La Gaviota: A Spanish novel
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Title: La Gaviota: A Spanish novel
Author: Fernán Caballero
Translator: J. Leander Starr
Release date: April 13, 2015 [eBook #48698]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA GAVIOTA: A SPANISH NOVEL ***
LA GAVIOTA:
A SPANISH NOVEL.
BY
FERNAN CABALLERO.
TRANSLATED BY
J. LEANDER STARR.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN BRADBURN,
(SUCCESSOR TO M. DOOLADY,)
49 WALKER-STREET.
1864.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864,
BY JOHN BRADBURN,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.
TO
THE HON. GEORGE OPDYKE,
EX-MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
SIR:
I am honored with your permission to dedicate to you this translation of
the best novel in the Spanish language. This honor I can well
appreciate. The urbanity of your character, and your firm integrity as a
gentleman, a merchant, and while so ably filling the civic chair of this
great city, have rendered you both distinguished and respected.
Glowing hopes and confident expectations were formed of your success in
the performance of the arduous duties of Mayor, when, two years ago, you
were inaugurated. Yesterday was a yet prouder day to yourself and to
your friends, when the mantle of office fell gracefully from your
shoulders, amid the applause and homage of citizens of all classes and
shades of political opinion, the only strife among whom was, who should
show to the courteous, impartial, and zealous retiring mayor the
greatest respect.
Well may the king of Israel have exclaimed: “Let not him that girdeth on
his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.”
Your career has been marked by the most devoted patriotism, and you have
stood forth at the period of the nation’s trials as an unflinching
supporter of constitutional government, and throughout every loyal State
in the Union will your name be revered as such.
May, sir, at some far distant day, that tribute be paid to you which
honored the memory of the immortal Pitt
“Non sibi, sed pro patria vixit.”
With great respect,
I have the honor to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. LEANDER STARR.
17 LAFAYETTE PLACE,
NEW YORK, _Jan. 5th, 1864_.
PREFACE,
BY THE TRANSLATOR.
Gaviota (sea-gull) is the _sobriquet_ which Andalusians give to
harsh-tongued, flighty women of unsympathetic mien and manners; and such
was applied to the heroine of this tale by a youthful, malicious
tormentor--MOMO.
_Fernan Caballero_ is, indeed, but a pseudonym: the author of this
novel, passing under that name, is understood to be a lady, partly of
German descent. Her father was Don Juan Nicholas Böhl de Faber, to whose
erudition Spain is indebted for a collection of ancient poetry. Cecelia,
the daughter of Böhl de Faber, was born at Morges, in Switzerland, in
1797, and subsequently married to a Spanish gentleman. Indeed, since the
death of her first husband, she has successively contracted two other
marriages, and is now a widow.
We have it on the authority of the Edinburgh Review, that the novels of
this gifted authoress were “published at the expense of the Queen.” The
same authority remarks, “Hence it might have been foretold, that of the
various kinds of novels, the romantic and descriptive was the least
repugnant to the old Spanish spirit; and that in order for a writer
successfully to undertake such a novel, it would be necessary for him to
have a passionate attachment to the national manners and
characteristics, and a corresponding dislike to the foreign and
new--such are the qualities we find united in Fernan Caballero: _La
Gaviota is perhaps the finest story in the volumes_.” Its advent is a
real literary event: the most severe critics have dissected this new
work, and have unhesitatingly proclaimed the authoress to be the Spanish
_Walter Scott_. Among the painters of manners, the best, without doubt,
are the Spanish writers. We are certain to find there truth, joined to a
richness and piquancy of details; and, above all, a spirited tone, which
singularly heightens and sets off their recitals. They have, however,
what in us is a defect, but with them a natural gift--_the being a
little prolix_.
In translating it is easy to avoid this prolixity. This has been
attended to in the present translation. I have preserved all the
character of truth and originality of this novel; curtailing only such
passages as seemed, in my judgment, too long and tedious for those who
are not initiated into those _agreeable familiarities_ of Spanish
intimate conversation, and others, which are without attraction to those
who were not born under the bright sun of Iberia. In regard to the
translation, I would again quote from the review of it by the “Edinburgh
Review:” “One quality which distinguishes their talk it is impossible to
give any notion of in translation, and that is the enormous quantity of
proverbs, in rhyme or in assonance, with which they intersperse their
speech; and even when they are not actually quoting a proverb, their
expressions have all the terseness of proverbial language.”
In rendering into English the ballads and other poetry, so profusely
interspersed throughout this novel, I had to decide between the
preservation of the original thoughts and ideas, in all their quaintness
and integrity, and wrest from my translation that poetic elegance which,
as English poetry, I could have wished to have clothed it in; or to
abandon all the original, save the mere text, and write independent
stanzas in English, as though I had composed original poetry, borrowing
only the _thought_ from the Spanish text. My habitual desire, in _all_
my translations, being to preserve the _original_ sense in its _fullest
force_, I adopted the former of these two views; and thus, while the
reader will find no poetic beauty, he will have before him the entire
original thoughts. The translation of any foreign poetry into chaste and
elegant English verse is acknowledged to be a very difficult task. At
the end of this volume are four specimens, to satisfy the curious, of a
_strictly literal_ verbal translation of short poetic sprinklings
towards the conclusion of the tale.
A writer remarks, on the Andalusian character: “Seeing nothing about
them but a smiling fertility, the hierarchy of the Catholic Heaven are
to them beneficent beings, to be approached with trust and confidence,
and the familiarity with which they speak of God, the Saviour, the
Virgin, and the saints, _must not be mistaken for irreverence_; on the
contrary, it springs from the belief that they are really the favored
sons of the faith, and from the vividness with which they realize the
existence and beneficent watchfulness of their Divine protectors.”
And again. “There is hardly a bird, or a shrub, or an odor, about which
the Andalusians have not some pious and simple legend. The white poplar
was the first tree the Creator made, and therefore it is hoary, as being
the oldest. San Joseph told the serpent to go on its belly, because it
attempted to bite the infant Saviour in their flight into Egypt.
Rosemary has its sweetest perfume and its brightest blossoms on Fridays,
the day of the Passion, because the Virgin hung on a rosemary-bush the
clothes of the infant Christ. Everybody loves the swallows, because they
plucked out the thorns of our Saviour’s crown on the cross; while the
owl, who dared to look impassively on the Crucifixion, has been sick and
afflicted ever since, and can utter nothing but _Cruz! Cruz!_ The rose
of Jericho was once white, but a drop of the blood of the wounded
Saviour fell on it, and it has been red ever since. Children smile in
their sleep because angels visit them. When there is a buzzing noise in
the ears, it is because a leaf of the tree of life has fallen.”
LA GAVIOTA.[1]
CHAPTER I.
In November, in the year 1836, the steamer “Royal Sovereign” took her
departure from the foggy coast of Falmouth, lashing the waves with her
paddle-wheels, and spreading her sails, gray and wet, in the mist still
grayer and more wet than they.
The interior of the hull presented the uncheerful spectacle of the
commencement of a sea voyage. The passengers, crowded together, were
struggling with the fatigue of sea-sickness. Women were seen in
extraordinary attitudes, with hair disordered, crinolines disarranged,
hats crushed; the men pale, and in bad-humor; the children neglected and
crying; the servants traversing the cabin with unsteady steps, carrying
to their patients tea, coffee, and other imaginary remedies; while the
ship, queen and mistress of the waters, without heeding the ills she
occasioned, wrestled powerfully with the waves, triumphing over
resistance, and pursuing the retreating billows.
