← catalogue

Pepita Ximenez

by Juan Valera · English · Gutenberg #30236 · 393,477 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pepita Ximenez
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Pepita Ximenez

Author: Juan Valera


        
Release date: October 12, 2009 [eBook #30236]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30236

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at DP Europe (http://dp.rastko.net)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEPITA XIMENEZ ***

PEPITA XIMENEZ

FROM THE SPANISH OF
JUAN VALERA

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY THE AUTHOR
WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THIS EDITION

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1886

COPYRIGHT, 1886,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.


_To the Messrs. Appleton._

GENTLEMEN: It was my intention to write a preface for the purpose of
authorizing the edition you are about to publish in English of "Pepita
Ximenez"; but, on thinking the matter over, I was deterred by the
recollection of an anecdote that I heard in my young days.

A certain gallant, wishing to be presented at the house of a rich man
who was about to give a magnificent ball, availed himself for that
purpose of the services of a friend, who boasted of his familiarity with
the great man, and of the favor he enjoyed with him. They proceeded to
the great man's house, and the gallant got his introduction; but the
great man said to him who had introduced the other, "And you, who is to
introduce you, for I am not acquainted with you?" As I entertain a
profound respect and affection for this country, and have not, besides,
the assurance that such an occasion would require, it would not do for
me to say what the _introducer_ of my story is said to have answered,
"I need no one to introduce or to recommend me, for I am just now going
away."

I infer from my story, as its evident moral, that I ought to refrain
from addressing the public of the United States, to which I am entirely
unknown as an author, notwithstanding the fact of my having maintained
pleasant and friendly relations with its Government as the
representative of my own.

The most judicious and prudent course I can adopt, then, is to limit
myself to returning you earnest thanks for asking from me an
authorization of which you did not stand in need, either by law or by
treaty, for wishing to make known to your countrymen the least insipid
of the products of my unfruitful genius, and for your generous purpose
of conceding to me author's rights.

This, however, does not preclude the fact that, in thus expressing my
thanks to you publicly, I incur a responsibility which I did not assume
on any other occasion, either in Germany, Italy, or any other country
where my works have been translated; for then, if they failed to please
the public, although the fact might pain me, I could still shrug my
shoulders, and throw the blame of failure on the translator, or the
publisher; but in this case I make myself your accomplice, and share, or
rather receive, all the disgrace of failure, if failure there should be.

"Pepita Ximenez" has enjoyed a wide celebrity, not only in Spain, but in
every other Spanish-speaking country. I am very far from thinking that
we Spaniards of the present day are either more easily satisfied, less
cultured than, or possessed of an inferior literary taste to, the
inhabitants of any other region of the globe; but this does not suffice
to dispel my misgivings that my novel may be received with indifference
or with censure by a public somewhat prejudiced against Spain by
fanciful and injurious preconceptions.

My novel, both in essence and form, is distinctively national and
classic. Its merit--supposing it to have such--consists in the language
and the style, and not in the incidents, which are of the most
commonplace, or in the plot, which, if it can be said to have any, is of
the simplest.

The characters are not wanting, as I think, in individuality, or in such
truth to human nature as makes them seem like living beings; but, the
action being so slight, this is brought out and made manifest by means
of a subtile analysis, and by the language chosen to express the
emotions, both which may in the translation be lost. There is, besides,
in my novel a certain irony, good-humored and frank, and a certain
humor, resembling rather the humor of the English than the _esprit_ of
the French, which qualities, although happily they do not depend upon
puns, or a play upon words, but are in the subject itself, require, in
order that they may appear in the translation, that this should be made
with extreme care.

In conclusion, the chief cause of the extraordinary favor with which
"Pepita Ximenez" was received in Spain is something that may fail to be
noticed here by careless readers.

I am an advocate of art for art's sake. I think it in very bad taste,
always impertinent, and often pedantic, to attempt to prove theses by
writing stories. For such a purpose dissertations or books purely and
severely didactic should be written. The object of a novel should be to
charm, through a faithful representation of human actions and human
passions, and to create by this fidelity to nature a beautiful work. The
object of art is the creation of the beautiful, and whoever applies it
to any other end, of however great utility this end may be, debases it.
But it may chance, through a conjunction of favorable circumstances, by
a happy inspiration, because in a given moment everything is, disposed
as by enchantment, or by supernatural influences, that an author's soul
may become like a clear and magic mirror wherein are reflected all the
ideas and all the sentiments that animate the eclectic spirit of his
country, and in which these ideas and these sentiments lose their
discordance, and group and combine themselves in pleasing agreement and
harmony.

Herein is the explanation of the interest of "Pepita Ximenez." It was
written when Spain was agitated to its center, and everything was thrown
out of its regular course by a radical revolution that at the same time
shook to their foundations the throne and religions unity. It was
written when everything in fusion, like molten metal, might readily
amalgamate, and be molded into new forms. It was written when the strife
raged fiercest between ancient and modern ideals; and, finally, it was
written in all the plenitude of my powers, when my soul was sanest and
most joyful in the possession of an enviable optimism and an
all-embracing love and sympathy for humanity that, to my misfortune, can
never again find place within my breast.

If I had endeavored by dialectics and by reasoning to conciliate
opinions and beliefs, the disapprobation would have been general; but,
as the conciliating and syncretic spirit manifested itself naturally in
a diverting story, every one accepted and approved it, each one drawing
from my book the conclusions that best suited himself. Thus it was that,
from the most orthodox Jesuit father down to the most rabid
revolutionist, and from the ultra-Catholic who cherishes the dream of
restoring the Inquisition, to the rationalist who is the irreconcilable
enemy of every religion, all were pleased with "Pepita Ximenez."

It would be curious, and not inopportune, to explain here how it came
about that I succeeded in pleasing every one without intending it,
without knowing it, and, as it were, by chance.

There was in Spain, some years ago, a conservative minister who had sent
a godson of his to study philosophy in Germany. By rare good fortune
this godson, who was called Julián Sanz del Río, was a man of clear and
profound intelligence, of unwearied application, and endowed with all
the qualities necessary to make of him a sort of apostle. He studied, he
formulated his system, he obtained the chair of metaphysics in the
University of Madrid, and he founded a school, from which has since
issued a brilliant pleiad of philosophers and statesmen, and of men
illustrious for their learning, their eloquence, and their virtues.
Chief among them are Nicolás Salmerón, Francisco Giner, Gumersindo
Azcárate, Federico de Castro, and Urbano González Serrano.

The clerical party soon began to stir up strife against the master, the
scholars, and the doctrines taught by them. They accused them of
mystical pantheism.

I, who had ridiculed, at times, the confused terms, the pomp of words,
and the method which the new philosophers made use of, regarded these
philosophers, nevertheless, with admiration, and took up their
defense--an almost solitary champion--in periodicals and reviews.

I had already maintained, before this, that our great dogmatic
theologians, and especially the celebrated Domingo de Soto, were more
liberal than the liberal rationalists of the present day, affirming, as
they do, the sovereignty of the people by divine right; for if, as St.
Paul declares, all authority proceeds from God, it does so through the
medium of the people whom God inspires to found it; and because the only
authority that proceeds directly from God is that of the Church.

I then set myself to demonstrate that, if Sanz del Río and his followers
were pantheists, our mystical theologians of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were pantheists also; and that, if the former had
for predecessors Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Krause, St. Theresa, St.
John de la Cruz, and the inspired and ecstatic Father Miguel de la
Fuente followed, as their model, Tauler and others of the Germans. In
saying this, however, it was not my intention to deny the claims of any
of these mystical writers as founders of their school in Spain, but only
to recognize, in this unbroken transmission of doctrine, the progressive
continuity of European civilization.

For the purpose of carrying forward my undertaking, I read and studied
with ardor every Spanish book on devotion, asceticism, and mysticism
that fell into my hands, growing every day more charmed with the
richness of our literature in such works; with the treasures of poetry
contained in them; with the boldness and independence of their authors;
with the profound and delicate observation, in which they excel the
Scotch school, that they display in examining the faculties of the soul;
and with their power of entering into themselves, of penetrating to the
very center of the mind, in order there to behold God, and to unite
themselves with God, not therefore losing their own personality, or
their capacity for an active life, but issuing from the ecstasies and
ravishments of divine love more apt than before for every work that can
benefit the human species, as the steel is more finely tempered,
polished, and bright after it has burned in the fires of the forge.

Of all this, on its most poetic and easily understood side, I wished to
give a specimen to the Spanish public of to-day, who had forgotten it;
but, as I was a man of my epoch, a layman, not very exemplary as regards
penitential practices, and had the reputation of a freethinker, I did
not venture to undertake doing this in my own name, and I created a
theological student who should do it in his. I then fancied that I could
paint with more vividness the ideas and the feelings of this student by
contrasting them with an earthly love; and this was the origin of
"Pepita Ximenez." Thus, when it was farthest from my thoughts, did I
become a novelist. My novel had, therefore, the freshness and the
spontaneity of the unpremeditated.

The novels I wrote afterward, with premeditation, are inferior to this
one.

"Pepita Ximenez" pleased the public also, as I have said, by its
transcendentalism.

The rationalists supposed that I had rejected the old ideals, as my hero
casts off the clerical garb. And the believers, with greater unanimity
and truth, compared me to the false prophet who went forth to curse the
people of Israel, and without intending it exalted and blessed them.
What is certain is that, if it be allowable to draw any conclusion from
a story, the inference that may be deduced from mine is, that faith in
an all-seeing and personal God, and in the lore of this God, who is
present in the depths of the soul, even when we refuse to follow the
higher vocation to which he would persuade and solicit us--even were we
carried away by the violence of mundane passions to commit, like Don
Luis, almost all the capital sins in a single day--elevates the soul,
purifies the other emotions, sustains human dignity, and lends poetry,
nobility, and holiness to the commonest state, condition, and manner of
life.

Such is, in my opinion, the novel you are now about to present to the
American public; for I repeat that I have not the right to make the
presentation.

Perhaps, independent of its transcendentalism, my novel may serve to
interest and amuse your public for a couple of hours, and may obtain
some favor with it; for it is a public that reads a great deal, that is
indulgent, and that differs from the English public--which is eminently
exclusive in its tastes--by its generous and cosmopolitan spirit.

I have always regarded as a delusion of national vanity the belief that
there is, or the hope that there ever will be, anything that, with
legitimate and candid independence, may be called American literature.
Greece diffused herself throughout the world in nourishing colonies,
and, after the conquests of Alexander, founded powerful states in Egypt,
in Syria, and even in Bactriana, among peoples who, unlike the American
Indians, possessed a high civilization of their own. But,
notwithstanding this dispersion, and this political severance from the
mother-country, the literature of Syracuse, of Antioch, and of
Alexandria was as much Greek literature as was the literature of Athens.
In my opinion, then, and for the same reason, the literature of New York
and Boston will continue to be as much English literature as the
literature of London and Edinburgh; the literature of Mexico and Buenos
Ayres will continue to be as much Spanish literature as the literature
of Madrid; the literature of Rio Janeiro will be as much Portuguese
literature as the literature of Lisbon. Political union may be severed,
but, between peoples of the same tongue and the same race, the ties of
spiritual fraternity are indissoluble, so long as their common
civilization lasts. There are immortal kings or emperors who reign and
rule in America by true divine right, and against whom no Washington or
Bolivar shall prevail--no Franklin succeed in plucking from them their
scepter. These tyrants are called Miguel de Cervantes, William
Shakespeare, and Luiz de Camoëns.

All this does not prevent the new nation from bringing to the common
fund, and _pro indiviso_, of the culture of their race, rich elements,
fine traits of character, and perhaps even higher qualities. Thus it is
that I observe, in this American literature, of English origin and
language, a certain largeness of views, a certain cosmopolitanism and
affectionate comprehension of what is foreign, broad as the continent
itself which the Americans inhabit, and which forms a contrast to the
narrow exclusivism of the insular English. It is because of these
qualities that I venture to hope now for a favorable reception of my
little book; and it is in these qualities that I found my hope that the
fruits of Spanish genius in general will, in future, be better known and
more highly esteemed here than in Great Britain.

Already, to some extent, Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, Longfellow, Howells,
and others have contributed, with judgment and discretion, translating,
criticising, and eulogizing our authors, to the realization of this
hope.

Forgive my wearying you with this long letter, and believe me to be
sincerely yours,

JUAN VALERA.

NEW YORK, _April 18, 1886._




CONTENTS



                                                PAGE

LETTER OF THE AUTHOR                             iii

PEPITA XIMENEZ                                     1

I--LETTERS OF MY NEPHEW                            4

II.--PARALIPOMENA                                129

III.--EPILOGUE.   (LETTERS OF MY BROTHER)        263




PEPITA XIMENEZ

"_Nescit labi virtus._"


The reverend Dean of the Cathedral of ------, deceased a few years since,
left among his papers a bundle of manuscript, tied together, which,
passing from hand to hand, finally fell into mine, without, by some
strange chance, having lost a single one of the documents contained in
it. Inscribed on this manuscript were the Latin words I use above as a
motto, but without the addition of the woman's name I now prefix to it
as its title; and this inscription has probably contributed to the
preservation of the papers, since, thinking them, no doubt, to be
sermons, or other theological matter, no one before me had made any
attempt to untie the string of the package, or to read a single page of
it.

The manuscript is in three parts. The first is entitled "Letters from my
Nephew"; the second, "Paralipomena"; and the third, "Epilogue--Letters
from my Brother."

All three are in the same handwriting, which, it may be inferred, is
that of the reverend dean; and, as taken together they form something
like a novel, I at first thought that perhaps the reverend dean wished
to exercise his genius in composing one in his leisure hours; but,
looking at the matter more closely, and observing the natural simplicity
of the style, I am inclined to think now that it is no novel at all, but
that the letters are copies of genuine epistles which the reverend dean
tore up, burned, or returned to their owners, and that the narrative
part only, designated by the biblical title of "Paralipomena," is the
work of the reverend dean, added for the purpose of completing the story
with incidents not related in the letters.

However this may be, I confess that I did not find the reading of these
papers tiresome; I found them, indeed, rather interesting than
otherwise; and as nowadays everything is published, I have decided to
publish them too, without further investigation, changing only the
proper names, so that if those who bear them be still living they may
not find themselves figuring in a book without desiring or consenting to
it.

The letters contained in the first part seem to have been written by a
very young man, with some theoretical but no practical knowledge of the
world, whose life was passed in the house of the reverend dean, his
uncle, and in the seminary, and who was imbued with an exalted religious
fervor and an earnest desire to be a priest.

We shall call this young man Don Luis de Vargas.

The aforesaid manuscript, faithfully transferred to print, is as
follows.




I.

LETTERS FROM MY NEPHEW.


_March 22d._

DEAR UNCLE AND VENERABLE MASTER:

Four days ago I arrived in safety at this my native village, where I
found my father, the reverend vicar, our friends and relations all in
good health. The happiness of seeing them and conversing with them has
so completely occupied my time and thoughts, that I have not been able
to write to you until now.

You will pardon me for this.

Having left this place a mere child, and coming back a man, the
impression produced upon me by all those objects that I had treasured up
in my memory is a singular one. Everything appears to me more
diminutive, much more diminutive, but also more pleasing to the eye,
than my recollection of it. My father's house, which in my imagination
was immense, is, indeed, the large house of a rich husbandman, but still
much smaller than the seminary. What I now understand and appreciate
better than formerly is the country around here. The orchards, above
all, are delightful. What charming paths there are through them! On one
side, and sometimes on both, crystal waters flow with a pleasant murmur.
The banks of these streams are covered with odorous herbs and flowers of
a thousand different hues. In a few minutes one may gather a large bunch
of violets. The paths are shaded by majestic trees, chiefly walnut and
fig trees; and the hedges are formed of blackberry-bushes, roses,
pomegranates, and honeysuckle.

The multitude of birds that enliven grove and field is marvelous.

I am enchanted with the orchards, and I spend a couple of hours walking
in them every afternoon.

My father wishes to take me to see his olive-plantations, his vineyards,
his farm-houses; but of all this we have as yet seen nothing. I have not
been outside of the village and the charming orchards that surround it.

It is true, indeed, that the numerous visits I receive do not leave me a
moment to myself.

Five different women have come to see me, all of whom were my nurses,
and have embraced and kissed me.

Every one calls me Luisito, or Don Pedro's boy, although I have passed
my twenty-second birthday; and every one inquires of my father for _the
boy_, when I am not present.

I imagine I shall make but little use of the books I have brought with
me to read, as I am not left alone for a single instant.

The dignity of squire, which I supposed to be a matter for jest, is, on
the contrary, a serious matter. My father is the squire of the village.

There is hardly any one here who can understand what they call my
caprice of entering the priesthood, and these good people tell me, with
rustic candor, that I ought to throw aside the clerical garb; that to be
a priest is very well for a poor young man, but that I, who am to be a
rich man's heir, should marry, and console the old age of my father by
giving him half a dozen handsome and robust grandchildren.

In order to flatter my father and myself, both men and women declare
that I am a splendid fellow, that I am of an angelic disposition, that I
have a very roguish pair of eyes, and other stupid things of a like kind
that annoy, disgust, and humiliate me, although I am not very modest,
and am too well acquainted with the meanness and folly of the world to
be shocked or frightened at anything.

The only defect they find in me is that I am too thin through
over-study. In order to have me grow fat they propose not to allow me
either to study or even to look at a book while I remain here; and,
besides this, to make me eat of as many choice dishes of meats and
confectionery as they know how to concoct in the village.

It is quite clear--I am to be stall-fed. There is not a single family of
our acquaintance that has not sent me some token of regard. Now it is a
sponge-cake, now a meat-salad, now a pyramid of sweetmeats, now a jug of
sirup.

And these presents which they send to the house are not the only
attentions they show me. I have also been invited to dinner by three or
four of the principal persons of the village.

To-morrow I am to dine at the house of the famous Pepita Ximenez, of
whom you have doubtless heard. No one here is ignorant of the fact that
my father is paying her his addresses.

My father, notwithstanding his fifty-five years, is so well preserved
that the finest young men of the village might feel envious of him. He
possesses, besides, the powerful attraction, irresistible to some women,
of his past conquests, of his celebrity, of having been a sort of Don
Juan Tenorio.

I have not yet made the acquaintance of Pepita Ximenez. Every one says
she is very beautiful. I suspect she will turn out to be a village
beauty, and somewhat rustic. From what I have heard of her I can not
quite decide whether, ethically speaking, she is good or bad; but I am
quite certain that she is possessed of great natural intelligence.
Pepita is about twenty years old and a widow; her married life lasted
only three years. She was the daughter of Doña Francisca Galvez, the
widow, as you know, of a retired captain

    "Who left her at his death,
     As sole inheritance, his honorable sword,"

as the poet says. Until her sixteenth year Pepita lived with her mother
in very straitened circumstances--bordering, indeed, upon absolute want.

She had an uncle called Don Gumersindo, the possessor of a small
entailed estate, one of those petty estates that, in olden times, owed
their foundation to a foolish vanity. Any ordinary person, with the
income derived from this estate, would have lived in continual
difficulties, burdened by debts, and altogether cut off from the display
and ceremony proper to his rank. But Don Gumersindo was an extraordinary
person--the very genius of economy. It could not be said of him that he
created wealth himself, but he was endowed with a wonderful faculty of
absorption with respect to the wealth of others; and, in regard to
dispensing, it would be difficult to find any one on the face of the
globe with whose maintenance, preservation, and comfort, Mother Nature
and human industry ever had less reason to trouble themselves. No one
knows how he lived; but the fact is that he reached the age of eighty
years, saving his entire income, and adding to his capital by lending
money on unquestionable security. No one here speaks of him as a usurer;
on the contrary, he is considered to have been of a charitable
disposition, because, being moderate in all things, he was so even in
usury; and would ask only ten per cent a year, while throughout the
district they ask twenty and even thirty per cent, and still think it
little.

