Vagabond Life in Mexico

by Gabriel Ferry

"My Latin won't drive away the spectre you talk of; it will rather attract it. God grant it may not appear! Be assured this is no freak of the imagination. The phantom seen by Señor Don Blas is a reality. It is my superior, the Reverend Father Epigmenio, who comes here every year, at the return of the Holy Week, to fulfill a penitential vow imposed on him for some sins of his youth. If he recognize me, how can I justify my present disguise and foolish excursion?"

The Franciscan's reply set us completely at our ease, and we sympathized very little in his anxiety. Wishing, however, to have no meeting between the two, we resolved to light our fire in a cell in a retired part of the convent, and to stretch ourselves on our wet cloaks round it. The student, the officer, and the hidalgo were soon sound asleep; the monk and I remained awake. Fray Serapio, on the watch to catch the slightest noise, trembled all over at the thought of being surprised by his superior, while my mind was filled with the story of Fray Epigmenio, so unfortunately interrupted. Seeing the Franciscan was not inclined to sleep, I pressed him to finish it. My companion, who could not shut an eye, was overjoyed at finding this means of whiling away the time. He consented with a very good grace, and crept more closely to the fire.

"I left," said he, "Fray Epigmenio at the moment when chance had delivered to his care a female in a swoon. His first impulse was to run away; his second was to remain, and he remained. He ceased even to shout for the wounded horseman, whose return he did not now particularly desire; and when the young lady, coming out of her faint, opened her languid eyes, the reverend father lost his senses entirely. If at this moment the stranger had appeared, the monk would have strangled him, for you have doubtless guessed by this time that the stranger in black was no other than the devil!"

To this unexpected assertion my only reply was a shake of the head. Fray Serapio, believing I agreed with him, continued:

"Fray Epigmenio yielded to temptation. He fell deeply, madly in love. For a time his vows were forgotten, but the prickings of conscience at last aroused him, and he resolved to confess his fault. He was taken before the tribunal of the Inquisition.[16] Till the final judgment was pronounced, they were both kept in confinement, the monk in his cell, the female in a dungeon. Some weeks passed in miserable anticipation. One evening, the cell of Fray Epigmenio was the theatre of a scene, in which the intervention of the devil was as clearly seen as in the meeting in the forest. Kneeling before his crucifix, the monk was asking from God that peace which his soul had lost. All at once he was startled by a footfall in his cell. A man stood before him, who regarded him with a stern, watchful eye. This man was no other than the stranger who had appeared to the recluse a month before in the wood; his dress was the same, and he appeared still paler than on the night in which the monk had found him bathed in blood. Fray Epigmenio stepped back, but the stranger did not stir. The formula of exorcism, hastily stammered out, had no effect upon him. The monk then called for help, but it was too late. When they entered the cell the stranger had disappeared. Epigmenio, bleeding from a dagger thrust, lay in a swoon before his folding-stool, and you could see the impress of the villain's bloody fingers. Time has not effaced these marks; they are still there."

"I can guess the conclusion of your story," said I to Fray Serapio; "the female was condemned as a sorceress, and the monk was acquitted."

"The female," said Serapio, "confessed on the rack that she had been in league with the devil, and was condemned to expiate the crime by a public act; but she did not undergo that punishment. Her keepers found her one morning lying dead on the floor of her dungeon, strangled with the beautiful black tresses which had proved so fatal to Fray Epigmenio. As for the monk, his wound was slight; it soon healed. Condemned to five years menial servitude in the convent of St. Francis, he was made the convent gardener. Almost at the same period the Inquisition ceased to exist, and the convent of the Desierto was abandoned as unhealthy. The visit which Fray Epigmenio makes at the same time every year to this ruined building is the only memorial of this event."

Fray Serapio paused. I was weary for want of sleep; he seemed also ready to drop with fatigue, and I forbore troubling him with any remarks on the story I had just heard. I had already lain down by the side of my companions, who were all fast asleep. Suddenly the Franciscan shook me by the arm, and invited me precipitately to follow him. I rose and accompanied him to a window which commanded a view of the inner courts of the convent, which were still bathed in the silvery light of the moon. The monk, whose stern and forbidding countenance had awakened my attention in the garden of St. Francis, was at this moment traversing one of the courts. We remarked that his steps were more tottering, and his body more bent than usual. When he disappeared, "Follow me," said Fray Serapio, "to the cell which was his, which he has just quitted." We soon arrived at the cell, but nothing distinguished it from the others. The walls were quite bare; the wind whistled through the parasitical plants which clung to the disjointed stones. A pine torch, stuck into an interstice of the wall, was just expiring. Fray Serapio fanned the dying flame, and, with all the obstinacy of a conscientious cicerone, he pretended to point out upon the wall the traces of the five fingers of the unknown who had stabbed the monk in his prison. I did not tell Serapio that the black stains on the wall had been produced by damp, and not by the hand of Satan. I seized, however, this opportunity of informing the worthy monk that the story of his unfortunate superior could be perfectly well explained without the intervention of the devil. The superiors of Fray Epigmenio, jealous of his rigid virtue, had probably set the trap into which he had fallen. They had found an adroit monk and a female willing to work through their plans, and the brutal fanaticism of the monk had unhappily spoiled every thing. The Inquisition had got wind of the matter. The farce was then turned into a tragedy. The vengeance of the father, who repented the selling of his child, her unhappy end, and the blighted, melancholy life which Fray Epigmenio had been afterward doomed to lead, were the unhappy consequences of the shameful intrigue hatched in the very convent in which we now were. Such was my commentary on Fray Serapio's story; but he, with an obstinacy only equaled by his credulity, held fast by his own interpretation.

Next morning we arrived at the hacienda of the friend of Don Diego Mercado, where the cordial reception we experienced soon made us forget the dangers and sufferings of the previous night.

On my return to Mexico I resumed my visits to the convent of St. Francis, and I read with more interest than ever the narratives preserved in these valuable archives, for I had now a thorough conviction that the old Spanish fanaticism, of which there were many instances in these documents, had still firm root in the minds of the people of Mexico. There is a close connection between the past and present race of the inhabitants of the cloisters, which the frivolous manners of the monks, as seen by me in the streets of Mexico, had not led me to suspect. The Inquisition has passed away, but it has left in the clergy a well-defined outline, a singularly deep-rooted tradition of demoralization, superstitious ignorance, and fanaticism.