The men who had escaped the common scourge were enabled to walk the
deck, either by being so constituted as to withstand the ship’s motion,
or by being accustomed to travel.
Among them was the governor of an English colony, a tall, fine-looking
fellow, accompanied by two of his staff officers. There were several who
wore their mackintoshes, thrusting their hands into their pockets; some
had flushed countenances, others blue, or very pale, and, generally, all
were discontented. In fine, that beautiful vessel seemed to be converted
into a palace of discontent.
Among all the passengers was distinguished a youth, who appeared to be
about twenty-four years of age; gallant, noble, and of ingenuous
countenance, and whose handsome and affable face gave no signs of the
slightest caprice. He was tall, and of gentlemanly manners; and in his
deportment there was grace, and an admirable dignity. A head of black,
curly hair adorned his fair and majestic forehead; the glances of his
large, black eyes were placid and penetrating by turns. His lips were
shaded by a light, black mustache; his bland smile indicated talent and
vivacity; and in his noble person, in his actions, and in his gestures,
there were evidences of the elevated class to which he belonged, with a
soul freed from the least symptom of that disdainful air which many
unjustly attribute to all kinds of superiority. He travelled for
pleasure, and was essentially good; nevertheless, a virtuous sentiment
of anger impelled him to launch out against the vices and extravagances
of society. He often affirmed that he did not feel it to be his vocation
to battle with windmills, like Don Quixote. He would much more agreeably
consort with those who seek the good, with the same satisfaction and
purity that the artless young damsel feels in gathering violets. His
physiognomy, his grace, the freedom with which he muffled himself in
his Spanish cloak, his insensibility to cold and to the general
disquietude around him, established decidedly that he was Spanish.
He was walking backwards and forwards, observing at a glance the
assemblage which, mosaic-like, chance had thrown together on those
boards which constitute a large ship, and which, in smaller dimensions,
would constitute a coffin. But there is not much to be observed in men
who thus presented the appearance of those who are intoxicated, or in
women whose appearance resembles that of a corpse.
Notwithstanding, he was much interested in the family of an English
official, whose wife had been brought on board greatly indisposed, and
who was immediately carried to her berth; the same was done with the
nurse, and the father followed, with the infant boy in his arms;
afterwards he led in three other little creatures, of two, three, and
four years of age, enjoining upon them to remain silent, and not to move
from thence. The poor children, although they felt inclined to cry,
remained motionless and silent, like the angels which are represented in
paintings at the feet of the Virgin. Little by little the beautiful
bloom of their cheeks disappeared; their large eyes opened wide, and
they remained mollified and stupid; and while no movement or expression
of anger announced that they suffered, such was clearly denoted by the
expression of their frightened and pallid countenances. No one noticed
this silent torment, this amiable and sad resignation.
The Spaniard went to summon the steward, while that official was
answering a young man, who, in German, and with expressive gestures,
appeared to be imploring assistance in favor of some wretched victim of
sea-sickness.
As the person of this young man did not indicate either elegance or
distinction, as he spoke nothing but German, the steward turned his
back, saying he did not understand him.
Then the German descended to his berth in the forecastle, and returned
immediately, bringing a pillow, a quilt, and a heavy overcoat. With
these auxiliaries he made up a kind of bed. He laid the children in it,
and covered them with great care, and stretched himself on the deck
beside them. But the sea-sick man had scarcely reclined, when a violent
vomiting commenced, despite his efforts, and, in an instant, pillow,
quilt, and great-coat were bespattered and ruined. The Spaniard then
noticed the German, in whose physiognomy he saw a smile of benevolent
satisfaction, which seemed to say, “Thank God, these little ones are
cared for!”
He attempted a conversation with him in English, in French, and in
Spanish, and received no other answer than a silent inclination of the
head, and with but little grace, repeating this phrase: “Ich verstehe
nicht” (I do not understand).
When, after dinner, the Spaniard again ascended to the deck, the cold
had increased. He enfolded himself in his cloak, and commenced
promenading. Then he noticed the German seated on a bench, and looking
at the sea; which, as if to exhibit its sparkling, displayed on the
sides of the ship its pearls of foam, and their brilliant phosphoric
light. This young observer was dressed very insufficiently, because his
frock-coat had become worn and unserviceable, and the cold must have
pierced him.
The Spaniard advanced several paces to approach him; but he hesitated,
he knew not how to institute a conversation. Immediately he smiled, as
if a happy thought had occurred to him, and that he was going the right
way towards it, and said to the German, in _Latin_: “You must feel very
cold.”
That voice and short phrase produced on the stranger the most lively
satisfaction, and harmonized, also, with his questioner, they were in
accord in the same dialect; he replied:
“The night is, indeed, somewhat severe; but I was not thinking of that.”
“Then what were you thinking of?” demanded the Spaniard.
“I was thinking of my father and mother, and of my brothers and
sisters.”
“Why do you travel, then, if you so much feel the separation?”
“Ah! señor; necessity--that implacable despot.”
“Why not travel for pleasure?”
“Pleasure is for the rich, and I am poor. For my pleasure! If I avow the
motive of my voyage, then truly pleasure would be very far off.”
“Where then do you go?”
“To the war. To the civil war, the most terrible of all, at Navarre.”
“To the war!” exclaimed the Spaniard, examining the kind and docile,
almost humble, and very little belligerent, countenance of the German.
“Then you would become a military man?”
“No, sir; that is not my vocation. Neither my affections nor my
principles induce me to take up arms, if it were not to defend the holy
cause of the independence of Germany, if the foreigner will become the
invader. I go to the army of Navarre to procure employment as a
surgeon.”
“You do not know the language?”
“No, sir; but I can learn it.”
“Nor the country?”
“Neither. I have never left my native town, except for the university.”
“But you are provided with recommendations?”
“None whatever.”
“Do you count upon any patron?”
“I know nobody in Spain.”
“What then do you rely upon?”
“My conscience, my good-will, my youth, and my confidence in God.”
This conversation rendered the Spaniard thoughtful. He gazed on that
face, in which candor and docility were impressed; those blue eyes, pure
as those of a girl; those smiles, sad, but at the same time confident,
earnestly interested him, and moved his pity.
“Will you descend with me,” he said, after a brief pause, “and accept
some hot punch to keep out the cold? In the interim let us converse.”
The German inclined his head in token of his gratitude, and following
the Spaniard, they descended to the dining-room.
At the head of the table were seated the governor, with his two
officers; on one side were two Frenchmen. The Spaniard and the German
seated themselves at the foot of the table.
“But how,” exclaimed the first, “have you ever conceived the idea of
going to this distracted country?”
The German hesitated, and then related to him faithfully his life: “I am
the sixth son of a professor in a small city of Saxonia, and who had
spent much in the education of his sons. Finding ourselves without
occupation or employment, like so many young paupers you find in
Germany, after having devoted their youth to excellent and profound
studies, and who had studied their art under the best masters, our
maintenance was a burden on our family; for which reason, without
feeling discouraged, with all my German calmness, I took the resolution
to depart for Spain, where the disgraceful and sanguinary wars of the
North opened up hopes that my services there might be useful.
