Night is falling as two riders cross an olive grove to an iron cross where the road divides. One waits with the horses; the other walks to a lonely convent and comes back pleased: the nun he visits, he says, would rather “fly free through Castile than live in a cage with Christ.” They are Captain Don César Gil de Montoya and his servant Ginés.
One October night, in a Toledo alley, a band of men lies in wait for a gentleman to leave a house with his daughter so they can carry her off. A young man with a long plume in his hat leaps to their defense, leaves two of the attackers on the ground and scatters the rest with a single line: “A legion is not enough for Captain Montoya.” The man he saves is Don Fadrique de Toledo, who offers him his honor and his daughter. Montoya, rich, gallant and feared all over Spain, accepts Diana and a dowry of four million without giving up the nun.
The wedding is celebrated in the duke’s palace before the cream of Castile, at a party the poet admits he cannot describe. Montoya arrives late, signs the marriage contract and promises a church wedding the next morning; but at two in the morning he slips out of Toledo with Ginés through the Cambrón gate. Meanwhile, in the convent, Doña Inés de Alvarado, shut away with no calling, suddenly seems the most devout of the sisters: she prays at the choir grille, embroiders without rest and rises with the sun. The nuns think the lost sheep has come home; in truth, a man is gazing at her from the other side of the grille.
The ending (spoilers)
At the olive grove Montoya leaves Ginés with three horses and enters the convent to fetch Inés. But the church is in mourning: monks chanting responses that sound like curses, nobles with dry, ancient faces, an open grave. He asks who the dead man is and whom the grave is for, and the answer is always the same: Montoya. He climbs the catafalque, uncovers the coffin and finds himself in the shroud; Don Fadrique and Diana mourn him without recognizing him, Inés calls to him from the grille, and a dead man with a foul face seizes his arm: “You are the one who changes places with me; come to my grave.” He wakes in the arms of Ginés, who saw and heard nothing. Montoya breaks off the wedding without explanation and divides his fortune: a share for Ginés, another to found a hospital or a convent, and another for Don Luis de Alvarado, who wins the bet they had made about stealing God’s finest treasure; Luis must never learn that the treasure was his own sister. Then he vanishes. Ten years later the dying Don Fadrique sends for a Capuchin friar: it is Montoya, who confesses his vision and stays with him to the end. His humble grave read: “Here lies Friar Diego de Simancas, who in the world was Captain Montoya.” Inés died a nun.
Arcadópolis
Margarita la tornera
El clavo
Noches lúgubres
Historia de los siete murciélagos
El infierno del amor