Legends & Romances of Spain Part 12

They had not proceeded far from the sh.o.r.es of the island when they were beset by a furious tempest, in which Agesilan and Diana were separated from the rest of their kindred and cast upon a desert rock, where they would have perished had not an accommodating knight, mounted upon a hippogriff, who chanced to be flying overhead, picked them up and carried them to his home in the Canary Islands. But their preserver's disinterestedness vanished on beholding the beauty of Diana, so, when Agesilan was off his guard, he bore her to a distant part of the Green Island, as his demesne was called. His amorous dream was, however, destined to be rudely broken in upon, for at that moment a party of corsairs landed, and seeing in Diana a prize who would bring them a large sum in the nearest slave-market, promptly bore her off.

Agesilan, on being unable to find Diana, suspected treachery, so mounted the hippogriff and set out in search of her. Having in vain surveyed the island from the back of the winged monster, in his despair he took to flying at large. Whether from 'engine trouble' or causes even more obscure, he was forced to alight in the country of the Garamantes, the king of which had been struck blind as a punishment for his overweening pride. Moreover, the unfortunate monarch was doomed to have the food prepared for him devoured daily by a hideous dragon. From this monster Agesilan delivered him. The whole incident is an unblushing imitation of a pa.s.sage in Orlando Furioso (can. x.x.xiii, st. 102 ff.), in which Senapus, King of Ethiopia, is visited by a like misfortune, and has his food daily destroyed by harpies until relieved by Astolpho, who descends in his dominions on a winged steed. But the author of Agesilan is no whit more guilty than Ariosto himself, for both incidents are derived originally from the story of Phineus and the harpies in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius.

Agesilan, pursuing the quest of Diana, arrived at the Desolate Isle. The G.o.d Tervagant (Termagaunt, Tyr Magus='Tyr the Mighty') had fallen in love with the queen of this country, and on being repulsed by her let loose a band of demons upon her possessions, who ravaged them far and wide. The G.o.d's oracle had announced that he would not be appeased unless the inhabitants daily exposed a maiden on the sea-sh.o.r.e until such time as he found one as much to his taste as the Queen. Each day a hapless damsel was chained to a rock on the desolate sh.o.r.es of the island, and was promptly devoured by a monster which rose out of the sea. This naturally rendered the supply of maidens in the vicinity rather scarce, so in order to save one of the local ladies for another occasion, Diana, who had been brought to the island, was tied to the rock one morning and, like another Andromeda, of whose myth the incident is a paraphrase, was left to the mercy of the monster. Agesilan, soaring through the air on his hippogriff, witnessed her plight, descended to her aid, and, after a terrific combat, slew the monster which had been about to devour her.

Having accounted for the grisly satellite of Tervagant, he placed the almost unconscious Diana upon his aery steed, whose head he turned in the direction of Constantinople; but on the way thither this now practised airman caught sight of the ship of Amadis from which he and his mistress had been separated in the tempest. Alighting on the vessel with all the skill of a sea-plane pilot on the deck of a 'mother-ship,' he greeted his astonished kindred, and the party eventually reached Constantinople, where the wedding of the princ.i.p.al characters was solemnized.

Silvio de la Selva

Silvio de la Selva, son of Amadis of Greece and a certain Finistea, is the hero of the twelfth and last book of the Amadis series. He first came into prominence by the gallant display he made against the Russians at the siege of Constantinople, and when the Tsar of that turbulent folk showed a desire to plunge Europe into the distractions of war once more he was not the last to unsheath his falchion and a.s.sure the twelve dwarfish amba.s.sadors of the Muscovite that the confederacy of one hundred and sixty monarchs which he had brought together had a small chance of returning to their respective dominions. The resultant siege, with its sallies and combats a outrance, we shall forbear to describe, only remarking en pa.s.sant that, in the mercantile phrase, its details are 'up to sample.' But if the Greek princes bethought them to escape the consequences of having incurred the enmity of the turbulent Russ merely by defeating him in the field, they were destined to receive a rude awakening, for by one fell stroke of necromantic art the entire galaxy was spirited away. Once more the inhabitants of the romantic city on the Bosphorus were plunged into the deepest consternation; but, nothing daunted at the task which now confronted them, the knights and paladins of the family--in themselves an army of no mean dimensions--set out in search of their honoured relatives. But we are not yet liberated from the tangle of plot and counter-plot excogitated by the expiring hackery of Castile, and the dying candle of the great romance of Amadis does not flare up and flicker out with the rescue of the heroes and heroines who have swaggered through its pages in almost immortal sequel of intrigue and battle. For, the princesses having been brought safely back to Constantinople, it was discovered that during their absence some of them had been blessed with little olive branches, many of whose adventures are related, until the bewildered reader, lost in the maze of their story, like Milton's Satan, looks round in desperation for any outlet of escape, exclaiming with the fallen great one:

"Me miserable, which way shall I fly?"

