I answered, apologetically, "No."
Having seen me glancing over a book, she added, as if to console me, and with emphasis, "But you can read!" To her mind that was a sister art and an equal one.
She went on to tell how her granddaughter had spent ten years in school, and at the end of that time was able to read. "But now she is forgetting it all. She goes out and plays too much with the muchachas" (young girls).
This amiable grandmother also took us in to see her domicile, which proved to be a part of the old city wall, and had a fine view from its iron-barred window. She declared vaguely that "a count" had formerly lived there; but it had more probably been the gate-captain's house, for close by was one of the fortified ports of the inner defences. A store-room, in fact, which she kept full of pigeons and incredibly miscellaneous old iron, stood directly over the arched entrance, and there we saw the heavy beam and windlass which in by-gone ages had hoisted or let fall the spiked portcullis. I induced "Solitude" to tell me a legend about one of the churches; for there is generally some story to every square rod of ground hereabout, and indeed a little basilica below the town sustains four different narratives all explaining a single miracle. Serving as an appropriate foundation for local wonder-mongering, a great cave in the rock underlies some portion of the city, and is said to have been hollowed out by Hercules, who, in addition to his other labors, has received the credit of founding Toledo. I am convinced that no muscles but his could ever have stood the strain of first climbing its site. The cave I refer to has been for the most part of the last two hundred years closed and walled up. About thirty years since it was timidly explored by a society formed for the purpose, and some Roman remains were found in it; but after that, terror fell upon the explorers, and the cavern was again closed, remaining even yet a reservoir of mystery. There are equally mysterious things above ground, however, as will shortly be demonstrated by the tale of the "Christ of Compassion." Let me, before giving that, recall here a more poetic tradition, preserved by Señor Eugenio Olavarria, a young author of Madrid. We saw just outside the mosque-church of the Christ of Light an old Moorish well, of a kind common in Spain, with a low thick wall surrounding the deep sunken shaft, to rest the bucket-chain on when it is let down and drawn up by sheer muscular force. The edges were worn into one continuous pattern of grooves by the incessant chafing of the chains for ages, and we conjured up a dozen romances about the people who of old slaked their thirst there. It is about another water-source of the same kind, on a small street still called Descent to the Bitter Well, that the story here outlined is told:
THE WELL OF BITTERNESS.
"In the time of one of the Moorish kings there lived at Toledo, under the mild toleration of that epoch, a rich Jew, strictly and passionately devoted to the laws of his religion and to one only other object: that one was his daughter Raquel, motherless, but able to solace his widowed heart with her devoted affection. Sixteen Aprils had wrought their beautiful changes into her exquisite form and lovely mind, till at last, of all things which they had waked to life, she appeared the fairest.
"Reuben had gradually made her the chief end of his existence, and she certainly merited this absolute concentration of her father's love. But, notwithstanding that at this time Jews and Christians dwelt together unmolested by the Mohammedan rule, the inborn hostility between these two orders underwent no abatement. Intercourse between them was sedulously avoided by each, and the springing up of any shy flower of love between man and maid of such hostile races was sure to be followed by deadly blight and ruin. Nevertheless—and how it happened who can say?—Raquel, already ripened by the rich sun of her native land into a perfected womanhood, fell in love with a young Christian cavalier, who had himself surrendered to her silent and distant beauty as it shone upon him, while passing, from her grated window in Reuben's stately mansion. He learned her name, and spoke it to her from the street—'Raquel!'—at twilight. So trembling and brimming with mutual love were they, that this one word, like the last o'erflowing drop of precious liquid from a vase, was enough to reveal to her what filled his heart. As she heard it she blushed as though it had been a kiss that he had reverently impressed upon her cheek; and this was answer enough—their secret and perilous courtship had begun. Thereafter they met often at night in the great garden attached to the house, making their rendezvous at the low-walled well that stood in a thicket of fragrant greenery. At last, through the prying of an aged friend, his daughter's passion came to the knowledge of old Reuben, who had never till then even conceived of such disgrace as her being enamoured of a Christian. His course was prompt and terrible. Concealing himself one evening behind a tree-trunk close to the well, he awaited the coming of the daring cavalier, sprung upon him, and after a short, noiseless struggle bore him down with a poniard in his breast!
"The stealthy opening of a door into the garden warned him of Raquel's approach. He hastened again into concealment. She arrived, saw her fallen lover, dropped at his side in agonies of terror, and sought to revive him. Then she saw and by the moonlight recognized her father's dagger in the breathless bosom of the young man, and knew what had happened. Moved by sudden remorse, Reuben came out with words of consolation ready. But she knew him not, she heard him not; from that instant madness was in her eyes and brain. Many months she haunted the spot at night, calm but hopelessly insane, and weeping silently at the margin of the well, into whose waters her salt tears descended. At length there came a night when she did not return to the house. She had thrown herself into the well and was found there—dead!
"Never again could any one drink its waters, which had been famous for their quality. Raquel's tears of sorrow had turned them bitter."