“Beneath the linden-trees which cast their shadows on the door of my
homestead, I decided to carry out this resolution. I embraced for the
last time my good father, my beloved mother, my sister Lotte, and my
little brothers, who clamored to accompany me in my peregrinations.
Profoundly moved, and bathed in tears, I entered on life’s highway,
which others find covered with flowers. But--courage; man is born to
labor, and I felt that Heaven would crown my efforts. I like the
profession which I had chosen, because it is grand and noble; its object
is the alleviation of our fellows, and the results are beautiful,
although the drudgery seems painful.”
“And you made progress?”
Fritz Stein replied in German, inflicting an excited blow on his seat,
and making a slight reverence.
A short time afterwards, the two new friends separated. One of the
Frenchmen, who was placed in front of the door, saw that he was about to
ascend the staircase, and offered to place on the shoulders of the
German his Spanish cloak, lined with fur, to which the other showed some
resistance, and the Frenchman, with a look of scorn, replaced it in his
berth.
“Have you understood what they were talking about?” demanded he of his
countryman.
“Truly,” rejoined the first (who was a commission merchant), “Latin is
not my forte; but the red and pale youth seems to me a species of pale
_Werther_, and I have heard there is in his history something of
Charlotte. So is it with those little children described in a German
novel. By good luck, instead of recurring to the pistol to console him,
he prefers punch; it is less sentimental, but much more philosophical,
and more German. As to the Spaniard, I believe he is a species of Don
Quixote, protector of the destitute, who shares his cloak with the poor;
that joined to these high allurements, his look, firm and ardent like a
flame, his countenance, dull and wan like the light of the moon, form an
altogether perfect Spaniard.”
“You know,” said the first, “that in my quality of painter of history, I
go to Tarifa with the object of painting the siege of that city at the
moment when the son of Guzman made a sign to his father to sacrifice him
before surrendering the place, and this young man will serve me for a
model, and I am thus sure to succeed with my tableau. I have never in my
life seen nature approach so near the ideal.”
“There, then, ye gentlemen-artists! Always poets!” replied the
commercial traveller. “For my part, if I am not deceived by the natural
grace of this man, his lady foot well cast, the elegance of his profile,
and his form, I would characterize him as a taureador (bull-fighter).
Who knows? perhaps it is Montés himself, possessing the joint
attractions of riches and generosity.”
“A taureador!” cried the artist; “a man of the people! You jest.”
“Not at all,” said the other; “I am very far, indeed, from jesting. You
have not lived, like me, in Spain, and you do not know the aristocratic
type of the nation. You will see, you will see. This is my opinion.
Thanks to the progress of equality and fraternity, the insulting
manners of the aristocracy disappear daily, and in a short time hence
they will be found only among the men of the people.”
“Believe that this man is a taureador!” repeated the artist, with a
smile so disdainful that the commercial traveller, wounded by the reply,
rose and said:
“We will know very soon who he is; come with me, we will get information
of him from his servant.”
The two friends mounted to the deck, where they were not long in meeting
the man they searched for.
The commercial traveller, who volunteered to converse with the Spanish
servant, led the conversation, and, after some trivial remarks, asked:
“Your master,” he said to him, “has he retired to his chamber?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the servant, casting on the questioner a look full
of penetration and malice.
“Is he rich?”
“I am not his intendant, I am only his valet-de-chambre.”
“Is he travelling on business?”
“I do not believe he has any.”
“Is he travelling for his health?”
“His health is excellent.”
“Is he travelling incognito?”
“No, sir; he travels with his name and Christian names.”
“And he is called--”
“Don Carlos de la Cerda.”
“An illustrious name, very certainly,” cried the painter.
“My name is Pedro de Guzman,” added the servant, “and I am humble
servant to you both.” He then made a very humble reverence, and went
away.
“Gil Blas is right,” said the Frenchman, “in Spain nothing is more
common than glorious names. It is true that in Paris my boot-maker was
named Martel, my tailor called himself Roland, and my laundress, Madame
Bayard. In Scotland, there are more Stuarts than paving-stones.”
“We are humbugged! That insolent servant is mocking us. But, every thing
considered, I have a suspicion that he is an agent of the factions, an
obscure emissary of Don Carlos.”
“Certainly not,” replied the artist; “it is my Alonzo Perez de Guzman
the Good--the hero of my dreams.” The other Frenchman shrugged his
shoulders.
When the ship arrived at Cadiz, the Spaniard took leave of Stein. “I am
obliged to remain some short time in Andalusia,” he said to him. “Pedro,
my servant, will accompany you as far as Seville, and take a place for
you in the diligence for Madrid. Here are some letters of recommendation
for the Minister of War and the general-in-chief of the army. If it
happens that you have any friendly service to ask of me, write to me at
Madrid, to this address.”
Stein, stifled with emotion, could not speak. With one hand he took the
letters, and with the other he pushed back the card which the Spaniard
presented to him. “Your name is engraven here,” he said in placing his
hand on his heart. “Oh! I will not forget it while I live; it is that of
a soul the most noble, the most elevated, the most generous; it is the
name of the best of men.”
“With this address,” replied Don Carlos, smiling, “your letters would
never reach me. You must have another, more clear and more brief,” and
he handed him his card, and departed.
Stein read: “The Duke of Almansa.”
And Pedro de Guzman, who was close by, added: “Marquis de Guadalmonte,
de Val-de-Flores, and de Loca-Fiel; Comte de Santa-Clara, de Encinasala,
et de Laza; Chevalier of the Golden Fleece, and Grand Cross of Charles
III.; Gentleman of the Chamber of his Majesty; Grandee of Spain, of
First Class; &c., &c., &c.”
CHAPTER II.
One morning in October, in the year 1838, a man on foot descended a
little hill in the county of Niebla, and advanced towards the coast. His
impatience to arrive at a little port which had been indicated to him
was such that, thinking to shorten his route, he found himself in one of
those vast solitudes so common in the south of Spain, real deserts,
reserved to raise cattle, and in which the flocks never go beyond the
limits. This man, although not more than twenty-six years of age,
appeared already old. He wore a military tunic, buttoned up to the chin.
On his head he wore a common cloth cap. He carried on his shoulder a
large stick, at the end of which was suspended a little casket of
mahogany, covered with green flannel, a package of books, fastened
together with pack-thread, a handkerchief covering a little white linen,
and a great cloak rolled up. This light baggage appeared to be beyond
the strength of the traveller, who, from time to time, paused,
supporting one hand on his oppressed chest, or passing it over his
burning forehead. At times he fixed his looks on a poor dog which
followed him, and which, whenever he halted, stretched himself at full
length at his feet. “Poor Fidele!” said the master; “the only being who
makes me believe there is yet in the world a little of affection and of
gratitude. No! I will never forget the day when I saw you for the first
time. Thou wast, with a poor herdsman, condemned to be shot, because he
would not be a traitor. He was on his knees, he awaited his death, and
it was in vain he supplicated a respite. He asked that thou shouldst be
spared, and no one listened to him. The shots were fired, and thou,
faithful friend of the unfortunate, thou didst fall cruelly wounded
beside the inanimate corpse of thy master. I rescued thee, I cured thy
wounds, and since then thou hast not abandoned me. When the wits of the
regiment called me a dog-curer, you came and licked the hand that had
saved you, as if you would say to me, ‘Dogs have gratitude.’ Oh! my God,
I have a loving heart! It is two years since, full of life, of hope, and
good-will, I arrived in this country, and offered to my brethren my
will, my care, my knowledge, and my heart. I have cured many wounds; for
my recompense they have made me feel sorrow the most profound, and it is
my soul they have lacerated. Great God! great God! discouragement has
seized me. I see myself ingloriously driven from the army, after two
years of incessant labor--labor without repose. I see myself accused and
pursued, for nothing but for having given my care to a man of an
opposite party; to an unhappy man, who, driven like a beast, fell dying
into my arms. Is it possible that the rules of war convert into a crime
what morality recognizes as a virtue, and which religion proclaims to be
a duty!