But, like the doomed archangel, he must 'dree his weird,' and wade through the adventures of Spheramond, son of Rogel of Greece, and Amadis of Astre, son of Agesilan--or, better still, he may do as we did, and, reverently closing the worm-eaten volume, restore it to the library, where its embossed back is, perhaps, rather more appreciated than its grotesque contents.

Instead of being hurled from the throne by an incensed and neglected populace, the line of Amadis continued to flourish exceedingly, and perhaps the secret of its success as a dynasty lies in the fact that it was more habitually resident in fire-ringed castles or enchanted islands than in its palace in the metropolis, which it seems to have chiefly employed as a convalescent establishment in which to recover from wounds delivered by magic swords and the poisonous bites of 'loathly' dragons, rather than as a seat of governmental activity and imperial direction.

We have seen how the great theme of Amadis of Gaul burst upon Spain in a blaze of glory, and how, mangled by the efforts of fluent hacks, it sank into insignificance amid the derision of the enlightened and the gibes of the vulgar. It is as if our own peerless British epos of Arthur, that thrice heroic treasury of the deeds of those who

Jousted in Aspremont or Montalban, Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebizond,

had been seized upon by Grub Street and prost.i.tuted to the necessities of scribblers. We cannot give thanks enough to the G.o.d of letters that it has escaped such a doom, though this has been more by virtue of good hap than through that of any protecting influence. The sequels of Amadis descend by stages of lessening excellence until at length they approach the limits of drivel. But does this sorrowful circ.u.mstance in any way dim the glory of the first fine rapture? Nay, no more than darkness can cloud the memory of morning. The knightly eloquence of the original characters may degenerate in rodomontade; the lofty and delicate imagery of the primary books may merge into unspeakable vulgarities of invention; the tender beauty which enchants the first love idyll may become coa.r.s.e intrigue. But no work of art is to be judged by its imitations. With the exception of the Fifth Book, the remaining Amadis romances are as oleographs placed beside a n.o.ble painting. Unrestrained in execution, daubed in colours of the harshest crudity, uneven in outline and distressing in ensemble, they are more fitted for the scullions' hall than the picture-gallery. Yet they may not be pa.s.sed over in a work dealing with Spanish romance, and they point a moral which in this twentieth century it is fitting that we should digest--that if a nation acquiesce in the debas.e.m.e.nt of its literary standards and revel in the worthless and the excitement of meretricious fiction, it will cease to excel among the comity of peoples. Literature is the expression of a nation's soul. And what species of soul is that which voices itself in crudely jacketed novelettes, redolent of a psychology at once ridiculous and unhealthy? Have we no Cervantes to shatter this ign.o.ble thing to the sound of inextinguishable laughter? Is not the sad lesson of Amadis one for the consideration of our own people? Spain was never so great as when its first books roused her chivalry to an ardour of knightly patriotism, and she was never so little as when the printing-presses of Burgos and Valladolid and Saragossa flooded her cities with a mercenary and undistinguished fiction, prompted by commercial greed, and joyfully received by a public avid for the drug of sensation.

CHAPTER V: THE PALMERIN ROMANCES

Let Palmerin of England be preserved as a singular relic of antiquity.

Cervantes

It would seem to have been a foible with the early critics of Spanish romance to seek to discover a Portuguese origin for practically all of its manifestations. They appear to have argued from the a.n.a.logy of Amadis that all romantic effort hailed from the Lusitanian kingdom, yet they are never weary of descanting upon the Provencal and Moorish influences which moulded Spanish romance! It is precisely as if one said: "Yes, the Arthurian story displays every sign of Norman-French influence, but all the same, it was first cast into literary form in Wales. England? Oh, England merely accepted it, that's all."

The Palmerin series ran almost side by side with Amadis in a chronological sense, and tradition ascribed its first book to an anonymous lady of Augustobriga. But there is reason to believe, from a pa.s.sage in Primaleon, one of its sections, that it was the work of Francisco Vasquez de Ciudad Rodrigo. No early Portuguese version is known, and the Spanish edition of the first romance of the series, Palmerin de Oliva, printed at Seville in 1525, was certainly not the earliest impression of that work. The English translation, by Anthony Munday, was published in black letter in 1588.

Palmerin de Oliva

No sooner did Palmerin de Oliva appear than it scored a success only second to that of Amadis, its resemblance to which can scarcely be called fortuitous, and, as in the case of that romance, translations and continuations were multiplied with surprising rapidity.