In the practice of this species of industry and economy, and with
thoughts dwelling constantly on increasing instead of diminishing his
capital, indulging neither in the luxury of matrimony and of having a
family, nor even of smoking, Don Gumersindo arrived at the age I have
mentioned, the possessor of a fortune considerable anywhere, and here
regarded as enormous, thanks to the poverty of these villagers, and to
the habit of exaggeration natural to the Andalusians.

Don Gumersindo, always extremely neat and clean in his person, was an
old man who did not inspire repugnance.

The articles of his modest wardrobe were somewhat worn, but carefully
brushed, and without a stain; although from time immemorial he had
always been seen with the same cloak, the same jacket, and the same
trousers and waistcoat. People sometimes asked each other in vain if
any one had ever seen, him wear a new garment.

With all these defects, which here and elsewhere many regard as virtues,
though virtues in excess, Don Gumersindo possessed excellent qualities;
he was affable, obliging, compassionate, and did his utmost to please
and to be of service to everybody, no matter what trouble, anxiety, or
fatigue it might cost him, provided only it did not cost him money. Of a
cheerful disposition, and fond of fun and joking, he was to be found at
every feast and merry-making around, that was not got up by
contribution, which he enlivened by the amenity of his manners, and by
his discreet although not very Attic conversation. He had never had any
tender inclination for any one woman in particular, but, innocently and
without malice, he loved them all; and was the most given to
complimenting the girls, and making them laugh, of any old man for ten
leagues around.

I have already said that he was the uncle of Pepita. When he was nearing
his eightieth year, she was about to complete her sixteenth. He was
rich; she, poor and friendless.

Her mother was a vulgar woman of limited intelligence and coarse
instincts. She worshiped her daughter, yet lamented continually and with
bitterness the sacrifices she made for her, the privations she
suffered, and the disconsolate old age and melancholy end that awaited
her in the midst of her poverty. She had, besides, a son, older than
Pepita, who had a well-deserved reputation in the village as a gambler
and a quarrelsome fellow, and for whom, after many difficulties, she had
succeeded in obtaining an insignificant employment in Havana; thus
finding herself rid of him, and with the sea between them. After he had
been a few years in Havana, however, he lost his situation on account of
his bad conduct, and thereupon began to shower letters upon his mother,
containing demands for money. The latter, who had scarcely enough for
herself and for Pepita, grew desperate at this, broke out into abuse,
cursed herself and her destiny with a perseverance but little resembling
the evangelical virtue, and ended by fixing all her hopes upon settling
her daughter well, as the only way of getting out of her difficulties.

In this distressing situation Don Gumersindo began to frequent the house
of Pepita and her mother, and to pay attentions to the former with more
ardor and persistence than he had shown in his attentions to other
girls. Nevertheless, to suppose that a man who had passed his eightieth
year without wishing to marry, should think of committing such a folly,
with one foot already in the grave, was so wild and improbable a
notion, that Pepita's mother, still less Pepita herself, never for a
moment suspected the audacious intentions of Don Gumersindo. Thus it was
that both were struck, one day, with amazement, when, after a good many
compliments between jest and earnest, Don Gumersindo, with the greatest
seriousness and without the least hesitation, proposed the following
categorical question:

"Pepita, will you marry me?"

Although the question came at the end of a great deal of joking, and
might itself be taken for a joke, Pepita, who, inexperienced though she
was in worldly matters, yet knew by a certain instinct of divination
that is in all women, and especially in young girls, no matter how
innocent they may be, that this was said in earnest, grew as red as a
cherry and said nothing. Her mother answered in her stead:

"Child, don't be ill-bred; answer your uncle as you should: 'With much
pleasure, uncle; whenever you wish.'"

This "with much pleasure, uncle--whenever you wish," came then, it is
said, and many times afterward, almost mechanically from the trembling
lips of Pepita, in obedience to the admonitions, the sermons, the
complaints, and even the imperious mandate of her mother.

I see, however, that I am enlarging too much on this matter of Pepita
Ximenez and her history; but she interests me, as I suppose she should
interest you too, since, if what they affirm here be true, she is to be
your sister-in-law and my step-mother. I shall endeavor,
notwithstanding, to avoid dwelling on details, and to relate briefly
what perhaps you already know, though you have been away from here so
long.

Pepita Ximenez was married to Don Gumersindo. The tongue of slander was
let loose against her, both in the days preceding the wedding and for
some months afterward.

In point of fact, ethically considered, this marriage was a matter that
will admit of discussion; but, so far as the girl herself is concerned,
if we remember her mother's prayers, her complaints, and even her
commands--if we take into consideration the fact that Pepita thought by
this means to procure for her mother a comfortable old age, and to save
her brother from dishonor and infamy, constituting herself his guardian
angel and his earthly providence, we must confess that our condemnation
will admit of some abatement. Besides, who shall penetrate into the
recesses of the heart, into the hidden secrets of the immature mind of a
young girl brought up, probably, in the most absolute seclusion and
ignorance of the world, in order to know what idea she might have formed
to herself of marriage? Perhaps she thought that to marry this old man
meant to devote her life to his service, to be his nurse, to soothe his
old age; to save him from a solitude and abandonment embittered by his
infirmities, and in which only mercenary hands should minister to him;
in a word, to cheer and illumine his declining years with the glowing
beams of her beauty and her youth, like an angel who has taken human
form. If something of this, or all of this, was what the girl thought,
and if she failed to perceive the full significance of her act, then its
morality is placed beyond question.

However this may be, leaving aside psychological investigations that I
have no authority for making, since I am not acquainted with Pepita
Ximenez, it is quite certain that she lived in edifying harmony with the
old man during three years, that she nursed him and waited upon him with
admirable devotion, and that in his last painful and fatal sickness she
ministered to him and watched over him with tender and unwearying
affection, until he expired in her arms, leaving her heiress to a large
fortune.

Although more than two years have passed since she lost her mother, and
more than a year and a half since she was left a widow, Pepita still
wears the deepest mourning. Her sedateness, her retired manner of
living, and her melancholy, are such that one might suppose she lamented
the death of her husband as much as though he had been a handsome young
man. Perhaps there are some who imagine or suspect that Pepita's pride,
and the certain knowledge she now has of the not very poetical means by
which she has become rich, trouble her conscience with something more
than doubt; and that, humiliated in her own eyes and in those of the
world, she seeks, in austerity and retirement, consolation for the
vexations of her mind, and balm for her wounded heart.

People here, as everywhere, have a great love of money. Perhaps I am
wrong in saying, _as everywhere_; in populous cities, in the great
centers of civilization, there are other distinctions which are prized
as much as or even more than money, because they smooth the way to
fortune, and give credit and consideration in the eyes of the world; but
in smaller places, where neither literary nor scientific fame, nor, as a
rule, distinction of manners, nor elegance, nor discretion and amenity
in intercourse, are apt to be either valued or understood, there is no
other way by which to grade the social hierarchy than the possession of
more or less money, or of something worth money. Pepita, then, in the
possession of money, and beauty besides, and making a good use, as every
one says, of her riches, is to-day respected and esteemed in an
extraordinary degree. From this and the surrounding villages, the most
eligible suitors, the wealthiest young men, have crowded to pay their
court to her. But, so far as can be seen, she rejects them all, though
with the utmost sweetness, for she wishes to make no one her enemy; and
it is commonly supposed that her soul is filled with the most ardent
devotion, and that it is her fixed intention to dedicate her life to
practices of charity and religious piety.

My father, according to the general opinion, has not succeeded better
than her other suitors; but Pepita, to fulfill the adage that "courtesy
and candor are consistent with each other," takes the greatest pains to
give him proofs of a frank, affectionate, and disinterested friendship.
She is unremitting in her attentions to him, and, when he tries to speak
to her of love, she brings him to a stop with a sermon delivered with
the most winning sweetness, recalling to his memory his past faults, and
endeavoring to undeceive him in regard to the world and its vain pomps.

I confess that I begin to have some curiosity to know this woman, so
much do I hear her spoken of; nor do I think my curiosity is without
foundation, or that there is anything in it either vain or sinful. I
myself feel the truth of what Pepita says; I myself desire that my
father, in his advanced years, should enter upon a better life, should
forget, and not seek to renew the agitations and passions of his youth,
and should attain to the enjoyment of a tranquil, happy, and honorable
old age. I differ from Pepita's way of thinking in one thing only; I
believe my father would succeed in this rather by marrying a good and
worthy woman who loved him, than by remaining single. For this very
reason I desire to become acquainted with Pepita, in order to know if
she be this woman; for I am to a certain extent troubled--and perhaps
there is in this feeling something of family pride, which, if it be
wrong, I desire to divest myself of--by the disdain, however honeyed and
gracious, of the young widow.

If my situation were other than it is, I should prefer my father to
remain unmarried. Then, being the only child, I should inherit all his
wealth, and, as one might say, nothing less than the position of squire
of the village. But you already know how firm is the resolution I have
taken. Humble and unworthy though I be, I feel myself called to the
priesthood, and the possessions of this world have but little power over
my mind. If there is anything in me of the ardor of youth, and the
vehemence of the passions proper to that age, it shall all be employed
in nourishing an active and fecund charity. Even the many books you have
given me to read, and my knowledge of the history of the ancient
civilizations of the peoples of Asia, contribute to unite within me
scientific curiosity with the desire of propagating the faith, and
invite and animate me to go forth as a missionary to the far East. As
soon as I leave this village, where you, my dear uncle, have sent me to
pass some time with my father, and am raised to the dignity of the
priesthood, and, ignorant and sinner as I am, feel myself invested, by
free and supernatural gift through the sovereign goodness of the Most
High, with the power to absolve from sin, and with the mission to teach
the peoples, as soon as I receive the perpetual and miraculous grace of
handling with impure hands the very God made man, it is my purpose to
leave Spain, and go forth to distant lands to preach the gospel.

I am not actuated in this by any species of vanity. I do not desire to
believe myself superior to other men. The power of my faith, the
constancy of which I feel myself capable, everything after the favor and
grace of God, I owe to the judicious education, to the holy teaching,
and to the good example I have received from you, my dear uncle.

There is something I hardly dare confess to myself, but which, against
my will, presents itself with frequency to my mind; and, since it
presents itself to my mind, it is my desire, it is my duty to confess it
to you: it would be wrong for me to hide from you even my most secret
and involuntary thoughts. You have taught me to analyze the feelings of
the soul; to search for their origin, if it be good or evil; to make, in
short, a scrupulous examination of conscience.

I have often reflected on two different methods of education: that of
those who endeavor to keep the mind in innocence, confounding innocence
with ignorance, and believing evil that is unknown to be avoided more
easily than evil that is known; and that of those, on the other hand,
who courageously, and as soon as the pupil has arrived at the age of
reason, show him, with due regard for modesty, evil in all its hideous
ugliness and repulsive nakedness, to the end that he may abhor and avoid
it. According to my way of thinking, it is necessary to know evil in
order the better to comprehend the infinite divine goodness, the ideal
and unattainable end of every virtuously born desire. I am grateful to
you that you have made me to know, with the honey and the oil of your
teaching, as the Scripture says, both good and evil, to the end that I
should aspire to the one and condemn the other, knowingly and with
discreet ardor. I rejoice that I am no longer in a state of mere
innocence, and that I shall go forward in the progress toward virtue,
and, in so far as is permitted to humanity, toward perfection, with a
knowledge of all the tribulations, all the asperities that there are in
the pilgrimage we are called upon to make through this valley of tears;
as I am not ignorant, on the other hand, of how smooth, how easy, how
pleasant, how flowery, the road is, in appearance, that leads to
perdition and eternal death.

Another thing for which I feel bound to be grateful to you is the
indulgence, the toleration, not condescending nor lax, but, on the
contrary, grave and severe, with which you have been able to inspire me
for the errors and the sins of my fellow-men.

I say all this to you because I wish to speak to you on a subject of so
delicate a nature that I hardly find words in which to express myself
concerning it. In short, I often ask myself whether the resolution I
have adopted had not its origin, in part at least, in the character of
my relations with my father. In the bottom of my heart have I been able
to pardon him his conduct toward my poor mother, the victim of his
errors?

I consider this matter carefully, and I can not find an atom of hatred
in my breast. On the contrary, gratitude fills it entirely. My father
has brought me up affectionately. He has tried to honor in me the memory
of my mother, and one would have said that in my bringing up, in the
care he took of me, in the indulgence with which he treated me, in his
devotion to me as a child, he sought to appease her angry shade--if the
shade, if the spirit of her who was on earth an angel of goodness and
gentleness, could be capable of anger. I repeat, then, that I am full of
gratitude toward my father; he has acknowledged me, and, besides, he
sent me at the age of ten years to you, to whom I owe all that I am.

If there is in my heart any germ of virtue, if there is in my mind any
element of knowledge, if there is in my will any honorable and good
purpose, to you it is I owe it.

My father's affection for me is extraordinary; the estimation in which
he holds me is far superior to my merits. Perhaps, vanity may have
something to do with this. In paternal love there is something selfish;
it is, as it were, a prolongation of selfishness. If I were possessed of
any merit, my father would regard it all as a creation of his own, as if
I were an emanation of his personality, as much in spirit as in body. Be
this as it will, however, I believe that my father loves me, and that
there is in his affection something self-sustaining, and superior to all
this pardonable selfishness of which I have spoken.

I experience a great consolation, a profound tranquillity of
conscience--and for this I return most fervent thanks to God--when I
take cognizance of the fact that the power of blood, the tie of nature,
that mysterious bond that unites us, leads me, without any
consideration of duty, to love my father and to reverence him. It would
be horrible not to love him thus--to be compelled to force myself to
love in order to obey a divine command. Nevertheless--and here comes
back my doubt--does my purpose of becoming a priest or a friar, of not
accepting, or of accepting only a very small part of the immense fortune
that will be mine by inheritance, and which I might enjoy even during my
father's lifetime, does this proceed solely from my contempt of the
things of this world, from a true vocation for a religious life, or does
it not also proceed from pride, from hidden rancor, from resentment,
from something in me that refuses to forgive what my mother herself,
with sublime generosity, forgave? This doubt assails and torments me at
times, but almost always I resolve it in my favor, and come to the
conclusion that I have no feeling of pride toward my father: I think I
would accept from him all he has, if I were to need it, and I rejoice to
be as grateful to him for little as for much.

Farewell, uncle; in future I will write to you often, and as much at
length as you recommend me, if not quite so much so as to-day, lest I
should appear prolix.

_March 28th._

I begin to be tired of my stay in this place, and every day the desire
grows stronger within me to return to you and to receive my ordination;
but my father wishes to accompany me, he wishes to be present at that
solemn ceremony, and desires that I should remain here with him at least
two months longer. He is so amiable, so affectionate with me, that it
would be impossible for me not to gratify him in all his wishes. I shall
remain here, therefore, for the time he desires. In order to give him
pleasure I do violence to my feelings, and make an effort to seem
interested in the amusements of the village, the country sports, and
even shooting, in all of which I am his companion. I try to appear gayer
and more animated than I am by nature. As, in the village, half in jest,
half by way of eulogy, I am called the saint, I endeavor, through
modesty, to avoid the appearance of sanctity, or to soften and humanize
its manifestations with the virtue of moderation, displaying a serene
and decent cheerfulness which was never yet opposed to holiness nor to
the saints. I confess, nevertheless, that the merry-making and the
sports of these people, with their coarse jokes and boisterous mirth,
weary me. I do not want to fall into the sin of scandal, nor to speak
ill of any one, though it be only to you and in confidence, but I often
think that it would be a more difficult enterprise, as well as a more
rational and meritorious one, to preach the gospel to these people, and
try to elevate their moral nature, than to go to India, Persia, or
China, leaving so many of my country-people behind, who are, if not
perverted, at least to some extent gone astray. Many, indeed, are of the
opinion that modern ideas, that materialism and infidelity, are to blame
for this; but if that be the case, if they it be that produce such evil
effects, then it must be in some strange, diabolical, and miraculous
manner, and not by natural means; since the fact is that here the people
read no books, either good or bad, so that I do not well see how they
can be perverted by any evil doctrines the books in fashion may contain.
Can these evil doctrines be in the air, like a miasma or an epidemic?
Perhaps--and I am sorry this thought, which I mention to you only,
should occur to me--perhaps the clergy themselves are in fault. Are
they, in Spain, equal to their mission? Do they go among the people,
teaching and preaching to them? Are they all capable of this? Have those
who consecrate themselves to a religious life and to the salvation of
souls a true vocation for their calling? Or is it only a means of
living, like any other, with this difference, that in our day only the
poorest, only those who are without expectations and without means,
devote themselves to it, for the very reason that this calling offers a
less brilliant prospect than any other? Be that as it may, the very
scarcity of virtuous and learned priests arouses all the more within me
the desire to be a priest. I would not willingly let self-love deceive
me. I recognize all my defects, but I feel within me a true vocation,
and many of those defects it may still be possible, with the divine
help, to correct.

The dinner at the house of Pepita Ximenez, which I mentioned to you,
took place three days ago. As she leads so retired a life, I had not met
her before; she seemed to me, in truth, as beautiful as she is said to
be; and I noticed that her amiability with my father was such as to give
him reason to hope, at least judging superficially, that she will yield
to his wishes in the end, and accept his hand.

As there is a possibility of her becoming my step-mother, I have
observed her with attention; she seems to me to be a remarkable woman,
whose moral qualities I am not able to determine with exactitude. There
is about her an air of calmness and serenity that may come either from
coldness of heart and spirit, with great self-control and power of
calculating effects, accompanied by little or no sensibility, or that
may, on the other hand, proceed from the tranquillity of her conscience
and the purity of her aspirations, united to the purpose of fulfilling
in this life the duties imposed upon her by society, while her hopes are
fixed meantime upon loftier things, as their proper goal. What is
certain is that, either because with this woman everything is the result
of calculation, without any effort to elevate her mind to a higher
sphere, or, it may be, because she blends in perfect harmony the prose
of daily life with the poetry of her illusions, there is nothing
discernible in her out of tone with her surroundings, although she
possesses a natural distinction of manner that elevates her above and
separates her from them all. She does not affect the dress of a
provincial, nor does she, on the other hand, follow blindly the fashions
of the city; she unites both these styles in her mode of dress in such a
manner as to appear like a lady, but still a lady country-born and
country-bred. She disguises to a great extent, as I think, the care she
takes of her person. There is nothing about her to betray the use of
cosmetics or the arts of the toilet. But the whiteness of her hands, the
color and polish of her nails, and the grace and neatness of her attire
denote a greater regard for such matters than might be looked for in one
who lives in a village, and who is said, besides, to despise the
vanities of this world, and to think only of heavenly things.

Her house is exquisitely clean, and everything in it reveals the most
perfect order. The furniture is neither artistic nor elegant, nor is it,
on the other hand, either pretentious or in bad taste. To give a poetic
air to her surroundings, she keeps in the saloons and galleries, as well
as in the garden, a multitude of plants and flowers. There is not,
indeed, among them any rare plant or exotic, but her plants and flowers,
of the commonest species here, are tended with extraordinary care.

Canaries in gilded cages enliven the whole house with their songs. Its
mistress, it is obvious, has need of living creatures on which to bestow
some of her affection; and besides several maid-servants that one would
suppose she had selected with care, since it can not be by mere chance
that they are all pretty, she has, after the fashion of old maids,
various animals to keep her company--a parrot, a little dog whose coat
is of the whitest, and two or three cats, so tame and sociable that they
jump up on one in the most friendly manner.

At one end of the principal saloon is a species of oratory, whose chief
ornament is an _Infant Jesus_, carved in wood, with red and white cheeks
and blue eyes, and altogether quite handsome. The dress is of white
satin, with a blue cloak full of little golden stars; and the image is
completely covered with jewels and trinkets. The little altar on which
the figure is placed is adorned with flowers, and around it are set pots
of broom and laurel; and on the altar itself, which is furnished with
steps, a great many wax tapers are kept burning. When I behold all this
I know not what to think, but for the most part I am inclined to believe
that the widow loves herself above all things, and that it is for her
recreation, and for the purpose of furnishing her with occasions for the
effusion of this love, that she keeps the cats, the canaries, the
flowers, and even the _Infant Jesus_ itself, which, in her secret soul,
perhaps, does not occupy a place very much higher than the canaries and
the cats.