“What can I do at present? Go and repose my head, prematurely bald, and
cure my lacerated heart in the shade of the linden-trees which surround
my father’s house. There, at least, they will not charge me with crime
for having showed pity for a dying man.”
After the pause of a few minutes, the unhappy man made an effort. “Let
us go, Fidele,” said he; “move on! move on!” and the traveller and his
faithful animal pursued their painful route.
But soon the man lost the right path, which he had until now followed,
and which had been beaten by the steps of the shepherds. The ground was
covered more and more with briers and with high and thick bushes; it was
impossible to follow a straight line; he must turn aside alternately to
the right and left.
The sun had finished his course, and no part of the horizon discovered
the least appearance of any human habitation. There was nothing to be
seen but limitless solitude; nothing but the desert tinged with green,
and uniform as the ocean.
Fritz Stein, whom our reader no doubt already recognizes, perceived too
late that he had placed too much confidence in his strength. With pain
and difficulty his swollen and aching feet could barely sustain him. His
arteries throbbed with violence, a sharp pain racked his temples, an
ardent thirst devoured him, and to heighten the horror of his situation,
the deafening and prolonged bellowings announced the approach of some
droves of wild bulls, so dangerous in Spain.
“God has saved me from many perils,” said the poor traveller; “he will
yet protect me. If not, his will be done.”
He redoubled his speed; but what was his terror, when, after having
passed a little plantation of mastic-trees, he found himself face to
face with a bull!
Stein remained immovable, and, to say truly, petrified.
The animal, surprised at this encounter and at so much audacity,
remained also without motion; his eyes were inflamed like two burning
coals. The man immediately understood that at the least movement he was
lost. The bull, who was, by instinct, conscious of his strength and his
courage, waited to be provoked to fight; lowering and raising his head
three or four times impatiently, he began to paw the earth and to fill
the air with dust, in token of his defiance. Stein preserved his
immobility. The animal then stepped one pace backward, lowered his head
and prepared for the attack--when he felt himself bitten in the ham. At
the same time the furious barking of his brave companion informed Stein
who was his rescuer. The bull, full of rage, turned to repel this
unlooked-for attack; Stein profited by this movement and took to flight.
The horrible situation from which he had with so great difficulty
escaped, gave him new strength to fly past the green oaks and through
the briers, the thickness of which sheltered him from his formidable
adversary.
He had already passed a little dale, and climbed a hillock, and then he
stopped nearly out of breath. He turned round to observe the place of
his perilous adventure. He saw through the clearing his poor companion,
which the ferocious animal tossed in the air as if diverting himself.
Stein extended his arms towards his dog, so courageous, so devoted, and,
sobbing, he exclaimed:
“Poor Fidele! poor Fidele! my only friend! you well merit your name! You
pay dear for the affection you have shown for your masters.”
Then, to distract his thoughts from this frightful spectacle, Stein
hurried on, shedding profuse tears. He thus arrived at the summit of
another hill, where was spread open to his view a magnificent landscape.
The ground sloped almost insensibly to the borders of the sea, which,
calmly and tranquilly, reflected the last rays of the sun, and presented
the appearance of a vast field spangled with rubies and sapphires.
The white sail of a vessel, which appeared as if held stationary by the
waves, seemed detached like a pearl in the midst of these splendid
riches.
The line formed by the coast was marvellously uneven; the shore seemed
covered with golden sands, where the sea rolled its long silver fringes.
Bordering the coast, rose rocks whose gigantic boulders seemed to pierce
the azure sky. In the distance, at the left, Stein discovered the ruins
of a fort--human labor which could resist nothing; and whose base was
the rock--divine work which resisted every thing: at the right he
perceived a cluster of houses, without being able to perceive whether it
was a village, a palace, or a convent.
Nearly exhausted by his last hurried walk, and by his saddened emotions,
it was towards this point he would direct his steps. He could not reach
it until night had set in. What he saw was, in fact, one of those
convents constructed in the times of Christian faith and enthusiasm. The
monastery had been in the olden time brilliant, sumptuous, and
hospitable; now it was abandoned, poor, empty, dismantled, offered for
sale--as was indicated by some strips of paper pasted on its ruined
walls. Nobody, however, desired to purchase it, however low was the
price asked.
The wide folding-doors which formerly offered an easy access to all
comers, were now closed as if they would never again be opened.
Stein’s strength abandoned him, and he fell almost without consciousness
upon a stone bench: the delirium of fever attacked his brain, and he was
only aroused by the crowing of a cock.
Rising suddenly, Stein with pain walked to the door, took up a stone and
knocked. A loud barking replied to his summons. He made another effort,
knocked again; but his strength was exhausted--he sank on the ground.
The door was opened, and two persons appeared.
One of them was a young woman, holding a light in her hand, which she
directed towards the object lying at her feet.
“Jesus!” she cried, “it is not Manuel--a stranger! God aid us!”
“Help him,” replied the other, a good and simple old woman. “Brother
Gabriel! brother Gabriel!” she called out in entering the court, “come
quickly, there is here an unfortunate man who is dying.”
Hurried steps were heard: they were those of an old man of ordinary
height, with a placid and high complexioned face. His dress consisted of
pantaloons and a large vest with gray sleeves, and the remnant of an old
frock-coat; he had sandals on his feet; a cap of black wool covered his
shiny forehead.
“Brother Gabriel,” said the elder female, “we must succor this man.”
“He must be cared for,” replied brother Gabriel.
“For God’s sake,” cried the woman who carried the light, “where can we
place here a dying man?”
“We will do the best we can, my daughter, without being uneasy about the
rest. Help me.”
“Would to God,” said Dolores, “that we may have no disagreement when
Manuel returns.”
“It cannot be otherwise,” replied the good old woman, “than that the son
will concur in what his mother has done.”
The three conveyed Stein to the chamber of brother Gabriel. They made up
for him a bed with fresh straw, and a good large mattress filled with
wool. Grandma Maria took out of a large chest a pair of sheets, if not
very fine, at least very white. She then added a warm woollen
counterpane.
Brother Gabriel wished to give up his pillow; the Grandma opposed it,
saying she had two, and that one would suffice for her. During these
preparations some one knocked loud at the door, and continued to knock.
“Here is Manuel,” said the young woman. “Come with me, mother; I do not
wish to be alone with him, when he learns that we have admitted a
stranger.”
The mother-in-law followed the steps of her daughter.
“God be praised! Good evening, mother; good evening, wife,” said, on
entering, a strong and powerfully constructed man. He seemed to be
thirty-eight to forty years old, and was followed by a child of about
thirteen years.
