class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 27]"/> proved, he was not entitled—the Archbishop went on the twelfth of the month, in accordance with the custom observed in that matter, to celebrate mass at the Villa de Guadalupe in Our Lady's Sanctuary. The mass being ended, he came homeward on his mule by the causeway to the City; and as he rode along easily he was put into a great surprise by seeing Don Tristan walking toward him, and by perceiving that he was of a most dismal dead paleness and that his feet were bare. For a moment Don Tristan paused beside the Archbishop—whose mule had stopped short, all in a tremble—and clasped his hand with a hand that was of an icy coldness; then he passed onward—saying in a dismal voice, rusty and cavernous, that for his soul's saving he was fulfilling the vow that he had made to her Ladyship: because the knowledge had come to him that if this vow were not accomplished he certainly would spend the whole of Eternity blistering in hell! Having thus explained matters, not a word more did Don Tristan have to say for himself; nor did he even look backward, as he walked away slowly and painfully on his bare old feet toward Our Lady's shrine.

The Archbishop trembled as much as his mule did, Señor, being sure that strange and terrible things were about him; and when the mule a little came out of her fright and could march again, but still trembling, he went straight to Don Tristan's house to find out—though in his heart he knew what his finding would be—the full meaning of this awesome prodigy. And he found at Don Tristan's house what he knew in his heart he would find there: and that was Don Tristan, the four lighted death-candles around him, lying on his bed death-struck—his death-white cold hands clasped on his breast on the black pall covering him, and on his death-white face the very look that was on it as he went to the keeping of his unkept vow! Therefore the Archbishop was seized with a hot and a cold shuddering, and his teeth rattled in the head of him; and straightway he and all who were with him—perceiving that they were in the presence of a divine mystery—fell to their knees in wondering awe of what had happened, and together prayed for the peace of Don Tristan's soul.

Very possibly, Señor, the Archbishop and the rest of them did not pray hard enough; or, perhaps, Don Tristan's sin of neglect was so serious a matter that a long spell in Purgatory was required of him before he could be suffered to pass on to a more comfortable region and be at ease. At any rate, almost immediately he took to walking at midnight in the little street that for so long he had lived in—always wrapped in a long white shroud that fluttered about him in the night wind loosely, and carrying always a yellow-blazing great candle; and so being a most terrifying personage to encounter as he marched slowly up and down. Therefore everybody who dwelt in that street hurried to move away from it, and Don Tristan had it quite to himself in its desertedness—for which reason, as I have mentioned, the Alley of the Dead Man became its name.

I have been told by my friend the cargador, Señor, and also by several other trustworthy persons, that Don Tristan—though more than three hundred years have passed since the death of him—has not entirely given up his marchings. Certainly, for myself, I do not think that it would be judicious to walk in the Callejón del Muerto at midnight even now.

LEGEND OF THE ALTAR DEL PERDON[2]

This painter, Señor, who by a miracle painted the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy that is to be found in the whole world—the very picture that ever since has adorned the Altar del Perdon in the Cathedral—in the beginning of him was a very bad sinner: being a Fleming, and a Jew, and many other things that he ought not to have been, and therefore straight in the way to pass the whole of Eternity—his wickednesses being so numerous that time would have been wasted in trying to purge him of them in Purgatory—in the hottest torments that the devil his master could contrive. He was a very agreeable young gentleman, of a cheerful and obliging nature, and both witty and interesting in his talkings—for which reason the Viceroy had a great liking for his company and had him often at the Palace to the banquets and the festivals of the court. His name, Señor, was Don Simon Peyrens; and the Viceroy his patron—in whose suite he had come from Spain expressly to beautify the Palace with his paintings—was Don Gastón de Peralta, Marqués de Falces: who was the third Viceroy of the Province, being the successor to the good Don Luis de Velasco when that most worthy gentleman ceased to be a Viceroy and became an angel in the year 1564.

Well, Señor, it happened some years later—in the time of Don Martín Enriquez de Almanza, the fourth Viceroy, with whom Peyrens remained in favor—that the Chapter of the Cathedral, desiring to make splendid the Altar del Perdon, offered in competition to all the painters of Mexico a prize for the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy: which picture was to be placed in the centre of that altar and to be the chief glory of it. And, thereupon, all the painters of Mexico, save only Peyrens, entered into that competition with a reverent and an eager joy. And then it was, Señor, that Peyrens made plain the wickedness that was in him by his irreverent blasphemies. At a banquet at the Palace a very noble gentleman asked him why he alone of all the painters of Mexico—and he the best of all of them—had not entered into the competition; to which that sinful young man answered with a disdainful and impious lightness that the painting of what were called sacred pictures was but foolishness and vanity, and that he for his part could not be tempted to paint one by all the gold in the world!

Talk of that sort, Señor, as you well may imagine, scalded the ears of all who heard it—and in the quarter where the punishment of such sinning was attended to it made an instant stir. In a moment information of that evil young man's utterances was carried to the Archbishop—who at that time was the venerable Fray Alonzo de Montúfar—and in another moment he found himself lodged behind iron bars in a cell in the Inquisition: that blessed constrainer to righteousness, for the comforting of the faithful, that then was proving its usefulness by mowing down the weeds of heresy with a very lively zeal.

Being of an incredible hard-heartedness, neither the threats nor the pleadings of the Familiars of the Holy Office could stir Peyrens from the stand that he had taken. Resolutely he refused to recant his blasphemies; equally resolutely he refused to accept his freedom on the condition that he should paint the picture of Our Lady—and he even went so far, when they brought him the materials for the making of that picture, as to tear the canvas to shreds and rags!

And so the days ran on into weeks, and the weeks into months, and nothing changed in that bad matter: save that the Archbishop, saintly man that he was, began to lose his temper; and that the Familiars of the Holy Office lost their tempers entirely—and were for settling accounts with Peyrens by burning his wickedness out of him with heavenly fire.

As it happened, Señor, a great opportunity for such wholesome purifying of him was imminent: because at that time the preparations were being made for the very