It can not be denied that Pepita Ximenez is possessed of discretion. No
silly jest, no impertinent question in regard to my vocation, and, above
all, in regard to my approaching ordination, has crossed her lips. She
conversed with me on matters relating to the village, about agriculture,
the last crop of grapes and olives, and the means of improving the
methods of making wine, expressing herself always with modesty and
naturalness, and without manifesting any desire of appearing to know
more than others.

There were present at dinner the doctor, the notary, and the reverend
vicar, who is a great friend of the house, and the spiritual father of
Pepita.

The reverend vicar must have a very high opinion of the latter, for on
several occasions he spoke to me apart of her charity, of the many alms
she bestows, of her compassion and goodness toward every one. In a word,
he declared her to be a saint.

In view of what the vicar has told me, and relying on his judgment, I
can do no less than wish that my father may marry Pepita. As my father
is not fitted for a life of penance, in this way only could he hope to
change his mode of life, that up to the present has been so dissipated,
and settle down to a well-ordered and quiet, if not exemplary, old age.

When we reached our house, after leaving that of Pepita Ximenez, my
father spoke to me seriously of his projects. He told me that in his
time he had been very wild, that he had led a very bad life, and that he
saw no way of reforming, notwithstanding his years, unless Pepita were
to fall in love with and marry him.

Taking for granted, of course, that she would do so, my father then
spoke to me of business. He told me that he was very rich, and would
leave me amply provided for in his will, even though he should have
other children. I answered him that for my plans and purposes in life I
needed very little money, and that my greatest satisfaction would always
consist in knowing him to be happy with wife and children, his former
evil ways forgotten. My father then spoke to me of his tender hopes with
a candor and vivacity that might make one suppose me to be the father
and the old man, and he a youth of my age, or younger. In order to
enhance the merit of his mistress, and the difficulties of his conquest,
he recounted to me the accomplishments and the excellences of the
fifteen or twenty suitors who had already presented themselves to
Pepita, and who had all been rejected. As for himself, as he explained
to me, the same lot, to a certain extent, had been his also; but he
flattered himself that this want of success was not final, since Pepita
showed him so many kindnesses, and an affection so great that, if it
were not love, it might easily, with time, and the persistent homage he
dedicated to her, be converted into love. There was, besides, in my
father's opinion, a something fantastic and fallacious in the cause of
Pepita's coldness, that must in the end wear away. Pepita did not wish
to retire to a convent, nor did she incline to a penitential life.
Notwithstanding her seclusion and her piety, it was easy to see that she
took delight in pleasing. Her neatness and the exquisite care she took
of her person had in them little of the cenobite. The cause of her
coldness, then, my father declared to be, without a doubt, her pride--a
pride, to a certain extent, well founded. She is naturally elegant and
distinguished in appearance; both by her force of character and by her
intelligence she is superior to those who surround her, no matter how
she may seek, through modesty, to disguise it. How, then, should she
bestow her hand upon any of the rustics who, up to the present time,
have been her suitors? She imagines that her soul is filled with a
mystic love of God, and that God only can satisfy it, because thus far
no mortal has crossed her path intelligent enough and agreeable enough
to make her forget even her image of the _Infant Jesus_. "Although it
may seem to indicate a want of modesty on my part," added my father, "I
flatter myself with being such a one."

Such, dear uncle, are the occupations and the projects of my father
here, and such the matters, so foreign to my nature, and to my aims and
thoughts, of which he speaks to me with frequency, and on which he
requires me to give an opinion.

It would almost seem as if your too indulgent opinion of my judgment had
extended itself to the people here, for they all tell me their troubles,
and ask my advice as to the course they should adopt. Even the reverend
vicar, exposing himself to the risk of betraying what might be called
secrets of confession, has already come to consult me in regard to
several cases of conscience that have presented themselves to him in the
confessional.

One of these cases, related, like all the others, with much mystery, and
without revealing the name of the person concerned, has greatly
interested me.

The reverend vicar tells me that a certain penitent of his is troubled
by scruples of conscience, because, while she feels herself irresistibly
attracted toward a solitary and contemplative life, she yet fears at
times that this devout fervor is not accompanied by a true humility, but
that it is in part excited by, and has its source in, the demon of pride
himself.

To love God in all things, to seek him in the inmost recesses of the
soul wherein he dwells, to purify ourselves from all earthly passions
and affections, in order to unite ourselves to him--these are, in truth,
pious aspirations and virtuous inclinations; but the doubt arises in
determining whether the source of these aspirations and inclinations be
not an exaggerated self-love. "Have they their origin," the penitent it
seems asks herself, "in the thought that I, although unworthy and a
sinner, presume my soul to be of more value than the souls of my
fellow-mortals?--that the interior beauty of my mind and of my will
would be dimmed by harboring affection for the human beings by whom I am
surrounded, and whom I deem unworthy of me? Do I love God above all
things, infinitely, or only more than the little things that I know,
and that I scorn and despise, that can not satisfy my heart? If my piety
is founded upon this feeling, then there are in it two great defects:
the first, that it is not based upon a pure love of God, full of
humility and charity, but on pride; and the second, that this piety,
because it is thus without foundation, is unstable and inefficacious.
For who can be certain that the soul will not forget the love of its
Creator, when it does not love him infinitely, but only because there is
no other being whom it deems worthy of endowing with its love?"

It is concerning this case of conscience, refined and subtle enough thus
to exercise the mind of a simple rustic, that the reverend vicar has
come to consult me. I would have excused myself from saying anything in
the matter, alleging, as a reason for doing so, my youth and
inexperience; but the reverend vicar has shown himself so persistent in
the matter that I could do no less than discuss the question with him. I
said--and it would rejoice me greatly should you concur in my
opinion--that what this troubled penitent requires is to regard those
who surround her with greater benevolence; to try to throw over their
faults--instead of analyzing and dissecting them with the scalpel of
criticism--the mantle of charity, bringing into relief and dwelling upon
their good qualities, to the end that she may esteem and love them; to
endeavor, in fine, to behold in every human being an object worthy of
her love, a true fellow-creature, her equal, a soul wherein there is a
treasure of good qualities and virtues--a being made, in short, in the
image and likeness of God. Entertaining this exalted view of our
surroundings, loving and esteeming others for what they are, and as more
than they are, striving not to hold ourselves superior to them in
anything, but, on the contrary, searching courageously in the depths of
our own conscience for the purpose of discovering all our faults and
sins, and thus acquiring a devout humility and contempt of self, the
heart will feel itself full of human affection, and, instead of
despising, will value highly the worth of things and of persons, so that
if afterward divine love should, with irresistible power, erect itself
upon and tower above this foundation, there can then be no fear but that
such a love has its origin, not in an exaggerated self-esteem, in pride,
or in an unjust contempt for our neighbor, but in a pure and holy
contemplation of the Infinite Beauty and Goodness.

If, as I suspect, it be Pepita Ximenez who has consulted the reverend
vicar in regard to these doubts and tribulations, I think my father can
not yet flatter himself with being very dear to her; but, if the vicar
should resolve on giving her my advice, and she accepts it and acts upon
it, then she will either become a sort of Maria de Agreda, a
self-conscious recluse, or, what is more probable, she will cast away
mysticism and coldness altogether, and will consent to accept, without
further caviling, the hand and heart of my father who is in no respect
her inferior.

_April 4th._

My life in this place begins, from its monotony, to be wearisome; and
not because it is, physically, less active here than it was elsewhere,
for I walk and ride a great deal, and make excursions into the country,
and, to please my father, visit the club-house and go to parties, and
live, in short, in a state of dissatisfaction with myself and with my
surroundings. But my intellectual life is a blank; I read nothing, and
there is hardly a moment left me in which to reflect and meditate with
tranquillity; and, as reflection and meditation were what constituted
the chief charm of my existence, my life without them seems to me
monotonous. Thanks to the patience which you have recommended to me for
every occasion, I am able to endure it.

Another thing that prevents my spirit from being completely at rest is
the longing, that becomes every day more ardent within me, to embrace
that life to which, without a moment's vacillation, I have been for
years inclined. It seems to me that, in those moments when I feel
myself so near to the realization of the constant dream of my life, it
is something like a profanation to allow my mind to be distracted by
other objects. So much does this idea torment me, and to so many doubts
does it give rise within me, that my admiration for the beauty of things
created--of the heavens so full of stars, in these serene nights of
spring, and in this favored region of Andalusia; of these smiling
fields, now covered with verdure, and of these cool and pleasant
gardens, abounding in shady and delightful walks, in gently flowing
streams and rivulets, in sequestered nooks, in birds that enliven them
with song, and in flowers and odorous herbs--this admiration and
enthusiasm, I repeat, which formerly seemed to me in perfect harmony
with the religious feeling that filled my soul, animating and exalting
it, instead of weakening it, seems to me now almost a sinful
distraction, and an unpardonable forgetfulness of the eternal for the
temporal, of the uncreated and the spiritual for the material and
created. Although I have made but little progress in virtue, although my
mind is never free from the phantasms of the imagination, although the
interior man is never exempt in me from the influence of external
impressions, and from the need of employing in meditation the fatiguing
argumentative method; although I can not, by an effort of love, withdraw
myself to the very center of pure intelligence, to the loftiest sphere
of thought, in order to behold there goodness and truth divested of
images and forms, yet I confess to you that the method of mental prayer,
unrestricted by set forms, makes me afraid. Even rational meditation
inspires me with distrust. I do not want to employ a process of
reasoning in order to know God, nor to adduce arguments for loving, in
order to love him. I desire, by a single effort of the will, to elevate
myself to and be absorbed in the divine contemplation. Oh, that I had
the wings of a dove, to fly to the bosom of him whom my soul loveth! But
what and where are my merits? Where the mortifications, the extended
prayers, and the fasting? What have I done, O my God, that thou shouldst
favor me?

I know that the ungodly of the present day accuse--though without any
foundation whatever--our holy religion of inciting souls to abhor the
things of this world, to despise or to contemn nature, perhaps to fear
it also, as if there were in it something diabolical, placing all their
affections on what these ungodly call the monstrous egotism of divine
love, for it is herself, they say, the soul loves in loving God; I know,
too, that this is not the case; that the divine love is charity, and
that to love God is to love all things, for all things are in God, in a
supreme and ineffable manner. I know that I commit no sin in loving
material things for the love of God, which is to love them for
themselves, righteously; for what are material things but the
manifestation, the creation of the love of God? And, notwithstanding, I
know not what undefinable fear, what unwonted scruple, what vague and
scarcely perceptible remorse torments me now, when, as formerly, as in
other days of my youth, as in childhood itself, I feel an effusion of
tenderness, a sort of ecstasy of enthusiasm, on penetrating into some
leafy grove, on hearing the song of the nightingale, or the twittering
of the swallows, or the tender cooing of the dove; on looking at the
flowers, on beholding the stars. I imagine, at times, that there is in
all this something of sensual pleasure, a something that makes me
forget, for the moment at least, more lofty aspirations. I do not desire
that in me the spirit should sin against the flesh; but neither do I
desire, on the other hand, that the beauty of the material world--that
its delights, even those most delicate, subtle, and ethereal ones that
are perceived rather by the spirit than by the senses, such as the soft
sigh of the zephyr, laden with rural scents, the song of the birds, the
peaceful and majestic silence of the night in these gardens and
orchards--should distract me from the contemplation of higher beauty, or
weaken, even for a moment, my love toward Him who has created this
harmonious fabric of the world.

I know that all these material things are like the letters of a book,
the signs and characters in which the soul, eager for knowledge, may
find a hidden meaning, and decipher and discover the beauty of God that,
though but dimly, is shadowed forth in them, and of which they are the
pictures or rather emblems, because they do not represent, but only
symbolize it. On this distinction I dwell at times to strengthen my
scruples and mortify the flesh. For, I consider, if I love the beauty of
earthly things as they are, it is idolatry; I ought to love this beauty
as a sign, as the symbol of a beauty occult and divine, and infinitely
superior to it in all things.

A few days ago I completed my twenty-second year. Heretofore, my
religious fervor has been such that I have felt no other love than the
immaculate love of God himself and of his holy religion, which I desire
to diffuse and see triumphant in all the regions of the earth. I confess
that something of a profane sentiment has mingled itself with this
purity of affection. You are aware of this; I have told it to you many
times, and you, regarding me with your accustomed indulgence, have
answered me that man is not an angel, and that even to aspire to so
great a degree of perfection is pride; that I should endeavor to
moderate these sentiments rather than seek to eradicate them entirely.
Love of knowledge, a desire for the reputation which is founded on the
possession of knowledge, even a not unfavorable opinion of one's own
merits, these, even when kept within just bounds, though guarded and
moderated by Christian humility, and directed toward a good end, have in
them, doubtless, something of selfishness, but they may serve as a
stimulus and a support to the noblest and most constant resolutions. The
scruples that trouble my conscience now, therefore, have not their
source in pride, in an overweening self-confidence, in a desire for
worldly fame, or in a too great love of knowledge. Nothing of this
nature it is that troubles me; nothing bearing any relation to
self-conceit, but, in a certain sense, something entirely opposed to it.
I feel a lassitude, a debility and abandonment of the will so great--I
am so ready to weep for tenderness when I see a little flower, when I
contemplate the ray, mysterious, tenuous, and swift, of a remote
star--that it almost makes me afraid.

Tell me what you think of these things; and if there be not something
morbid in this disposition of my mind.

_April 8th._

The amusements of the country, in which, very much against my will, I am
compelled to take part, still go on.

My father has taken me to see almost all his plantations, and he and his
friends are astonished to find me not altogether ignorant in matters
pertaining to the country. It would seem as if, in their eyes, the study
of theology, to which I have dedicated myself, were incompatible with a
familiarity with Nature. How much have they not wondered at my
knowledge, on seeing me discriminate, among the vines that have only
just begun to sprout, the common from the choice varieties! How much
have they not wondered, too, at my being able to distinguish, among the
young plants in the fields, the shoots of the barley from those of the
bean; at my being familiar with many fruit and shade trees; at my
knowing the names of many plants, even, that grow spontaneously in the
woods, as well as something of their properties and virtues!

Pepita Ximenez, who has heard through my father of the delight I take in
the gardens here, has invited me to visit one that she owns at a short
distance from the village, and eat the early strawberries that grow
there. This caprice of Pepita's to show so many little attentions to my
father, while at the same time she declines his addresses, seems to me
at times to partake somewhat of coquetry, and to be worthy of
reprobation. But when next I see her, and find her so natural, so frank
and so simple, this bad opinion is dispelled, and I can not believe her
to have any other end in view than to maintain the friendly relations
that exist between her and our family.

Be this as it may, yesterday afternoon we went to Pepita's garden. It is
charmingly situated, and as delightful and picturesque a place as one
can imagine. The river, that by means of innumerable drains waters
almost all these gardens, falls into a deep ravine, bordered on both
sides by white and black poplars, osiers, flowering oleanders, and other
leafy trees. The waterfall, clear and transparent, precipitates itself
into this ravine, sending up a cloud of spray, and then follows its
tortuous course by a channel formed for it by Nature herself, enameling
its banks with a thousand plants and flowers, and just now covering them
with a multitude of violets. The declivity at the end of the garden is
full of walnut, hazel, fig, and other fruit trees; and in the level
portion are beds planted with strawberries and vegetables, tomatoes,
potatoes, beans, and peppers. There is also a little flower-garden, with
a great abundance of flowers, of the kinds most commonly cultivated
here. Roses especially abound, and of these there are innumerable
varieties. The house of the gardener is prettier and cleaner than the
houses of its class that one is accustomed to see in this part of the
country; and near it there is another smaller building, dedicated to the
use of the mistress of the place, where Pepita regaled us with a
sumptuous collation. The pretext for this collation was the
strawberries, to eat which was the chief purpose of our visit. The
quantity of strawberries, considering the earliness of the season, was
astonishing. They were served with the milk of goats belonging also to
Pepita.

There were present at this banquet the doctor, the notary, my aunt
Casilda, my father, and myself, and of course the indispensable vicar,
spiritual father, and, more than spiritual father, admirer and perpetual
eulogist of Pepita.

By a sort of sybaritic refinement, it was not by the gardener, nor his
wife, nor the son of the gardener, nor by any other rustic, that we were
served at this banquet, but by two lovely girls, confidential servants,
in a manner, of Pepita's, dressed like peasants, but with the greatest
neatness and even elegance. They wore gowns of gay-colored percale,
short, and confined at the waist, and around their shoulders silk
handkerchiefs. Their lustrous and abundant black hair, without covering,
was braided and arranged in a knot behind; and in front they wore curls
confined to the head by large hair-pins, here called _caracols_. Above
the knot or _chignon_ they each displayed a bunch of fresh roses.

Pepita's attire, except that it was black and of rich material, was
equally unpretending. Her merino gown, made in the same style as those
of her maids, without being short, was yet not long enough to catch the
dust of the ground. A modest handkerchief of black silk covered also,
according to the usage of the country, her shoulders and bosom; and on
her head she wore no other ornament, either flower or jewel, than that
of her own blonde tresses.

The only particular, with respect to Pepita, in which I observed a
certain fastidiousness, and in which she departed from the customs of
the country-people, was in wearing gloves. It is evident that she takes
great care of her hands, and is, perhaps, to a certain extent, vain of
their beauty and whiteness, as well as of her rose-colored and polished
nails; but if this be so, it is to be pardoned to the weakness of the
flesh; and indeed, if I remember aright, I think that St. Theresa, in
her youth, had this same species of vanity, which did not prevent her,
however, from becoming a great saint.

In truth, I can understand, even though I do not excuse, this little
piece of vanity. It is so distinguished, so aristocratic to possess a
beautiful hand! I even think, at times, that there is something
symbolic in it. The hand is the instrument by which we execute our
works, the sign of our nobility, the means by which the intellect gives
form and shape to its artistic conceptions, by which it gives reality to
the mandates of its will, by which it exercises the dominion that God
conceded to man over all other creatures. The rough, strong, sinewy,
horny hand, it may be, of a laborer, a workman, testifies nobly to this
dominion, but on its rudest and least intellectual side. The hands of
Pepita, on the contrary, transparent almost, like alabaster, but
rosy-hued, and in which one can almost see the pure and subtle blood
circulate that gives to the veins their faint, bluish tinge--these
hands, I say, with their tapering fingers, and unrivaled purity of
outline, seem the symbol of the magic power, the mysterious dominion,
that the human spirit holds and exercises, without the intervention of
material force, over all those visible things that are the creation of
God by a direct act of his will, and which man, as the instrument of
God, improves and completes. It would be impossible to suppose that any
one with hands like Pepita's should have an impure thought, a gross
desire, an unworthy purpose at variance with the purity of the hands
that would be called upon to put them into effect.

It is unnecessary to say that my father appeared as much charmed with
Pepita, and she as attentive and affectionate toward him, as always;
though her affection seemed, perhaps, of a character more filial than he
could have wished. The fact is, that my father, notwithstanding the
reputation he has of being in general but little respectful or reverent
toward women, treats this one woman with such respect and consideration
that not even Amadis, in the most devoted period of his wooing, showed
greater toward Oriana. Not a single word that might shock the ear, no
indelicate or inopportune compliment, no coarse jest, of the kind the
Andalusians permit themselves so frequently to employ, does he ever
indulge in. Hardly does he dare say to Pepita, "What beautiful eyes you
have!" and, indeed, should he say so, he would only speak the truth, for
Pepita's eyes are large, green as those of Circe, expressive, and well
shaped. And what enhances their beauty is that she seems unaware of all
this, for there is not to be detected in her the slightest wish to
please or attract any one by the sweetness of her glances. One would say
she thought eyes were only made to see with, and for no other purpose;
the contrary of what I suppose to be the opinion, according to what I
have heard, of the greater number of young and pretty women, who use
their eyes as a weapon of offense, or as a sort of electric battery, by
means of which to subdue hearts and captivate them. Not like those,
indeed, are Pepita's eyes, wherein dwell a peace and a serenity as of
heaven. And yet it can not be said that there is anything of coldness in
their glance. Her eyes are full of charity and sweetness. They rest with
tenderness on a ray of light, on a flower, on the commonest object in
nature; but with greater tenderness still, with signs of a softer
feeling, more human and benign, do they rest on her fellow-man, without
his daring to imagine in that tranquil and serene glance, however young
or handsome or conceited he may be, anything more than charity and love
toward a fellow-man, or, at most, a friendly preference.

