Читать книгу The Aztec Treasure-House - Thomas A. Janvier - Страница 10

"But the letter itself?" I asked, with more energy than politeness. "What is the story that it contains? What is this mystery? Tell me of it first, and then explain as much as you please afterwards."

Fray Antonio smiled at me kindly. "Ah, you too are becoming excited," he said. "But, truly, it is not fair that I should thus have kept you waiting. Indeed, I am so full of it all that I forgot that as yet you know nothing. Come out with me into the court-yard, where the light is stronger—for the writing is very faint and pale—and I will read you this letter in which so wonderful a story is set forth."

Together we passed out through a little door in the rear of the sacristy into what had been the inner and smaller cloister court-yard of the old convent—a lovely place in which a fountain set in a quaint stone basin sparkled, and where warm sunshine fell upon the rippling water and upon beds of sweet-smelling flowers. And here it was, standing among the flowers in the sunshine, beside the quaint fountain, that Fray Antonio read to me the letter—that in this strange fashion had come to us from a hand dead for much more than three centuries, and that yet brought to us two a vital message that wholly was to shape our destinies.