Watching the body were the father, leaning over the bier, bowed down under the weight of an immeasurable grief; the nurse dissolved in tears; Adrian, with dry and glittering eyes, pale, motionless, mute, terrible in his anguish; and the priest with folded arms and head bent over his breast, murmuring pious prayers.
Such was the scene which the morning sun lighted in Berta's room. The birds of the garden alighted on the rail of the window, but did not venture to enter; they looked in apprehensively and flew away terrified; they twittered on the branches of the trees, and their melancholy chirpings seemed like sighs.
Breathing a sigh torn from the inmost depths of his soul, Adrian Baker exclaimed in a hollow voice:
"Miserable man that I am! I have killed her!"
"Ah, yes," said the priest, slowly shaking his head. "Divine Justice—
Doubt kills."
MAESE PEREZ, THE ORGANIST
By Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
From "Modern Ghosts." Translated by Rollo Ogden.
MAESE PEREZ, THE ORGANIST
I.
"Do you see that man with the scarlet cloak, and the white plume in his hat, and the gold-embroidered vest? I mean the one just getting out of his litter and going to greet that lady—the one coming along after those four pages who are carrying torches? Well, that is the Marquis of Mascoso, lover of the widow, the Countess of Villapineda. They say that before he began paying court to her he had sought the hand of a very wealthy man's daughter, but the girl's father, who they say is a trifle close-fisted— but hush! Speaking of the devil—do you see that man closely wrapped in his cloak coming on foot under the arch of San Felipe? Well, he is the father in question. Everybody in Seville knows him on account of his immense fortune.
"Look—look at that group of stately men! They are the twenty-four knights. Aha! there's that Heming, too. They say that the gentlemen of the green cross have not challenged him yet, thanks to his influence with the great ones at Madrid. All he comes to church for is to hear the music.