Mare Nostrum | Page 3

power of the Crusaders, founders of a Latin
dynasty; then, when Vatacio died, the audacious Miguel Paleólogo
reconquered Constantinople, and the imperial widow found herself
courted by this victorious adventurer. For many years she resisted his
pretensions, finally maneuvering that her brother Manfred should return

her to her own country, where she arrived just in time to receive news
of her brother's death in battle, and to follow the flight of her
sister-in-law and nephews. They all took refuge in a castle defended by
Saracens in the service of Frederick, the only ones faithful to his
memory.
The castle fell into the power of the warriors of the Church, and
Manfred's wife was conducted to a prison where her life was shortly
after extinguished. Obscurity swallowed up the last remnants of the
family accursed by Rome. Death was always hovering around the
basilisa. They all perished--her brother Manfred, her half-brother, the
poetic and lamented Encio, hero of so many songs, and her nephew, the
knightly Coradino, who was to die later on under the axe of the
executioner upon attempting the defense of his rights. As the Oriental
empress did not represent any danger for the dynasty of Anjou, the
conqueror let her follow out her destiny, as lonely and forsaken as a
Shakespearian Princess.
As the widow of the late Emperor she was supposed to have a rental of
three thousand besantes of fine gold. But this remote rental never
arrived, and almost as a pauper she embarked with her niece, Constanza,
in a ship going toward the perfumed shores of the Gulf of Valencia,
where she entered the convent of Santa Barbara. In the poverty of this
recently founded convent, the poor Empress lived until the following
century, recalling the adventures of her melancholy destiny and seeing
in imagination the palace of golden mosaics on Lake Nicaea, the
gardens where "Vatacio" had wished to die under a purple tent, the
gigantic walls of Constantinople, and the arches of Saint Sophia, with
its hieratic galaxies of saints and crowned monarchs.
From all her journeys and glittering fortunes she had preserved but one
thing--a stone--the sole baggage that accompanied her upon
disembarking on the shore of Valencia. It was a fragment from
Nicodemia that had miraculously sent forth water for the baptism of
Santa Barbara.
The notary used to point out this rough, sacred stone inlaid in a
baptismal font of Holy Water. Without ceasing to admire these historic

bits of knowledge, Ulysses, nevertheless, used to receive them with a
certain ingratitude.
"My godfather could explain things to me in a better way.... My
godfather knows more."
When surveying the chapel of Santa Barbara during the Mass, he used
always to turn his eyes away from the funeral chest. The thought of
those bones turned to dust filled him with repugnance. That Doña
Constanza did not exist for him. The one who was interesting to him
was the other one, a little further on who was painted in a small picture.
Doña Constanza had had leprosy--an infirmity that in those days was
not permitted to Empresses--so Santa Barbara had miraculously cured
her devotee. In order to perpetuate this event, Santa Barbara was
depicted on the canvas as a lady dressed in a full skirt and slashed
sleeves, and at her feet was the basilisa in the dress of a Valencian
peasant arrayed in great jewels. In vain Don Esteban affirmed that this
picture had been painted centuries after the death of the Empress. The
child's imagination vaulted disdainfully over such difficulties. Just as
she appeared on the canvas, Doña Constanza must have
been--flaxen-haired, with great black eyes, exceedingly handsome and
a little inclined to stoutness, perhaps, as was becoming to a woman
accustomed to trailing robes of state and who had consented to disguise
herself as a country-woman, merely because of her piety.
The image of the Empress obsessed his childish thoughts. At night
when he felt afraid in bed, impressed by the enormousness of the room
that served as his sleeping chamber, it was enough for him to recall the
sovereign of Byzantium to make him forget immediately his
disquietude and the thousand queer noises in the old building. "Doña
Constanza!"... And he would go off to sleep cuddling the pillow, as
though it were the head of the basilisa, his closed eyes continuing to
see the black eyes of the regal Señora, maternal and affectionate.
All womankind, on coming near him, took on something of that other
one who had been sleeping for the past six centuries in the upper part of
the chapel wall. When his mother, sweet and pallid Doña Cristina,
would stop her fancy work for an instant to give him a kiss, he always

saw in her smile something of the Empress. When Visenteta, a maid
from