by
Pédro Antonio de Alarcón

I

THE once famous but now little known town of Aldeire is situated in the Marquisate of El Cenét, or, let us say, on the eastern slope of the Alpujarra, and partly hangs over a ledge, partly hides itself in a ravine of the giant central ridge of Sierra Nevada, five or six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and seven or eight thousand below the eternal snows of the Aulhacem.

Aldeire, be it said with all respect to its reverend pastor, is a Moorish town. That it was formerly Moorish is clearly proved by its name, its situation, and its architecture, and that it is not yet completely Christianized, although it figures among the towns of reconquered Spain, and has its little Catholic church and its confraternities of the Virgin, of Jesus, and of several of the saints, is proved by the character and the customs of its inhabitants; by the perpetual feuds, as terrible as they are causeless, which unite or separate them; and by the gloomy black eyes, pale complexions, laconic speech, and infrequent laughter of men, women, and children.

But it may be well to remind our readers, in order that neither the aforesaid pastor nor any one else may question the justice of this reasoning, that the Moors of the Marquisate of El Cenét were not expelled in a body, like those of the Alpujarra, but that many of them succeeded in remaining in the country, living in concealment, thanks to the prudence—or the cowardice—which made them turn a deaf ear to the rash and the heroic appeal of their unfortunate Prince, Aben Humcya; whence I infer that Uncle Juan Gomez, nicknamed Hormiga, in the year of grace 1821 Constitutional Alcalde of Aldeire, might very well be the descendant of some Mustapha, Mohammed, or the like.

It is related, then, that the aforesaid Juan Gomez—a man at the time of our story about fifty years of age, very shrewd, although he knew neither how to read nor write, and grasping and industrious to some purpose, as might be inferred not only from his sobriquet, but also from his wealth, acquired honestly or otherwise, and invested in the most fertile lands of the district—leased, at a nominal rent, by means of a present to the secretary of the corporation of some hens which had left off laying, a piece of arid town land, on which stood an old ruin, formerly a Moorish watch-tower or hermitage, and still called the Moor’s Tower.

Needless to say that Uncle Hormiga did not stop to consider for an instant who this Moor might be, nor what might have been the original purpose of the ruined building; the one thing which he saw at once, clear as water, was, that with the stones which had already fallen from the ruin and those which he should remove from it, he might make a secure and commodious yard for his cattle; consequently, on the very day after it came into his possession, and as a suitable pas-time for a man of his thrifty habits, he began to devote his leisure hours to the task of pulling down what still remained standing of the ruin.

“You will kill yourself,” said his wife, seeing him come home in the evening, covered with dust and sweat and carrying his crowbar hidden under his cloak.

“On the contrary,” he answered, “this exercise is good for me; it will put my blood in motion and keep me from being like our sons, the students who, according to what the storekeeper tells me, were at the theatre in Granada the other night looking so yellow that it was enough to make one sick to see them.”

“Poor boys! From studying so much! But you ought to be ashamed to work like a laborer, when you are the richest man in the town, and Alcalde into the bargain.”

“That is why I take no one with me. Here, hand me that salad!”

“It would be well to have some one to help you, however. You will spend an age in pulling down the tower by yourself, and besides, you may not be able to manage it.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Torcuata. When I begin to build the wall of the cattle yard, I shall hire workmen, and even employ a master-builder. But any one can pull down. And it is such fun to destroy! Come, clear away the table and let us go to bed.”

“You speak that way because you are a man. As for me, it disturbs and saddens me to see things destroyed.”

“Old women’s notions. If you only knew how many things there are in the world that ought to be destroyed!”

“Hold your tongue, you free-mason! It was a misfortune they ever elected you Alcalde. You will see when the Royalists come into power again that the king will have you hanged!”

“Yes, we shall see! Bigot! Hypocrite! Owl! Come, I am sleepy; stop blessing yourself and put out that light.”

And thus they would argue until one or the other of the consorts fell asleep.

II

One evening Uncle Hormiga returned from his task very thoughtful and preoccupied, and earlier than usual.

His wife waited until after he had dismissed the laborers to ask him what was the matter, when he responded by showing her a leaden tube with a cover, somewhat like the tube in which a soldier on furlough keeps his leave, from which he drew a yellow parchment covered with crabbed handwriting, and carefully unrolling it said, with imposing gravity:

“I don’t know how to read, even in Spanish, which is the easiest language in the world, but the devil take me if this was not written by a Moor.”

“That is to say that you found it in the tower?”

“I don’t say it on that account alone, but because these spider’s legs don’t look like anything I ever saw written by a Christian.”

The wife of Juan Gomez looked at the parchment, smelled it, and exclaimed, with a confidence as amusing as it was ill-founded:

“By a Moor it was written!”

After a while she added, with a melancholy air:

“Although I am but a poor hand myself at reading writing, I would swear that we hold in our hands the discharge of some soldier of Mohammed who is now in the bottomless pit.”

“You say that on account of the tube.”

