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                                  THE

                           SWAN OF VlLAMORTA


                                   BY
                           EMILIA PARDO BAZ¡N
            AUTHOR OF "A WEDDING TRIP," "A CHRISTIAN WOMAN,"
                            "MORRIÑA," ETC.

                             TRANSLATED BY
                            MARY J. SERRANO

             TRANSLATOR OF "MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF: THE JOURNAL
                        OF A YOUNG ARTIST," ETC.


                                NEW YORK
                       CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
                        104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE




                            Copyright, 1891.

                                   BY

                      CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

                         _All rights reserved._


                                          THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
                                                       RAHWAY, N. J.




                                  THE
                           SWAN OF VILAMORTA.

                                 * * *

                                   I.

Behind the pine grove the setting sun had left a zone of fire
against which the trunks of the pine trees stood out like bronze
columns. The path was rugged and uneven, giving evidence of the
ravages wrought by the winter rains; at intervals loose stones,
looking like teeth detached from the gum, rendered it still more
impracticable. The melancholy shades of twilight were beginning to
envelop the landscape; little by little the sunset glow faded away
and the moon, round and silvery, mounted in the heavens, where the
evening star was already shining. The dismal croaking of the frogs
fell sharply on the ear; a fresh breeze stirred the dry plants and
the dusty brambles that grew by the roadside; and the trunks of the
pine trees grew momentarily blacker, standing out like inky bars
against the pale green of the horizon.

A man was descending the path slowly, bent, apparently, on
enjoying the poetry and the peace of the scene and the hour. He
carried a stout walking-stick, and as far as one could judge in the
fading light, he was young and not ill-looking.

He paused frequently, casting glances to the right and to the
left as if in search of some familiar landmark. Finally he stood
still and looked around him. At his back was a hill crowned with
chestnut trees; on his left was the pine grove; on his right a small
church with a mean belfry; before him the outlying houses of the
town. He turned, walked back some ten steps, stopped, fronting the
portico of the church, examined its walls, and, satisfied at last
that he had found the right place, raised his hands to his mouth and
forming with them a sort of speaking trumpet, cried, in a clear
youthful voice:

"Echo, let us talk together!"

From the angle formed by the walls, there came back instantly
another voice, deeper and less distinct, strangely grave and
sonorous, which repeated with emphasis, linking the answer to the
question and dwelling upon the final syllable:

"Let us talk togethe-e-e-e-r!"

"Are you happy?"

"Happy-y-y-y!" responded the echo.

"Who am I?"

"I-I-I-I!"

To these interrogations, framed so that the answer should make
sense with them, succeeded phrases uttered without any other object
than that of hearing them reverberated with strange intensity by the
wall. "It is a lovely night."--"The moon is shining."--"The sun has
set."--"Do you hear me, echo?"--"Have you dreams, echo, of glory,
ambition, love?" The traveler, enchanted with his occupation,
continued the conversation, varying the words, combining them into
sentences, and, in the short intervals of silence, he listened to the
faint murmur of the pines stirred by the evening breeze, and to the
melancholy concert of the frogs. The crimson and rose- clouds
had become ashen and had begun to invade the broad region of the
firmament over which the unclouded moon shed her silvery light. The
honeysuckles and elder-flowers on the outskirts of the pine grove
embalmed the air with subtle and intoxicating fragrance. And the
interlocutor of the echo, yielding to the poetic influences of the
scene, ceased his questions and exclamations and began to recite, in
a slow, chanting voice, verses of Becquer, paying no heed now to the
voice from the wall, which, in its haste to repeat his words,
returned them to him broken and confused.

Absorbed in his occupation, pleased with the harmonious sounds of
the verse, he did not notice the approach of three men of odd and