. I was married at the age of eighteen years to Don Enrique de Torres, a colonel who had retired from active service. My mother had died many years before. We lost my father two months after our marriage, and took into our household my younger sister, Elvira de Noruña, who, although not yet fourteen years old, was already famed for her beauty. My father left practically nothing; as for my husband, he was quite well off, but we were obliged for family reasons to pay the pensions of five knights of Malta and the dowries of six nuns who were related to us, so that our income was only sufficient to provide us with the bare necessities. But a pension which my husband had been granted by the court made our lives somewhat easier.
At that time there were a good number of noble houses in Segovia which were no better off than we were; drawn together by this common interest, they had introduced a method of saving money. They rarely visited each other; ladies showed themselves at their windows, and gentlemen remained in the street below. There was a great deal of playing of the guitar, and even more amorous sighing, neither of which cost a penny. Manufacturers of vicuña cloth lived in luxury; we could not emulate them, so we took our revenge by despising and ridiculing them.
As my sister grew older, the street below grew more and more congested with guitars. Some sighed while others strummed, or else they strummed and sighed at the same time. The other beauties of the town were in torments of jealousy, but the object of all these attentions took no notice of them. My sister almost never showed herself; so as not to be impolite, I remained at the window and spoke a few obliging words to everyone. This courtesy was a duty which I could not have foregone, but when the last strummer had departed, I took indescribable pleasure in closing the window. My husband and sister were waiting for me in the dining room, where we partook of a frugal supper which we spiced with endless jokes at the expense of the suitors. Everyone was ridiculed in turn, and I am sure that if they had been listening behind the door, not one would have come back. These conversations were hardly charitable, but we took such pleasure in them that we continued them sometimes long into the night.
One evening, as we were talking about our favourite subject, Elvira became more serious and said to me, ‘Have you noticed, sister, that when all the strummers have left the street and the light has gone from our drawing room, one can still hear one or two seguidillas which are sung and accompanied as though by a professional player rather than an amateur?’
My husband confirmed that it was true, and that he had noticed the same thing. I replied in similar terms, and we teased my sister about her new suitor. But we thought that she responded less well to these jokes than was usual.
The next day, after having bid farewell to the strummers and closed the window, I put the light out and stayed in the room. I could soon hear the voice of which my sister had spoken. At first there was a very elaborate prelude, and then a couplet was sung about the pleasures of secrecy, followed by one on love that is shy; I heard nothing after that. As I left the drawing room, I saw that my sister had been behind the door, listening. I did not reveal that I had seen her, but I noticed that she seemed preoccupied and abstracted.
The mysterious singer carried on with his serenades, and we grew so used to them that we would wait to hear them before going to supper.
Elvira was made curious by this persistent mystery, but her heart was not touched by it. Meanwhile Segovia witnessed the arrival of a new personage, causing heads to turn and fortunes to topple. It was the Conde de Rovellas, an exile from the court and therefore a man of importance in the eyes of provincials.
Rovellas had been born in Vera Cruz. His Mexican mother had brought an immense fortune to his family, and as Americans were at that time well looked-upon at court, he crossed the ocean to acquire the rank of grandee. As you may well imagine, he was bound to have but little knowledge of the manners of the Old World, having been born in the New. But he lived in great luxury, and even the king deigned t
o be amused by his naïve behaviour. However, as it nearly all stemmed from the high opinion he had of himself, he became in the end an object of mockery.
It was at that time the practice among the young gentlemen of the court to choose a lady to whom to dedicate their thoughts. They would wear her colours, and on certain occasions, as for example at the parejos, which are a kind of joust, they would sport a symbol representing her.
Rovellas, who was very arrogant, wore the symbol of the Princess of the Asturias. The king found this to be a very amusing gesture, but the princess found it offensive; so an alguazil de corte arrested the count in his own house and escorted him to the tower of Segovia. He spent a week there, and then was confined to the town itself. The reason for this exile was hardly very honourable, but it was in the nature of the count to boast about everything; so he took to speaking of his ‘disgrace’ and to insinuating that the princess was secretly in league with him.
Indeed, Rovellas was possessed of every sort of vanity. He thought that he knew about everything and that he would succeed in everything he undertook. His greatest pretensions were reserved, however, for bullfighting, singing and dancing.
His fellow men were not impolite enough to cast doubt on the latter two talents, but the bulls were less forbearing. None the less, the count, with the help of his picadors, thought himself invincible.
Our houses, as I told you, were not open to callers, except for the first visit, to which we were always at home. As my husband was distinguished by birth and military career, Rovellas felt it incumbent upon him to begin his visits at our house. I received him on my dais; he remained below, as it is the custom of our province to keep a considerable distance between us women and the men who call upon us.
Rovellas spoke fluently and at great length. As he was holding forth, my sister came in and sat down beside me. The count was so struck by her beauty that he was turned to stone. He stammered a few words which made little sense, and then asked her what her favourite colour was. She replied that she did not have one.
‘Señora,’ said the count, ‘since you show such indifference on the subject, it befits me to display only a colour consistent with such melancholy; brown shall henceforth be my colour.’
My sister was not used to such compliments and did not know how to respond. Rovellas rose and took his leave. That very evening we learnt that he had done nothing but speak of Elvira’s beauty during all the visits he had made, and the following day we found out that he had ordered forty brown liveries, embroidered in gold and black.
And from that evening on we no more heard the singing that had so moved us.
Having found out that it was not the custom of the noble houses of Segovia to receive regularly, Rovellas resigned himself to spending all his evenings under our windows in the company of the other gentlemen who did us the same honour. As he was not a grandee of Spain, and the other young noblemen were of Castilian origin, they thought themselves his equal and treated him accordingly. But gradually wealth reasserted its real power; all the guitars fell silent when confronted with his, and just as he dominated conversations, so did he the music-making under our windows.
