  Ella era hermosa, hermosa con esa hermosura que inspira el vÉrtigo; hermosa con esa hermosura que no se parece en nada Á la que soÑamos en los Ángeles, y que, sin embargo, es sobrenatural; hermosura diabÓlica, que tal vez presta el demonio Á algunos seres para hacerlos sus instrumentos en la tierra. Él la amaba: la amaba con ese amor que no conoce freno ni lÍmites; la amaba con ese amor en que se busca un goce y sÓlo se encuentran martirios; amor que se asemeja Á la felicidad, y que, no obstante, parece infundir el cielo para la expiaciÓn de una culpa. Ella era caprichosa, caprichosa y extravagante, como todas las mujeres[1] del mundo. [Footnote 1: This cynical view of women is repeated in some of Becquer's verses, and may not unlikely have been caused by a bitter personal experience, as the love-story embodied in the poems seems to suggest.] Él, supersticioso, supersticioso y valiente, como todos los hombres de su Época. Ella se llamaba MarÍa Antunez. Él Pedro Alfonso de Orellana. Los dos eran toledanos[1], y los dos vivÍan en la misma ciudad que los viÓ nacer. [Footnote 1: toledanos—'of Toledo.' Toledo is the capital of a province of the same name. It is situated on the Tagus not far to the south of Madrid. "The city was the ancient capital of the Carpetani, and was conquered by the Romans about 193 B.C. It was the capital of the West-Gothic realm;... was the second city in the country under the Moorish rule; was taken by Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon in 1085;... and was the capital of Castile until superseded by Madrid in the sixteenth century." Century Dict. Population (1900) 23,375. Within its walls it presents the appearance of a Moorish city with huddled dwellings and narrow, crooked streets, which afford but scanty room even for the foot passenger. Viewed from without it is unrivaled for stern picturesqueness. "The city lies on a swelling granite hill in the form of a horseshoe, cut out, as it were, by the deep gorge of the Tagus from the mass of mountains to the south. On the north it is connected with the great plain of Castile by a narrow isthmus. At all other points the sides of the rocky eminence are steep and inaccessible." (Baedeker.) "Toledo, on its hillside, with the tawny half-circle of the Tagus at its feet, has the color, the roughness, the haughty poverty of the sierra on which it is built, and whose strong articulations from the very first produce an impression of energy and passion." (Quoted from M. Maurice BarrÈs in Hannah Lynch's Toledo, London, 1903, p. 3.)] La tradiciÓn que refiere esta maravillosa historia, acaecida hace muchos aÑos, no dice nada mÁs acerca de los personajes que fueron sus hÉroes. Yo, en mi calidad de cronista verÍdico, no aÑadirÉ ni una sola palabra de mi cosecha para caracterizarlos mejor. |
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