For nearly an hour the village girls had been back in their homes. The last glow of sunset had faded on the horizon, and the night was beginning to close in more and more darkly, when Marta and Magdalena, each avoiding the other, left the hamlet by different paths in the direction of the mysterious fountain. The fountain welled up in a hidden nook among some steep, mossy rocks at the further end of a deep grove. Now that the sounds of the day had ceased little by little, and no longer was heard the distant echo of voices from the laborers who return home in knightly fashion, mounted on their yoked oxen and trolling out songs to the accompaniment of the beam of the plough they go dragging over the ground,—now that the monotonous clang of the sheep-bells had gone beyond hearing, together with the shouts of the shepherds and the barking of their dogs gathering the flocks together,—now that there had sounded in the village-tower the last peal of the call to prayers, there reigned august that double silence of night and solitude, a silence full of strange, soft murmurs making it yet more perceptible.

Marta and Magdalena slipped through the labyrinth of the trees and, sheltered by the darkness, arrived without seeing each other at the far end of the grove. Marta knew no fear; her steps were firm and unfaltering. Magdalena trembled at the mere rustle made by her feet as they trod upon the dry leaves carpeting the ground. When the two sisters were close to the fountain, the night wind began to stir the branches of the poplars, and to their uneven, sighing whispers the springing water seemed to make answer with a steady, regular murmur.

Marta and Magdalena lent attention to those soft noises of the night,—those that flowed beneath their feet like a continuous ripple of laughter, and those that floated above their heads like a lament rising and falling only to rise again and spread through the foliage of the grove. As the hours went on, that unceasing sound of the air and of the water began to produce in them a strange exaltation, a kind of dizziness that, clouding the eyes and humming in the ears, seemed to confuse them utterly. Then as one hears in dreams the far, vague echo of speech, they seemed to perceive, amid those nameless noises, inarticulate sounds as of a child who would call his mother and cannot; then words repeated over and over, always the same; then disconnected, inconsequent phrases, without order or meaning, and at last—at last the wind wandering among the trees, and the water leaping from rock to rock, commenced to speak.

And they spoke thus:

The Water.-Woman!—woman!—hear me!—hear me and draw near that thou mayst hear me, and I will kiss thy feet while I tremble to copy thine image in the shadowy depth of my waves. Woman!—hear how my murmurs are words.

The Wind.-Maiden!—Gentle maiden, lift thine head, let me give thy brow the kiss of peace, while I stir thy tresses. Gentle maiden, listen to me, for I, too, know how to speak and I will murmur in thine ear phrases of tenderness.

Marta.-Oh, speak! Speak, and I will understand, for my mind floats in a dizzy maze, as float those dim words of thine.

Speak, mysterious stream.

Magdalena.-I am afraid. Air of night, air of perfumes, refresh my burning brow! Tell me what may inspire me with courage, for my spirit wavers.

The Water.-I have crossed the dark hollow of the earth, I have surprised the secret of its marvellous fecundity, and I know the phenomena of its inner parts, whence springs the life to be.

My murmur lulls to sleep and awakens. Awaken thou that thou mayst comprehend it.

The Wind.-I am the air which the angels, as they traverse space, set in motion with their mighty wings. I mass up in the west the clouds that offer to the sun a bed of purple, and I shed at dawn, from the mists that vanish into drops, a pearly dew over the flowers. My sighs are a balm: open thine heart and I will flood it with bliss.

Marta.-When for the first time I heard the murmur of a subterranean stream, not in vain did I bow myself to the earth, lending it ear. With it there went a mystery which at last it should be mine to understand.

Magdalena.-Sighs of the wind, I know you well: you used to caress me, a dreaming child, when, spent with weeping, I gave myself up to slumber, and your soft breathings would seem to me the words of a mother who sings her child to sleep.