But this pre-eminence did not satisfy Rovellas. He was desperate to fight bulls with us there to see him, and to dance with my sister. So he told us, not without pomposity, that he had had a hundred bulls brought from Guadarrama to Segovia, and that he was going to have a public square a hundred paces from the bullring floored over, where the nights following the bullfights would be spent dancing. This announcement, although brief, had a great effect in Segovia: the effect of turning heads and, if not toppling fortunes, at least causing great inroads to be made into them.
No sooner had the news of the bullfight got out than young gentlemen were to be seen running about like madmen, adopting the postures associated with this sort of fighting, and ordering the traditional golden costumes and scarlet cloaks. I do not need to tell you what the women got up to. Of course, they tried on the whole of their wardrobe of dresses and wigs; but they also summoned tailors and milliners, and their orders, as yet unpaid-for, added to the general prosperity.
The day after this celebrated announcement, Rovellas appeared beneath our windows at the usual time and told us that he had summoned twenty-five confectioners of sweets and lemonade, on whose talents he invited us to comment. And at that very moment, our street was filled with servants in brown and gold livery carrying refreshments on gold-plated platters.
The next day the same thing happened, and my husband quite rightly took offence. It did not seem honourable to him that our house should become a place of public assembly. He was kind enough to consult me on the subject. As always, I was of his opinion, and we decided to retire to the little village of Villaca, where we had a house and estate. We found a further great advantage in doing this: that of saving money. Thanks to this arrangement, we were able to miss some of Rovellas’s bullfights and balls, which saved us the cost of as many new dresses. However, since the house at Villaca needed some restoration, we had to delay our departure for three weeks. As soon as our plan was announced, Rovellas made known how sad it had made him, and how passionate were the feelings which my sister had inspired in him. As for Elvira herself, she seemed to me to have forgotten the singer who had so moved us each evening; but for all that, Rovellas’s attentions left her completely unmoved.
I should already have told you that at this time my son was two years old, and this son is none other than the little muleteer whom you have seen with us. The child, whom we called Lonzeto, was our pride and joy. Elvira loved him almost as much as I did, and I can assure you that he was our only consolation when we had wearied of the inanities going on below our windows. No sooner had we decided to go to Villaca than Lonzeto caught smallpox. You can imagine our grief. We passed our days and nights caring for him, and during this time the singer who had so moved us began again to sing. Elvira would blush as soon as the prelude began, but thereafter gave all her attention to Lonzeto. Once he had recovered we opened our window again to the suitors below, and the mysterious singer fell silent again.
Once we had again opened the window, Rovellas did not fail to reappear. He told us that we were the only reason for the bullfight’s postponement, and he asked us to suggest a date for it. We replied to this courtesy as we were bound to, and so at last the date for this famous event was fixed for the following Sunday, which came only too soon for the unfortunate Rovellas.
I shall not describe the spectacle to you; to have seen one, is to have seen a thousand of them. Of course, you are aware that gentlemen do not attack the bull as do those of lower rank; they begin on horseback with a rejon, or lance. Once they have struck the first blow, they have to receive one in turn; but as their horses are trained in this exercise, it is just a glancing blow on their hindquarters. The nobleman must then dismount and continue the fight sword in hand. For this to turn out well, it is necessary to have toros francos, or bulls with trustworthy natures who are not devious. But the count’s picadors had made the mistake of bringing him a marrajo1 bull, which had been kept for other purposes. The connoisseurs noticed the error that had been made, but Rovellas was already in the arena and there was no means of retreating. He seemed not to be aware of the risk he was running. He paraded around the animal and struck it in the right shoulder with his lance, with his arm extended and his whole body leaning forward between the horns of his adversary, as the rules of the art dictate.
The wounded bull seemed to flee in the direction of the gate, but suddenly turned round, charged Rovellas and tossed him with such violence that the horse fell beyond the fenced enclosure and Rovellas inside it. After that, the bull turned on him, caught him up with its horn by the collar of his cloak, swung him round in the air and then threw him to the other side of the arena. Having lost sight of its victim, the animal looked for him everywhere, and having eventually spotted him, glared at him with rising anger, pawing the ground and swishing its tail furiously. At that very moment, a y
oung man leapt over the fence, seized hold of Rovellas’s sword and scarlet cloak and set himself before the bull. The crafty animal tried a number of feints, but could not disconcert its unknown adversary. At last, it charged him with its horns low to the ground, impaled itself on his sword and fell stone dead at his feet. At that, the victor threw the sword and the cloak over the bull, looked in the direction of our box, bowed to us, leaped back over the fence and was lost in the crowd. Elvira clasped my hand and said, ‘I am sure that he is our mysterious singer.’
As the gypsy chief reached this point in his story, one of his henchmen came across to speak to him. He asked us to allow him to postpone to the next day the rest of the story, and disappeared to see to the needs of his little realm.
‘I am very put out by this interruption,’ said Rebecca. ‘Our chief has left the Conde de Rovellas in a very sorry state, and if he has to remain in the arena until tomorrow, help will come too late for him.’
‘Don’t be upset,’ I replied. ‘You may be sure that rich men never are left abandoned, and you can trust his picadors to do what is necessary.’
‘Of course you are right,’ said the Jewess. ‘So it’s not that which is upsetting me; what I want to know is the name of the slayer of the bull, and whether he is the same as the mysterious singer.’
‘But Señora,’ I said, ‘I thought that nothing was hidden from you.’
‘Alphonse,’ she retorted, ‘I forbid you to speak to me about the occult sciences; from now on, I only want to know what I am told, and I want no other art than that of making the man I shall love happy.’