“Come, Momo![2] unlade the ass and lead him to the stable; the poor
beast is tired.”
Momo carried to the kitchen, where the family was accustomed to
assemble, a supply of large loaves of white bread, some very plump
woodcock, and his father’s cloak.
Dolores went and closed the door and then rejoined her husband and her
mother in the kitchen.
“Have you brought my ham and my starch?” she asked.
“Here there are.”
“And my flax?”
“I had almost a desire to forget it,” answered Manuel, smiling, and
handing some skeins to his mother.
“Why, my son?”
“Because I recollected that villager who went to the fair, and whom all
the neighbors loaded with commissions: Bring me a hat, said one; Bring
me a pair of gaiters, said another; a cousin asked for a comb; an aunt
wished for some chocolate; and for all these commissions no one gave him
a _cuarto_. He had already bestrode his mule, when a pretty little child
came to him and said: ‘Here are two cuartos for a flageolet, will you
bring me one?’ The child presented his money, the villager stooped, took
it, and replied, ‘You shall be flageoleted.’ And in fact when he
returned from the fair, of all the commissions they had given him he
brought only the flageolet.”
“Be it so! it is well,” said the mother: “why do I pass every day in
sewing? Is it not for thee and thy children? Do you wish that I imitate
the tailor who worked for nothing, and furnished the thread below the
cost?”
At this moment Momo reappeared on the threshold of the kitchen; he was
small and fat, high shouldered; he had, besides, the bad habit to raise
them without any cause, with an air of scorn and carelessness, almost to
touch his large ears which hung out like fans. His head was enormous,
his hair short, lips thick. Again--he squinted horribly.
“Father,” said he, with a malicious air, “there, is a man asleep in the
chamber of brother Gabriel.”
“A man in my house!” cried Manuel, throwing away his chair. “Dolores,
what does this mean?”
“Manuel, it is a poor invalid. Your mother would that we receive him: it
was not my opinion: she insisted, what could I do?”
“It is well; but however she may be my mother, ought she for that to
lodge here the first man that comes along?”
“No--he should be left to die at the door like a dog, is it not so?”
“But, my mother,” replied Manuel, “is my house a hospital?”
“No. It is the house of a Christian; and if you had been here you would
have done as I did.”
“Oh! certainly not,” continued Manuel; “I would have put him on our ass
and conducted him to the village, now there are no more convents.”
“We had not our ass here, and there was no one to take charge of this
unfortunate man.”
“And if he is a robber?”
“Dying men do not rob.”
“And if his illness is long, who will take care of him?”
“They have just killed a fowl to make broth,” said Momo, “I saw the
feathers in the court.”
“Have you lost your mind, mother!” cried Manuel furiously.
“Enough, enough,” said his mother, in a severe tone. “You ought to blush
for shame to dare to quarrel with me because I have obeyed the law of
God. If your father were still living, he would not believe that his son
could refuse to open his door to the unfortunate, ill, without succor,
and dying.”
Manuel bowed his head: there was a moment of silence.
“It is well, my mother,” he said, at last. “Forget that I have said any
thing, and act according to your own judgment. We know that women are
always right.”
Dolores breathed more freely.
“How good he is!” she said joyously to her mother-in-law.
“Could you doubt it?” she replied, smiling, to her daughter, whom she
tenderly loved; and in rising to go and take her place at the couch of
the invalid, she added:
“I have never doubted it, I who brought him into the world.”
And in passing near to Momo, she said to him:
“I already knew that you had a bad heart; but you have never proved it
as you have to-day. I complain of you: you are wicked, and the wicked
carry their own chastisement.”
“Old people are only good for sermonizing,” growled Momo, in casting a
side look at his grandmother.
But he had scarcely pronounced this last word, when his mother, who had
heard him, approached and applied a smart blow.
“That will teach you,” she said, “to be insolent to the mother of your
father; towards a woman who is twice your mother.”
Momo began to cry, and took refuge at the bottom of the court, and
vented his anger in bastinadoing the poor dog who had not offended him.
CHAPTER III.
The grandma and the brother Gabriel took the best care of the invalid;
but they could not agree upon the method which should be adopted to cure
him.
Maria, without having read Brown, recommended substantial soups,
comforts, and tonics, because she conceived that Stein was debilitated
and worn out.
Brother Gabriel, without ever having heard the name of Broussais
pronounced, pleaded for refreshments and emollients, because, in his
opinion, Stein had a brain fever, the blood heated and the skin hot.
Both were right, and with this double system, which blended the soups of
the grandma with the lemonade of brother Gabriel, it happened that Stein
recovered his life and his health the same day that the good woman
killed the last fowl, and the brother divested the lemon-trees of their
last fruit.
“Brother Gabriel,” said the grandma, “to which State corps do you think
our invalid belongs? Is he military?”
“He must be military,” replied brother Gabriel, who, except in medical
or horticultural discussions, had the habit of regarding the good woman
as an oracle, and to be guided wholly by her opinion.
“If he were military,” continued the old woman, shaking her head, “he
would be armed, and he is not armed. I found only a flute in his pocket.
Then he is not military.”
“He cannot be military,” replied brother Gabriel.
“If he were a contrabandist?”
“It is possible he is a contrabandist,” said the good brother Gabriel.
“But no,” replied the old woman, “for to be a contrabandist, he should
wear stuffs or jewelry, and he has nothing of these.”
“That is true, he cannot be a contrabandist,” affirmed brother Gabriel.
“See what are the titles of his books. Perhaps by that means we can
discover what he is.”
The brother rose, took his horn spectacles, placed them on his nose, and
the package of books in his hands, and approached the window which
looked out on the grand court. His inspection of the books lasted a long
time.
“Brother Gabriel,” asked the old woman, “have you forgotten to know how
to read?”
“No--but I do not know these characters; I believe it is Hebrew.”
“Hebrew! Holy Virgin of Heaven, can he be a Jew?”
At that moment, Stein, awaking from a long lethargy, addressed him, and
said in German:
“Mein Gott, wo bin ich? My God, where am I?”
The old woman sprang with one bound to the middle of the chamber;
brother Gabriel let fall the books, and remained petrified after opening
his eyes as large as his spectacles.
“In what language have you spoken?” she demanded.
“It must be Hebrew, like these books,” answered brother Gabriel.
“Perhaps he is a Jew, as you said, good Maria.”
“God help us!” she cried. “But no, if he were a Jew, would we not have
seen it on his back when we undressed him?”
“Good Maria,” replied the brother, “the holy father said that this
belief which attributes to a Jew a tail at his back is nonsense, a piece
of bad wit, and that the Jews laugh at it.”
“Brother Gabriel,” replied the good Mama Maria, “since this holy
constitution, all is changed, all is metamorphosed. This clique, who
govern to-day in place of the king, wish that nothing should remain of
what formerly existed; it is for that they no longer permit the Jews to
wear tails on their backs, although they always before carried them, as
does the devil. If the holy father said to the contrary it is because it
is obligatory, as they are obliged to say at Mass, ‘Constitutional
king.’”
“That may be so,” said the monk.
“He is not a Jew,” pursued the old woman; “rather is he a Turk or a
Moor, who has been shipwrecked on our coast.”
