Vagabond life in Mexico/The Convent of the Bernardines
CHAPTER III.
The Convent of the Bernardines.—The young Creole Lady.
Arrived at the terrace, we stood for some time in silent contemplation. At our feet lay the ancient city of the Aztecs, with its domes and spires innumerable glittering in the pale moonlight. Not far from us, the Cathedral threw its gigantic shadow and the profile of its towers on the Plaza Mayor. In the distance, the Parian[1] reared its black mass in the midst of spaces whitened by the moon, like a dark rock surrounded by foaming billows. Still farther off you recognized the elegant cupola of Santa Teresa, the fine domes of the convent of St. Francisco, the steeples of St. Augustin and the Bernardines, and behind this majestic crenulated mass of buildings, cupolas, and colored spires, you saw the country bathed in a white vapor, which, rising from the lakes, encircles the city like a luminous halo.
Don Tadeo was the first to break silence by asking me some questions about the business which had been intrusted to him. I eagerly replied, hoping that he would soon make me some revelations about himself, which could not fail to be interesting; but the licentiate had fallen into a profound reverie, and I was beginning to despair of success, when the merest accident came to my relief. This was the toll of a distant bell, which suddenly rose, like a mysterious wail, from amid the mournful silence. At the sound he shook his head, then put his hands over his face, which became gradually overspread with a deadly pallor. At last he took me by the hand, and, interrupting me in the midst of my explanation, cried, "Don't you hear that bell?"
"Yes," I replied. "And, if I am not deceived, it is the sound of the passing-bell in the convent of the Bernardines."
"In the convent of the Bernardines!" he repeated, in a strangely altered tone; "in the convent of the Bernardines, do you say?"
"Assuredly. I recognize the direction of the sound; I can not be wrong."
"Let us descend immediately, for the sound drives me mad."
"Why descend? Is the light of the moon not better than those smoky lamps in the hell we have just quitted?"
The licentiate made no reply for a long time. The bell, whose strokes became more and more distinct, exercised upon him a kind of influence quite inexplicable. I can not tell whether Don Tadeo remarked my surprise, but he probably relieved his bursting heart by taking my hand, and letting escape, in the midst of stifled sobbing, these strange words:
"You must listen to me. I never hear the peal of that bell without seeing, as in a bad dream, the saddest event in my life rise before my eyes. Nothing in me will more excite your astonishment when you are acquainted with the horrible occurrence of which that bell reminds me."
I made him aware, by signs, that I was ready to listen to him. This is the story he told me, with a coolness that I could hardly have expected, from the sad introduction with which it was prefaced.
"In the year 1825, that is, ten years ago, an attempt at assassination was made in the streets of Mexico. This is, unhappily, such an every-day affair in the capital of Mexico, that the public mind would not have been called to it had it not been accompanied by some strange circumstances. These were so strange, that, instead of being briefly narrated in the last column of the journals, as is commonly the case, it figured among the events, more or less important, which have the privilege of engaging the attention of the idle inhabitants of Mexico for more than a week. A singular mystery, in fact, hung over this attempt at murder. Early in the morning, when the Paseo of Bucareli is quite solitary, a hackney-coach was seen standing in a retired part of the promenade. The coachman had descended from his box, and was standing prudently aside, as if he guessed the meaning of this early drive. Was it a man or a woman whom this coach of providence (you know that is the name given to the hackney-coaches in Mexico) had driven to a love appointment? The blinds, carefully drawn down, left every thing to conjecture; but it transpired afterward that a young female of dazzling beauty was in it, who, prompted by female vanity, was richly adorned with jewels for this occasion. The Creoles, you know, have a strange fancy for appearing to be as rich as they are beautiful; however, although that was the case with this young lady, she was still more beautiful than rich. A few minutes passed, when a man enveloped in a large cloak approached the vehicle. The coach man opened the door of the carriage, and the stranger sprang in precipitately. A meeting of this kind was too much in the Mexican fashion to astonish the coach man, who stretched himself upon the grass under the poplars, and fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke the carriage was still in the same place, only the