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White storks hang their nests on the tower-vane, martins build under the eaves, swallows in the granite canopies, and the owls choose for their haunt lofty holes left by fallen stones, whence on cloudy nights they affright superstitious old women and timid children with the phosphoric gleam of their round eyes and their shrill, uncanny hoots.

Only all these changes of fortune, only all these special circumstances could have resulted in a building so individual, so full of contrasts, of poetry and of memories as the one which on that afternoon presented itself to my view and which to-day I have essayed, albeit in vain, to describe by words.

I had drawn it in part on one of the leaves of my sketchbook. The sun was scarcely gilding the highest spires of the city, the evening breeze was beginning to caress my brow, when rapt in the ideas that suddenly had assailed me on contemplating the silent remains of other eras more poetic than the material age in which we live, suffocating in its utter prose, I let my pencil slip from my fingers and gave over the drawing, leaning against the wall at my back and yielding myself up completely to the visions of imagination. Of what was I thinking? I do not know that I can tell. I clearly saw epoch succeeding epoch, walls falling and other walls rising in their stead. I saw men or, rather, women giving place to other women, and the first and those who came after changing into dust and flying like dust upon the air, a puff of wind bearing away beauty,-beauty which had been wont to call forth secret sighs, to engender passions, to be the source of ecstasies; then-what know I?-all confused of thought, I saw many things jumbled together,-boudoirs of cunning work, with clouds of perfume and beds of flowers, strait and dreary cells with prayer-stool and crucifix, at the foot of the crucifix an open book, and upon the book a skull; stern and stately halls, hung with tapestries and adorned with

trophies of war; and many women passing and still repassing before my gaze, tall nuns pale and thin, brown concubines with reddest lips and blackest eyes; great dames of faultless profile, high bearing and majestic gait.

All these things I saw; and many more of those which, though visioned, cannot be remembered; of those so immaterial that it is impossible to confine them in the narrow compass of a word,-when suddenly I gave a bound upon my seat and, passing my hand over my eyes to convince myself that I was not still dreaming, leaping up as if moved by a nerve-spring, I fastened my gaze on one of the lofty turrets of the convent. I had seen-there is no room for doubt -perfectly had I seen a hand of transcendent whiteness, which, reaching out from one of the apertures of those turrets mortared like chess-boards, had waved several times as if greeting me with a mute and loving sign. And it was I whom it greeted; there was no possibility of a mistake; I was alone, utterly alone in the square.

In vain I waited till night, nailed to that spot and without removing my eyes for an instant from the turret; fruitlessly I often returned to take up my watch again on the dark stone which had served me for seat that afternoon when I saw appear the mysterious hand, already the object of my dreams by night and wildest fantasies by day. I beheld it

nevermore.

And finally came the hour when I must depart from Toledo, leaving there, as a useless and ridiculous burden, all the illusions which in its bosom had been raised in my mind. I turned with a sigh to put my papers together in my portfolio; but before securing them there, I wrote another date, the second, the one which I know as the Date of the Hand. I wrote it, I noticed for a moment the earlier, that of the Window, and could not but smile at my own folly.

As

III.

From the time of the strange occurrence which I have just related until my return to Toledo, there elapsed about a year, during which the memory of that afternoon was still present to my imagination, at first constantly and in full detail, then less often, and at last so vaguely that I even came to believe sometimes that I had been the sport of an illusive dream.

Nevertheless, scarcely had I arrived at the city which some with good reason call the Spanish Rome than this recollection beset me anew and under its spell I set forth in absent-minded fashion to roam the streets, without determined direction, with no preconceived purpose of making my way to any special point.

The day was gloomy with that gloom which invades all that one hears and sees and feels. The sky was the color of lead, and under its melancholy shadow the houses seemed older, quainter and duskier than ever. The wind moaned along the tortuous, narrow streets, bearing upon its gusts, like the lost notes of a mysterious symphony, unintelligible words, the peal of bells, and echoes of heavy, far-off blows. The damp, chill air froze the soul with its icy breath.

I wandered for several hours through the most remote and deserted parts of the city, rapt in a thousand confused imaginings; and, contrary to my custom, with a gaze all vague and lost in space, nor could my attention be aroused by any playful detail of architecture, by any monument of an unknown style, by any marvellous and hidden work of sculpture, by any one, in short, of those rare features for whose minute examination I had been wont to pause at every step, at times when only artistic and antiquarian interests held sway in my mind.

The sky was continually growing darker; the wind was blowing more strongly and more boisterously; and a fine

sleet had begun to fall, very keen and penetrating, when unwittingly, for I was still ignorant of the way-and as if borne thither by an impulse which I could not resist, an impulse whose occult force had brought me to the spot whither my thoughts were tending, I found myself in the lonely square which my readers already know.

On finding myself in that place I sprang to clear consciousness from out the depths of that lethargy in which I had been sunken, as if awakened from profound slumber by a violent shock.

I looked about me. All was as I described it-nay, it was more dreary. I know not whether this gloom was due to the darkness of the sky, the lack of verdure, or the state of my own spirit, but the truth is that between the feeling with which I first contemplated that spot and this later impression there was all the distance which lies between poetic melancholy and personal bitterness.

For some moments I stood gazing at the sombre convent, now more sombre than ever to my eyes, and I was already on the point of withdrawing when my ears were wounded by the sound of a bell, a bell of broken, husky voice, which was tolling slowly, while in vivid contrast it was accompanied by something like a little clapper-bell which suddenly began to revolve with the rapidity of a ringing so sharp and so incessant that it seemed to have been seized by an attack of vertigo.

Nothing was ever stranger than that edifice, whose black silhouette was outlined against the sky like that of a cliff bristling with thousands of freakish points, speaking with tongues of bronze through bells that seemed moved by the touch of invisible powers, the one weeping with smothered sobs, the other laughing with shrill, wild outcry, like the laughter of a madwoman.

At intervals and confused with the bewildering clamor of

the bells, I seemed to hear, too, something like the indistinct notes of an organ and the words of a sacred, solemn chant.

I changed my intention; and instead of departing I approached the door of the church and asked one of the ragged beggars squatted on the stone steps:

"What is going on here?"

"A taking of the veil," the mendicant answered, interrupting the prayer which he was muttering between his teeth to resume it later, although not until he had kissed the bit of copper that I dropped into his hand as I put my question.

I had never been present at that ceremony, nor had I ever seen the interior of the convent church. Both considerations impelled me to enter.

The church was high and dark; its aisles were defined by two rows of pillars made up of slender columns gathered into sheaves and resting on broad octagonal bases, while from their rich crowning of capitals sprang the vaulting of the strong ogee arches. The High Altar was placed at the further end under a cupola of Renaissance style decorated with great shield-bearing angels, griffins, a profusion of foliage on the finials, cornices with gilded moldings and rosettes, and odd, elaborate frescoes. Bordering the aisles might be seen a countless number of dusky chapels, in whose recesses were burning a few lamps like stars lost in a cloudy sky. Chapels there were of Arab architecture, Gothic, rococo; some enclosed by magnificent iron gratings; some by humble wooden rails; some submerged in shadow with an ancient marble tomb before the altar; some brightly lighted, with an image clad in tinsel and surrounded by votive offerings of silver and wax, together with little bows of gay-colored ribbon.

The fantastic light which illuminated all the church, whose structural confusion and artistic disorder were entirely in keeping with the rest of the convent, tended to enhance its

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