This story is entirely true, Señor—as is proved by the fact that the Inquisition building, in which all these wonders happened, still is standing. It is the Escuela de Medicina, now.
[LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL MUERTO]
It is an unwise thing, Señor, and there also is wickedness in it, to make a vow to the Blessed Virgin—or, for that matter, to the smallest saint in the whole calendar—and not to fulfil that vow when the Blessed Virgin, or the saint, as the case may be, has performed punctually all that the vow was made for: and so this gentleman of whom I now am speaking found out for himself, and most uncomfortably, when he died with an unfulfilled vow on his shoulders—and had to take some of the time that he otherwise would have spent pleasantly in heaven among the angels in order to do after he was dead what he had promised to do, and what he most certainly ought to have done, while he still was alive.
The name of this gentleman who so badly neglected his duty, Señor, was Don Tristan de Alculer; and he was a humble but honorable Spanish merchant who came from the Filipinas to live here in the City of Mexico; and he came in the time when the Viceroy was the Marqués de Villa Manrique, and most likely as the result of that Viceroy's doings and orderings: because the Marqués de Villa Manrique gave great attention to enlarging the trade with the East through the Filipinas—as was found out by the English corsairs, so that Don Francisco Draco, who was the greatest pirate of all of them, was able to capture a galleon laden almost to sinking with nothing but silver and gold.
With Don Tristan, who was of an elderliness, came his son to help him in his merchanting; and this son was named Tristan also, and was a most worthy young gentleman, very capable in the management of mercantile affairs. Having in their purses but a light lining, their commerce at its beginning was of a smallness; and they took for their home a mean house in a little street so poor and so deserted that nobody had taken the trouble to give a name to it: the very street that ever since their time has been called the Alley of the Dead Man—because of what happened as the result of Don Tristan's unfulfilled vow. That they were most respectable people is made clear by the fact that the Archbishop himself—who at that period was the illustrious Don Fray García de Santa María Mendoza—was the friend of them; and especially the friend of Don Tristan the elder, who frequently consulted with him in regard to the state of his soul.
So a number of prospering years passed on, Señor, and then, on a time, Don Tristan the son went down to the coast to make some buyings: and it was in the bad season, and the fever seized him so fiercely that all in a moment the feet and half the legs of him fairly were inside of death's door. Then it was that Don Tristan, being in sore trouble because of his son's desperate illness, made the vow that I am telling you about. He made it to the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe; and he vowed to her that if she would save his son alive to him from the fever he would walk on his bare feet from his own house to her Sanctuary, and that there in her Sanctuary he would make his thanks to her from the deep depths of his soul. And the Blessed Virgin, being full of love and of amiability, was pleased to listen to the prayer of Don Tristan, and to believe the vow that went along with it: wherefore she caused the fever immediately to leave the sick Don Tristan—and presently home he came to his father alive and well.
But Don Tristan, having got from the Blessed Virgin all that he had asked of her, did not give to her what he had promised to give to her in return. Being by that time an aged gentleman, and also being much afflicted with rheumatism, the thought of taking a walk of near to three miles barefoot was most distasteful to him. And so he put his walk off for a week or two—saying to himself that the Blessed Virgin would not be in any hurry about the matter; and then he put it off for another week or two; and in that way—because each time that he was for keeping his vow shivers would come in his old feet at dread of being bare and having cold earth under them, and trembles would come in his old thin legs at dread of more rheumatism—the time slipped on and on, and the Blessed Virgin did not get her due.