"BretHarte-LegendsAndTales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harte Bret)

with enthusiastic conceptions, beheld all that vast expanse
gathered under the mild sway of the Holy Faith, and peopled with
zealous converts. Each little knoll in fancy became crowned with a
chapel; from each dark canyon gleamed the white walls of a mission
building. Growing bolder in his enthusiasm, and looking farther
into futurity, he beheld a new Spain rising on these savage shores.
He already saw the spires of stately cathedrals, the domes of
palaces, vineyards, gardens, and groves. Convents, half hid among
the hills, peeping from plantations of branching limes; and long
processions of chanting nuns wound through the defiles. So
completely was the good Father's conception of the future
confounded with the past, that even in their choral strain the
well-remembered accents of Carmen struck his ear. He was busied in
these fanciful imaginings, when suddenly over that extended
prospect the faint, distant tolling of a bell rang sadly out and
died. It was the Angelus. Father Jose listened with superstitious
exaltation. The mission of San Pablo was far away, and the sound
must have been some miraculous omen. But never before, to his
enthusiastic sense, did the sweet seriousness of this angelic
symbol come with such strange significance. With the last faint
peal, his glowing fancy seemed to cool; the fog closed in below
him, and the good Father remembered he had not had his supper. He
had risen and was wrapping his serapa around him, when he perceived
for the first time that he was not alone.

Nearly opposite, and where should have been the faithless Ignacio,
a grave and decorous figure was seated. His appearance was that of
an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-
gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws.
The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and
exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and
wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was
not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination,
continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him a certain
advantage over the practical and material minded. He instantly
detected the diabolical quality of his visitant, and was prepared.
With equal coolness and courtesy he met the cavalier's obeisance.

"I ask your pardon, Sir Priest," said the stranger, "for disturbing
your meditations. Pleasant they must have been, and right
fanciful, I imagine, when occasioned by so fair a prospect."

"Worldly, perhaps, Sir Devil,--for such I take you to be," said the
Holy Father, as the stranger bowed his black plumes to the ground;
"worldly, perhaps; for it hath pleased Heaven to retain even in our
regenerated state much that pertaineth to the flesh, yet still, I
trust, not without some speculation for the welfare of the Holy
Church. In dwelling upon yon fair expanse, mine eyes have been
graciously opened with prophetic inspiration, and the promise of
the heathen as an inheritance hath marvellously recurred to me.