“A pirate of Morocco,” replied the good brother, “it may be.”
“But then he would wear a turban and yellow slippers, like the Moor I
have seen thirty years ago, when I was in Cadiz. They called him the
Moor Seylan. How handsome he was! But for me his beauty was nothing: he
was not a Christian. After all, be he Jew or Moor let us relieve him.”
“Assist him, Jew or Christian,” repeated the brother. And they both
approached the bed.
Stein had raised himself up in a sitting position, and regarded with
astonishment all the objects by which he was surrounded.
“He does not understand what we say to him,” said the good Maria. “Let
us try, nevertheless.”
“Let us try,” added Gabriel.
In Spain, the common people believe that the best way to make
themselves understood is to speak very loud. Maria and Gabriel, with
this conviction, cried out both together: “Will you have some soup?”
said Maria. “Will you have some lemonade?” said the brother.
Stein, whose ideas became clearer little by little, asked in Spanish:
“Where am I? who are you?”
“He,” replied the old woman, “is brother Gabriel; I am grandma Maria,
and we are both at your orders.”
“Ah!” said Stein, “from whom do you take your names? The holy archangel
and the holy Virgin, guardians of the sick and consolers of the
afflicted, will recompense you for your good action.”
“He speaks Spanish!” cried Maria with emotion; “and he is a Christian!
and he knows the litanies!”
In her access of joy, she approached Stein, pressed him in her arms and
bravely kissed his forehead.
“Decidedly, who are you?” she said, after having made him take a bowl of
soup. “How, ill and dying, have you reached this depopulated village?”
“I am called Stein, and I am a surgeon. I was in the war at Navarre. I
came by Estremadura to seek a port whence I could embark for Cadiz, and
then regain Germany, my country. I lost myself in my route: I made a
thousand detours and finished by arriving here, worn out by fatigue and
ready to give up the ghost.”
“You see,” said Maria to brother Gabriel, “that his books are not in the
Hebrew language, but in the language of surgeons.”
“That’s true,” repeated brother Gabriel.
“And which party do you belong to?” asked the old woman. “Don Carlos, or
the other?”
“I serve in the troops of the Queen,” replied Stein.
Maria turned towards her companion, and with an expressive gesture, said
in a low voice:
“He is not with the good.”
“He was not with the good,” repeated brother Gabriel, in bowing his
head.
“But where am I?” again demanded Stein.
“You are,” replied the old woman, “in a convent which is no longer a
convent. It is a body without a soul. There remain but the walls, the
white cross, and brother Gabriel. The _others_ have taken away all the
rest. When there was nothing more to take, some _gentlemen_ whom they
call the public credit searched for a good man to guard the
convent--that is to say, its carcass. They heard my son spoken of, and
we came and established ourselves here, where I live with my son, the
only one who would remain. When we entered into the convent, the fathers
went away. Some retired to America or rejoined the missions in China;
some returned to their families; some demanded their subsistence or
work, or had recourse to alms. We have with us a monk, borne down by age
and grief, who, seated on the steps of the white cross, weeps sometimes
for the absent brethren, sometimes for the convent which they have
abandoned. ‘Will not your Reverence come here,’ a child but lately
attached to the services of the chapel said to him. ‘Where would you
that I go?’ he replied. ‘I will never go away from these walls, where I
was, poor and an orphan, received by the good fathers. I know nobody in
the world, and know nothing but how to take care of the garden of the
convent. Where shall I go? What shall I do? I can live only here.’ ‘Then
remain with us.’ ‘Well said, mother,’ replied my son; ‘we are seven
seated at the same table; we will be eight, and, as the proverb says,
We will eat more, and we will eat less.’”
“Thanks to this act of charity,” said Gabriel, “I remain here, I take
charge of the garden; but since they have sold the large pump, I do not
know how to water a foot of ground; the orange and lemon trees dry up
under my feet.”
“Brother Gabriel,” continued the grandma, “will not quit these walls to
which he is attached like the ivy; he also says, ‘Very well, there
remain but the walls. The barbarians! They have proved this maxim:
Destroy the nest, the birds will never come back again.’”
“Notwithstanding,” hazarded Stein, “I have heard said there are too many
convents in Spain.”
Maria fixed her black sparkling eyes on the German, and said to herself
in an undertone:
“Were our first suspicions well founded?”
CHAPTER IV.
The end of October had been rainy, and November sheltered herself under
her thick green mantle.
Stein took a walk one day in front of the convent. A magnificent
panorama presented itself to his sight: at the right, the limitless sea;
at the left, solitude without end. Between them, on the horizon, was
painted the black profile of the fort San Cristobal. The sea undulated
softly, in raising without effort the waves gilded by the sun’s rays,
like a queen who spreads out her gorgeous mantle.
Not far from thence was situated the village of Villamar, near a river
as impetuous during winter, as calm and muddy during summer. The grounds
around, well cultivated, presented the aspect of a chess-board, where
each square revealed the thousand shades of green. Here shone the warm
tints of the vine, then covered with leaves; there, the ash-colored
green of the olive-tree; the emerald green of the fig-trees, which the
rains of autumn had imparted growth to; further off still, the
bluish-green hedges of aloes. At the mouth of the river were collected
several fishermen’s boats.
Near the convent, upon a light hillock, stood a chapel; in front, a
cross based on a block of masonry whitened with lime; behind this cross,
a retreat of verdure: it was the cemetery. Stein went there to meditate
upon the powerful magic of the works of nature, when he saw Momo leaving
the farm and going towards the village. In perceiving Stein, Momo
proposed to him to accompany him, and they both commenced their route.
They arrived soon at the top of the hillock, near the cross and the
chapel. This ascension, however short and easy, had taken away Stein’s
strength, who was yet scarcely convalescent. He rested an instant; then
he entered the chapel, whose walls were covered with “_exvotos_.” Among
these _exvotos_ there was one which singularly attracted by its
strangeness. The front of the altar contracted itself towards the base
in describing a curved line. Stein perceived there in the obscurity an
object supported against the wall, and the form of which he could not
distinguish. Fixing his earnest scrutiny on this object, he became
assured it was a carbine. The size was such, and the weight must have
been so great that it was incomprehensible how one single man could have
the strength to place it in that position: it is but the reflection
which is always inspired by the sight of the armor of the middle ages.
The mouth of the carbine was so large that an orange could easily be
introduced. The arm was broken, and the pieces were artistically put
together by means of little cords.
“Momo,” said Stein, “what does this signify? Is it really a carbine?”
“In looking at it,” replied Momo, “it seems to me to be one.”
“But why do they place a murderous weapon in this holy and peaceful
place? In truth, it is not sense to arm Christ with a pair of pistols.”
“But see, then,” replied Momo, “the carbine is not placed in the hands
of our Lord; it is at his feet, as an offering. The day on which this
carbine was brought here, they called this Christ, the Christ of _Good
Help_.”
“And from what motive?” demanded Stein.
“For what motive!” said Momo in opening his eyes, “everybody knows that,
and you know it not!”
“Have you forgotten that I am a stranger?” replied. Stein.
“That is true; I will tell you then: there was formerly in this country
a highway robber who did not content himself with robbing, he murdered
the people as if they were insects, whether from hatred, whether from
fear of being denounced, or whether from caprice. One day two men of
this village, two brothers, would undertake a journey. All their friends
assembled to conduct them part of the way. There were abundance of good
wishes that they might not encounter the bandit who gave quarter to no
one, and who terrified everybody. But they, good children, commended
themselves to Christ, and departed full of confidence in his protection.