The water ceased from speech for a few moments and made no other noise than that of water breaking on rocks. The wind was voiceless, too, and its sound was no other than the sound of blowing leaves. So passed some time, and then they spoke again, and thus they spoke:

The Water.-Since I came filtering, drop by drop, through the vein of gold in an inexhaustible mine; since I came running along a bed of silver and leaping, as over pebbles, amid innumerable sapphires and amethysts, bearing on with me, in lieu of sands, diamonds and rubies, I have joined myself in mystic union to a spirit of the earth. Enriched by his power and by the occult virtues of the precious stones and metals, saturated with whose atoms I come, I can offer thee the utmost reach of thine ambitions. I have the force of an incantation, the power of a talisman, and the virtue of the seven stones and the seven colors.

The Wind.-I come from wandering over the plain, and as the bee that returns to the hive with its booty of sweet honey, I bring with me woman’s sighs, children’s prayers, words of chaste love, and aromas of nard and wild lilies. I have gathered in my journey no more than fragrances and echoes of harmonies; my treasures are not material, but they give peace of soul and the vague happiness of pleasant dreams.

While her sister, drawn on and on as by a spell, was leaning over the margin of the fountain to hear better, Magdalena was instinctively moving away, withdrawing from the steep rocks in whose midst bubbled the spring.

Both had their eyes fixed, the one on the depth of the waters, the other on the depth of the sky.

And Magdalena exclaimed, seeing the astral splendors overhead: “These are the halos of the invisible angels who have us in their keeping.”

At the same instant Marta was saying, seeing the reflection of the stars tremble in the clear waters of the fountain: “These are the particles of gold which the stream gathers in its mysterious course.”

The fountain and the wind, after a second brief period of silence, spoke again and said:

The Water.-Trust thyself to my current, cast from thee fear as a coarse garment, and dare to cross the threshold of the unknown. I have divined that thy soul is of the essence of the higher spirits. Envy perchance hath thrust thee out of heaven to plunge thee into the mire of mortal misery. Yet I see in thy darkened brow a seal of pride that renders thee worthy of us, spirits strong and free.—Come; I am going to teach thee magic words of such virtue that as thou speakest them the rocks will open and allure thee with the diamonds that are in their hearts, as pearls are in the shells which fishermen bring up from the bottom of the sea. Come! I will give thee treasures that thou mayst live in joy, and later, when the cell that imprisons thee is shattered, thy spirit shall be made like unto our own, which are human spirits, and all in one we shall be the motive force, the vital ray of the universe, circulating like a fluid through its subterranean arteries.

The Wind.-Water licks the earth and lives in the mud; I roam the ether and fly in limitless space. Follow the impulses of thy heart; let thy soul rise like flame and the azure spirals of smoke. Wretched is he who, having wings, descends to the depths to seek for gold, while he might mount to the heights for love and sympathy.

Live hidden as the violet, and I will give thee in a fruitful kiss the living seed of another, sister flower, and I will rend the clouds that there may not be lacking a sunbeam to illume thy joy. Live obscure, live unheeded, and when thy spirit is set free, I will lift it on a rosy cloud up to the world of light.

Wind and wave were hushed, and there appeared the gnome.

The gnome was like a transparent pigmy, a sort of dwarf all made of light, as a Will-o-the-wisp; it laughed hugely, but without noise, and leapt from rock to rock, making one dizzy with its giddy antics. Sometimes it plunged into the water and kept on shining in the depths like a precious stone of myriad colors; again it leapt to the surface, and tossed its feet and its hands, and swung its head from one side to the other with a rapidity that was little short of prodigious.

Marta had seen the gnome and was following him with a bewildered gaze in all his extravagant evolutions; and when the diabolical spirit darted away at last into the craggy wilds of the Moncayo, like a running flame, shaking out sparks from its hair, she felt an irresistible attraction and rushed after it in frantic chase.

Magdalena! at the same instant called the breeze, slowly withdrawing; and Magdalena, moving step by step like a sleep-walker guided in slumber by a friendly voice, followed the zephyr, which was softly blowing over the plain.

When all was done, again there was silence in the dusky grove, and the wind and the water kept on, as ever, with sounds as of murmuring and sighing.