FullReads

“Come,” he said; “that is for the Christmas Mass. I will tell you as we go.”

The little inn was lively enough as we emerged from the bower and crossed the court-yard towards the road. The woman who had prepared my supper came forth arrayed in a capulet of white and scarlet, and two younger girls who accompanied her wore veils and long, black robes which fell about their forms like Oriental garments. Two or three men, attendants and hostlers of the place, were also about to start, trigged out in queer little capes and high-crowned hats. All this fine apparel, mine host informed me, was peculiar to Christmas, and I soon found the highway full of peasants in similar garb.

As we got off, Jose Rosado resumed his story, which was brief enough to beguile us just to the church-door.

“You ask me, senor, who lives in the castle now? The Donna Isabella is alone there, now, the only survivor of the noble race, except–except senor,” (he laid a peculiar emphasis on the word,) “except a wilful son, whom she has disowned and driven from her house. He is a handsome lad, and married, here in Alcala, the beauty of the town, in spite of his mother’s wounded pride. It was a love-match of stolen wooing and secret wedding,–but, ha! ha! we saw it all, knew it all, before even they did themselves. Many an evening have I met them on these roads, billing and cooing like the doves on La Fonda’s eaves. They were made by nature for each other, though, and even the rage of the proud Donna Isabella could never part them.”

“And do they still live in the town?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Jose; “over there in the white house where the olive trees are, at the bottom of the long hill.”

I looked in the direction whither he pointed, but I could see little in the dim moonlight save a white wall amid dense shadows.

“And is Donna Isabella a very old lady?” I asked, because very old ladies are often charged with peculiar severity to very young ones.

“No, no, no,” said Jose Rosado, with a quick turn of the head to each no. “She’s a widow lady of middle age; very proud and very handsome. You shall see her presently, for she has consented to take part in the Christmas play at the church.”

As I had come a long journey to see this same Christmas play, my expectation was doubly aroused as we approached the old edifice, whose open belfry and rows of cloisters stood before us at the top of the hill we were ascending.

As we entered, the bells stopped ringing, for it was precisely midnight, and the priest at the altar began to say the Christmas Masses. When he had reached the Gospel, he was interrupted by the appearance of a matron, dressed all in white, who stood at the end of the nave. She was clad like the Madonna, and was accompanied by Joseph, who wore the garb of a mountaineer, with a hatchet in his hand. An officious little officer with a halberd opened the way through the crowd before these personages, and they came solemnly up the aisle towards the chancel, which had been arrayed to represent Bethlehem, the Madonna reciting, as she moved forward, a plaintive song about her homelessness. Joseph replied cheeringly, and led her under a roof of leaves in the sanctuary, formed in the manner of a stable, in which we could see the manger against the wall. Here she took rest from her journey, while a little crib, wherein lay the Bambino–or waxen image of the Babe–all adorned with ribbons and laces, was brought from the sacristy and placed in the straw at her feet.

As the Madonna passed us, Jose Rosado nudged me, and whispered audibly enough to make the crowd about us turn and stare,–

“Hist! here’s the Donna Isabella, senor! She looks like a saint to-night!”