EL CALLEJÓN DEL ARMADO
In the darkness of the darkest of nights—when there was no moon, and especially when a dismal drizzling rain was falling—he would be seen to come out from his house in all his armor and go stealing away in the direction of the Plazuela de Mixcalco. He would disappear into the shadows, and not come back again until midnight had passed. Then he would be heard, in his shut house, counting his money. For a long while that would go on—counting, counting, counting—there was no end to the clinking of silver coin. Then, when all his money was counted, would be heard the sound of scourging, together with most lamentable and complaining groanings. And, at the end of all, would come a heavy clanking—as of a great iron cover falling heavily upon a chest of iron. After that there would be no sign of life about the house until the morning—when the Armed One would come forth from it and go to San Francisco to pray.
The life of that man was a bad mystery, Señor, that many wished to uncover by denouncing him to justice; but the uncovering came of its own accord, and was a greater mystery still! On a morning, all the neighbors saw the Armed One hanging dead—hanging dead from his own balcony by a cord! No one knew what to think; but most thought that he had hung himself there in fear that denouncement of his crimes would be made and that justice would have its hold upon him. When the Alcalde came, and made search in his house, a very great sum of money was found; and, also, were found many skulls of men who certainly must have perished at his hands.
It is a most curious matter, Señor. I cannot see my way through it. But the house is gone.
LEGEND OF THE ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO[3]
This gentleman who for love's sake, Señor, conquered his coldness and his laziness and became all fire and energy, was named Don Juan Gutiérrez Rubín de Celis. He was a caballero of the Order of Santiago—some say that he wore also the habit of Calatrava—and the colonel of the regiment of the Tres Villas. He was of a lovable nature, and ostentatious and arrogant, and in all his ways dilatory and apathetic to the very last degree. So great were his riches that not even he himself knew the sum of them: as you will understand when I tell you that on an occasion of state—it was the entry into the City in the year 1716 of the new Viceroy, the Marqués de Valero—pearls to the value of thirty thousand pesos were used in the mere trimming of his casacón.
Being of an age to take part so nobly in that noble ceremony, he must have been a gentleman well turned of forty, Señor, when the matters whereof I now am telling you occurred: of which the beginning—and also the middle and the ending, because everything hinged upon it—was his falling most furiously in love with a very beautiful young lady; and his falling in love in that furious fashion was the very first sign of energy that in all his lifetime, until that moment, he had shown. The name of this beautiful young lady with whom he fell in love so furiously was Doña Sara de García Somera y Acuña; and she was less than half as old as he was, but possessed of a very sensible nature that made her do more thinking than is done usually by young ladies; and she was of a noble house, and a blood relative of the Viceroy's: for which reason the Viceroy—who by that time was Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte—was much interested in the whole affair.
The love-making of this so notoriously lazy gentleman did not at all go upon wheels, Señor: because Doña Sara set herself—as was her habit when dealing with any matter of importance—to thinking about it very seriously; and the more that she thought about it the more she made her mind up that so dull and so apathetic a gentleman—who, moreover, was old enough to be her father—would not in the least be the sort of husband that she desired. But also, because of her good sense, she perceived that much was to be said in favor of entering into wedlock with him: because his rank and his great wealth made him one of the most important personages in the Vice-Kingdom; and, moreover, for all that he was old enough to be her father, he still was a very personable man. And so she thought very hard in both directions, and could not in either direction make up her mind.