Don Fernando

Considered by Graham Greene to be Maugham’s best work, Don Fernando is a paean to a golden age of enormous creative energy. It discusses the writings of St. Teresa and the paintings of El Greco, and comments with sagacity and wit on such illustrious figures as Cervantes, Velazquez and the creator of Don Juan. This vibrant assessment of a great people at their greatest hour is full of happy surprises, curious facts and stimulating opinions that reflect Maugham’s lifelong enchantment with the landscape and people of Spain.

About the Author

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas’ Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and short story writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, which was followed by seven more collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer’s Notebook.

In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965.

Don Fernando

W. Somerset Maugham

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Epub ISBN: 9781409090588

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W. Somerset Maugham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 1935
Collected edition, new and completely revised first published
by William Heinemann in 1950

This edition first published by Mandarin Paperbacks in 1990

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Note

I wish to tell the reader that I have taken advantage of a new edition of this book to make certain changes in it. It is not often that a writer comes across a criticism of his work that can be of use to him. When he is lucky enough to do so he is foolish not to profit by it. That is what I have tried to do in this edition. When Mr. Desmond MacCarthy reviewed The Summing Up in The Sunday Times he remarked, but without acrimony, that I had already said quite a number of things in Don Fernando that I had said in the book he was reviewing. I knew it. I had when I wrote it no intention of writing The Summing Up and since a subject I happened to be treating in Don Fernando seemed to give me a plausible excuse to say various things I very much wanted to say, I said them. As I hoped its name indicated, The Summing Up was a summing up of my reflections on most of the matters that in the course of my life had occupied it and so it seemed natural enough to repeat more or less fully what I was well aware I had said in more books than one. But since The Summing Up has had a far wider circulation than I could have expected I have thought it wise to omit in this book what in the later one I think I have said more adequately. I was indeed glad to do this, since on re-reading Don Fernando after fifteen years, I could not but see that to deal at considerable length with a topic that was not too relevant to my theme was an error in composition. I have learnt enough about the difficult business of writing to know that when you are hunting a fox you have no business to course a hare.

Mr. Raymond Mortimer in a kindly review of Don Fernando in The New Statesman found one of the chapters tedious. It contained a long passage from a conversation-manual written in the sixteenth century by a certain John Minsheu to teach Englishmen such Spanish phrases as they might find useful on their travels. I inserted it because I thought it threw a curious side-light on the times. John Minsheu described his dialogues as Pleasant and Delightful, but I am prepared to believe that the general reader, who cannot be expected to share my particular interests, found them neither; so I have left the passage out and replaced it by matter which I hope will be more to his taste.

On another point on which Mr. Mortimer animadverted I could do nothing. I stated that these essays on various aspects of Spanish life during the reign of Philip III were composed out of material I had collected in order to write a novel, but which for certain reasons I never wrote. My critic thought this was all moonshine; in fact, if I remember right, he said it was as thin a pretext to account for the writing of a book as he had ever met with. I daresay it was, I could not help it; it was the plain truth. I do not believe any writer would go to the trouble of reading so many books, many of them dull, in a Spanish which the Spaniards of today themselves find none too easy to read, without an ulterior motive. To write about them. The best proof I can give that when I said what I did it was not merely an idle invention to give my book some kind of form and lead me naturally from one topic to another, is that many years later I wrote, certainly not the novel I had purposed, but another dealing with the same period in which I was able to use much of the material I had collected.

I aim to please, and when I came to go over Don Fernando again I tried to find some way of getting round the point with which Mr. Mortimer had found fault. For it is no use to tell your readers that so and so is a fact; the fact must be plausible. But since the whole book hung on this thread, tenuous maybe, but strong enough, I thought, to bear its weight, I soon saw that the only manner in which I could get rid of this useful expedient was to re-write the book from beginning to end, and that I was not prepared to do. If it has no worse defect I can afford to be satisfied.

I am glad to have this opportunity to tender my very grateful thanks to the two distinguished critics I have mentioned for criticism which has enabled me, I hope, to produce a somewhat better book than that which so many years ago I offered to the public.

