A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde (free ebook novel .txt) 📖

opened their great globe-like

blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy

perfume.

 

The little Princess herself walked up and down the terrace with her

companions, and played at hide and seek round the stone vases and

the old moss-grown statues. On ordinary days she was only allowed

to play with children of her own rank, so she had always to play

alone, but her birthday was an exception, and the King had given

orders that she was to invite any of her young friends whom she

liked to come and amuse themselves with her. There was a stately

grace about these slim Spanish children as they glided about, the

boys with their large-plumed hats and short fluttering cloaks, the

girls holding up the trains of their long brocaded gowns, and

shielding the sun from their eyes with huge fans of black and

silver. But the Infanta was the most graceful of all, and the most

tastefully attired, after the somewhat cumbrous fashion of the day.

Her robe was of grey satin, the skirt and the wide puffed sleeves

heavily embroidered with silver, and the stiff corset studded with

rows of fine pearls. Two tiny slippers with big pink rosettes

peeped out beneath her dress as she walked. Pink and pearl was her

great gauze fan, and in her hair, which like an aureole of faded

gold stood out stiffly round her pale little face, she had a

beautiful white rose.

 

From a window in the palace the sad melancholy King watched them.

Behind him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated,

and his confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his

side. Sadder even than usual was the King, for as he looked at the

Infanta bowing with childish gravity to the assembling counters, or

laughing behind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who

always accompanied her, he thought of the young Queen, her mother,

who but a short time before—so it seemed to him—had come from the

gay country of France, and had withered away in the sombre

splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after the

birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom

twice in the orchard, or plucked the second year’s fruit from the

old gnarled fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-grown courtyard. So great had been his love for her that he had

not suffered even the grave to hide her from him. She had been

embalmed by a Moorish physician, who in return for this service had

been granted his life, which for heresy and suspicion of magical

practices had been already forfeited, men said, to the Holy Office,

and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier in the black

marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her in on

that windy March day nearly twelve years before. Once every month

the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his

hand, went in and knelt by her side calling out, ‘Mi reina! Mi

reina!’ and sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in

Spain governs every separate action of life, and sets limits even

to the sorrow of a King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands

in a wild agony of grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the

cold painted face.

 

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the

Castle of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and

she still younger. They had been formally betrothed on that

occasion by the Papal Nuncio in the presence of the French King and

all the Court, and he had returned to the Escurial bearing with him

a little ringlet of yellow hair, and the memory of two childish

lips bending down to kiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage.

Later on had followed the marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a

small town on the frontier between the two countries, and the grand

public entry into Madrid with the customary celebration of high

mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than usually solemn

auto-da-fe, in which nearly three hundred heretics, amongst whom

were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular arm to

be burned.

 

Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought, of

his country, then at war with England for the possession of the

empire of the New World. He had hardly ever permitted her to be

out of his sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have

forgotten, all grave affairs of State; and, with that terrible

blindness that passion brings upon its servants, he had failed to

notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please

her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered.

When she died he was, for a time, like one bereft of reason.

Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated

and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he

was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the

little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in

Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having

caused the Queen’s death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that

he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle

in Aragon. Even after the expiration of the three years of public

mourning that he had ordained throughout his whole dominions by

royal edict, he would never suffer his ministers to speak about any

new alliance, and when the Emperor himself sent to him, and offered

him the hand of the lovely Archduchess of Bohemia, his niece, in

marriage, he bade the ambassadors tell their master that the King

of Spain was already wedded to Sorrow, and that though she was but

a barren bride he loved her better than Beauty; an answer that cost

his crown the rich provinces of the Netherlands, which soon after,

at the Emperor’s instigation, revolted against him under the

leadership of some fanatics of the Reformed Church.

 

His whole married life, with its fierce, fiery-coloured joys and

the terrible agony of its sudden ending, seemed to come back to him

to-day as he watched the Infanta playing on the terrace. She had

all the Queen’s pretty petulance of manner, the same wilful way of

tossing her head, the same proud curved beautiful mouth, the same

wonderful smile—vrai sourire de France indeed—as she glanced up

now and then at the window, or stretched out her little hand for

the stately Spanish gentlemen to kiss. But the shrill laughter of

the children grated on his ears, and the bright pitiless sunlight

mocked his sorrow, and a dull odour of strange spices, spices such

as embalmers use, seemed to taint—or was it fancy?—the clear

morning air. He buried his face in his hands, and when the Infanta

looked up again the curtains had been drawn, and the King had

retired.

 

She made a little moue of disappointment, and shrugged her

shoulders. Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday.

What did the stupid State-affairs matter? Or had he gone to that

gloomy chapel, where the candles were always burning, and where she

was never allowed to enter? How silly of him, when the sun was

shining so brightly, and everybody was so happy! Besides, he would

miss the sham bull-fight for which the trumpet was already

sounding, to say nothing of the puppet-show and the other wonderful

things. Her uncle and the Grand Inquisitor were much more

sensible. They had come out on the terrace, and paid her nice

compliments. So she tossed her pretty head, and taking Don Pedro

by the hand, she walked slowly down the steps towards a long

pavilion of purple silk that had been erected at the end of the

garden, the other children following in strict order of precedence,

those who had the longest names going first.

 

A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as toreadors,

came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a

wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering

his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain,

led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was

placed on a raised dais above the arena. The children grouped

themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to

each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing

at the entrance. Even the Duchess—the Camerera-Mayor as she was

called—a thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not

look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill

smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin

bloodless lips.

 

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the

Infanta thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought

to see at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of

Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobbyhorses brandishing long javelins with gay

streamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on foot

waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightly

over the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull himself,

he was just like a live bull, though he was only made of wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running round

the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams of

doing. He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got so

excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace

handkerchiefs and cried out: Bravo toro! Bravo toro! just as

sensibly as if they had been grown-up people. At last, however,

after a prolonged combat, during which several of the hobbyhorses

were gored through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the

young Count of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and

having obtained permission from the Infanta to give the coup de

grace, he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with

such violence that the head came right off, and disclosed the

laughing face of little Monsieur de Lorraine, the son of the French

Ambassador at Madrid.

 

The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead

hobbyhorses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow

and black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a

French posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian

puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of Sophonisba on the

stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose.

They acted so well, and their gestures were so extremely natural,

that at the close of the play the eyes of the Infanta were quite

dim with tears. Indeed some of the children really cried, and had

to be comforted with sweetmeats, and the Grand Inquisitor himself

was so affected that he could not help saying to Don Pedro that it

seemed to him intolerable that things made simply out of wood and

coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires, should be so

unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.

 

An African juggler followed, who brought in a large flat basket

covered with a red cloth, and having placed it in the centre of the

arena, he took from his turban a curious reed pipe, and blew

through it. In a few moments the cloth began to move, and as the

pipe grew shriller and shriller two green and gold snakes put out

their strange wedge-shaped heads and rose slowly up, swaying to and

fro with the music as a plant sways in the water. The children,

however, were rather frightened at