Stendhal
The Chest and the Ghost
A Spanish Adventure
Translated by John Penuel
Original title: “Le Coffre et le Revenant”
English translation copyright 2012 by John Penuel
Published at Smashwords by John Penuel
One fine morning in the month of May 182., don Blas Bustos y Mosquera, followed by twelve horsemen, entered the village of Alcolote, one league from Granada. At his approach, the peasants rushed back into their houses and closed their doors. The women, in terror, looked at this terrible chief of the Granada police out of a small corner of their windows. Heaven punished his cruelty by leaving the stamp of his soul on his face. He was a man of six feet tall, dark, of appalling leanness; he is only chief of police, but the bishop of Granada himself and the governor tremble before him.
During this sublime war against Napoleon, which, to the eyes of posterity, will place the Spaniards of the nineteenth century above all the other peoples of Europe and second only to the French, don Blas was one of the famous guerrilla leaders. When his band hadn’t killed at least one Frenchman during the day, he didn’t go to bed: it was a vow.
Upon Ferdinand’s return,[1] he was sent to the galleys in Ceuta, where he spent eight years in the most horrible destitution. He was accused of having been a Capuchin in his youth and of having given up the vocation. He later found favor again—no one knows how. Don Blas is famous now for his silence; he never talks. In the past, the sarcastic remarks he made to his prisoners of war before having them hanged had earned him a sort of reputation as a wit. His jokes were passed on from one Spanish army to the next.
Don Blas went slowly up the road in Alcolote, looking at the houses on both sides with his piercing eyes. As he was going by the church, bells tolled for mass. More than dismount, he flung himself off his horse, and you could see him get down on his knees before the altar. Four of his men got on their knees around his chair. They looked at him; there was no longer any piety in his eyes. His sinister eye was on a young man of a highly distinguished demeanor who was praying devoutly a few paces away.
“What?” don Blas said to himself. “A man who, to all appearances, belongs to the first classes of society and is a stranger to me! He hasn’t appeared in Granada since I’ve been there. He’s hiding.”
Don Blas leaned toward one of his policemen and ordered that the young man be arrested as soon as he was outside the church. At the final words of the mass, he himself hastened out and settled in the lounge of the Alcolote inn. The young man, astonished, soon appeared.
“Your name?”
“Don Fernando de la Cueva.”
Don Blas’s sinister mood was exacerbated by seeing up close that don Fernando had a most handsome face; he was blond and, despite the tight spot he was in, his features expressed great mildness. Don Blas, lost in thought, looked at the young man.
“What job did you have under the Cortes?”[2] he said finally.
“I was in the College of Seville in 1823; I was fifteen years old then, and I’m only nineteen now.”
“What do you do for a living?”
The young man seemed annoyed by the rudeness of the question. He resigned himself to it and said:
“My father, a general in the armies of don Charles IV (may God bless the memory of this good king!), left me a small estate near this village. It earns me an income of 12,000 reales (3,000 francs). I work it with my own hands, and with three servants.”
“Who are without a doubt highly devoted to you. An excellent core for a band of guerrillas,” said don Blas with a bitter smile.
“To prison and in solitary!” he added as he went out, leaving the prisoner in the midst of his people.
A few moments later, don Blas was having lunch.
“Six months in prison,” he thought, “is what he deserves for that fine complexion and that air of coolness and insolent happiness.”
The horseman on watch at the door to the dining room raised his rifle energetically. He pushed it across the chest of an old man who was trying to get into the room in the wake of a kitchen helper carrying a dish. Don Blas ran to the door. Behind the old man was a young girl who made him forget don Fernando.
“It’s cruel not to give me time to eat,” he said to the old man. “Come in, anyway; explain yourself.”
Don Blas could not stop looking at the girl; in her brow and in her eyes he found the expression of innocence and heavenly piety that stands out in the fine madonnas of the Italian school. Don Blas didn’t listen to the old man or go on with his lunch. He was finally roused from his reverie; for the third or fourth time the old fellow was explaining the reasons for which don Fernando de la Cueva, who had been his daughter Inés’s fiancé for a long time and was going to marry her the following Sunday, ought to be released.
At this word, the terrible chief of police’s eyes shone with such an extraordinary gleam that they frightened Inés and even her father.
“We have always been God-fearing and we are old Christians,” the old man went on. “My lineage is ancient, but I am poor, and don Fernando is a good match for my daughter. I never had a position in the time of the French, or before or after.”[3]
Don Blas didn’t emerge from his cruel silence.
“I am a member of the most ancient nobility of the kingdom of Granada,” continued the old man, “and before the revolution,” he added with a sigh, “I would have the cut the ears off of any insolent monk who didn’t answer me when I spoke to him.”
The old man’s eyes filled with tears. The timid Inés took a rosary that had touched the dress of Our Lady of the Pillar from her bosom, and her pretty hands clasped the cross with a sudden movement. Don Blas’s terrible eyes fell on those hands. Then he noticed young Inés’s shapely though somewhat large waist.
“Her features could be more symmetrical,” he thought, “but that heavenly grace. I’ve seen it only in her.”
“And you are don Jaime Arregui?” he finally said to the old man.
“That’s my name,” said don Jaime, straightening up.
“Seventy years old?”
“Only sixty-nine.”
“It’s you,” said don Blas, brightening noticeably. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Our master the king has deigned to grant you a yearly pension of 4,000 reales (1,000 francs). At home in Granada I have two years’ worth of this royal favor, which I will give you tomorrow at noon. I will show you that my father was a rich plowman of Old Castile, an old Christian like you, and that I was never a monk. So the insult you leveled at me misses the mark.”
The old gentleman didn’t dare miss the appointment. He was a widower and had only his daughter Inés. Before leaving for Granada, he took her to the village priest’s and made arrangements as if he were never to see her again. He found don Blas Bustos dressed to the nines, with a sash over his frock coat. It seemed to don Jaime that he had the polite air of old soldier who is trying to be kind and smiles at everything, off the point or not.
If he had dared, don Jaime would have refused the 2,000 reales don Blas gave him; nor could he refuse to dine with him. After the meal, the terrifying chief of police had him read all of his licenses, his baptismal certificate, and even an attestation, through which he had been released from the galleys and which proved that he had never been a monk.
Don Jaime still feared some bad joke.
“So I’m forty-three years old,” don Blas said to him finally, “and I have an honorable position that earns me 50,000 reales. I have an income of 11,000 onzas from the bank of Naples. I ask you for the hand of your daughter doña Inés Arregui.”
Don Jaime went pale. There was a moment of silence. Don Blas went on:
“I won’t hide from you that don Fernando de la Cueva happens to be involved in an unfortunate business. The minister of the police is looking for him; he’s going to get the garrotte [a way of strangling used for nobles] or at the very least be sent to the galleys. I was there eight years, and I can assure you it was an awful stay. [As he said these words he went over to the old man’s ear.] Within two to three weeks I’ll probably get orders from the minister to have don Fernando transferred from prison in Alcolote to the one in Granada. This order will be carried out very late in the evening; if don Fernando takes advantage of the darkness to escape I’ll look the other way out of consideration for the friendship you are showing me. Let him go spend a year or two in Mallorca, for example; nobody will say anything to him.”