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ALSO BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I WAS LIVING in Seville at the time, in the street called Guzman el Bueno, and whenever I went out or came home I passed Don Fernando’s tavern. When, my morning’s work done, I had gone for a stroll down the gay and crowded Sierpes, I found it very pleasant to drop in for a glass of manzanilla on my way back to luncheon; and in the cool of the evening, walking my horse over the dangerous cobbles after a ride in the country, I would often stop, call the boy to hold the horse, and step in. The tavern was no more than a long low room with doors on two sides of it, for it was at the corner of a street; the bar ran down the length of the room and behind it were the barrels of wine from which Don Fernando served you. From the ceiling hung bunches of Spanish onions, strings of sausages, and hams from Granada, which Don Fernando always said were the best in Spain. I think his custom was chiefly among the servants of the neighbourhood. This district of Santa Cruz was then the most elegant in Seville. Tortuous white streets, with large houses, and here and there a church. It was strangely deserted. If you went out in the morning you might see a lady in black, with her maid, going to Mass; sometimes a huckster passed along with his donkey, his wares in great open panniers; or a beggar, stopping at house after house, who raised his voice at each reja, the wrought iron gate that led into the patio, and begged for alms with the phrase of immemorial usage. At nightfall the ladies who had been driving in the Paseo in a landau drawn by two horses came home again and the streets resounded with the clatter of the horses’ hooves. Then all again grew silent. This was many years ago. I write of the last years of the nineteenth century.

Don Fernando was small even for a Spaniard, but he was very fat. His round brown face shone with sweat and he had always two days’ growth of beard. Never more and never less. I do not know how he managed it. He was incredibly dirty. He had large black shining eyes, with extremely long lashes, and they were at the same time sharp, good-natured and gay. He was a wag and he enjoyed his own dry humour. He spoke in the soft Andalusian Spanish from which the Moorish influence has eliminated the harshness of Castile and it was not till I had learnt the language pretty well that I found him easy to understand. He was an aficionado of the bull-ring and it was his boast that the great Guerrita came in now and then to drink a glass of wine with him. He was a bachelor and lived alone with a scrubby, pale-faced boy whom he had got from the orphanage and who did the cooking, washed the glasses and swept the floor. This boy had the most pronounced squint I ever saw.

But Don Fernando did not only sell you as good a glass of manzanilla as you could get in Seville; he also dealt in curios. That was why I dropped in to see him so often. You never knew what he might have to show you. I suppose the things came through a confidential servant from the houses in the neighbourhood. Their owners, temporarily embarrassed, were too proud to take them to a shop. They were for the most part small and easily portable, pieces of silver, lace, old fans with sticks of mother-of-pearl decorated with gold, crucifixes, paste ornaments and antique rings of baroque design. Don Fernando seldom acquired a piece of furniture; but when he did, a bargueño or a pair of straight-backed chairs, with leather seats and all studded with nails, he would keep it upstairs in the bedroom he shared with the foundling. I had very little money and he knew I could only buy trifles, but he loved to show his purchases and two or three times he took me up into his room. The windows were closed to keep out the heat by day and the noxious airs by night and it was filthy. It stank. In opposite corners of the room were two small iron beds, unmade at whatever time of day you went in, and the sheets looked as though they had not been washed for months. The floor was strewn with cigarette-ends. Don Fernando’s eyes would shine more brightly than ever when he passed his grubby, podgy hand over the wood of a chair that had been polished by the usage of three centuries. He would spit on the dusty gilt surface of a tabernacle and rub the place with his finger to show you with delight the fine quality of the gold. Sometimes, while you stood at the bar, he would fish out from behind it the pieces of a pair of ear-rings, those old heavy Spanish ear-rings in three tiers, and assemble them delicately so that you might admire the beauty of the paste and the elegance of the setting. He had a way of handling these things, sensual and tender, that showed you more than any words he might have spoken how profound a feeling he had for them. When he flicked open an old fan, with the peculiar click that the Spanish woman gives, and fanned himself, an old fan a great lady in her mantilla had flaunted at a bull-fight when Charles III was King of Spain, you could but feel that, ignorant though he was, he had some vague, delightful emotion of the past.

Don Fernando bought cheaply and sold cheaply; and so, after bargaining for days, often for weeks, which I think we both enjoyed, I was able to get from him little by little a number of objects which were not of the smallest use to me, but which I hankered after because their associations appealed to my fancy. So I bought the fans that pretty women, dead a hundred and fifty years ago, had flirted, the ear-rings they wore in their ears, the fantastic rings they wore on their fingers and the crucifixes they hung in their rooms. It was junk and in the passage of time it has all been stolen, lost or given away. Of all I bought from Don Fernando I have now nothing but a book, and that I did not want and bought against my will. One day as I stepped across the threshold Don Fernando addressed me forthwith.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. ‘I bought it especially for you.’

