V.
In a wretched village which may be found at one side of the highway leading to Gômara, I saw not long since the spot where the strange ceremony of the Count’s marriage is said to have taken place.
After he, kneeling upon the humble grave, had pressed the hand of Margarita in his own, and a priest, authorized by the Pope, had blessed the mournful union, the story goes that the miracle ceased, and the dead hand buried itself forever.
At the foot of some great old trees there is a bit of meadow which, every spring, covers itself spontaneously with flowers.
The country-folk say that this is the burial place of Margarita.
THE KISS
I.
WHEN a division of the French army, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, took possession of historic Toledo, the officers in command, not unaware of the danger to which French soldiers were exposed in Spanish towns by being quartered in separate lodgings, commenced to fit up as barracks the largest and best edifices of the city.
After occupying the magnificent palace of Carlos V. they appropriated the City Hall, and when this could hold no more, they began to invade the pious shade of monasteries, at last making over into stables even the churches sacred to worship. Such was the state of affairs in the famous old town, scene of the event which I am about to recount, when one night, already late, there entered the city, muffled in their dark army-cloaks and deafening the narrow, lonely streets, from the Gate of the Sun to the Zocodover, with the clang of weapons and the resounding beat of the hoofs that struck sparks from the flinty way, one hundred or so of these tall dragoons, dashing, mettlesome fellows, whom our grandmothers still tell about with admiration.
The force was commanded by a youthful officer, riding about thirty paces in advance of his troop and talking in low tones with a man on foot, who, so far as might be inferred from his dress, was also a soldier. Walking in front of his interlocutor, with a small lantern in hand, he seemed to be serving as guide through that labyrinth of obscure, twisted and intertangled streets.