At the entrance of a wood of olives, they found themselves face to face
with the robber, who came before them, with carbine in hand, rested his
gun and aimed. In this extreme peril the two brothers fell on their
knees, addressing themselves to Christ: ‘Help us, Lord!’ The bandit
pulled the trigger, but whose soul was launched into another world? It
was that of the robber: God caused the carbine to burst in the hands of
the bandit. And you see now that, in memory of this miraculous
assistance, they repaired the carbine with cords, and deposited it here,
and it is the Christ who, since then, we implore help from. You knew
nothing about it, Don Frederico?”
“Nothing, Momo,” he replied, in adding as if his own reflections: “If
you know all that others are ignorant of, they who pretend know every
thing.”
“Let us go! will you come?” said Momo after a moment’s silence. “You
know I cannot wait.”
“I am fatigued,” replied Stein; “go along, I will wait for you here.”
“God protect you!” and Momo resumed his route, singing:
“God’s sweet protection be your lot,
Is the usual affiance.
Poor be ye rich! for science,
The rich can buy it not.”
Stein contemplated this little village, so tranquil, at once fishing,
commercial, and laborious.
It was not like the villages of Germany, an assemblage of houses
scattered without order, with their roofs of straw, and their gardens;
they resembled in no way those of England, sheltered by the shades of
their large trees; nor those of Flanders, which retired to the borders
of the roads. It was composed of large streets, although badly made,
where the houses, without separate stories, were of various heights, and
covered with old tiles; windows were rare, and still more rare, glass
and every species of ornament.
But the village contained a grand square, which, in spring, was green as
a prairie; on this square was situated a beautiful church: the general
aspect was one of charming neatness.
Fourteen crosses, of dimensions equal to that which was near to Stein,
were placed equidistant from each other; the last, which was raised in
the middle of the square, was opposite to the church: it was the _Road
of the Cross_.
Momo came back, but with a companion, who was old, tall, dry, thin, and
stiff as a wax taper. This man was dressed in a coat and pantaloons made
of coarse gray cloth; a waistcoat enamelled in faded colors, and
embellished with some repairs, real _chef-d’œuvres_ of their kind; a
red belt, such as is worn by the peasants; a slouched hat with large
rim, ornamented with a cockade which had been red, and which time, the
rain, and the sun had colored with the brilliant shades of a watermelon.
On each shoulder was a narrow strip of lace, probably destined to secure
two much-used epaulets; and then an old sword, suspended from a belt of
the same age, completed this _ensemble_, half military and half rural.
Long years had exercised great ravages upon the front part of the long
and narrow skull of this being. To supply the natural ornament, he had
coaxed towards the forehead the sad remnant of his head of hair, and
fixing them there by means of a cord of black silk on the top of his
skull, he formed a tuft as gracious as that of a Chinese coxcomb.
“Momo, who is this man?” asked Stein in a low voice.
“The commandant,” the other replied, very simply.
“The commandant of what?” anew asked Stein.
“Of the Fort de San Cristobal.”
“The Fort de San Cristobal!” cried Stein in ecstasy.
“Your servant,” said the newly arrived, saluting him with courtesy; “my
name is Modesto Guerrero, and I place at your entire command my useless
services.”
The compliment of usage had an application so exact to him who made it,
that Stein could not resist a smile in returning his military salute.
“I know who you are,” pursued Don Modesto; “I have taken a prominent
part in your _contretemps_ and your misfortunes; I congratulate you on
your re-establishment, and on your rencounter with the Alerzas, who are,
by my faith, very good kind of people. My person and my house are
entirely at your orders; I reside at the _Plaza de la Iglesia_, that is
to say, Place of the Constitution, for that is the name at present. If
sometime you would favor it with a visit, the inscription will indicate
to you the place.”
“As if he possessed all the village!” said Momo with a sneer.
“Then there is an inscription?” again demanded Stein, who, in the busy
life of a camp, had never had time to learn the language of studied
compliments, and could not therefore reply to those of the courteous
Spaniard.
“Yes, sir,” replied Don Modesto, “the subordinate should obey the orders
of his superiors. You should comprehend that in this little village it
is not easy to procure a slab of marble with letters of gold, like those
you can purchase in Cadiz or Seville. We must have recourse to the
schoolmaster, who writes a good hand, and who, to paint the inscription
on the walls of common houses, is obliged to place himself at a certain
height. The schoolmaster prepared a black color with soot and vinegar
mixed, mounted the ladder, and commenced the work by tracing the letters
about a foot long. Unfortunately, in wishing to make an elegant
flourish, he gave such a violent shake to the ladder that it fell to the
earth, carrying with it in its fall the schoolmaster with his pot of
black, and all rolled together into the stream. Rosita, my hostess, who
from the window had been a witness of this catastrophe, and having seen
the unfortunate man come out black as coal, was frightened to that
degree that she went into spasms, and continued thus for three days; and
in truth I was myself not without some uneasiness. The Alcalde,
notwithstanding, gave orders to the poor bruised schoolmaster to
complete his work, and saw that the inscription gave only the letters
CONSTI. The unfortunate man was ill at ease, but this time he would not
use the ladder; he would bring a cart, and place a table on it, and
secure it with strong cords. Hoisted upon this improvised scaffolding,
the poor devil was so astounded that, reflecting on his accident, he had
but one thought, which was, to complete his work as speedily as
possible. This is the reason why the last letters, in lieu of being a
foot long like the first, are not longer than your thumb; and that is
not the worst of it--in his eagerness he forgot one letter at the bottom
of his pot of black; and the inscription thus appears:
PLAZA DE LA CONSTItucin.
“The Alcalde was thrown into a pious fury; but the schoolmaster
stoutly declared that neither for God nor for all the Saints would
he recommence it, and that he preferred to mount a bull of eight
years old rather than to work upon that mountebank plank. Thus has
the inscription remained as it was: happily no one reads it. He is
sorry that the schoolmaster had not completed it, for it would have
been very handsome and done great honor to Villamar.”
Momo, who carried on his shoulder some saddlebags, well filled, and who
was in a hurry, asked the commandant if he was going to Fort San
Cristobal.
“I go there, and on my way I will first go to see the daughter of Pedro
Santalo; she is ill.”
“Who! The Gaviota?” asked Momo; “don’t believe it: I saw her yesterday
on the top of a rock, screaming like the sea-gull.”
“Gaviota!” said Stein, with surprise.
“It is,” said the commandant, “a wicked nickname, which Momo has given
this young girl.”
“Because she has long legs,” replied Momo, “because she lives equally on
the sea and on the earth, because she sings, cries, and leaps from rock
to rock like the seagulls.”
“Your grandmother,” replied Don Modesto, “loves her much, and never
calls her any thing but Marisalada (witty Maria), on account of her
piquant frolics, the grace of her song and her dance, and her beautiful
imitation of the singing of birds.”
“It is not that,” replied Momo. “It is because that her father is a
fisherman, and brings us salt and fish.”
“And does she live near the port?” asked Stein, whose curiosity was much
excited by all these details.