He opened a drawer in the bar and brought out a little squat volume bound in parchment. My face fell.

‘But look at it. It’s an old book. It’s more than three hundred years old.’

He opened it and showed me the title page. There it was all right, the date 1586, with the imprint of Madrid and the publisher’s name: Por la viuda de Alonso Gomez Impressor de la C.R.M.

‘It doesn’t cost anything,’ he went on. ‘I’ll give it you for fifty pesetas.’

‘It’s a celebrated book. When it was brought to me I said to myself: Don Guillermo will like that. He’s an educated man.’

‘My eye and Betty Martin.’ (Not many people know the Spanish for that.) ‘Sell it to somebody else. I’m not a book collector. I only buy books to read.’

‘A book three hundred years old? Come, man, don’t say things like that to me. Look, there’s writing on the margins in places and there’s writing on the back page. That shows you it’s old.’

It was true that some reader had written notes here and there in a hand that might very well have been that of the seventeenth century, but I could not decipher a word. I turned a few pages. It was beautifully printed on strong, fine paper, but the type was so close-set that it was difficult to read. The old spelling, the abbreviations I noticed, made it hard to understand. I shook my head firmly and handed the book back to Don Fernando.

A few days later I happened to pass the tavern on horseback and Don Fernando, who was standing at the doorway sucking a toothpick, called me.

I dismounted and gave the bridle to the boy. Don Fernando put the book in my hands.

‘I’ll give it you for thirty pesetas. I lose five on it, but I want you to have it.’

‘But you ought to have a library. Start your library with this book. It’s a beautiful book.’

And it wasn’t. Even though I knew I should never read it I might have been tempted if it had been bound in leather with a coat of arms in gold, a handsome folio with wide margins. But it was an ugly little volume, much too thick for its height, and the parchment with which it was bound was crinkled and yellow. I was determined not to have the book. Don Fernando, I do not know why, was determined that I should; and after that I never went into the tavern without his attacking me. He flattered me, he cajoled me, he threw himself on my mercy, he appealed to my sense of justice; he came down in his price to twenty pesetas, to ten, but I stood firm. Then one day he got hold of a wooden statuette of St. Anthony, obviously of the seventeenth century, beautifully carved and painted, that I immediately set my heart on. We bargained over it for several weeks until at last we arrived somewhere near the price that he was prepared to let it go for and that I was able to pay. The difference between us was only twenty pesetas. I forget the exact sum. I think he was asking a hundred and thirty pesetas and I was offering a hundred and ten.

‘Give me a hundred and thirty for the statue and the book,’ he said, ‘and you’ll never regret it.’

I turned round. He came towards me, an ingratiating smile on his fat, red lips, with the statuette in one hand and the book in the other.

‘I’ll give you the statuette for a hundred and twenty pesetas and I’ll make you a present of the book.’

A hundred and twenty pesetas was the price I had all along made up my mind to give.

‘But I want to make you one. It’s a pleasure for me. You can’t refuse a present. Come, man.’

‘Even at that it’s a present,’ he said. ‘You could sell it in Madrid for two hundred.’

He wrapped it up in a dirty piece of newspaper; I paid my money, and with the book in my hand and the statuette under my arm, walked home.

IN COURSE OF time I gathered together something of a library and the little squat book that Don Fernando forced upon me found its place in it. Because of its shape and its parchment binding among the paper covers of my foreign books and the multicoloured cloth of the English ones it often caught my eye. It did not irritate me for it reminded me of Don Fernando’s tavern, the streets of Seville in summer (the glare mitigated by the awnings stretched across them), and the cool, dry taste of manzanilla; but I never thought of reading it. And then one rainy afternoon when I was browsing among my books I happened to notice it and took it from the shelf. I turned over a few pages idly. I thought I would read a paragraph and see what I could make of it. But the paragraph was six pages long. I did not find it so hard to understand as I had expected. The long s’s were a bit of a bother and the n’s, omitted according to no obvious plan, were indicated by a little squiggle over the preceding letter; v in the middle of a word was replaced by u, and at the beginning sometimes by b. This reproduced the pronunciation of the sixteenth century. But, unfamiliar with this as I was, it was something of a facer when I had to guess that the word spelt boluer must be read volver. There were many abbreviations and the spelling was archaic. But I found that if I read with attention there was no great difficulty to overcome and the author seemed to me to write with perspicuity. He said what he had to say briefly. I turned back and started at the beginning.