I sometimes wonder if all this can be studied, and if Pepita be, in
truth, an accomplished actress; but the acting would be so perfect, and
so purposeless the play, that it seems to me, after all, impossible that
this should be the case. Nature herself it is, then, who serves as
teacher and as type for that glance and for those eyes. First, Pepita
loved her mother; then circumstances led her to love Don Gumersindo
through duty, as the companion of her existence; and then, doubtless,
all passion that any earthly object could inspire was extinguished in
her breast, and she loved God, and loved material objects for the love
of God; and so arrived at last at a peaceful and even enviable
condition of spirit, in which, if there be anything to censure, it is
perhaps a certain vanity of which she is herself unconscious. It is very
convenient to love in this mild fashion, without allowing ourselves to
be disturbed by our feelings, to have no passion to combat, to make of
our love and affection for others an addition to, and, as it were, the
complement of self-love.

I ask myself at times if, when I censure this state of mind in Pepita,
it be not myself I censure. How do I know what passes in the soul of
this woman that I should censure her? Perhaps, in thinking I behold her
soul, it is my own soul that I behold. I never had nor have I now any
passion to conquer. All my virtuous inclinations, all my instincts, good
or bad, tend, thanks to your wise teachings, without obstacle or
impediment, to the furtherance of the one purpose. In the fulfillment of
this purpose, I should find not only my noble and disinterested desires,
but my selfish ones also, satisfied--my love of glory, my desire for
knowledge, my curiosity to see distant lands, my longing for name and
fame. All these are centered in the completing of the career upon which
I have entered. I fancy at times that, in this respect, I am more worthy
of censure than Pepita, supposing her even to be worthy of censure at
all.

For, as regards myself, I have been invested with the lesser orders; I
have cast out from my soul the vanities of the world; I have received
the tonsure; I have consecrated myself to the service of the altar. Yet
I have a future full of ambition before me, and I dwell with pleasure on
the thought that this future is within my reach. I please myself in
thinking that the conditions I possess for it are real and efficacious;
though I call humility to my aid, at times, to save me from an
overweening self-confidence.

To what, on the other hand, does this woman aspire, and what are her
hopes? I censure her for the care she takes of her hands, for regarding
her beauty, perhaps, with complacency; I almost censure her for her
neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain
indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her
attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can
not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the
body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with
which I regard the neatness and purity of Pepita? Is this displeasure,
perchance, because she is to be my step-mother? But, perhaps, she does
not wish to be my step-mother! Perhaps she does not love my father! It
is true, indeed, that women are incomprehensible. It may be that in her
secret heart she already feels inclined to return my father's
affection, and marry him, though, in accordance with the saying that
"what is worth much, costs much," she chooses first to torment him with
her affected coldness, to reduce him to unquestioning submission, to put
his constancy to the proof, and then means to end by quietly saying Yes.
We shall see.

What there is no question about is, that our garden-party was decorously
merry. We talked of flowers, of fruit, of grafts, of planting, and of
innumerable other things relating to husbandry, Pepita displaying her
knowledge of agriculture in rivalry with my father, with myself, and
with the reverend vicar, who listens with open mouth to every word she
utters, and declares that in the seventy-odd years of his life, and
during his many wanderings, in the course of which he has traversed
almost the whole of Andalusia, he has never known a woman more discreet
or more judicious in all she thinks and says than she.

On returning home from any of these excursions, I renew my entreaties to
my father to allow me to go back to you, in order that the wished-for
moment may at last arrive in which I shall see myself elevated to the
priesthood. But my father is so pleased to have me with him, he is so
happy here in the village, taking care of his plantations, exercising
the judicial and executive authority of squire, paying homage to Pepita,
and consulting her in everything as his Egeria, that he always finds,
and will find perhaps for months to come, some plausible pretext to keep
me here. Now he has to clarify the wine of I know not how many casks;
now he has to decant more wine still; now it is necessary to hoe around
the vines; now to plow the olive-groves and dig around the roots of the
olives; in fine, he keeps me here against my wishes--though I should not
say "against my wishes," for it gives me great pleasure to be with my
father, who is so good to me.

The evil is, that, with this way of life, I fear I shall grow too
material. I am conscious in my devotions of a certain aridity of spirit.
My religious fervor diminishes; common life begins to penetrate, to
infiltrate itself into my nature; when I pray, I suffer distractions; in
my solitary meditations, when the soul should raise itself up to God, I
can no longer concentrate my thought as formerly. My sensibility of
heart, on the other hand, that refuses to occupy itself with any worthy
object, that does not employ and consume itself on its legitimate ends,
wells forth and, as it were, overflows, at times, for objects and under
circumstances that have something in them of puerile, that seem to me
ridiculous, of which I am ashamed. If I awaken in the silence of the
night and hear by chance some love-lorn rustic singing, to the sound of
his badly played guitar, a verse of a _fandango_ or a _rondeña_, neither
very discreet, nor very poetical, nor very delicate, I am wont to be
affected as if I were listening to some celestial melody; a feeling of
pity, childish and insensate, comes over me at times. The other day the
children of my father's overseer stole a nest full of young sparrows,
and on seeing the little birds, not yet fledged, torn thus violently
from their tender mother, I felt a sudden pang of anguish, and I confess
I could not restrain my tears. A few days before this, a peasant had
brought in from the fields a calf that had broken its leg; he was about
to carry it to the slaughter-house, and came to ask my father what part
of it he wished for his table. My father answered, the head and the
feet, and a few pounds of the flesh. I was touched by compassion on
seeing the calf, and, but that shame prevented me, would have bought it
from the man, in the hope of curing and keeping it alive. In fine, my
dear uncle, nothing less than the confidence I have with you would make
me recount to you these signs of an extravagant and restless emotion, so
that you may judge by them how necessary it is that I should return to
my former way of life, to my studies, to my lofty speculations, and be
at last elevated to the priesthood, in order to provide with its fit and
proper aliment the fire that consumes my soul.

_April 14th._

I continue to lead the same life as usual, and am detained here still by
my father's entreaties.

The greatest pleasure I enjoy, after that of being with him, is my
intercourse and conversation with the reverend vicar, with whom I am in
the habit of taking long walks. It seems incredible that a man of his
age--for he must be near eighty--should be so strong and active, and so
good a walker. I grow tired sooner than he; and there is no rough road,
no wild place, no rugged hill-top, in the neighborhood, where we have
not been.

The reverend vicar is reconciling me, in a great degree, with the
Spanish clergy, whom I have stigmatized, at times, in speaking with you,
as but little enlightened. How much more to be admired, I often say to
myself, is this man, so full of candor and benevolence, so simple and
affectionate, than one who may have read many books, but in whose soul
the flame of charity burns less brightly than, fed by the purest and
sincerest faith, it does in his! Do not suppose from this that the
understanding of the reverend vicar is a limited one; his is a spirit
uncultured, indeed, but clear and sagacious. At times I fancy that the
good opinion I entertain of him may be due to the attention with which
he listens to me; but, if this be not the case, it seems to me that he
reasons on every subject with remarkable perspicacity, and that he knows
how to unite an ardent love of our holy religion with an appreciation of
all the good things that modern civilization has brought us. I am
charmed, above all, by the simplicity, the sobriety of sentiment, the
naturalness, in short, with which the reverend vicar performs the most
disagreeable works of charity. There is no misfortune he does not seek
to alleviate, no suffering he does not strive to console, no error he
does not endeavor to repair, no necessity which he does not hasten
solicitously to relieve.

In all this, it must be confessed, he has a powerful auxiliary in
Pepita, whose piety and compassionate disposition he is always
extolling.

This species of homage which the vicar pays to Pepita is founded upon,
and goes side by side with, the practice of a thousand good works--the
giving of alms, prayer, public worship, and the care of the poor. Pepita
not only gives alms for the poor, but also gives money for _novenas_,
sermons, and other observances of the Church. If the altars of the
parish are gay, at times, with beautiful flowers, these flowers are due
to the bounty of Pepita who has sent them from her garden. If Our Lady
of Sorrows, instead of her old worn cloak, wears to-day a resplendent
and magnificent mantle of black velvet, embroidered with silver, Pepita
it is who has paid for it.

These, and other similar acts of beneficence, the vicar is always
extolling and magnifying. Thus it is, when I am not speaking of my own
aims, of my vocation, of my studies, to hear about which gives the
reverend vicar great delight, and keeps him hanging upon my words, when
it is he who speaks and I who listen, that, after a thousand turns, he
always ends by speaking of Pepita Ximenez. And of whom, indeed, should
the reverend vicar speak to me? His intercourse with the doctor, with
the apothecary, with the rich husbandmen of the place, hardly gives
motive for three words of conversation. As the reverend vicar possesses
the very rare quality, in one bred in the country, of not being fond of
scandal, or of meddling in other people's affairs, he has no one to
speak of but Pepita, whom he visits frequently, and with whom, as may be
gathered from what he says, he is in the habit of holding the most
familiar colloquies.

I know not what books Pepita Ximenez has read, nor what education she
may have received; but, from what the reverend vicar says, it may be
deduced that she possesses a restless soul and an inquiring spirit, to
which a multiplicity of questions and problems present themselves that
she longs to elucidate and resolve, bringing them for that purpose
before the reverend vicar, whom she thus puts into a state of agreeable
perplexity.

This man, educated in country fashion, a priest whose breviary is, as
one may say, his library, possesses an understanding open to the light
of truth, but is wanting in original power, and thus the problems and
questions Pepita presents to him open before him new horizons and new
paths, nebulous and vague indeed, and which he did not even imagine to
exist, which he is not able to follow with exactitude, but whose
vagueness, novelty, and mystery enchant him.

The vicar is not ignorant of the danger of all this, and that he and
Pepita expose themselves to fall, without knowing it, into some heresy;
but he tranquillizes his conscience with the thought that, although very
far from being a great theologian, he has his catechism at his fingers'
ends, he has confidence in God that he will illuminate his spirit, and
he hopes not to be led into error, and takes it for granted that Pepita
will follow his counsels, and never deviate from the right path.

Thus do both form to themselves a thousand poetical conceptions, full of
charm, although vague, of all the mysteries of our religion and the
articles of our faith. Great is the devotion they profess to the most
holy Virgin, and I am astonished to see how they are able to blend the
popular idea or conception of the Virgin with some of the sublimest
theological thoughts.

From what the vicar relates, I can perceive that Pepita Ximenez's soul,
in the midst of its apparent calmness and serenity, is transfixed by the
sharp arrow of suffering; there is in it a love of purity in
contradiction with her past life. Pepita loved Don Gumersindo as her
companion, as her benefactor, as the man to whom she owed everything;
but she is tortured, she is humiliated by the recollection that Don
Gumersindo was her husband.

In her devotion to the Virgin there may be detected a feeling of painful
humiliation, of suffering, of sadness, produced by the recollection of
her ignoble and childless marriage.

Even in her adoration of the _Infant Jesus_, in the beautiful carved
image she has in her house, there is something of maternal love that
lacks an object on which to expend its tenderness, of maternal love that
seeks this object in a being not born of sin and impurity.

The vicar says that Pepita worships the _Infant Jesus_ as her God, but
that she also loves him with the maternal tenderness she would feel for
a son, if she had one, and whom she had no cause to regard with any
other feeling than affection. The vicar sees that Pepita, in her prayers
to the Holy Virgin, and in her care of her beautiful image of the Child
Jesus, has in her thoughts the ideal Mother and the ideal Son, both
alike immaculate.

I confess that I know not what to think of all these singularities. I
know so little of women! What the vicar tells me of Pepita surprises me;
and yet, though on the whole I believe her to be good, rather than the
contrary, she inspires me at times with a certain fear on my father's
account. Notwithstanding his fifty-five years, I believe that he is in
love; and Pepita, although virtuous through conviction, may, without
premeditating or intending it, be an instrument of the spirit of evil,
may practice a species of coquetry, involuntary and instinctive, more
irresistible, efficacious, and fatal, than that which proceeds from
premeditation, calculation, and reasoning.

Who knows, I say to myself at times, notwithstanding her prayers, her
secluded and devout life, her alms and her gifts to the churches, on all
which is based the affection that the vicar entertains for her, if there
be not also an earthly spell, if there be not something of diabolical
magic in the arts she practices, and with which she deludes and beguiles
this simple vicar, so that he thinks and speaks only of her on all
occasions?

The very influence that Pepita exercises over a man so incredulous as my
father, a man whose nature is so vigorous and so little sentimental,
has in it, in truth, something extraordinary.

Nor do the good works of Pepita suffice to explain the respect and
affection with which she inspires these country-people in general. On
the rare occasions on which she leaves her house, the little children
run to meet her and kiss her hand; the young girls smile, and salute her
with affection; and the men take off their hats, as she passes, and
incline themselves before her with the most spontaneous reverence and
the most natural good-feeling.

Pepita Ximenez, whom many of the villagers have known since she was
born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with
her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don
Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon
as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant
land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her fellow-townspeople
with affectionate esteem, and something like loving admiration.

I see that I am inadvertently falling into the same fault that I censure
in the reverend vicar, and that I speak to you of nothing but Pepita.
But this is natural. Here no one speaks of anything else. One would
suppose the whole place to be full of the spirit, of the thought, of
the image, of this singular woman, in regard to whom I have not been
able to determine if she be an angel or an accomplished coquette, full
of _instinctive astuteness_, although the words may seem to involve a
contradiction. For I am fully convicted in my own mind that this woman
does not play the coquette, nor seek to gain the good-will of others, in
order to gratify her vanity.

Pepita's soul is full of candor and sincerity. One has only to see her,
to be convinced of this. Her dignified and graceful bearing, her slender
figure, the smoothness and clearness of her forehead head, the soft and
pure light of her eyes, all blend into a fitting harmony, in which there
is not a single discordant note.

How deeply I regret having come to this place, and having remained here
so long! I had passed my life in your house, and in the seminary; I had
seen and known no one but my companions and my teachers; I knew nothing
of the world but through speculation and through theory; and suddenly I
find myself thrown into the midst of this world, though it be only that
of a village; and distracted from my studies, meditations, and prayers
by a thousand profane objects.

_April 20th._

Your last letters, dearest uncle, have been a welcome consolation to my
soul. Benevolent, as always, you admonish and enlighten me with prudent
and useful reflections.

It is true, my impetuosity is worthy of reprobation. I wish to attain my
aims, without making use of the means requisite to their attainment; I
wish to reach the journey's end, without first treading, step by step,
the rough and thorny path.

I complain of an aridity of spirit in prayer, of inability to fix my
thoughts, of a proneness to dissipate my tenderness on childish objects;
I desire to elevate myself to and be absorbed in God, to attain at once
to the contemplation of essential being, and yet I disdain mental prayer
and rational and discursive meditation. How, without attaining to its
purity, how, without beholding its light, can I hope to enjoy the
delights of divine love?

I am by nature arrogant, and I shall therefore endeavor to humiliate
myself in my own eyes, in order that God may not suffer the spirit of
evil, in punishment of my pride and presumption, to cover me with
humiliation.

I do not believe that it would be easy for me to fall into a lapse from
virtue so shameful and unexpected as the one you fear. I do not confide
in myself; I confide in the mercy of God and in his grace; and I trust
they will not fail me.

Nevertheless, you are altogether right in advising me to abstain from
forming ties of friendship with Pepita Ximenez; I am far enough from
being bound to her by any tie.

I am not ignorant that, when those holy men and saints, who should serve
us as models and examples, were bound in close intimacy and affection
with women, it was in their old age, or when they were already proved
and disciplined by penitence, or when there existed a noticeable
disproportion in years between them and the pious women they elected to
be their friends; as is related of St. Jerome and St. Paulina, and of
St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. And even thus, even with a purely
spiritual affection, I know it is possible to sin through excess. For
God only should occupy the soul as Lord and Spouse, and any other being
who dwells in it should do so but as the friend, the servant, the
creation of the Spouse, and as one in whom the Spouse delights.

Do not think, however, that I vaunt myself on being invincible, that I
despise danger, and defy and seek it. He who loves danger shall perish
therein. And if the prophet-king, though so agreeable in the sight of
God and so favored of him, and Solomon, notwithstanding his supernatural
and God-given wisdom, were troubled and fell into sin because God turned
his face away from them, what have not I to fear, miserable sinner that
I am, so young, so inexperienced in the wiles of the devil, and so
wavering and unpracticed in the combats of virtue!

Filled with a salutary fear of God, and imbued with a fitting distrust
of my own weakness, I shall not be forgetful of your counsels and your
prudent admonitions; and I shall pray, meantime, with fervor, and
meditate on holy things, in order to abhor the things of the world, in
so far as they deserve abhorrence; but of this I may assure you: that,
however deeply I penetrate into the depths of my conscience, however
carefully I search its inmost recesses, I have thus far discovered
nothing to make me share your fears.

If my former letters are full of encomiums on the virtue of Pepita, it
is the fault of my father and of the reverend vicar, and not mine; for,
at first, far from being friendly to this woman, I was unjustly
prejudiced against her.

As for the beauty and physical grace of Pepita, be assured that I have
contemplated them with entire purity of thought, and, though it cost me
something to say it, and may cost you a little to hear it, I confess
that, if any cloud has arisen to dim the clear and serene image of
Pepita in the mirror of my soul, it has been owing to your harsh
suspicions, which, for an instant, have almost made me suspect myself.

But no; what thought have I ever entertained with regard to Pepita, what
have I seen or praised in her that should lead any one to suppose me to
have any other feeling for her than friendship, and the admiration, pure
and innocent, that a work of art may inspire, the more especially if it
be the work of the Supreme Artist, and nothing less than the temple
wherein he dwells?

Besides, dear uncle, I shall have to live in the world, to hold
intercourse with my fellow-beings, to see them, and I can not, for that
reason, pluck out my eyes. You have told me many times that you wish me
to devote myself to a life of action, preaching the divine law, and
making it known in the world, rather than to a contemplative life in the
midst of solitude and isolation. Well, then, this being so, how would
you have me act, in order to avoid seeing Pepita Ximenez? Unless I made
myself ridiculous by closing my own eyes in her presence, how could I
fail to notice the beauty of hers; the clearness, the roseate hue, and
the purity of her complexion, the evenness and pearly whiteness of her
teeth, which she discloses with frequency when she smiles, the fresh
carmin of her lips, the serenity and smoothness of her forehead, and a
thousand other attractions with which Heaven has endowed her? It is true
that for one who bears within his soul the germ of evil thoughts, the
leaven of vice, any one of the impressions that Pepita produces might be
the shock of the steel against the flint, kindling the spark that would
set fire to and consume all around it; but, prepared for this danger,
watching against it, and guarded with the shield of Christian prudence,
I do not think I have anything to fear. Besides, if it be rash to seek
danger, it is cowardly not to be able to face it, or to shun it when it
presents itself.

Have no fear; I see in Pepita only a beautiful creation of God; and in
God I love her as a sister. If I feel any predilection for her, it is
because of the praises I hear spoken of her by my father, by the
reverend vicar, and by almost every one here.

For my father's sake it would please me were Pepita to relinquish her
inclination for a life of seclusion, and her purpose to lead it, and to
marry him. But were it not for this--were I to see that my father had
only a caprice and not a genuine passion for her--then I should be glad
that Pepita would remain resolute in her chaste widowhood; and when I
should be far away from here, in India or Japan or some other yet more
dangerous mission, I might find a consolation in writing to her of my
wanderings and labors; and, when I returned here in my old age, it
would be a great pleasure for me to be on friendly terms with her, who
would also then be aged, and to hold spiritual colloquies with her, and
chats of the same sort as those the father vicar now holds with her. At
present, however, as I am but a young man, I see but little of Pepita; I
hardly speak to her. I prefer to be thought bashful, shy, ill-bred, and
rude, rather than give the least occasion--not that I should be thought
to feel for her in reality what I ought not to feel--but even for
suspicion or for scandal.