The commencement of Palmerin de Oliva carries us once more to the enchanted sh.o.r.es of the Golden Horn. Reymicio, the Emperor of Constantinople, had a daughter named Griana, whom he had resolved to give in marriage to Tarisius, son of the King of Hungary, and nephew to the Empress. But Griana had given her heart to Florendos of Macedon, to whom she had a son. Dreading the wrath of her father, she permitted an attendant to carry the infant to a deserted spot, where it was found by a peasant, who took it to his cottage, and brought it up as his own son, calling the child Palmerin de Oliva, because he had been found on a hill which was covered with a luxuriant growth of palm and olive trees.

When the boy grew up he accepted his humble lot with equanimity. But on learning that he was not the son of a peasant he longed for a life of martial excitement. Adventure soon afforded him a taste of its dazzling possibilities. While traversing a gloomy forest in search of game he encountered a merchant beset by a ferocious lion. He slew the beast, and learned that the traveller was returning to his own country from Constantinople. Attaching himself to the man of commerce, Palmerin accompanied him to the city of Hermide, where his grateful companion furnished him with arms and a horse. Thus accoutred for the life chivalric, he betook himself to the Court of Macedon, where he received the honour of knighthood from Florendes, the son of the king of that country, and his own father.

A quest soon presented itself to him. Primaleon, King of Macedon, had long been a sufferer from a grievous sickness. His physicians a.s.sured him that could he obtain water from a certain fountain his malady would disappear. But the spring in question was guarded by an immense serpent of such ferocity that to approach its lair meant certain death. Knight after knight had essayed the adventure, only to be crushed in the monster's venomous folds, so that the life-giving waters the ailing King so sorely required continued to be withheld from him. This condition of affairs seemed to Palmerin to present him with an opportunity for distinguishing himself, and without realizing the strenuous nature of the task before him he leapt into the saddle and cantered off in the direction of the serpent-guarded fountain.

The Fairy Damsels

Very conscious of the honour of knighthood which but so lately had been conferred upon him, and inordinately proud of the gilded spurs which glittered on his mailed heels, Palmerin was not a little pleased that he had succeeded in attracting the attention of a bevy of young and beautiful ladies, who stood where field and forest met, watching his rather haughty progress with laughing eyes. Had he been less occupied with himself and his horse, which he forced to curvet and caracole in the most outrageous fashion, he would have seen that the damsels before whom he wished to cut such a fine figure were of a beauty far too ethereal to be human, for the ladies who watched him with such amus.e.m.e.nt were princesses of the race of Faery, and had waylaid the young knight with the intention of giving him such aid as fairies have in their power.

Palmerin greeted them with all the distinction of which he was capable.

"G.o.d save you, fair damsels," he said, bowing almost to his horse's mane. "Can you tell me if I am near the serpent-guarded fountain?"

"Fair sir," replied one of the sylphs, "you are within a league of it. But let us entreat you to turn back from such a neighbourhood as this. Many famous knights have we seen pa.s.s this way to do battle with the monster who guards its waters, but none have we seen return."

"It is not my custom to turn my back upon an enterprise," said Palmerin loftily. "Did I understand you to say the fountain lies within a league of this place?"

"Within a short league, Sir Knight," replied the fairy. Then, turning to her companions, she said: "Sisters, this would seem to be the youth we have awaited so long. He appears bold and resolute. Shall we confer upon him the gift?"

Her companions having given their a.s.sent to this proposal, the fairy then enlightened Palmerin regarding the true character of herself and her attendant maidens, and a.s.sured him that wherever he went, or whatever adventure he undertook, neither monster nor magician would have the power to cast enchantment upon him. Then, directing him more particularly to the lair of the serpent, they disappeared in the recesses of the forest.

Riding on, he speedily came within view of the fountain, but had scarcely beheld its silver waters bubbling from a green hill-side when a horrible hissing warned him of the proximity of its loathly guardian. All unafraid, however, he spurred his terrified horse forward. A blast of fire, belched from the monster's mouth, surged over him, but he bent low in the saddle and avoided it. Then, dashing at the bristling head, poised on a neck thick as a pillar, and armoured with dazzling scales, he struck fiercely at it with his falchion. The serpent tried to envelop horse and man in its folds, but ere it could bring its grisly coils to bear upon them Palmerin had smitten off its head.