The story I read was strange. Its hero was the youngest son of the thirteen children of Don Beltran Yañez de Oñaz and his wife Doña Maria Saez de Balda. Don Beltran was the head of an ancient and illustrious house, and his wife was his equal in birth and virtue. They were related to the greatest families in the province of Guipuzcoa. This is one of the pleasantest parts of Spain, a hilly country, with green, fertile valleys through which run bubbling crystalline streams. The cold in winter is tolerable and in summer the air is cool and fresh. Don Beltran’s house, still extant, stands in a long, narrow valley closed in by hills in front and by hills behind. But the view, though thus confined, is spacious. The summits of the hills are bare and stony, but trees grow on the sides, and on the lower slopes are patches of pasture, maize and corn. It is a smiling, richly coloured scene. A little river runs through the valley and it may be supposed that it was for the convenience of this that the house was built at that spot. But the times were troublous, and though no longer the fortress that had been destroyed by order of King Henry the Fourth and the Brotherhoods of Guipuzcoa, it could be defended in case of need. It is a square building, the lower part (the remains of the fourteenth century stronghold) of grey untrimmed stone, but the upper part, built a century later in a less warlike manner, is of brick, with the little pepper-pot towers called bartizans decorating the four corners. It is not very large; in England it would seem a country house of but moderate size, and Don Beltran and his wife, with their large family and the number of servants that their station demanded, must have been somewhat crowded. Don Beltran was a man of consequence and his heir, Don Martin, married Doña Magdalena d’Araoz, maid of honour to Queen Isabella the Catholic, who gave her as a wedding-present a painting of the Annunciation. A few days after the bride arrived in her new home she was surprised to find the picture bathed in sweat. The miracle caused great surprise to all the members of the family and Don Pedro Lopez, her husband’s brother and a priest, proposed that the picture should be transferred to the village church for the veneration of the faithful. But Don Martin, unwilling to part with so great a treasure, offered instead to build a chapel in the house, where the miraculous painting might be suitably enshrined.

The youngest son of Don Beltran, the hero of the story I read, was christened Iñigo. When little more than a child he was sent by his father to Court and here entered the service of Don Juan Velazquez de Cuellar, treasurer to the Catholic Kings. Service was an honourable calling. Men of rank thought it no disgrace to place their sons in the households of great noblemen. They waited at table, made the beds, lit the fires, swept the floors and fetched and carried for their masters. Don Juan Velazquez was governor of Arevalo in the province of Avila, one of the cities left by Juan II of Castile to his widow, the mother of Isabella. The arms of Arevalo show a battlemented wall and a plumed knight in full armour on horseback, with his lance at rest. Here the young Iñigo learnt manners, the usages of the world and such accomplishments as became a gentleman. Growing to man’s estate, with the example before him of his brothers, who were goodly men, and urged by his own gallant spirit, he applied himself to the exercise of arms. He sought to excel his equals and to achieve a reputation for valour. But his biographer passes over this period briefly. It is only from his own casual remarks made in after life that he is known to have been quick to defend his honour when the occasion arose, to have loved the chase and to have been something of a gambler. He was a young man of a comely person, not very tall, but well-made, with small feet of which he was not a little proud; he admitted in later years that he liked to wear boots that were too tight for him. He had beautiful hair, of a chestnut colour with a reddish glint in it, and his brown eyes were large, moving and wonderfully eloquent. His skin was white. His nose was hooked; it was the most noticeable feature of his face, but it was not so large as to be a disfigurement. He wore with grace the rich clothes of the court. For the sober habit which the economical spirit of Ferdinand the Catholic had except on occasions of state made usual, gave way with the arrival of Philip the Handsome, and his Flemish followers, to fashions of great extravagance. Don Iñigo was of an amorous complexion and is reputed to have been the lover of Germaine de Foix, the young wife whom Ferdinand not withstanding his name of the Prudent, married after the death of Isabella. The French chronicler describes her as ‘bonne et fort belle princesse’, but another contemporary, a Spaniard, states that she was ill-favoured and lame. He was possibly prejudiced. ‘This lady introduced into Castile magnificent dinners, albeit the Castilians and even their kings are very moderate in this matter,’ he says severely. ‘Whoever spent money on parties and banquets for her was her friend.’ She was but eighteen when she married (Ferdinand being fifty-four) and it is not strange if she liked to amuse herself. Don Iñigo fell passionately in love with her. He wore her colours and composed madrigals in her honour. He was a very proper gentleman.