As for Pepita herself, not even in the most remote degree do I share the
apprehension that, as a vague suspicion, you allow me to perceive. What
projects could she form with respect to a man who, in two or three
months more, is to be a priest! She--who has treated so many others with
disdain--why should she be attracted by me? I know myself well, and I
know that, fortunately, I am not capable of inspiring a passion. They
say I am not ill-looking; but I am awkward, dull, shy, wanting in
amiability; I bear the stamp of what I am, a humble student. What am I,
compared with the gallant if somewhat rustic youths who have paid court
to Pepita--agile horsemen, discreet and agreeable in conversation,
Nimrods in the chase, skilled in all bodily exercises, singers of renown
in all the fairs of Andalusia, and graceful and accomplished in the
dance? If Pepita has scorned all these, how should she now think of me,
and conceive the diabolical desire, and the more than diabolical
project, of troubling the peace of my soul, of making me abandon my
vocation, perhaps of plunging me into perdition? No, it is not possible.
Pepita I believe to be good, and myself--and I say it in all
sincerity--insignificant; insignificant, be it understood, so far as
inspiring her with love is concerned, but not too insignificant to be
her friend, to merit her esteem, to be the object, one day, in a certain
sense, of her preference, when I shall have succeeded in making myself
worthy of this preference by a holy and laborious life.

I ask you to forgive me if I have vindicated myself too warmly from
certain half-expressed suspicions in your letter--suspicions that sound
like accusations, or like prophetic warnings.

I do not complain of these suspicions: you have given me judicious
advice, the greater part of which I accept, and intend to follow; if you
have gone a little beyond what is just, in your suspicions, it is owing,
without doubt, to the interest you take in me, and for which I am
grateful to you with all my heart.

_May 4th._

It is strange that in so many days I should not have had time to write
to you, but such is the fact. My father does not let me rest a moment,
and I am besieged by visitors.

In large cities it is easy to avoid seeing visitors, to isolate one's
self, to create for one's self a solitude, a Thebaid in the midst of the
tumult; in an Andalusian village, and, above all, when one has the honor
of being the son of the squire, it is necessary to live in public. Not
only now to my study, but even to my bedroom, do the reverend vicar, the
notary, my cousin Currito, the son of Doña Casilda, and a hundred
others, penetrate without any one daring to oppose them, waken me if I
am asleep, and carry me off with them wherever they wish.

The club-house here is not a place of amusement for the evening only,
but for all the hours of the day. From eleven o'clock in the morning it
is full of people, who chat, glance over a paper to learn the news, and
play at _hombra._ There are persons here who spend ten or twelve hours a
day at this game. In short, there is as much enjoyment here as one could
well desire. In order that this enjoyment may be uninterrupted, there
are a great many amusements. Besides _hombra,_ there are many other
games at cards. Checkers, chess, and dominoes are not neglected. And,
finally, there is a decided passion for cock-fighting.

All this, together with making calls, going to the fields to inspect the
work, settling accounts every night with the overseer, visiting the
wine-vaults and cask-stores, superintending the clarifying, decanting,
and perfecting of the wines, treating with gypsies and horse-dealers for
the purchase, sale, or barter of horses, mules, and donkeys, or with
dealers from Jeres who come to buy our wine in order to convert it into
sherry, are here the daily occupation of the gentry, squirearchy, or
whatever else they may choose to call themselves. On extraordinary
occasions there are other tasks and amusements that give a greater
appearance of animation to everything: as in harvest-time, at the
vintage, and the gathering in of the olives; or when there is a fair or
a bull-fight, either here or in the neighboring village; or when there
is a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of some miraculous image of the Holy
Virgin, where, if it be true that many go through curiosity, or to amuse
themselves, and give to their sweethearts a fairing of a Cupid or a
scapula, many more go through devotion, or in fulfillment of a vow or
promise. One of these sanctuaries is situated at the top of a very high
mountain, yet there are delicate women who, to reach it, will climb,
with bare feet, wounded by the stones and brambles, the steep and
rugged path that leads to it.

There is, in the life here, a certain charm. For one who has no desire
for fame, no ambition, I can understand that it might be a very easy and
agreeable life. Even solitude may be obtained by an effort. As I am here
only for a short time, I can neither make this effort, nor ought I to do
so; but if I were settled here, I should find no difficulty in secluding
myself--and that, too, without offending any one--for several hours, or
for the whole day, if it were necessary, in order to devote myself to my
studies and meditations.

Your last letter has troubled me a little. I see that you persist in
your suspicions, and I know not what answer to make, in order to justify
myself, but the answer I have already made you.

You say that the victory, in a certain kind of warfare, consists in
flight; that to fly is to conquer. Why should I seek to deny what the
apostle and so many holy fathers and doctors of the Church have said?
But you well know that, in this case, flight does not depend upon me. My
father is resolved that I shall not go; he keeps me here against my
will, and I must obey him. The victory must be gained by other means,
then, than by flight.

To set your mind at rest, I repeat that matters have not gone so far as
you think; that you see them in a much more advanced stage than they
really are.

There is not the slightest sign that Pepita Ximenez loves me. And even
did she love me, it would be in a different way from that in which those
women loved whom you cite as a salutary warning to me. A lady of our
times, virtuous and well brought up, is neither so susceptible nor so
wanting in decorum as those matrons of whose adventures ancient history
is full.

The passage you cite from St. John Chrysostom is indeed worthy of
consideration; but it is not altogether applicable to the circumstances.
The great lady that in Of, Thebes, or Diospolis Magna, fell in love with
the favorite son of Jacob, was in all probability extremely handsome. By
such a supposition only can one comprehend the words of the saint, that
it was a greater miracle that Joseph should have passed through this
ordeal unscathed, than that the three young men whom Nebuchadnezzar
caused to be placed in the fiery furnace were not reduced to ashes!

As far as beauty is concerned, I confess frankly that I can not think
that the wife of the Egyptian prince, chamberlain of the palace of the
Pharaohs, or whatever else may have been his title, was in any degree
superior to Pepita Ximenez. But neither am I endowed with as many gifts
and excellences as was Joseph, nor is Pepita a woman without religion
and without decorum. And even were the circumstances such as he relates,
were all those horrors true, I can only account for the exaggerated
language of St. John Chrysostom by the fact that he lived in the corrupt
capital, half Gentile still, of the Lower Empire, in the midst of that
court whose vices he so harshly censures, and where even the Empress
Eudoxia herself gave an example of scandal and corruption.

But in our day, when the morality taught in the gospel has penetrated
more deeply into the strata of society, it seems to me an exaggeration
to think the chaste scorn of the son of Jacob any more miraculous than
the material incombustibility of the three young men of Babylon.

There is one point on which you touch in your letter that encourages and
pleases me greatly. You condemn, as is right, the exaggerated
sentimentality, and the tendency to be easily moved and to weep from
childish motives, from which I told you that I suffered at times; but,
since this disposition of soul, so necessary to combat, exists in me,
you rejoice that it does not affect my prayers and meditations, and
contaminate them. You recognize and praise in me the virile energy that
should animate the passions and the mind that seek to elevate themselves
to God.

The intelligence that strives to comprehend him must be a vigorous one;
the will that submits itself entirely to him must first have triumphed,
fighting bravely against every appetite, and defeating and putting to
flight every temptation over self. The very passion that, purified and
ardent, has power, even in weak and miserable mortals, to exalt itself,
by an ecstasy of love, to God himself, attaining by a supernatural
illumination to the knowledge of him, is the offspring of a steadfast
and upright character, as well as of the divine grace. This languor,
this debility of the will, this morbid tenderness have nothing in them
in common with charity, with piety, or with divine love. The former are
the attributes of a nature less than feminine; the latter are passions,
if passions they can be called, of angels rather than of men. God will
be my surety, and with his help I will fight for my own salvation. But,
should I sink into perdition, not in disguise nor by capitulation shall
the enemies of the soul and the sins of the flesh enter into the
fortress of my conscience, but with banners flying, laying waste
everything before them by fire and sword, and after a desperate
conflict.

In the past few days I have had occasion to practice patience in an
extreme degree, and to mortify my self-love in the most cruel manner. My
father, wishing to reciprocate Pepita's compliment of the garden-party,
invited her to visit his villa of the _Pozo de la Solana_. The excursion
took place on the 22d of April. I shall not soon forget that date.

The _Pozo de la Solana_ is about two leagues distant from the village,
and the only road to it is a bridle-path. We all had to go on horseback.
As I never learned to ride, I had on former occasions accompanied my
father mounted on a pacing mule, gentle and, according to the expression
of Dientes the muleteer, as good as gold, and of easier motion than a
carriage. On the journey to the _Pozo de la Solana_ I went in the same
manner.

My father, the notary, the apothecary, and my cousin Currito, were
mounted on good horses. My aunt, Doña Casilda, who weighs more than two
hundred and fifty pounds, rode on a large and powerful donkey, seated in
a commodious side-saddle. The reverend vicar rode a gentle and easy mule
like mine.

As for Pepita Ximenez, who, I supposed, would go also mounted on a
donkey, in the same sort of easy saddle as my aunt--for I was ignorant
that she knew how to ride--she surprised me by making her appearance on
a black and white horse full of fire and spirit. She wore a
riding-habit, and managed her horse with admirable grace and skill.

I was pleased to see Pepita look so charming on horseback, but I soon
began to foresee and to be mortified by the sorry part I would play,
jogging on in the rear beside my corpulent aunt Casilda and the vicar,
all three as quiet and tranquil as if we were seated in a carriage,
while the gay cavalcade in front would caracole, gallop, trot, and make
a thousand other displays of their horsemanship.

I fancied on the instant that there was something of compassion in
Pepita's glance as she noted the pitiable appearance I no doubt
presented, seated on my mule. My cousin Currito looked at me with a
mocking smile, and immediately began to make fun of me and to tease me.

Confess that I deserve credit for my resignation and courage. I
submitted to everything with a good grace, and Currito's jests soon
ceased when he saw that I was invulnerable to them. But what did I not
suffer in secret! The others, now trotting, now galloping, rode in
advance of us, both in going and returning. The vicar and I, with Doña
Casilda between us, rode on, tranquil as the mules we were seated upon,
without hastening or retarding our pace.

I had not even the consolation of chatting with the vicar, in whose
conversation I find so much pleasure, nor of wrapping myself up in my
own thoughts and giving the reign to my fancy, nor of silently admiring
the beauty of the scenery around us. Doña Casilda is gifted with an
abominable loquacity, and we were obliged to listen to her. She told us
all there is to be told of the gossip of the village; she recounted to
us all her accomplishments; she told us how to make sausages,
brain-puddings, pastry, and innumerable other dishes and delicacies.
There is no one, according to herself, who can rival her in matters
pertaining to the kitchen, or to the dressing of hogs, but Antoñona, the
nurse of Pepita, and now her housekeeper and general manager. I am
already acquainted with this Antoñona, for she goes back and forth
between her mistress's house and ours with messages, and is in truth
extremely handy; as loquacious as Aunt Casilda, but a great deal more
discreet.

The scenery on the road to the _Pozo de la Solana_ is charming, but my
mind was so disturbed during our journey that I could not enjoy it. When
we arrived at the villa and dismounted, I was relieved of a great load,
as if it had been I who carried the mule, and not the mule who carried
me.

We then proceeded on foot through the estate, which is magnificent, of
varied character, and extensive. There are vines, old and newly planted,
all on the same boundary-line, that produce more than a hundred and
twenty bushels of grapes; olive-trees that yield to the same amount;
and, finally, a grove of the most majestic oaks that are to be found in
all Andalusia. The water of the _Pozo de la Solana_ forms a clear and
deep brook at which all the birds of the neighborhood come to drink, and
on whose borders they are caught by hundreds, by means of reeds smeared
with bird-lime, or of nets, in the center of which are fastened a cord
and a decoy. All this carried my thoughts back to the sports of my
childhood, and to the many times that I too had gone to catch birds in
the same manner.

Following the course of the brook, and especially in the ravines, are
many poplars and other tall trees, that, together with the bushes and
the shrubs, form a dark and labyrinthine wood. A thousand fragrant wild
flowers grow there spontaneously, and it would, in truth, be difficult
to imagine anything more secluded and sylvan, more solitary, peaceful,
and silent than this spot. The mind is invaded here, during all the
fervor of noonday, when the sun pours down his light in torrents from a
heaven without a cloud, by the same mysterious terror that visits it at
times in the silent hours of the night. One can understand here the
manner of life of the patriarchs of old, and of the primitive shepherds
and heroes; and the visions and apparitions that appeared to them of
nymphs, of gods, and of angels, in the midst of the noonday brightness.

As we walked through this thicket, there arrived a moment in which, I
know not how, Pepita and I found ourselves alone together. The others
had remained behind.

I felt a sudden thrill pass through me. For the first time, and in a
place so solitary, I found myself alone with this woman, while my
thoughts were still dwelling on the noontide apparitions, now sinister,
now gracious, but always supernatural, vouchsafed to the men of remote
ages.

Pepita had left the long skirt of her riding-habit in the house, and now
wore a short dress that did not interfere with the graceful ease of her
movements. She had on her head a little Andalusian hat, which became her
extremely. She carried in her hand her riding-whip, which I fancied to
myself to be a magic wand by means of which this enchantress might cast
her spells over me.

I am not afraid to transcribe here these eulogies of her beauty. In this
sylvan scene she appeared to me more beautiful than ever. The precaution
recommended in similar cases by ascetics, to think of her beauty
defaced by sickness and old age, to picture her to myself dead, the prey
of corruption and of the worm, presented itself, against my will, to my
imagination; and I say _against my will_, for I do not concur in the
necessity for such a precaution. No thought of the material, no
suggestion of the evil spirit, troubled my reason, or infected my will
or my senses.

What did occur to me was an argument, at least to my mind, in disproof
of the efficacy of this precaution. Beauty, the creation of a Sovereign
and Divine Power, may, indeed, be frail and ephemeral, may vanish in an
instant; but the idea of beauty is eternal, and, once perceived by the
mind, it lives there an immortal life. The beauty of this woman, such as
it manifests itself to-day, will disappear in a few short years; the
graceful form, those charming contours, the noble head that raises
itself so proudly above her shoulders, all will be food for loathsome
worms; but though the material must of necessity be transformed, its
idea, the thought through which it was created, abstract beauty, in a
word, who shall destroy this? Does it not exist in the Divine Mind? Once
perceived and known by me, shall it not continue to live in my soul,
triumphing over age and even over death?

I was meditating thus, striving to tranquillize my spirit and to
dissipate the doubts which you have succeeded in infusing into my mind,
when Pepita and I encountered each other. I was pleased and at the same
time troubled to find myself alone with her--hoping and yet fearing that
the others would join us.

The silvery voice of Pepita broke the silence, and drew me from my
meditations, saying:

"How silent you are, Don Luis, and how sad! I am pained to think that it
is, perhaps, through my fault, or partly so at least, that your father
has caused you to spend a disagreeable day in these solitudes, taking
you away from a solitude more congenial, where there would be nothing to
distract your attention from your prayers and pious books."

I know not what answer I made to this. It must have been something
nonsensical, for my mind was troubled. I did not wish to flatter Pepita
by paying her profane compliments, nor, on the other hand, did I wish to
answer her rudely.

She continued:

"You must forgive me if I am wrong, but I fancy that, in addition to the
annoyance of seeing yourself deprived to-day of your favorite
occupation, there is something else that powerfully contributes to your
ill-humor."

"And what is this something else?" I said; "since you have discovered
it, or fancy you have done so."

"This something else," responded Pepita, "is a feeling not altogether
becoming in one who is going to be a priest so soon, but very natural in
a young man of twenty-two."

On hearing this I felt the blood mount to my face, and my face burn. I
imagined a thousand absurdities; I thought myself beset by evil spirits;
I fancied myself tempted by Pepita, who was doubtless about to let me
understand that she knew I loved her. Then my timidity gave place to
haughtiness, and I looked her steadily in the face. There must have been
something laughable in my look, but either Pepita did not observe it,
or, if she did, she concealed the fact with amiable discretion; for she
exclaimed, in the most natural manner:

"Do not be offended because I find you are not without fault. This that
I have observed seems to me a slight one. You are hurt by the jests of
Currito, and by being compelled to play--speaking profanely--a not very
dignified _rôle_, mounted, like the reverend vicar with his eighty
years, on a placid mule, and not, as a youth of your age and condition
should be, on a spirited horse. The fault is the reverend dean's, to
whom it did not occur that you should learn to ride. To know how to
manage a horse is not opposed to the career you intend to follow, and I
think, now that you are here, that your father might in a few days give
you the necessary instruction to enable you to do so. If you should go
to Persia or to China, where there are no railroads yet, you will make
but a sorry figure in those countries as a bad horseman. It is possible,
even, that, through this want of foresight of the dean's, the missionary
himself may come to lose prestige in the eyes of those barbarians, which
will make it all the more difficult for him to reap the fruits of his
labors."

This and other arguments Pepita adduced in order to persuade me to learn
to ride on horseback; and I was so convinced of the necessity of a
missionary's being a good horseman, that I promised her to learn at
once, taking my father for a teacher.

"On the very next expedition we make," I said, "I shall ride the most
spirited horse my father has, instead of the mule I am riding to-day."

"I shall be very glad of it," responded Pepita, with a smile of
indescribable sweetness.

At this moment we were joined by the rest of the party, at which I was
secretly rejoiced, though for no other reason than the fear of not being
able to sustain the conversation, and of saying a great many foolish
things, on account of the little experience I have had in conversing
with women.

After our walk my father's servants spread before us on the fresh grass,
in the most charming spot beside the brook, a rural and abundant
collation.

The conversation was very animated, and Pepita sustained her part in it
with much discretion and intelligence. My cousin Currito returned to his
jests about my manner of riding and the meekness of my mule. He called
me a theologian, and said that, seated on mule-back, I looked as if I
were dispensing blessings. This time, however, being now firmly resolved
to learn to ride, I answered his jests with sarcastic indifference. I
was silent, nevertheless, with respect to the promise I had just made
Pepita. The latter, doubtless thinking as I did--although we had come to
no understanding in the matter--that silence for the present was
necessary to insure the complete success of the surprise that I would
create afterward by my knowledge of horsemanship, said nothing of our
conversation. Thus it happened, naturally and in the simplest manner,
that a secret existed between us; and it produced in my mind a singular
effect.

Nothing else worth telling occurred during the day.

In the afternoon we returned to the village in the same manner in which
we had left it. Yet, seated on my easy-going mule and at the side of my
aunt Casilda, I did not experience the same fatigue or sadness as
before.

During the whole journey I listened without weariness to my aunt's
stories, amusing myself at times in conjuring up idle fancies. Nothing
of what passes in my soul shall be concealed from you. I confess, then,
that the figure of Pepita was, as it were, the center, or rather the
nucleus and focus of these idle fancies.--

The noonday vision in which she had appeared to me in the shadiest and
most sequestered part of the grove, brought to my memory all the
visions, holy and unholy, of wondrous beings, of a condition superior to
ours, that I had read of in sacred authors and in the profane classics.
Pepita appeared to the eyes and on the stage of my fancy in foe, leafy
seclusion of the grove not as she rode before us on horseback but in an
ideal and ethereal fashion, as to Æneas his mother, as Minerva to
Callimachus, as the sylph who, afterward became the mother of Libusa to
the Bohemian Kroco, as Diana to the son of Aristæus, as the angels in
the valley of Mamre to the patriarch, as the hippocentaur to St. Anthony
in the solitude of the wilderness.

That the vision of Pepita should assume in my mind something of a
supernatural character, seems to me no more to be wondered at than any
of these. For an instant, seeing the consistency of the illusion, I
thought myself tempted by evil spirits; but I reflected that in the few
moments, during which I had been alone with Pepita near the brook of the
Solana, nothing had occurred that was not natural and commonplace; that
it was afterward, as I rode along quietly on my mule, that some demon,
hovering invisible around me, had suggested these extravagant fancies.

