de una culpa.

Ella era caprichosa, caprichosa y extravagante, como todas las
mujeres[1] del mundo.

[Footnote 1: This cynical view of women is repeated in some of
Becquer's verses, and may not unlikely have been caused by a bitter
personal experience, as the love-story embodied in the poems seems
to suggest.]

El, supersticioso, supersticioso y valiente, como todos los hombres de
su epoca.

Ella se llamaba Maria Antunez.

El Pedro Alfonso de Orellana.

Los dos eran toledanos[1], y los dos vivian en la misma ciudad que los
vio nacer.

[Footnote 1: toledanos--'of Toledo.' Toledo is the capital of a
province of the same name. It is situated on the Tagus not far to
the south of Madrid. "The city was the ancient capital of the
Carpetani, and was conquered by the Romans about 193 B.C. It was the
capital of the West-Gothic realm;... was the second city in the
country under the Moorish rule; was taken by Alfonso VI of Castile
and Leon in 1085;... and was the capital of Castile until superseded
by Madrid in the sixteenth century." _Century Dict_. Population
(1900) 23,375. Within its walls it presents the appearance of a
Moorish city with huddled dwellings and narrow, crooked streets,
which afford but scanty room even for the foot passenger. Viewed
from without it is unrivaled for stern picturesqueness. "The city
lies on a swelling granite hill in the form of a horseshoe, cut out,
as it were, by the deep gorge of the Tagus from the mass of
mountains to the south. On the north it is connected with the great
plain of Castile by a narrow isthmus. At all other points the sides
of the rocky eminence are steep and inaccessible." (Baedeker.)
"Toledo, on its hillside, with the tawny half-circle of the Tagus at
its feet, has the color, the roughness, the haughty poverty of the
sierra on which it is built, and whose strong articulations from the
very first produce an impression of energy and passion." (Quoted
from M. Maurice Barres in Hannah Lynch's _Toledo_, London, 1903, p.
3.)]

La tradicion que refiere esta maravillosa historia, acaecida hace
muchos anos, no dice nada mas acerca de los personajes que fueron sus
heroes.

Yo, en mi calidad de cronista veridico, no anadire ni una sola palabra
de mi cosecha para caracterizarlos mejor.

II

El la encontro un dia llorando y le pregunto:--?Por que lloras?

Ella se enjugo los ojos, le miro fijamente, arrojo un suspi