In the city of the winds
The Ebro, as all the world knows—or will
pretend to know, being an ignorant and vain world—runs
through the city of Saragossa. It is a river,
moreover, which should be accorded the sympathy of
this generation, for it is at once rapid and shallow.
On one side it is bordered by the wall of the city.
The left bank is low and sandy, liable to flood; a
haunt of lizards in the summer, of frogs in winter-time.
The lower bank is bordered by poplar trees, and here
and there plots of land have been recovered from the
riverbed for tillage and the growth of that harsh
red wine which seems to harden and thicken the men
of Aragon.
One night, when a half moon hung over the domes of
the Cathedral of the Pillar, a man made his way through
the undergrowth by the riverside and stumbled across
the shingle towards the open shed which marks the
landing-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that
Saragossa possesses. The ferry-boat was moored
to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed, high-sterned
vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observant
must conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings
across the river on a wire rope, with a running tackle,
by the force of the stream and the aid of a large
rudder.
The man looked cautiously into the vine-clad shed.
It was empty. He crept towards the boat and found
no one there. Then he examined the chain that
moored it. There was no padlock. In Spain
to this day they bar the window heavily and leave
the door open. To the cunning mind is given in
this custom the whole history of a great nation.
He stood upright and looked across the river.
He was a tall man with a clean cut face and a hard
mouth. He gave a sharp sigh as he looked at Saragossa
outlined against the sky. His attitude and his
sigh seemed to denote along journey accomplished at
last, an object attained perhaps or within reach,
which is almost the same thing, but not quite.
For most men are happier in striving than in possession.
And no one has yet decided whether it is better to
be among the lean or the fat.
Don Francisco de Mogente sat down on the bench provided
for those that await the ferry, and, tilting back
his hat, looked up at the sky. The northwest
wind was blowing—the Solano—as
it only blows in Aragon. The bridge below the
ferry has, by the way, a high wall on the upper side
of it to break this wind, without which no cart could
cross the river at certain times of the year.
It came roaring down the Ebro, bending the tall poplars
on the lower bank, driving before it a cloud of dust
on the Saragossa side. It lashed the waters of
the river to a gleaming white beneath the moon.
And all the while the clouds stood hard and sharp of
outline in the sky. They hardly seemed to move
towards the moon. They scarcely changed their
shape from hour to hour. This was not a wind of
heaven, but a current rushing down from the Pyrenees
to replace the hot air rising from the plains of Aragon.