He lived a life of ease and gallantry till the age of twenty-seven when, King Ferdinand being dead and his widow remarried, he entered the service of Don Antonio Manrique, Duke of Najera, a patron of his house. He took part in various campaigns. He was ambitious and energetic. He had a native gift for the managing of men so that the Duke of Najera employed him in affairs that needed discretion. On one occasion he sent him on a mission to reconcile contending factions in Guipuzcoa, and Don Iñigo succeeded in settling the matters in dispute to the satisfaction of all concerned. Charles V began his reign over Spain with a series of mistakes that drove his new subjects to revolt. The King of France seized the opportunity to declare war on his rival and a French army entered Navarre. The Duke of Najera, who was in command of the Spanish troops, leaving a garrison in the city of Pampeluna, evacuated the country. The French laid seige to the city, and the officers of the garrison, among whom was Don Iñigo, seeing no help for it, were of a mind to capitulate; but Don Iñigo opposed the common judgement and by his eloquence filled them with his own spirit so that they determined to resist to the death. But in the course of an assault he was hit by a cannon-ball in the right leg, and a splinter of stone from the wall at the same time wounded his other leg also. He fell and the garrison who had been sustained by his courage lost heart and surrendered.

The French entered the city. When they came upon Don Iñigo and discovered who he was they were moved to compassion and tended his wounds. So that he might be better taken care of, the French commander with generous courtesy gave orders that as soon as it was possible he should be borne back to his own house in a litter. But no sooner was he there than his wounds, especially that on his right leg, grew worse. The surgeons formed the opinion that in order to set it properly the bone must be broken again. This was done, to the great pain of the sick man, but during the operation he neither changed colour, groaned nor said a word that discovered want of courage. He did not mend, however, and little hope remained that he would recover. He was told of his danger, whereupon he confessed and received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. But that night, St. Peter, for whom he had always had a devotion, appeared to him and restored him to health. His bones began to set and he grew stronger. Twenty splinters of bone had been removed from his leg, so that it was shorter than the other and mis-shapen; and he could neither walk nor stand. Below the knee a piece of bone protruded in an unsightly manner and this distressed him so much that he asked the surgeons how it might be remedied. They told him that the excrescence could be cut away, but it would cause him greater anguish than he had ever endured in his life. His intention was to proceed with the career of arms; he was vain, he wanted to wear the smart boots that were then in fashion; and so notwithstanding their hesitation he insisted that the operation should be performed. He would not consent to be tied down, thinking this unworthy of his generous soul, and bore the suffering without a movement and without a murmur. The deformity was removed and then by means of wheels and other instruments, which caused him horrible pain, the leg was gradually stretched and straightened. But it never attained the same length as the other and he limped ever afterwards.

To pass the tedious hours of his convalescence he asked for the novels of chivalry which he was fond of reading, but it happened that there were none in the house. He was given what books there were, and these were a life of Christ and the stories of the saints which were known as Flos Sanctorum. He began to read, carelessly enough, but in a little while was deeply moved, and presently there arose in him a desire to imitate the great deeds of which he read. But he could not at once forget the past and he was beset by memories of his warlike exploits, the pleasant occupations of the court and thoughts of love. God and the Devil contended for his soul. But he noticed that when he thought of things divine he was filled with exultation, and contrariwise when he thought of things of the world, with discontent. That was enough. He determined to alter his life. His bitterest torment was the love that he sought in vain to tear out of his yearning heart; and one night, when he rose from his bed to pray, as was his frequent habit, the Queen of Heaven, with the child in her arms, appeared to him. From that time he was freed from the sensual thoughts that had vexed him, so that to the end of his life he preserved the chastity of his soul without stain.