shadows of the poplars, instead of leaning to the west, as at the time when he fell asleep, were stretching toward the east, as much as to say that the sun had nearly set, and the evening was succeeding the morning. This is the time when the Paseo is most thronged with promenaders. The coachman was astonished at having slept so long; he ran to the carriage, called aloud, and, not receiving any answer, opened the door. A horrible spectacle met his eyes. Upon the cushions lay the young lady in a swoon, the cause of which was sufficiently explained by the blood with which the carriage was flooded. The blood flowed from a large wound, struck by the unerring hand of a skillful practitioner; and this wound, at its first appearance, seemed mortal. Of all the diamonds which sparkled on her neck and dangled from her ears, not one remained. The unhappy female had thus found an assassin instead of a lover, and theft was followed by an attempt at murder. The cries of the coachman were not long in drawing a crowd, among which was luckily a surgeon, who maintained that the lady was still alive. He got her conveyed to the nearest convent, which happened to be that of the Bernardines. The first duty of humanity fulfilled, justice commenced its task; but while the physicians were restoring her to health, the efforts of the ministers of justice were not crowned with a like success. The coachman was first arrested; but he was soon released, having proved his perfect innocence. A young Spaniard, whose attentions to the fair Creole had been very marked for a long time, was then apprehended. He learned at one and the same time both the infidelity and death of her whom he wished to become his wife. This was a terrible stroke." Here Don Tadeo's voice evidently broke, and he seemed as if he had lost his senses. "At the end of a year," continued the licentiate, "the Spaniard was released for want of proof; but he left the prison ruined by law expenses, and with a heart dead to all his former dear illusions. He then learned that she who had deceived him, and whom he had bewailed as dead, was still alive, but that she had renounced the world, and taken the veil in that convent to which she had been carried after the unhappy incident in the Paseo. He never attempted to see her; but all his efforts, all his thoughts were directed to one sole end vengeance! Mexican justice had been unable to discover the assassin. He set on foot inquiries himself, and succeeded, although the judges declared that success was impossible."
The licentiate here paused; the bell was still tolling, and I began to undestand the emotions these melancholy sounds awoke in his bosom.
"This Spaniard, you have guessed already, I dare say, was myself. A letter had been found on the young Creole's person, inviting her to that private interview which had nearly terminated in her death. This was the only clew I had to guide me in the intricate labyrinth where Mexican justice had been at fault. Since then commenced a dark and uneasy period of my life, which death can alone put an end to. I condescended to live among thieves and murderers in the hope of unraveling, by their revelations, that secret which entirely absorbed me. Under color of exercising my profession, I mixed myself up in all those cases which would give me an opportunity of interrogating malefactors, and of penetrating into their haunts and places of amusement. Since then, not a single crime has been committed in Mexico whose perpetrator I could not hand over to justice. The most secret societies of criminals are well known to me in all their most intimate workings. You may perhaps have heard of that band of ensebados who for a whole year kept the Mexican capital in continual alarm. The ensebados were men who, "after besmearing their naked bodies with grease or oil, threw themselves upon the benighted pedestrian and robbed him, and in the event of resistance, plunged a dagger into his body. Only one of the bandits, as slippery as an eel, escaped from the soldiers who had managed to hunt down all the rest. Well, he was their chief. I know him; and even now I could put my hand on him, if I chose. This is not the only singular discovery I made. I could mention a thousand. Thanks to the perilous and watchful life I have led, I acquired an experience which soon made me of incalculable benefit to the miserable cutthroats with whose singular antecedents I had thus become acquainted. Often, for days together, has my life been in danger, and more than one wretch has tried to stab me as a spy; but the services which my knowledge of the law rendered to many of the rest proved my protection. Now, I am not a little proud of the influence which I exercise over the most redoubtable robbers in Mexico, and you see that I have under my orders an army willing to assist honest people who stand in need of my assistance."