That night I told my father of my desire to learn to ride. I did not
wish to conceal from him that it was Pepita who had suggested this
desire. My father was greatly rejoiced; he embraced me, he kissed me, he
said that now not you only would be my teacher, but that he also would
have the pleasure of teaching me something. He ended by assuring me that
in two or three weeks he would make of me the best horseman of all
Andalusia; able to go to Gibraltar for contraband goods and come back
laden with tobacco and cotton, after eluding the vigilance of the
custom-house officers; fit, in a word, to astonish the riders who show
off their horsemanship in the fairs of Seville and Mairena, and worthy
to press the flanks of Babrecá, Bucephalus, or even of the horses of the
sun themselves, if they should by chance descend to earth, and I could
catch them by the bridle.

I don't know what you will think of this notion of my learning to ride,
but I take it for granted you will see nothing wrong in it.

If you could but see how happy my father is, and how he delights in
teaching me! Since the day after the excursion I told you of, I take two
lessons daily. There are days on which the lesson is continuous, for we
spend from morning till night on horseback. During the first week the
lessons took place in the court-yard of the house, which is unpaved, and
which served us as a riding-school.

We now ride out into the country, but manage so that no one shall see
us. My father does not want me to show myself on horseback in public
until I am able to astonish every one by my fine appearance in the
saddle, as he says. If the vanity natural to a father does not deceive
him, this, it seems, will be very soon, for I have a wonderful aptitude
for riding.

"It is easy to see that you are my son!" my father exclaims with joy, as
he watches my progress.

My father is so good that I hope you will pardon him the profane
language and irreverent jests in which he indulges at times. I grieve
for this at the bottom of my soul, but I endure it with patience. These
constant and long-continued lessons have reduced me to a pitiable
condition with blisters. My father enjoins me to write to you that they
are caused by my flagellations.

As he declares that within a few weeks I shall be an accomplished
horseman, and he does not desire to be superannuated as a master, he
proposes to teach me other accomplishments of a somewhat irregular
character, and sufficiently unsuited to a future priest. At times he
proposes to train me in throwing the bull in order that he may take me
afterward to Seville, where, with lance in hand, on the plains of
Tablada, I shall make the braggarts and the bullies stare. Then he
recalls his own youthful days, when he belonged to the body-guard, and
declares that he will look up his foils, gloves, and masks, and teach me
to fence. And, finally, as my father flatters himself that he can wield
the Sevillian knife better than any one else, he has offered to teach me
even this accomplishment also.

You can already imagine the answer I make to all this nonsense. My
father replies that, in the good old times, not only the priests but
even the bishops themselves rode about the country on horseback, putting
infidels to the sword. I rejoin that this might happen in the dark ages,
but that in our days the ministers of the Most High should know how to
wield no other weapons than those of persuasion. "And what if persuasion
be not enough?" rejoins my father. "Do you think it would be amiss to
re-enforce argument with a few good blows of a cudgel?" The complete
missionary, according to my father's opinion, should know how, on
occasion, to have recourse to these heroic measures, and, as my father
has read a great many tales and romances, he cites various examples in
support of his opinion. He cites in the first place St. James, who, on
his white horse, without ceasing to be an apostle, puts the Moors to the
sword more frequently than he convinces or preaches to them; he cites a
certain Señor de la Vega who, being sent on an embassy to Boabdil by
Ferdinand and Isabella, became entangled in a theological discussion
with the Moors in the court-yard of the Lions, and, being at the end of
his arguments, drew his sword and fell upon them with fury in order to
complete their conversion; and he finally cites the Biscayan hidalgo,
Don Inigo de Loyola, who, in a controversy he had with a Moor, regarding
the purity of the Holy Virgin, growing weary at last of the impious and
horrible blasphemies with which the aforesaid Moor contradicted him,
fell upon him, sword in hand, and, if he had not taken to his heels,
would have enforced conviction upon his soul in a terrible fashion. In
regard to the incident relating to St. Ignatius, I answer my father that
this was before the saint became a priest; and in regard to the other
examples, I answer that historians are not agreed in the matter.

In short, I defend myself as best I can against my father's jests, and I
content myself with being a good horseman, without learning other
accomplishments unsuited to the clergy; although my father assures me
that not a few of the Spanish clergy understand and practice them with
frequency in Spain, even in our own day, with a view to contributing to
the triumph of the faith, and to the preservation or the restoration of
the unity of the Church.

I am grieved to the soul by this levity of my father's, and that he
should speak with irreverence and jestingly about the most serious
things; but a respectful son is not called upon to go further than I do
in repressing his somewhat Voltairean freedom of speech. I say
_Voltairean,_ because I am not able to describe it by any other word. At
heart my father is a good Catholic, and this thought consoles me.

Tuesday was the Feast of the Cross, and the village presented a very
animated appearance. In each street were six or seven May-crosses,
covered with flowers, but none of them was so beautiful as that placed
by Pepita at the door of her house. It was adorned by a perfect cascade
of flowers.

In the evening we went to an entertainment at the house of Pepita. The
cross which had stood at the door was now placed in a large saloon on
the ground-floor, in which there is a piano, and Pepita presented us
with a simple and poetic spectacle, one that I had seen when a child,
but had since forgotten.

From the upper part of the cross hung down seven bands or broad ribbons,
two white, two green, and three red, the symbolic colors of the
theological virtues. Eight children of five or six years old,
representing the seven sacraments, and holding the seven ribbons that
hung from the cross, performed with great skill a species of
contra-dance. The sacrament of baptism was represented by a child
wearing the white robe of a catechumen; ordination, by another child as
a priest; confirmation, by a little bishop; extreme unction, by a
pilgrim with staff and scrip, the latter filled with shells; marriage,
by a bride and bridegroom, and penance, by a Nazarene with cross and
crown of thorns.

The dance was a series of reverences, steps, evolutions, and
genuflections, rather than a dance, performed to the sound of very
tolerable music, something like a march, which the organist played, not
without skill, on the piano.

The little dancers, children of the servants or retainers of Pepita,
after playing their parts, went away to bed amid compliments and
caresses.

The entertainment, in the course of which we were served with
refreshments, continued till twelve; the refreshments were sirup served
in little cups, and afterward chocolate with sponge-cake, and meringues
and water.

Since the return of spring, Pepita's seclusion and retirement are being
gradually abandoned, at which my father is greatly rejoiced. In future,
Pepita will receive every night, and my father desires that I shall be
one of the guests.

Pepita has left off mourning, and now appears more lovely and attractive
than ever, in the lighter fabrics appropriate to the season, which is
almost summer. She still dresses, however, with extreme simplicity.

I cherish the hope that my father will not now detain me here beyond the
end of this month at farthest. In June we shall both join you in the
city, and you shall then see how, far from Pepita, to whom I am
indifferent, and who will remember me neither kindly nor unkindly, I
shall have the pleasure of embracing you, and attaining at last to the
happiness of being ordained.

_May 7th._

Pepita, as I mentioned to you before, receives every evening, from nine
to twelve.

Four or five married ladies of the village, and as many more unmarried
ones, including Aunt Casilda, are frequent visitors; as well as six or
seven young men, who play at forfeits with the girls. Three or four
engagements are the natural result.

The sedate portion of the company are the same as usual. These are, as
one may say, the high functionaries of the village--my father, who is
the squire, the apothecary, the doctor, and the reverend vicar.

I am at a loss to know in which division to place myself. If I join the
young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and
flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the _rôle_ of a
looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I
know are the _burro ciego_, the _burro con vista_, and a little _tute_
or _brisca cruzada_.

The best course for me to pursue would be to absent myself from the
house altogether, but my father will not hear of this. By doing so,
according to him, I should make myself ridiculous.

My father shows many signs of wonder when he sees my ignorance in
certain things. That I should not know how to play even ombre fills him
with astonishment.

"Your uncle has brought you up quite out of the world," he says to me,
"cramming you with theology, and leaving you in the dark about
everything else you ought to know. For the very reason that you are to
be a priest, and can neither dance nor make love in society, it is
necessary that you should know how to play ombre. Otherwise how are you
going to spend your time, unhappy boy?"

To these and other arguments of a like land I have been obliged to
yield, and my father is teaching me at home to play ombre, so that, as
soon as I have learned it, I may play it at Pepita's. He wanted also, as
I already told you, to teach me to fence, and afterward to smoke and
shoot and throw the bar; but I have consented to nothing of all this.

"What a difference," my father exclaims, "between your youth and mine!"

And then he adds, laughing:

"In substance it is the same thing. I, too, had my canonical hours, in
the quarters of the life-guard: a cigar was the censer; a pack of cards,
the hymn-book; and there were never wanting other devotions and
exercises of a more or less spiritual character."

Although you had warned me of this levity of disposition of my father,
and on account of it I have spent with you twelve years of my life--from
the age of ten to that of twenty-two--yet the sayings of his, altogether
too free at times, perturb and mortify me. But what is to be done?
Although I can not reprove him for making use of them, I do not, on the
other hand, applaud or laugh at them. The strangest part of it is that
my father is altogether another person when he is in the house of
Pepita. Not even by chance does a single phrase, a single jest of the
kind he is so prodigal of at other times escape from him then. At
Pepita's my father is politeness itself. He seems, too, to become every
day more attached to her, and to cherish greater hopes of success.

My father continues greatly pleased with me as his pupil in
horsemanship. He declares that in four or five days I shall have
mastered the art, and that I shall then mount Lucero, a black horse bred
from an Arab horse and a mare of the race of Guadalcazar, full of fire
and spirit, and trained to all manner of curvetings.

"Whoever succeeds in getting on the back of Lucero," my father says to
me, "may venture to compete in horsemanship with the centaurs
themselves; and that you shall do very soon."

Although I spend the whole day out of doors on horseback, in the
club-house, or at Pepita's, I yet steal a few hours from slumber,
sometimes voluntarily, sometimes because I can not sleep, to meditate on
my situation and to examine my conscience. The image of Pepita is always
present to my mind. "Can this be love?" I ask myself.

The moral obligation I am under, the vow I have made to consecrate
myself to the service of the altar, although not confirmed, is
nevertheless, in my eyes, full and binding. If anything opposed to the
fulfillment of this vow has entered into my soul, it must be combated.

I note, too, and do not accuse me of arrogance because I mention this to
you, that the empire of my will, which you have taught me to exercise,
is complete over my senses. While Moses on the top of Mount Sinai
conversed with God, the people on the plain below adored, rebellious,
the golden calf. Notwithstanding my youth, my spirit has no fears of
incurring a like rebelliousness. I might converse with God in full
security, if the enemy did not come to attack me in the sanctuary
itself. But the image of Pepita presents itself to my soul. It is a
spirit that makes war against my spirit. It is the idea of her beauty in
all its spiritual purity, that stands before the sanctuary of the souls
where God resides, and prevents me from reaching him.

I do not shut my eyes to the truth, however; I can see clearly; I can
reason; I do not deceive myself. Above and beyond this spiritual
inclination that draws me to Pepita, is the love of the Infinite and of
the Eternal. Although I represent Pepita to myself as an idea, as a
poem, it is still the idea, the poetry of something finite, limited,
concrete; while the love of God and the conception of God embrace
everything. But, notwithstanding all my efforts, I am unable to give
form in my mind to this supreme conception--this object of the highest
love--in order that it may combat the image, the memory of the frail and
ephemeral reality that continually besets me. Fervently do I implore
Heaven to awaken within me the power of the imagination, that it may
create a likeness, a symbol of this conception, that shall be
all-embracing, and absorb and efface the image of Pepita. This highest
conception, on which I desire to center my love, is vague, shadowy,
indescribable, like the blackness of darkness; while Pepita's image
presents itself to me in clearly defined outlines, bright, palpable,
luminous with the subdued light that may be borne by the eyes of the
spirit, not bright with the intense light that for the eyes of the
spirit is as darkness.

Every other consideration, every other object is of no avail to destroy
her image. Between the crucifix and me it places itself; between the
most sacred image of the Virgin and me it places itself; on the page of
the spiritual book I am reading it also comes to place itself.

Yet I do not believe that my soul is invaded by what in the world is
called love. And even if this were the case, I should do battle against
this love, and conquer in the end.

The daily sight of Pepita, the hearing her praises sounded continually,
even by the reverend vicar, preoccupy me; they turn my spirit toward
profane things, and withdraw it from its proper meditations. But, no--I
do not yet love Pepita; I will go away from here and forget her.

While I remain here, I shall do battle with valor. I shall wrestle with
the Lord in order to prevail with him by love and submission. My cries
shall reach him like burning arrows, and shall cast down the buckler
wherewith he defends himself from the eyes of my soul. I shall fight
like Israel in the silence of the night; and the Lord shall wound me in
the thigh, and shall humble me in the conflict in order that, being
vanquished, I may become the victor.

_May 12th._

Before I had any intention of doing so, my dear uncle, my father
persuaded me to ride Lucero. Yesterday, at six in the morning, I mounted
the beautiful wild creature, as my father calls Lucero, and we set out
for the country.

I rode so well, I kept so firm a seat, and looked to such advantage on
the superb animal, that my father could not resist the temptation of
showing off his pupil; and, about eleven in the morning, after resting
at a grange he owns, half a league distant from here, he insisted on our
returning to the village and entering it by the most frequented street,
which we did, our horses' hoofs clattering loudly against the
paving-stones. It is needless to say that we rode by the house of
Pepita, who for some time past is to be seen occasionally in her window,
and who was then seated at the grating of a lower window, behind the
green blind.

Hardly had Pepita heard the noise we made than, lifting up her eyes and
seeing us, she rose, laid down the sewing she had in her hands, and set
herself to observe us. Lucero, who has the habit, as I learned
afterward, of prancing and curveting when he passes the house of Pepita,
began to show off, and to rear and plunge. I tried to quiet him, but, as
there was something unfamiliar to him in the ways of his present rider,
as well as in the rider himself, whom, perhaps, he regarded with
contempt, he grew more and more unmanageable, and began to neigh and
prance, and even to kick; but I remained firm and serene, showing him
that I was his master, chastising him with the spur, touching his breast
with the whip, and holding him in by the bridle. Lucero, who had almost
stood up on his hind-legs, now humbled himself so far as to bend his
knees gently and make a reverence.

The crowd of idlers who had gathered around us broke into boisterous
applause. My father called out to them:

"A good lesson that for our braggarts and blusterers!"

And, observing afterward that Currito--who has no other occupation than
to amuse himself--was among the crowd, he addressed him in these words:

"Look at that, you rascal! Look at the theologian now, and see if you
don't stare with wonder, instead of laughing at him."

And, in fact, there Currito stood stock-still with amazement, and unable
to utter a word.

My triumph was great and assured, although unsuited to my character. The
unfitness of the triumph covered me with confusion. Shame brought the
blood to my cheeks. I must have turned as red as scarlet, or redder,
when I saw that Pepita was applauding and saluting me graciously, while
she smiled and clapped her beautiful hands.

In short, I have been adjudged a man of nerve, and a horseman of the
first rank.

My father could not be prouder or more happy than he is; he declares
that he is completing my education, that in me you have sent him a book
full of wisdom, but unconnected and unbound, which he is now making a
fair copy, and putting it between covers.

On two occasions I played _hombre_ with Pepita. Learning _hombre_, if
that be a part of the binding and the correcting, is already done with.

The night after my equestrian feat Pepita received me with enthusiasm,
and--what she had never ventured nor perhaps desired to do before--she
gave me her hand.

Do not suppose that I did not call to mind what so many moralists and
ascetics recommend in like cases, but in my inmost thoughts I believed
they exaggerated the danger. Those words of the Holy Spirit, that it is
as dangerous to touch a woman as a scorpion, seem to me to have been
said in another sense. In pious books, no doubt, many phrases and
sentences of the Scriptures are, with the best intentions, interpreted
harshly. How are we to understand otherwise the saying that the beauty
of woman, this perfect work of God, is always the cause of perdition? Or
how are we to understand, in a universal and invariable sense, that
woman is more bitter than death? How are we to understand that he who
touches a woman, on whatever occasion or with whatsoever thought, shall
not be without stain?

In fine, I made answer rapidly within my mind to these and other similar
counsels, and took the hand that Pepita kindly extended to me and
pressed it in mine. Its softness made me comprehend all the better the
delicacy and beauty of the hand that until now I had known only by
sight.

According to the usages of the world, the hand, once given, should be
given always thereafter on entering a room and on taking leave. I hope
that in this ceremony, in this evidence of friendship, in this
manifestation of kindness, given and accepted in purity of heart, and
without any mixture of levity, you will see nothing either evil or
dangerous.

As my father is often obliged of an evening to see the overseer and
others of the country-people, and is seldom free until half-past ten or
eleven, I take his place beside Pepita at the ombre-table. The reverend
vicar and the notary are generally the other partners. We each stake a
penny a point, so that not more than a dollar or two changes hands in
the game.

As the game possesses thus but little interest, we interrupt it
constantly with pleasant conversation, and even with discussions on
matters foreign to the game itself, in all which Pepita displays such
clearness of understanding, such liveliness of imagination, and a grace
of expression so extraordinary, as to astonish me.

I find no sufficient motive to change my opinion with respect to what I
have already said in answer to your suspicions that Pepita perhaps feels
a certain liking for me. She manifests toward me the affection she would
naturally entertain for the son of her suitor, Don Pedro de Vargas, and
the timidity and shyness that would be inspired by a man in my position,
who, though not yet a priest, is soon to become one.

Nevertheless, as I always speak to you in my letters as if I were
kneeling before you in the confessional, I desire, as is my duty, to
communicate to you a passing impression I have received on two or three
occasions. This impression may be but a hallucination or a delusion, but
I have none the less received it.

I have already told you in my former letters that the eyes of Pepita,
green as those of Circe, are calm and tranquil in their gaze; she does
not seem to be conscious of their power, or to know that they serve for
any other purpose than to see with. When she looks at one, the soft
light of her glance is so clear, so frank, and so untroubled that,
instead of giving rise to any evil thoughts, it seems to give birth to
pure thoughts, and leaves innocent and chaste souls in untroubled
repose, while it destroys every incitement to evil in souls that are not
chaste. There is no trace of ardent passion, no fire to be discovered in
Pepita's eyes. Their light is like the mild ray of the moon.

Well, then, notwithstanding all this, I fancied I detected, on two or
three occasions, a sudden brightness, a gleam as of lightning, a swift,
devouring flame in her eyes as they rested on me. Can this be the result
of a ridiculous vanity, inspired by the arch-fiend himself?

I think so. I believe it is, and I wish to believe it.

The swiftness, the fugitive nature of the impression make me conjecture
that it had no external reality, that it was only an illusion.

The serenity of heaven, the coldness of indifference, tempered, indeed,
with sweetness and charity--this is what I always discern in Pepita's
eyes.

Nevertheless, this illusion, this vision of a strange and ardent glance,
torments me.

My father affirms that in affairs of the heart it is the woman, not the
man, who takes the first step; and that she takes it without thereby
incurring any responsibility, and with the power to disavow or retract
it whenever she desires to do so. According to my father, it is the
woman who first declares her passion through the medium of furtive
glances that, later, she disavows to her own conscience if necessary,
and of which he to whom they are directed divines, rather than reads,
the significance. In this manner, by a species of electric shock, by
means of a subtle and inexplicable intuition, he who is loved perceives
that he is loved; and when at last he makes up his mind to declare
himself, he can do so confidently, and in the full security that his
passion is returned.

Perhaps it is these theories of my father, to which I have listened
because I could not help it, that have heated my fancy and made me
imagine what has no existence in reality.

Yet, after all, I say to myself at times, Is the thought so absurd, so
incredible, that this illusion should have an existence in reality? And
if it had, if I were pleasing in Pepita's eyes otherwise than as a
friend, if the woman to whom my father is paying his addresses should
fall in love with me, would not my position then be terrible?

But let us cast away these fears, the creation, no doubt, of vanity. Let
us not make of Pepita a Phædra, or of me a Hippolytus.