Returning to Macedon, the young hero was at once overwhelmed by the applications of importunate monarchs that he should a.s.sist them in one enterprise or another. All of these Palmerin achieved with such consummate address that his fame spread into all parts of Europe, and we find him as far afield as Belgium, where he delivered the Emperor of Germany from certain traitor knights who besieged him in the town of Ghent. It was during this adventure that he met and became enamoured of the Emperor's daughter, the beauteous Polinarda, who had on one occasion appeared to him in a dream. But the young paladin felt that if he were to render himself worthy of such a peerless lady he must subdue many knights in her name, and undertake adventures even more onerous than those through which he had already come scathless. Learning, therefore, of a great tournament in the land of France, he journeyed thither, and bore off the prize.

Returning to Germany, Palmerin found the Emperor engaged in a war with the King of England, at the instance of the King of Norway, who had requested his a.s.sistance against the British monarch. This partisanship did not, however, appeal to Trineus, the Emperor's son, who, enamoured of the princess Agriola, daughter of the English king, privately departed with Palmerin, his object being to aid the father of his lady-love. After undergoing many adventures, the companions succeeded in carrying off the English princess, but while voyaging homeward were attacked by a furious tempest and were driven on the sh.o.r.es of the Morea. When the elements subsided Palmerin landed on the neighbouring island of Calpa, to engage in the sport of hawking, and during his absence the vessel in which he had left his friends was seized by Turkish pirates, who carried Agriola as a present to the Grand Turk. Trineus was even less happily situated, for being marooned upon an island, which we must surely regard as that of Circe, he was immediately transformed into a dog. To add to this indignity, his transformation did not take the shape of any of the more n.o.ble varieties of the canine race, but that of a tiny lap-dog, such as are found in ladies' boudoirs.

In the meantime Palmerin, all unconscious of the fate of his friends, was discovered in the island of Calpa by Archidiana, daughter of the Soldan of Babylon, who at once pressed him into her service, refusing to allow him to depart. Archidiana had from the first conceived a violent pa.s.sion for the handsome young adventurer, whose embarra.s.sment was heightened by the knowledge that her cousin, Ardemira, had likewise fallen in love with him. The knight, however, stoutly repelled the fair advances, and Ardemira took her repulse so much to heart that she burst a blood-vessel and expired, shortly after the party had arrived at the Babylonian Court. Hearing of her demise, Amaran, son of the King of Phrygia, to whom she had been affianced, hastened to Babylon, and precipitately accused Archidiana of her death, offering to make good his a.s.sertion by an appeal to arms. Palmerin, as in duty bound, espoused the princess's quarrel, slew Amaran in single combat, and by doing so won the good graces of the Soldan, whom he a.s.sisted in the war with Phrygia which followed.

The Soldan, elated by his military successes, resolved to extend his empire, and with this object in view fitted out a great expedition against Constantinople, which Palmerin was forced to accompany. But during a tempest which the Babylonian fleet encountered he commanded the seamen of his own vessel to steer for the German coast. On reaching it he made his way to the capital, and made himself known in secret to Polinarda, with whom he spent some time.

But his heart misgave him regarding the fate of his friend Trineus, and he resolved to set out in quest of that unhappy prince. Journeying across Europe, he arrived at the city of Buda, where he learned that Florendos, Prince of Macedon, had recently slain Tarisius, who, it will be remembered, was his rival for the hand of the Princess Griana, and whom she had been forced to marry by her tyrannous father, the Emperor of Constantinople. Florendos had, however, been taken captive by the kinsmen of Tarisius, and had been sent to Constantinople, where he was condemned to be burnt at the stake, along with Griana, who was believed to be his accomplice. On hearing of the impending fate of those who, unknown to him, were his parents, Palmerin at once repaired to Constantinople, where he maintained their innocence, defeated their accusers, the nephews of Tarisius, in a combat a outrance, and succeeded in saving them from the terrible fate which had awaited them. While he lay in bed recovering from his wounds he was visited by the grateful Griana, who, from a mark upon his face and the account of his exposure as an infant, knew that he must be her son. On hearing her story the Emperor joyfully received Palmerin and acknowledged him as his successor.

The Quest for Trineus

But his new accession to power did not render Palmerin unmindful of his vow to search for his lost friend Trineus. Sailing over the Mediterranean in quest of him, he fell in with an overwhelming force of Turks, and was taken prisoner. Brought to the palace of the Grand Turk, he succeeded in liberating the princess Agriola from the power of that tyrant. Effecting his own escape, he came to the palace of a princess to whom Trineus in his shape of a lap-dog had been presented by those who had found him. This lady had contracted a severe inflammation in the nose (unromantic detail!), and requested Palmerin to accompany her to Mussabelin, a Persian magician, whom she believed to be able to remove the distressing complaint. But the sage informed her that only by means of the flowers of a tree which grew near the Castle of the Ten Steps could she be cured.