"Mine is a case in point," I replied, "and I am glad that I fell in with you; but you have not informed me whether you were successful in finding the assassin of the Paseo of Bucareli."
"I was completely successful. I was lucky enough to fall in with the public scribe who had been employed to write those fatal lines which had enticed my mistress to the Paseo. The evangelist knew the wretch, and he set me on his track. I found him out. I had but to denounce him, and justice would have pounced upon him; but this would have defeated the object to which I had devoted my life. I did not betray him, therefore. Many years had rolled away since the attempt; and, during that time, on account of my intercourse with such characters, I had learned more to pity than hate them. Nay, I often employ them to do certain pieces of business for me, which Mexican justice gives up as impossible. The assassin is still a useful instrument for me; one, too, that I can crush at a word, but whom I prefer employing in the service of my numerous clients."
Another pause. The toll of the bell was still heard. "I never saw my beloved again, who is now in a convent," continued Don Tadeo; "but I learned from a sure quarter that she has been long in a deep consumption. You will now understand why the bell-peal of the Bernardines made me shudder."
I was trying to persuade Don Tadeo to descend, that he might no longer hear the dismal toll of the passing bell, when the trap-door of the azotea creaked lightly on its hinges, and the squint-eyed Mexican, called Navaja, glided rather than walked toward us. He was pale with fright, and looked uneasily behind him.
"He is the devil in person!" cried he, leaning to take breath against the railing of the azotea.
"Whom do you mean?" asked the licentiate. "The American. He is just about finishing his third bottle of refino, and is shouting in a loud voice what he calls his war-song. He is a ferocious Indian, with a white man's skin. He is recounting all the hair he has raised, all the murders he has committed. And, would you believe it, he claims my scalp as an addition to his treasures. I tell you again, he is a devil."
"What a saint you have become all at once!" said the licentiate, who again began to fling his sarcasms at the Mexican. "How long is it since you began to hate the smell of blood?"
The gayety of Don Tadeo was terrible to behold. This question of the licentiate's raised a hatred in his mind, fierce and implacable as the tiger's. Don Tadeo did not seem to take any notice of the impression he was producing, but, on the contrary, to delight in irritating the wretch, who foamed with anger under his cold, biting sarcasm. An allusion to the criminal attempt on the Paseo suddenly enlightened me as to this keen, bitter irony. Before me stood the man on whom the licentiate could take vengeance if he chose, at whose mercy he lived, and who had treacherously attempted the life of the unhappy female for whom the passing-bell was perhaps tolling at this very moment. "Does the peal of the Bernardines remind you of nothing?" said Don Tadeo; but this last sally deprived the Mexican of all patience, and, instead of replying, he bounded forward to snatch the licentiate's rapier, but with a vigorous thrust of the arm he was hurled violently to the ground.
"Come, now," cried the licentiate, "you forget the crime you committed. I forgive you, miscreant; but out of this, instantly." The Mexican, stunned and stupefied, did not wait for a repetition of the order, but shuffled off precipitately. I could not help complimenting Don Tadeo on his coolness and courage. "What of that?" he said, with a melancholy smile. "You know the university in which I took my degree. I value my life only at its true worth. Let us go below. I understand your case thoroughly; and, before many days are passed, I hope to have some good news for you."
We went down, and soon reached the great square upon which the Callejon del Arco opens. There we separated, the licentiate repairing to his abode, and I to mine, by the street Monterilla. "We shall meet again soon," said Don Tadeo to me on bidding me good-night. "I hope so," I replied, although I did not partake so heartily in that belief as did the intrepid lawyer. I could not help comparing Don Tadeo in my own mind with those wild-beast tamers, who often astonish us by their deeds of courage and address, but whose least false step may transform them from masters to victims.
- ↑ An old bazar, not unlike the Temple-market in Paris.