“On account of the tube I say it.”

“Well, then, you are altogether wrong, my dear Torcuata, for such a thing as conscription was not known among the Moors, nor is this a discharge. This is a—a—”

Uncle Hormiga glanced around him cautiously, lowered his voice, and said with air of absolute certainty:

“This paper contains directions where to find a treasure!”

“You are right!” cried his wife, suddenly inspired with the same belief; “and have you already found it? Is it very big? Did you cover it up carefully again? Are the coins gold or silver? Do you think they will pass current now? What a happiness for our boys! How they will spend money and enjoy themselves in Granada and Madrid! I want to have a look at it. Let us go there. There is a moon tonight!”

“Silly woman! Be quiet! How do you suppose that I could find the treasure by these directions, when I don’t know how to read, either in Moorish or in Christian?”

“That’s true! Well, then, I’ll tell you what to do. As soon as it is daylight, saddle a good mule, cross the Sierra through the Puerto de la Ragua, which they say is safe now, and go to Ugíjar, to the house of our gossip, Don Matías Quesada, who knows something of everything. He will explain what is in the paper and give you good advice, as he always does.”

“And money enough his advice has cost me, notwithstanding our gossipred! But I was thinking of doing that myself. In the morning I will start for Ugíjar and be back by nightfall; I can do that easily by putting the mule to his speed.”

“But be sure and explain everything to him clearly.”

“I have very little to explain. The tube was hidden in a hollow, or niche, in the wall, and covered with tiles, like those at Valencia. I tore down the whole of the wall, but I found nothing else. At the surface of the ground begin the foundation walls, built of immense stones, more than a yard square, any one of which it would take two or three men as strong as I am to move. Consequently, it is necessary to know exactly where the treasure is hidden, unless we want to tear up all the foundation walls of the tower, which could not be done without outside help.”

“No, no; set out for Ugíjar as soon as it is daybreak Offer our gossip a part—not a large one—of what we may find, and as soon as we know where we must dig, I will help you myself to tear up the foundation stones. My darling boys! It is all for them! For my part, the only thing that troubles me is lest there be some sin in this business that we are whispering about.”

“What sin can there be in it, you great fool?”

“I can’t explain what I mean, but treasures have always seemed to me to have something to do with the devil, or the fairies. And then, you got that ground for so low a rent! The whole town says there was some trickery in the business!”

“That concerns the secretary and councillors. They drew up the documents.”

“Besides, as I understand, when a treasure is discovered, a part of it must be given to the king.”

“That is when it is found on ground that is not one’s own, like mine!”

“One’s own! One’s own! Who knows to whom that tower the Council sold you belonged!”

“Why, to the Moor, of course!”

“And who knows who that Moor may have been? It seems to me, Juan, whatever money the Moor may have hidden in his house should belong to him, or to his heirs, not to you or to me.”

“You are talking nonsense. According to that, it is not I who ought to be the Alcalde of Aldeire, but the man who was Alcalde a year ago, at the time of the proclamation of Riego. According to that, we should have to send the rents of the lands of Granada and Guadix, and hundreds of other towns, every year to the descendants of the Moors in Africa.”

“It may be that you are right. At any rate, go to Ugíjar, and our gossip will tell you what is best to be done in the matter.”

III

Ugíjar is distant from Aldeire some four leagues, and the road between the two towns is a very bad one. Before nine o’clock on the following morning, however, Uncle Juan Gomez, wearing his blue stockinet knee-breeches and his embroidered white Sunday boots, was in the office of Don Matías de Quesada, a vigorous old man, a doctor in civil and criminal jurisprudence, and the most noted criminal lawyer in that part of the country. He had always been a promoter of lawsuits, and was very wealthy, and had a large circle of influential acquaintances in Granada and Madrid.

When he had heard his worthy gossip’s story and had carefully examined the paper, he gave it as his opinon that the document had nothing whatever to do with the treasure; that the hole in which the tube had been found was a sort of closet, and the writing one of the prayers which the Moors read every Friday morning. But notwithstanding this, as he was not thoroughly versed in the Arabic language, he added that he would send the document to a college companion of his who was employed in the Commission of the Holy Places, in Madrid, in order that he might send it to Jerusalem, where it could be translated into Spanish, for which purpose it would be well to inclose to his friend in Madrid a draft for a couple of ounces in gold, for a cup of chocolate.

Uncle Juan Gomez considered seriously before he made up his mind to pay so high a price for a cup of chocolate (which would be paying for the article at the rate of 10,240 reals a pound), but he was so certain in regard to the treasure (and in truth he was not mistaken, as we shall see later on), that he took from his belt eight gold pieces of four dollars each and delivered them to Don Matías, who weighed them one by one before putting them into his purse, after which Hormiga took the road back to Aldeire, resolving in his own mind to continue his excavations under the Moor’s tower while the document went to the Holy Land and came back translated; proceedings which, according to the lawyer, would occupy something like a year and a half.