His elder brother, and the people of the house, saw that he was different, for though he kept his secret his manner was changed. They must indeed have guessed that something very odd was going on, for when the young soldier finally made up his mind to follow in the footsteps of Jesus the house was rocked with a great crash and the stout stone wall was split through its entire thickness. It was observed that he read a great deal (an occupation naturally unfitting to a man of his birth) and prayed, and no longer cared to jest; his speech was grave and measured, of spiritual things, and he wrote much. He had a book elegantly bound and in this, for he was a good scribe, wrote down the most remarkable sayings and deeds of Jesus, of Mary, and of the Saints. He wrote those of Jesus in letters of gold, those of his blessed mother in letters of blue, and those of the other saints in other colours according to his devotion to them. He found satisfaction in these pursuits, but in none greater than in the contemplation of the sky and the stars. It stimulated him to contempt of all mutable things which are beneath them and enflamed his love of God. This habit never left him and his biographer relates how in old age when he could behold the heavens from some height he would remain absorbed in the sight so that he seemed transported. When he returned to himself the tears poured from his eyes with the delight that filled his heart and he said: ‘How vile and base appears the earth when I look at the sky; it is but mud and dung.’ He resolved to go to Jerusalem as soon as he had recovered his health. Till this was possible he decided with fasting, penitences of various kinds and corporal punishment to persecute his flesh. He sought a manner of life in which, stamping earthly things and the vanities of the world beneath his feet, he might castigate himself with such rigour as to give satisfaction to his Redeemer.

When at last he was sufficiently well to set out on his pilgrimage, Don Iñigo, knowing that it would arouse opposition in his family, gave as a pretext for leaving home his desire to visit his protector, the Duke of Najera, who had sent several times during his illness to enquire after him. But his elder brother, Don Martin, suspecting that the journey he was taking had another motive than civility, called him aside.

‘All things are great in you, my brother,’ he said, ‘your intelligence, your judgement, your courage, your birth, your appearance, your influence with the great, the goodwill in which this country holds you, the use and experience of war, sense and prudence, your age which is now in the flower of youth, and the great expectations, founded on these facts, which all men have of you. So how can you for a whim, deceiving our well-founded hopes, make fools of us all, and dispossess our house of the trophies of your victories and of the profits and rewards that should ensue from your labours? I have one advantage only over you, that I was born before you; but in everything else I recognise that you excel me. Look, I beg you, brother dearer than my life, look what you do and adopt not a course that will not only cheat us of our hopes, but will also cast upon our lineage perpetual infamy and disgrace.’

Don Iñigo answered in few words. He said that he would not forget-that he was well-born, and he promised to do nothing to bring dishonour on his house. He set out accompanied by two servants, but, giving them presents, soon afterwards dismissed them. His immediate destination was Monserrat. From the day he left his father’s house he scourged himself every night. He desired to do great and difficult things and he mortified his body with severity, because the saints, whose example he sought to follow, had thus acquitted themselves. In this he aimed, not so much at atoning for his sins, as at pleasing God. At a certain place along the road he was overtaken by a Moor, of whom at that time there were still many in the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, and they rode for a space together. They began to talk and presently discussed the virginity of Our Lady. The Moor admitted that she had enjoyed this blessed state before and at the birth of Jesus, but denied that she had retained it afterwards. Don Iñigo did all he could to undeceive him, but, such was his knavishness, he would not listen to reason. The Moor rode on, leaving Don Iñigo much perplexed; he could not decide whether his faith, and Christian charity, did not demand that he should pursue the fellow and stab him to the death for his audacity. He was a soldier, punctilious in the point of honour, and he took it as a personal affront that an enemy of the faith should venture in his presence to speak with disrespect of the Queen of Heaven. After anxious consideration he decided to leave the matter to the arbitrament of God; he made up his mind to go on his way till he came to a cross-road and there drop the reins on his horse’s neck. If the horse took the road along which the Moor had gone he would follow and kill him. But if the horse took the other road he would let him be. Thus he did and the horse, leaving on one side the broad and flat road along which the Moor had ridden, chose the other. God had spoken. Arriving at length in the neighbourhood of Monserrat, Don Iñigo reached a village where he provided himself with what little he needed for his pilgrimage. He bought a tunic of rough coarse stuff that reached to his feet, a piece of rope for a belt, espadrilles, a staff and a drinking-vessel.

About the Book

About the Author

Don Fernando

W. Somerset Maugham

Note

THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE

ALSO BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

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