Romantic legends of Spain

by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Then the abbess despoiled her of her veil, and her fair tresses poured in a golden cascade down her back and shoulders, which they were suffered to cover but an instant, for at once there began to be heard, in the midst of that profound silence reigning among the faithful, a sharp, metallic clickity-click which set the nerves twitching, and first the magnificent waves of hair fell from the forehead they had shaded, and then those flowing locks that the fragrant air must have kissed so many times slipped over her bosom and dropped upon the floor.

Again the abbess fell to murmuring the unintelligible words; the priest repeated them; and once more all was silence in the church. Only from time to time were heard, afar off, sounds like long-drawn, dreadful moans. It was the wind complaining as it broke upon the edges of the battlements and towers, and shuddering as it passed the colored panes of the ogive windows.

She was motionless, motionless and pallid as a maiden of stone wrenched from the niche of a Gothic cloister.

And they despoiled her of the jewels which covered her arms and throat, and finally they divested her of her wedding robe, that raiment which seemed to have been wrought that a lover might break its clasps with a hand trembling for bliss and passion.

The mystic Bridegroom was awaiting the bride. Where? Beyond the doors of death; lifting, undoubtedly, the stone of the sepulchre and calling her to enter, even as the timid bride crosses the threshold of the sanctuary of nuptial love, for she fell to the floor prostrate as a corpse. As if she were clay, the nuns strewed her body with flowers, intoning a most mournful psalm; a murmur went up from amid the multitude, and the priests with their deep and hollow voices commenced the service for the dead, accompanied by those instruments that seem to weep, augmenting the unfathomable fear which the terrible words they pronounce inspire of themselves.

De profundis clamavi a te! chanted the nuns from the depths of the choir with plaintive, lamenting voices.

Dies irae, dies illa! responded the priests in thunderous, awful echo, and therewith the bells pealed slowly, tolling for the dead, and between the peals the metal was heard to vibrate with a strange and dolorous drone.

I was touched; no, not touched—terrified. I believed that I was in presence of the supernatural, that I felt the heart of my own life torn from me, and that vacancy was closing in upon me; I felt that I had just lost something precious, as a father, a mother, or a cherished wife, and I suffered that immeasurable desolation which death leaves behind wheresoever it passes, a desolation nameless, indescribable, to be comprehended only by those who have had it to bear.

I was still rooted to that spot with wildly staring eyes, quaking from head to foot and half beside myself, when the new nun rose from the ground. The abbess robed her in the habit of the order, the sisters took lighted candles in their hands and, forming two long lines, led her in procession back to the further side of the choir.

There, amid the shadows, I saw the sudden glint of a ray of light; the door of the cloister was opened. As she stepped beneath the lintel, the nun turned for the last time toward the altar. The brightness of all the lights suddenly shone upon her, and I could see her face. As I saw it, I had to choke back a cry.