What in reality begins to surprise me is my father's carelessness and
complete consciousness of security. Pardon my pride, ask Heaven to
pardon it; for at times this consciousness of security piques and
offends me. What! I say to myself, is there something so absurd in the
thought that it should not even occur to my father that, notwithstanding
my supposed sanctity, or perhaps because of my supposed sanctity, I
should, without wishing it, inspire Pepita with love?

There is an ingenious method of reasoning by which I explain to myself,
without wounding my vanity, my father's carelessness in this important
particular. My father, although he has no reason for doing so, begins to
regard himself already in the light of Pepita's husband, and to share in
that fatal blindness with which Asmodeus, or some other yet more
malicious demon, afflicts husbands. Profane and ecclesiastical history
is fall of instances of this blindness, which God permits, no doubt, for
providential purposes. The most remarkable example of it, perhaps, is
that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had for wife a woman so vile as
Faustina, and yet so wise a man and so great a philosopher remained in
ignorance to the end of his days of what was known to every one else in
the Roman Empire; so that in the meditations or memoirs of himself that
he composed he gives infinite thanks to the immortal gods for having
bestowed upon him so faithful and so good a wife; thus provoking the
smiles of his contemporaries and of future generations.

Every day since then we see examples of great men and men of exalted
rank who make those who enjoy the favor of their wives their private
secretaries, and bestow honors on them. Thus do I explain to myself my
father's indifference and his failure to suspect that, even against my
own will, it would be possible for him to find a rival in me.

Would it be a want of respect on my part, should I fall into the fault
of presumption or insolence, if I were to warn my father of the danger
which he himself does not see? But he gives me no opportunity to say
anything to him. Besides, what could I say to him? That once or twice I
fancy Pepita has looked at me in a way different from that in which she
usually does? May not this be an illusion of mine? No; I have not the
least proof that Pepita desires to play the coquette with me.

What, then, could I tell my father? Shall I say to him that it is I who
am in love with Pepita; that I covet the treasure he already regards as
his own? This is not the truth; and, above all, how could I tell this to
my father, even if, to my misfortune and through my fault, it were the
truth?

The best course I can adopt is to say nothing; to combat the temptation
in silence, if it should indeed assail me, and to endeavor, as soon as
possible, to leave this place and return to you.

_May 19th._

I return thanks to Heaven and to you for the letters and the counsels
you have lately sent me. To-day I need them more than ever.

The mystical and learned St. Theresa is right in dwelling upon the
suffering of timid souls that allow themselves to be disturbed by
temptation; but a thousand times worse than that suffering is the
awakening from error of those who, like me, have permitted themselves to
indulge in arrogance and self-confidence.

Our bodies are the temples wherein dwells the Holy Spirit; but when
fire is set to the walls of the temple, though they do not burn, yet
they are blackened.

The first evil thought is the head of the serpent; if we do not crush it
with firm and courageous foot, then will the venomous reptile climb up
and hide himself in our bosom.

The nectar of earthly joys, however innocent they be, is sweet indeed to
the taste; but afterward it is converted into gall, and into the venom
of the serpent.

It is true--I can no longer deny it to you--I ought not to have allowed
my eyes to rest with so much complacency on this dangerous woman.

I do not deem myself lost; but I feel my soul troubled.

Even as the thirsty hart desires and seeks the water-brooks, so does my
soul still seek God. To God does it turn that he may give it rest; it
longs to drink at the torrent of his delights the gushing forth of which
rejoices paradise, and whose clear waves make whiter than snow but deep
calleth unto deep, and my feet have stuck fast in the mire that is
hidden in their abysses.

Yet have I still breath and voice to cry out with the psalmist: "Arise,
my joy! if thou dost take my part, who shall prevail against me?"

I say unto my sinful soul, full of the chimerical imaginations and
sinful desires engendered by unlawful thoughts: "O miserable daughter
of Babylon! happy shall he be who shall give thee thy reward! Happy
shall he be that dasheth thy little ones against the rock!"

Works of penance, fasting, prayer, and penitence, are the weapons
wherewith I shall arm myself to combat, and, with the Divine help, to
vanquish.

It was not a dream; it was not madness; it was the truth: she lets her
eyes rest upon me at times with the ardent glance of which I have told
you. There is in her glance an unexplainable magnetic attraction. It
draws me on, it seduces me, and I can not withdraw my gaze from her. On
such occasions my eyes must burn, like hers, with a fatal flame, as did
those of Amnon when he turned them upon Tamar; as did those of the
prince of Shechem when they were fixed upon Dinah.

When our glances encounter each other thus, I forget even God. Her image
rises up within my soul, the conqueror of everything. Her beauty
outshines all other beauty; the joys of heaven seem to me less desirable
than her affection. An eternity of suffering would be little in exchange
for one moment of the infinite bliss with which one of those glances
that pass like lightning inundates my soul.

When I return home, when I am alone in my room, in the silence of the
night, I realize all the horror of my position, and I form good
resolutions, only to break them again.

I resolve to feign sickness, to make use of any pretext so as not to go
to Pepita's on the following night, and yet I go.

My father, confiding to the last degree, says to me when the hour
arrives, without any suspicion of what is passing in my soul:

"Go you to Pepita's; I will go later, when I have finished with the
overseer."

No excuse occurs to me; I can find no pretext for not going, and,
instead of answering, "I can not go," I take my hat and depart.

On entering the room I shake hands with Pepita, and, as our hands touch,
she casts a spell over me; my whole being is changed; a devouring fire
penetrates my heart, and I think only of her. Moved by an irresistible
impulse, I gaze at her with insane ardor, and at every instant I think I
discover in her new perfections. Now it is the dimples in her cheeks
when she smiles, now the roseate whiteness of her skin, now the straight
outlines of her nose, now the smallness of her ear, now the softness of
contour and the admirable modeling of her throat.

I enter her house against my will, as though summoned there by a
conjurer, and no sooner am I there than I fall under the spell of her
enchantment. I see clearly that I am in the power of an enchantress,
whose fascination is irresistible.

Not only is she pleasing to my sight, but her words sound in my ears
like the music of the spheres, revealing to my soul the harmony of the
universe; and I even fancy that a subtle fragrance emanates from her,
sweeter than the perfume of the mint that grows by the brook-side, or
the wood-like odor of the thyme that is found among the hills.

I know not how, in this state of exaltation, I am able to play _hombre,_
or to converse rationally, or even to speak, so completely am I absorbed
in her.

When our glances encounter each other, our souls rush forth in them, and
seem to join and interpenetrate each other. In that meeting a thousand
feelings are communicated that in no other way could be made known;
poems are recited that could be uttered in no human tongue, and songs
are sung that no human voice could sing, no according zither accompany.

Since the day I met Pepita in the _Pozo de la Solana_, I have not seen
her alone. Although no word has passed between us, yet we have told each
other everything.

When I withdraw myself from this fascination, when I am again alone at
night in my chamber, I set myself to examine coolly the situation in
which I am placed; I see the abyss that is about to ingulf me, yawning
before me, and I feel my feet slip from under me, and that I am sinking
into it.

You counsel me to reflect upon death--not on the death of this woman,
but on my own. You counsel me to reflect on the instability, on the
insecurity of our existence, and on what there is beyond it. But these
considerations, these reflections neither terrify nor daunt me. Why
should I, who desire to die, fear death? Love and death are brothers. A
sentiment of self-abnegation springs to life within me, and tells me
that my whole being should be consecrated to and annihilated in the
beloved object. I long to merge myself in one of her glances; to diffuse
and exhale my whole being in the ray of light shot forth from her eyes;
to die while gazing on her, even though I should be eternally lost.

What is still to some extent efficacious with me against this love is
not fear, but love itself. Superior to this deep-rooted love with which
I now have the evidence that Pepita inspires me, Divine love exalts
itself in my spirit in mighty uprising. Then everything is changed
within me, and I feel that I may yet obtain the victory. The object of
my higher love presents itself to my mental vision, as the sun that
kindles and illuminates all things, and fills all space with light; and
the object of my inferior love appears but as an atom of dust floating
in the sunbeam. All its beauty, all its splendor, all its attraction are
nothing but the reflection of this uncreated sun, the brilliant,
transitory, fleeting spark that is cast off from that infinite and
inexhaustible fire.

My soul, burning with love, would fain take to herself wings and rise to
that flame, in order that all that is impure within her might be
consumed therein.

My life, for some days past, is a constant struggle. I know not how it
is that the malady from which I suffer does not betray itself in my
countenance. I scarcely eat; I scarcely sleep. And if by chance sleep
closes my eyelids, I awake in terror as from a dream in which rebel
angels are arrayed against good angels, and in which I am one of the
combatants. In this conflict of light against darkness, I do battle for
the right, but I sometimes imagine that I have gone over to the enemy,
that I am a vile deserter; and I hear a voice from Patmos saying, "And
men preferred darkness rather than light"; and then I am filled with
terror and I look upon myself as lost. No resource is left me but
flight. If, before the end of the month, my father does not go with me,
or consent to my going alone, I shall steal away like a thief, without a
word to any one.

_May 23d._

I am a vile worm, not a man; I am the opprobrium and disgrace of
humanity. I am a hypocrite.

I have been encompassed by the pangs of death, and the waters of
iniquity have passed over me.

I am ashamed to write to you, and yet I write. I desire to confess
everything to you.

I can not turn away from evil. Far from abstaining from going to
Pepita's, I go there each night earlier than the last. It would seem as
if devils took me by the feet and carried me there against my will!

Happily, I never find Pepita alone; I do not desire to find her alone. I
almost always find there before me the excellent vicar, who attributes
our friendship to similarity of feeling in religious matters, and bases
it on piety, like the pure and innocent friendship he himself entertains
for her.

The progress of my malady is rapid. Like the stone that is loosened from
the mountain-top and gathers force as it falls, so is it with my spirit
now.

When Pepita and I shake hands, it is not now as before. Each one of us,
by an effort of the will, transmits to the other, through the handclasp,
every throb of the heart. It is as if, by some diabolical art, we had
effected a transfusion and a blending together of the most subtle
elements our blood. She must feel my life circulate through her veins,
as I feel hers in mine.

When I am near her, I love her; when I am away from her, I hate her.
When I am in her presence she inspires me with love; she draws me to
her; she subjugates me with gentleness; she lays upon me a very easy
yoke.

But the recollection of her undoes me. When I dream of her, I dream that
she is severing my head from my body, as Judith slew the captain of the
Assyrians; or that she is driving a nail into my temple, as Jael did to
Sisera. But when I am near her, she appears to me the Spouse of the Song
of Songs, and a voice within me calls to her, and I bless her, and I
regard her as a sealed fountain, as an inclosed garden, as the flower of
the valley, as the lily of the fields, my dove and my sister.

I desire to free myself from her, and I can not. I abhor, yet I almost
worship her. Her spirit enters into and takes possession of me as soon
as I behold her; it subjugates me, it abases me.

I leave her house each night, saying, "This is the last night I shall
return here"; and I return there on the following night!

When she speaks, and I am near, my soul hangs, as it were, upon her
words. When she smiles, I imagine that a ray of spiritual light enters
into my heart and rejoices it.

It has happened, when playing _hombre_, that our knees have touched by
chance, and then I have felt a thrill run through me impossible to
describe.

Get me away from this place. Write to my father and ask him to let me
return to you. If it be necessary, tell him everything. Help me! Be you
my refuge!

_May 30th._

God has given me strength to resist, and I have resisted.

It is now many days since I have been in the house of Pepita, many days
since I have seen her.

It is scarcely necessary that I should feign sickness, for I am in
reality sick. I have lost my color, and dark circles begin to show
themselves under my eyes; and my father asks me, full of affectionate
anxiety, what the cause of my suffering is, and manifests the deepest
concern in my regard.

The kingdom of heaven is said to yield to violence, and I am resolved to
conquer it. With violence I call at its gates that they may open to me.

With wormwood am I fed by the Lord, in order to prove me; and in vain do
I supplicate him to let this cup of bitterness pass away from me. But,
as I have passed and still pass many nights in vigil, delivered up to
prayer, a loving inspiration from the Supreme Consoler has come to
sweeten the bitterness of my cup.

I have beheld with the eyes of the soul the new country; and the new
song of the heavenly Jerusalem has resounded within the depths of my
heart.

If in the end I should conquer, glorious will be the victory; but I
shall owe it to the Queen of Angels, under whose protection I place
myself. She is my refuge and my defense; the tower and the house of
David, on whose walls hang innumerable shields and the armor of many
valiant champions; the cedar of Lebanon, that puts to flight the
serpent.

The woman who inspires me with an earthly love, on the contrary, I
endeavor to despise and abase in my thoughts, remembering the words of
the sage, and applying them to her.

"Thou art the snare of the hunter," I say to her; "thy heart is a net of
deceit, and thy hands are bands that imprison; he who fears God will
flee from thee, and the sinner shall be taken captive by thee."

In my meditations on love, I find a thousand reasons for loving God, and
against loving her.

I feel, in the depths of my heart, an indescribable enthusiasm that
convinces me that for the love of God I would sacrifice all
things--fame, honor, power, dominion. I feel myself capable of imitating
Christ, and if the tempter should carry me off to the mountain-top, and
should there offer me all the kingdoms of the earth if I consented to
bow the knee before him, yet would I not bend it. But were he to offer
me this woman if I should do so, I feel that I should waver, that I
should not reject his offer. Is this woman, then, worth more in my eyes
than all the kingdoms of the earth? More than fame, honor, power, and
dominion?

Is the virtue of love, I ask myself at times, always the same, even when
applied to diverse objects; or are there two species and qualities of
love? To love God seems to me to be the giving up of self and of selfish
interest. Loving him, I desire to love, and I can love all things
through him, and I am not troubled or jealous because of his love toward
all things. I am not jealous of the saints, or of the martyrs, or of the
blessed, or even of the seraphim. The greater I picture to myself to be
the love of God for his creatures, and the graces and gifts he bestows
upon them, the less am I troubled by jealousy; the more I love him, the
nearer to me do I feel him to be, and the more loving and gracious does
he seem toward me. My brotherhood, my more than brotherhood with all
creatures, stands forth then in a most pleasing light. It seems to me
that I am one with all things, and that all things are bound together in
the bonds of love, through God and in God.

Very different is it when my thoughts dwell upon Pepita, and on the love
with which she inspires me. This love is a love full of hatred, that
separates me from everything but myself. I desire her for myself,
altogether for myself, and myself altogether for her. Even devotion to
her, even sacrifices made for her sake, partake of the nature of
selfishness. To die for her would be to die of despair at not being able
to possess her in any other manner--from the fear of not enjoying her
love completely, except by dying and commingling with her in an eternal
embrace.

By these reflections I endeavor to render the love of Pepita hateful to
me. I invest my love in my imagination with something diabolical and
fatal; but, as if I possessed a double soul, a double understanding, a
double will, and a double imagination, in contradiction to this thought,
other feelings rise up within me in its train, and I then deny what I
have just affirmed, and insanely endeavor to reconcile the two loves.
Would it not be possible, I ask myself, to fly from Pepita, and yet
continue to love her, without ceasing therefore to consecrate myself
with fervor to the love of God? For, as the love of God does not
exclude love of country, love of humanity, love of learning, love of
beauty in nature and in art, neither should it exclude another love, if
it be spiritual and immaculate. I will make of her, I say to myself, a
symbol, an allegory, an image of all that is good, of all that is
beautiful. She shall be to me, as Beatrice was to Dante, the image and
the symbol of country, of knowledge, and of beauty.

This intention suggests to me a horrible fancy, a monstrous thought. In
order to make of Pepita this symbol, this vaporous and ethereal image,
this sign and epitome of all that I can love under God, in God, and
subordinate to God, I picture her to myself dead, as Beatrice was dead
when Dante made her the subject of his song.

If I picture her to myself among the living, then I am unable to convert
her into a pure idea, and if I convert her into a pure idea, I kill her
in my thoughts.

Then I weep; I am filled with horror at my crime, and I draw near to her
in spirit, and with the warmth of my heart I bring her back to life
again; and I behold her, not errant, diaphanous, floating in shadowy
outline among roseate clouds and celestial flowers, as the stern
Ghibelline beheld his beloved in the upper sphere of purgatory, but
coherent, solid, clearly defined in the pure and serene air like the
masterpieces of Greek art, like Galatea already animated by the love of
Pygmalion, and descending--full of fire, exhaling love, rich in youth
and beauty--from her pedestal of marble.

Then I exclaim in the depths of my perturbed heart: "My virtue faints!
My God, do not thou forsake me! Hasten to my help; show thy countenance,
and I shall be saved."

Thus do I recover strength to resist temptation. Thus again does the
hope spring to life within me, that I shall regain my former
tranquillity when I shall have left this place.

The devil longs with ardor to swallow up the pure waters of Jordan, by
which are symbolized the persons who are consecrated to God. Hell
conspires against them, and lets loose all her monsters, upon them. St.
Bonaventure says, "We should not wonder that these persons have sinned,
but rather that they have not sinned."

Notwithstanding, I shall be able to resist and not sin. The Lord will
protect me.

_June 6th._

Pepita's nurse--now her housekeeper--is, as my father says, a good bag
of wrinkles; she is talkative, gay, and skillful, as few are. She
married the son of Master Cencias, and has inherited from the father
what the son did not inherit--a wonderful facility for the mechanical
arts, with this difference; that while Master Cencias could set the
screw of a wine-press, or repair the wheels of a wagon, or make a plow,
this daughter-in-law of his knows how to make sweetmeats, conserves of
honey, and other dainties. The father-in-law practiced the useful arts,
the daughter-in-law those that have for their object pleasure, though
only innocent, or at least lawful pleasure.

Antoñona--for such is her name--is permitted, or assumes, the greatest
familiarity with all the gentry here. She goes in and out of every house
as if it were her own. She says _thou_ to all the young people of
Pepita's age, or four or five years older; she calls them _niño_ and
_niña,_ and treats them as if she had nursed them at her breast.

She behaves toward me with the same familiarity; she comes to visit me,
enters my room unannounced, and has asked me several times already why I
no longer go to see her mistress, and has told me that I am wrong in not
going.

My father, who has no suspicion of the truth, accuses me of
eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I
shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist
his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my
father was about to settle his accounts with the overseer.

Would God I had not gone!

Pepita was alone. When our glances met, when we saluted each other, we
both turned red. We shook hands with timidity and in silence.

I did not press her hand, nor did she press mine, but for a moment we
held them clasped together.

In Pepita's glance, as she looked at me, there was nothing of love;
there was only friendship, sympathy, and a profound sadness.

She had divined the whole of my inward struggle; she was persuaded that
divine love had triumphed in my soul; that my resolution not to love her
was firm and invincible.

She did not venture to complain of me; she had no reason to complain of
me; she knew that right was on my side. A sigh, scarcely perceptible,
that escaped from her dewy, parted lips, revealed to me the depth of her
sorrow.

Her hand still lay in mine; we were both silent. How say to her that she
was not destined for me, nor I for her; that we must part forever?

But, though my lips refused to tell her this in words, I told it to her
with my eyes; my severe glance confirmed her fears; it convinced her of
the irrevocableness of my decision.

All at once her gaze was troubled; her lovely countenance, pale with a
translucent pallor, was contracted with a touching expression of
melancholy. She looked like Our Lady of Sorrows. Two tears rose slowly
to her eyes, and began to steal down her cheeks.

I know not what passed within me--and how describe it, even if I knew?

I bent toward her to kiss away her tears, and our lips met in a kiss.

A rapture unspeakable, a faintness full of peril, invaded our whole
being. She would have fallen, but that I supported her in my arms.

Heaven willed that we should at this moment hear the step and the cough
of the reverend vicar, who was approaching, and we instantly drew apart.

Recovering myself, and summoning all the strength of my will, I brought
to an end this terrible scene, that had been enacted in silence, with
these words, which I pronounced in low and intense accents:

"The first and the last!"

I made allusion to our profane kiss, but, as if my words had been an
invocation, there rose before me the vision of the Apocalypse in all its
terrible majesty. I beheld Him who is indeed the First and the Last,
and, with the two-edged sword that proceeded from his mouth, he pierced
my soul, full of evil, of wickedness, and of sin.

All that evening I passed in a species of frenzy, an inward delirium,
that I know not how I was able to conceal.

I withdrew from Pepita's house very early.

The anguish of my soul was yet more poignant in solitude.

When I recalled that kiss, and those words of farewell, I compared
myself with the traitor Judas, who made use of a kiss to betray; and
with the sanguinary and treacherous assassin Joab, who plunged the sharp
steel into the bowels of Amasa while in the act of kissing him.

I had committed a double treason; I had been guilty of a double perfidy.
I had sinned against God and against her.

I am an execrable wretch.

_June 11th._

Everything may still be remedied.

Pepita will, in time, forget her love and the weakness of which we were
guilty.

Since that night I have not returned to her house. Antoñona has not made
her appearance in ours.

By dint of entreaties I have obtained a formal promise from my father
that we shall leave here on the 25th, the day after St. John's day,
which is here celebrated with splendid feasts, and on the eve of which
there is a famous vigil.

Absent from Pepita, I begin to recover my serenity, and to think that
this first appearance of love was a trial of my virtue.

All these nights I have prayed, I have watched, I have performed many
works of penance.

The persistence of my prayers, the deep contrition of my soul, have
found favor with the Lord, who has manifested to me his great mercy.

The Lord, in the words of the prophet, has sent fire to the stronghold
of my spirit, he has illuminated my understanding, he has kindled my
resolution, and he has given me instruction. The working of the Divine
love which animates the Supreme Will has had power, at times, without my
deserving it, to lead me to that condition of prayerful contemplation in
which all the faculties of the soul are in repose. I have cast out from
the lower faculties of my soul every species of image--even her image;
and I am persuaded, if vanity does not deceive me, that, mind and heart
in reconciliation, I have known and enjoyed the Supreme Good that dwells
within the depths of the soul.

Compared with this good, all else is worthless; compared with this
beauty, all else is deformity. Who would not forget and scorn every
other love for the love of God?

Yes, the profane image of this woman shall depart, finally and forever,
from my soul. I shall make of my prayers and of my penance a sharp
scourge, and with it I will expel her therefrom, as Christ expelled the
money-lenders from the temple.

_June 18th._

This is the last letter I shall write to you. On the 25th I shall leave
this place without fail.

I shall soon have the happiness of embracing you. Near you I shall be
stronger; you will infuse courage into me, and lend me the energy in
which I am wanting.

A tempest of conflicting emotions is raging now in my soul. The disorder
of my ideas may be known by the disorder of what I write.

Twice I returned to the house of Pepita. I was cold and stern. I was as
I ought to have been, but how much did it not cost me!

My father told me yesterday that Pepita was indisposed, and would not
receive.

The thought at once assailed me that the cause of her indisposition
might be her ill-requited love.

Why did I return her glances of fire? Why did I basely deceive her? Why
did I make her believe I loved her? Why did my vile lips seek hers with
ardor, and communicate the ardor of an unholy love to hers?

But no; my sin shall not be followed, as its unavoidable consequence, by
another sin!

What has been, has been, and can not be undone; but a repetition of it
may be avoided, shall be avoided in future.

On the 25th, I repeat, I shall depart from here without fail.

The impudent Antoñona has just come to see me. I hid this letter from
her, as if it were a crime to write to you.

Antoñona remained here only for a moment.

I arose, and remained standing while I spoke to her, that the visit
might be a short one.

During this short visit she gave utterance to a thousand absurdities
that afflict me profoundly. Finally, as she was going away, she
exclaimed, in her half-gypsy jargon:

"Get away, you deceiver! you villain! my curse upon you! You have made
the child sick, and now you are killing her with your subterfuges. May
witches fly away with you, body and bones!"

Having said this, the fiendish woman gave me, in a coarse plebeian
fashion, six or seven ferocious pinches below the shoulders, as if she
would like to tear the skin from my back in strips; and then went away,
looking daggers at me.

I do not complain. I deserve this brutal jest, granting it to be a jest.
I deserve that fiends should tear my flesh with red-hot pincers.

Grant, my God, that Pepita may forget me; let her, if it be necessary,
love another, and be happy with him!

Can I do more than ask thee this, O my God?

My father knows nothing, suspects nothing; it is better thus.

Farewell for a few days, till we see and embrace each other again.

How changed will you find me! How full of bitterness my heart! How lost
my innocence! How bruised and wounded my soul!




II.

PARALIPOMENA.


Here end the letters of Don Luis de Vargas. We should therefore be left
in ignorance of the subsequent fortunes of these lovers, and this simple
and ardent love-story would have remained without an ending, if one
familiar with all the circumstances had not left us the following
narrative:

No one in the village found anything strange in the fact of Pepita's
being indisposed, or thought, still less, of attributing her
indisposition to a cause of which only we, Pepita herself, Don Luis, the
reverend dean, and the discreet Antoñona, are thus far cognizant.

They might rather have wondered at the life, of gayety that Pepita had
been leading for some time past, at the daily gatherings at her house,
and the excursions into the country in which she had joined. That Pepita
should return to her habitual seclusion was quite natural.

Her secret and deeply rooted love for Don Luis was hidden from the
searching glances of Doña Casilda, of Currito, and of all the other
personages of the village of whom mention is made in the letters of Don
Luis. Still less could the public know of it. It never entered into the
head, of any one--no one imagined for a moment that the theologian, the
_saint,_ as they called Don Luis, could become the rival of his father,
or could have succeeded where the redoubtable and powerful Don Pedro de
Vargas had failed--in winning the heart of the lovely, graceful, coy,
and reserved young widow.

Notwithstanding the familiarity of the ladies of the village with their
servants, Pepita had allowed none of hers to suspect anything. Only the
lynx-eyed Antoñona, whom nothing could escape, and more especially
nothing that concerned her young mistress, had penetrated the mystery.

Antoñona did not conceal her discovery from Pepita, nor could Pepita
deny the truth to the woman who had nursed her, who idolized her, and
who, if she delighted in finding out and gossiping about all that took
place in the village, being, as she was, a model scandal-monger, was
yet, in all that related to her mistress, reticent and loyal as but few
are.

In this manner Antoñona made herself the confidante of Pepita; and
Pepita found great consolation in unburdening her heart to one who,
though she might be cross and vulgar in the frankness with which she
expressed her sentiments, was not so either in the sentiments or the
ideas that she expressed.

In this may be found the explanation of Antoñona's visits to Don Luis,
as well as of her words, and even of the ferocious and disrespectful
pinches, given in so ill-chosen a spot, with which she bruised his flesh
and wounded his dignity, on the occasion of her last visit to him.

Not only had Pepita not desired Antoñona to carry messages to Don Luis,
but she did not even know that she had gone to see him. Antoñona had
taken the initiative, and had interfered in the matter simply because
she herself had wanted to do so.

As we have already said, she had, with wonderful perspicacity, made
herself acquainted with the state of affairs between her mistress and
Don Luis.

While Pepita herself was still scarcely conscious of the fact that she
loved Don Luis, Antoñona already knew it. Scarcely had Pepita begun to
cast on him those furtive glances, ardent and involuntary, that had
wrought such havoc--glances which had been intercepted by none of those
present when they were given--than Antoñona, who was not present, had
already spoken of them to Pepita. And no sooner had those glances been
returned in kind, than Antoñona also knew it.

There was but little left, then, for the mistress to confide to a
servant of so much penetration, and who was so skilled in divination of
what passed in the inmost recesses of her breast.

       *       *       *       *       *

Five days after the date of Don Luis's last letter, our narrative
begins.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Pepita was in an apartment on an
upper floor, contiguous to her bedroom and dressing-room, where no one
ever entered without being summoned, save Antoñona.

The furniture of this apartment was simple, but comfortable and in good
taste. The curtains and the covering of the easy-chairs, the sofas and
the arm-chairs, were of a flowered cotton fabric. On a mahogany table
were writing materials and papers, and in a book-case, also of mahogany,
were many books of devotion and history. The walls were adorned with
pictures--engravings on religious subjects, but with this particularity
in their selection, unheard-of, extraordinary, almost incredible in an
Andalusian village, that, instead of being bad French lithographs, they
were engravings in the best style of Spanish art, as the _Spasimo di
Sicilia_, of Rafael; the _St. Ildefonso and the Virgin_, the
_Conception_, the _St. Bernard_, and the two _Lunettes_ of Murillo.

On an antique oak table, supported by fluted columns, was a small
writing-desk, or escritoire, inlaid with shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory,
and brass, and containing a great many little drawers, in which Pepita
kept bills and other papers. On this table were also two porcelain vases
filled with flowers; and, finally, hanging against the walls, were
several flower-pots of Seville Carthusian ware, containing ivy,
geranium, and other plants, and three gilded cages, in which were
canaries and larks.

This apartment was the retreat of Pepita, where no one entered during
the daytime except the doctor and the reverend vicar, and, in the
evening, only the overseer to settle accounts. This apartment was called
the library, and served the purpose of one.

Pepita was seated, half reclining, on a sofa, before which stood a small
table with some books upon it.

She had just risen, and was attired in a light summer wrapper. Her
blonde hair, not yet arranged, looked even more beautiful in its
disorder. Her countenance, somewhat pale, and, although it still
preserved its fresh and youthful aspect, showing dark circles under the
eyes, looked more beautiful than ever under the influence of the malady,
that robbed it of color.

Pepita showed signs of impatience; she was waiting for some one.

At last the person she was awaiting, who proved to be the reverend
vicar, arrived, and entered without announcement.

After the usual salutations the reverend vicar settled himself
comfortably in an easy-chair, and the conversation thus began:

"I am very glad, my child, that you sent for me; but, even without your
doing so, I was just coming to see you. How pale you are! What is it
that ails you? Have you something of importance to tell me?"

Pepita began her answer to this series of affectionate inquiries with a
deep sigh; she then said:

"Do you not divine my malady? Have you not discovered the cause of my
suffering?"

The vicar made a gesture of denial, and looked at Pepita with something
like terror in his gaze; for he knew nothing of all that had taken
place, and was struck by the vehemence with which she spoke.

Pepita continued:

"I ought not to have sent for you, father. I should have gone to the
church myself instead, to speak with you in the confessional, and there
confess my sins. But, unhappily, far from repenting of them my heart has
hardened itself in wickedness. I have neither the courage nor the
desire to speak to the confessor, but only to the friend."

"What are you saying about sins and hardness of heart? Have you taken
leave of your senses? What sins can you have committed, you who are so
good?"

"No, father, I am not good. I have been deceiving you; I have been
deceiving myself; I have tried to deceive God."

"Come, come, calm yourself; speak with moderation and common sense, and
don't talk foolishly."

"And how shall I avoid talking foolishly when the spirit of evil
possesses me?"

"Holy Virgin! Don't talk nonsense, child; the demons most to be feared
that take possession of the soul are three, and none of them, I am
certain, can have dared to enter into yours. One is Leviathan, or the
spirit of Pride; the other is Mammon, or the spirit of Avarice; and the
other is Asmodeus or the spirit of Unholy Love."

"Well, I am the victim of all three; all three hold dominion over me."

"This is dreadful! Calm yourself, I repeat. The real trouble with you is
that you are out of your head."

"Would to God it were so! The contrary, unhappily for me, is the case. I
am avaricious, because I possess riches, and do not perform the works
of charity I ought to perform; I am proud, because I scorn the addresses
of my many suitors, not through virtue, not through modesty, but because
I thought them unworthy of my love. God has punished me; God has
permitted the third enemy you have named to take possession of me."

"How is this, child? What diabolical notion has entered into your mind?
Have you by chance fallen in love? And, if you have, what harm is there
in that? Are you not free? Get married, then, and stop talking nonsense.
I am certain it is my friend Don Pedro de Vargas who has wrought the
miracle. That same Don Pedro is the very devil! I confess I am
surprised, though. I did not think matters had gone quite so far as that
already."

"But it is not Don Pedro de Vargas I am in love with."

"And with whom, then?"

Pepita rose from her seat, went to the door, opened it, looked to see if
any one was listening outside, drew near to the reverend vicar, and,
with signs of the deepest distress, in a trembling voice, and with tears
in her eyes, said, almost in the ear of the good old man:

"I am hopelessly in love with his son."

"With whose son?" cried the reverend vicar, who could not yet bring
himself to believe what he had heard.

"With whose son should it be? I am hopelessly, desperately in love with
Don Luis."

Consternation and dolorous surprise were depicted on the countenance of
the kind and simple priest. There was a moment's pause; the vicar then
said:

"But this is a love without hope; a love not to be thought of. Don Luis
will not love you in return."

In the midst of the tears that clouded the beautiful eyes of Pepita
gleamed a joyful light; her rosy, dewy lips, contracted by sorrow,
parted in a smile, disclosing to view her pearly teeth.

"He loves me," said Pepita, with a faint and ill-concealed accent of
satisfaction and triumph that rose exultant over her sorrow and her
scruples of conscience.

The consternation and the astonishment of the reverend vicar here
reached their highest pitch. If the saint to whom he paid his most
fervent devotions had been suddenly cast down from the altar before him,
and had fallen, broken into a thousand fragments at his feet, the
reverend vicar could not have felt greater consternation than he did. He
still looked at Pepita with incredulity, as if doubting whether what she
had said were true, or only a delusion of feminine vanity, so firmly
did he believe in the holiness of Don Luis, and in his
spiritual-mindedness.

"He loves me," Pepita repeated, in answer to his incredulous glance.

"Women are worse than the very devil!" said the vicar. "You would set a
snare for the old boy himself."

"Did I not tell you already that I was very wicked?"

"Come, come! calm yourself. The mercy of God is infinite. Tell me all
that has happened."

"What should have happened? That he is dear to me; that I love him; that
I adore him; that he loves me, too, although he strives to conquer his
love, and, in the end, may succeed in doing so; and that you, without
knowing it, are very much to blame for it all!"

"Well, this caps the climax! What do you mean by saying I am very much
to blame?"

"With the extreme goodness that is characteristic of you, you have done
nothing but praise Don Luis to me; and I am sure that you have
pronounced still greater eulogies on me to him, although very much less
deserved. What is the natural consequence? Am I of bronze? Have I not
the passions of youth?"

"You are more than right; I am a dolt: I have contributed, in great
part, to this work of Lucifer."

The reverend vicar was so truly good, and so full of humility, that,
while pronouncing the preceding words, he showed as much confusion and
remorse as if he were the culprit and Pepita the judge.

Pepita, conscious of her injustice and want of generosity in thus making
the reverend vicar the accomplice, and scarcely less than the chief
author of her fault, spoke to him thus:

"Don't torment yourself, father; for God's sake, don't torment yourself!
You see now how perverse I am. I commit the greatest sins, and I want to
throw the responsibility of them on the best and the most virtuous of
men. It is not the praises you have recited to me of Don Luis that have
been my ruin, but my own eyes, and my want of circumspection. Even
though you had never spoken to me of the good qualities of Don Luis, I
should still have discovered them all by hearing him speak; for, after
all, I am not so ignorant, nor so great a fool. And, in any case, I
myself have seen the grace of his person, the natural and untaught
elegance of his manners, his eyes full of fire and intelligence, his
whole self, in a word, which seems to me altogether amiable and
desirable. Your eulogies of him have indeed pleased my vanity, but they
did not awaken my inclinations. Your praises charmed me because they
coincided with my own opinion, and were like the flattering
echo--deadened, indeed, and faint--of my thoughts. The most eloquent
encomium you have pronounced, in my hearing, on Don Luis, was far from
being equal to the encomiums that I, at each moment, at each instant,
silently pronounced upon him in my own soul."

"Don't excite yourself, child," interrupted the reverend vicar.

Pepita continued, with still greater exaltation:

"But what a difference between your encomiums and my thoughts! For you
Don Luis was the exemplary model of the priest, the missionary, the
apostle, now preaching the gospel in distant lands, now endeavoring in
Spain to elevate Christianity, so degraded in our day through the
impiety of some, and the want of virtue, of charity, and of knowledge,
of others. I, on the contrary, pictured him to myself handsome, loving,
forgetting God for me, consecrating his life to me, giving me his soul,
becoming my stay, my support, my sweet companion. I longed to commit a
sacrilegious theft: I dreamed of stealing him from God and from his
temple, like the thief who, proclaiming himself the enemy of Heaven,
robs the sacred monstrance of its most precious jewel. To commit this
theft I have put off the mourning garments of the widow and orphan, and
have decked myself with profane adornments; I have abandoned my
seclusion, and I have sought and gathered around me society. I have
tried to make myself look beautiful; I have cared for every part of this
miserable body--that must one day be lowered into the grave, and be
converted into dust--with an unholy devotion; and, finally, I have
looked at Don Luis with provoking glances, and on shaking hands with him
I have sought to transmit from my veins to his, the inextinguishable
fire that is consuming me."

"Alas! my child, what grief it gives me to hear this! Who could have
imagined it?" said the vicar.

"But there is still more," resumed Pepita; "I succeeded in making Don
Luis love me. He declared it to me with his eyes. Yes, his love is as
profound, as ardent as mine. His virtues, his aspirations toward
heavenly things, his manly energy, have all urged him to conquer this
insensate passion. I sought to prevent this. One day, at the end of many
days during which he had stayed away, he came to see me, and found me
alone. When he gave me his hand, I wept; I could not speak, but hell
inspired me with an accursed, mute eloquence that told him of my grief
that he had scorned me, that he did not return my love, that he
preferred another love--a love without stain--to mine. Then he was
unable to resist the temptation, and he approached his lips to my face
to kiss away my tears. Our lips met. If God had not willed that you
should approach at that moment, what would have become of me?"

"How shameful! my child, how shameful!" said the reverend vicar.

Pepita covered her face with both hands and began to sob like a
Magdalen. Her hands were, in truth, beautiful, more beautiful even than
Don Luis had described them to be in his letters. Their whiteness, their
pure transparency, the tapering form of the fingers, the roseate hue,
the polish and the brilliancy of the pearl-like nails, all were such as
might turn the head of any man.

The virtuous vicar could understand, notwithstanding his eighty years,
the fall, or rather the slip, of Don Luis.

"Child!" he exclaimed, "don't cry so! It breaks my heart to see you.
Calm yourself; Don Luis has no doubt repented of his sin; do you repent
likewise, and nothing more need be said. God will pardon you both, and
make a couple of saints of you. Since Don Luis is going away the day
after to-morrow, it is a sure sign that virtue has triumphed in him, and
that he flies from you, as he should, that he may do penance for his
sin, fulfill his vow, and return to his vocation."

"That is all very well," replied Pepita; "fulfill his vow, return to his
vocation, after giving me my death-wound! Why did he love me, why did he
encourage me, why did he deceive me? His kiss was a brand, it was as a
hot iron with which he marked me and stamped me as his slave. Now that I
am marked and enslaved, he abandons and betrays and destroys me. A good
beginning to give to his missions, his preachings, and gospel triumphs!
It shall not be! By Heaven, it shall not be!"

This outbreak of anger and scorned love confounded the reverend vicar.

Pepita had risen. Her attitude, her gesture, had something in them of
tragic animation. Her eyes gleamed like daggers; they shone like two
suns. The vicar was silent, and regarded her almost with terror. She
paced with hasty steps up and down the apartment. She did not now seem
like a timid gazelle, but like an angry lioness.

"What!" she said, once more facing the vicar, "has he nothing to do but
laugh at me, tear my heart to pieces, humiliate it, trample it under
foot, after having cheated me out of it? He shall remember me! He shall
pay me for this! If he is so holy, if he is so virtuous, why did he,
with his glance, promise me everything? If he loves God so much, why
does he seek to hurt one of God's poor creatures? Is this charity? Is
this religion? No; it is pitiless selfishness."

Pepita's anger could not last long. After she had spoken the last words,
it turned to dejection. She sank into a chair, weeping bitterly, and
abandoning herself to an anguish heart-breaking to witness.

The vicar's heart was touched with pity; but he recovered himself on
seeing that the enemy gave signs of yielding.

"Pepita, chi

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/30236