“Very near,” replied the commandant. “Pedro Santalo possessed a bark:
having made sail for Cadiz he encountered a tempest, and was shipwrecked
on our coast. All perished, crew and cargo, with the exception of Pedro
and his daughter, whom he had with him; the desire to save her doubled
his strength: he gained the shore, but his ruin was complete. His
sadness and discouragement were so profound that he would not return to
his country. With the debris of his bark he constructed a little skiff
among the rocks, and commenced as a fisherman. It was he who furnished
the convent with fish: the brothers in exchange gave him bread, oil, and
vinegar. It is now twelve years that he has lived here in peace with all
the world.”
This recital finished when they had arrived at a point where the paths
divide into two roads.
“I will return soon,” said the old commandant; “in an instant I will be
at your disposal, and salute your hosts.”
“Say to Gaviota,” cried Momo, “that her illness does not alarm me, bad
weeds never die.”
“Has the commandant been long at Villamar?” asked Stein of Momo.
“Let me count--a hundred and one years before the birth of my father.”
“And who is this Rosita, his hostess?’
“Who? Señorita Rosa Mistica!” replied Momo, with grotesque gesture. “It
is a first love: she is uglier than hunger; she has one eye which looks
to the east, and the other to the west; and her face, which the
small-pox has not spared, is filled with cavities, each sufficient to
hold an echo. But, Don Frederico, the heavens scorch, the clouds rush as
if they would pursue us--let us hasten our steps.”
CHAPTER V.
Before we continue our recital, it is well, we believe, to make the
acquaintance of this new personage. Don Modesto Guerrero was the son of
an honorable farmer, who, like many others, was possessed of excellent
parchments of nobility. During the war of independence, the French
burned these parchments in burning his house, under the pretext that the
children of a laborer are brigands,--that is to say, that they have
committed the unpardonable crime of defending their country. The brave
man could reconstruct his house; but as to the parchments, they were not
of the class of phœnix. Modesto was called to the military service,
and, in default of a substitute, he entered a regiment of infantry as a
cadet. Sufficiently good-natured, he was not long in becoming a butt,
the object of coarse jokes from his companions. These, encouraged by his
forbearance, pushed their mockeries so far that Don Modesto put an end
to them, as we will directly see. On a grand parade day he took his
station at the end of a file. Near by was a cart. His comrades, with as
much address as promptitude, passed a noose round his leg, and attached
it to the wheels of the cart. The colonel gave the orders to “March!”
The trumpets sounded, and all the men were in motion, with the exception
of Modesto, who was brought up with his feet in the air, in the position
which the sculptors give to the Zephyrs ready to fly.
The review ended. Modesto returned to quarters calm and tranquil as he
had set out, and, without changing his step, he demanded satisfaction
of his companions. Neither of them would assume the responsibility of
the trick played. He then declared he would fight with them all, one
after the other. Then he who had planned and executed the trick came
forward, and they went out to fight. In the combat, Modesto’s adversary
lost an eye. “If you desire to lose the other,” the vanquisher said to
him, with his habitual phlegm, “I am at your service when you please.”
Without relations or patrons at court, without ambitious views, and no
fondness for intrigue, Modesto continued his career at a tortoise pace,
until the siege of Gaëte, in 1805, a period at which his regiment
received an order to join the troops of Napoleon. Modesto distinguished
himself so well by his bravery and coolness, that he merited a cross,
and the praises of his chiefs. His name was blazoned at Gaëte like a
meteor, to disappear immediately in eternal obscurity.
These laurels were the first and the last which he had an opportunity of
gathering during his military career: severely wounded in the arm, he
was obliged to quit active service, and received as compensation the
post of commandant of the ruined fort of San Cristobal. It was then
forty years that he had under his orders the skeleton of a fort, and a
garrison of lizards of all varieties. In the commencement, our Guerrero
could not content himself with this abandonment. No one year passed
without his pressing a request to the government to obtain the necessary
repairs; also the guns and troops which this point of defence demanded.
All these requests remained unnoticed, although, according to
circumstances, he did not fail to represent the possibility of an
invasion, whether by the English or the American insurgents, whether by
the French, or the revolutionists, or the Carlists. A similar reception
was accorded to his continual solicitations to obtain part: the
government took no account whatever of these two ruins--the fort, and
its commander. Don Modesto was patient; he finished by submitting to his
destiny. When he arrived at Villamar, he lodged with the widow of the
sacristan, who, in company with her then young daughter, lived a life of
devotion. It was the abode of excellent women, a little meagre, and
tainted with excessive intolerance, and scolds; but good, charitable,
and of exquisite neatness.
The inhabitants of the village, who had great affection for the
commandant, and who, at the same time, knew how irksome his position
was, did all they possibly could to render his situation less irksome.
They never killed a pig without sending him a supply of lard and
pudding. At harvest-times they brought him some wheat, pease, oil, and
honey. The women made him presents of the fruits of their orchards; and
his happy hostess had always an abundance of provisions, thanks to the
generous kindness which inspired the good Modesto, who, of a nature
corresponding with his name, far from feeling pride from so many favors,
was accustomed to say that Providence was everywhere, but that his
headquarters were at Villamar. He knew, in truth, how to show his
gratitude for all these bounties by being serviceable to every one, and
complaisant in the extreme. He arose with the sun, and his first duty
was to assist the cura in the services of the mass. One villager charged
him with a commission; another besought him to write to his son, who was
a soldier; a mother confided to his care her little children, while she
attended out doors to some little household affairs: he watched at the
bedsides of the sick, and mingled his prayers with those of his
hostesses; indeed, he sought to be useful to everybody in all that was
in his power, consistent with decorum or honor. The widow of the
sacristan died, leaving her daughter Rosa, now full forty-five years of
age, and of an ugliness which you would travel far to see the like of.
The mournful consequences of the varioloid did not contribute a little
to augment this last misfortune. The evil was concentrated on one of her
eyes, and chiefly on the pupil, which she could but half open; and it
resulted that the pupil half effaced gave to all her physiognomy an
aspect devoid of intelligence and mind, forming a singular contrast with
the other eye, from which shot out flames like the fire of a brier-bush
at the slightest cause of scandal; and certainly the occasions which
presented themselves were frequent enough.
After the funeral, the nine days of mourning passed, the Señorita Rosita
said one morning to Don Modesto: “I regret much, señor, the duty of
announcing to you that we must separate.”
“We part!” cried the brave man, opening his large eyes, and placing his
cup of chocolate on the table-cloth, instead of placing it on the tray.
“And why, Rosita?”
Don Modesto was accustomed, during thirty years, to employ this pet name
when he spoke to the daughter of his old hostess.
“It seems to me,” she replied, elevating her eyelids, “it seems to me
you need not ask me why. You know it is not proper that two honest
persons live together under the same roof. It gives rise to scandal.”
“And who could bring scandal against you?” replied Don Modesto; “you,
the village model!”
“Are you sure there will not be something? What will you say when you
learn that you yourself, despite your great age, your uniform, and your
cross, and I, a poor girl who thinks only of serving God, that we
afford amusement to these scandal-mongers?”
“What say you?” demanded Don Modesto, saddened.
“What you have just heard. And no one knows us but under nicknames which
they apply to us, these cursed!”
“I am stunned, Rosita. I cannot believe--”
“So much the better for you if you do not believe it,” said the devout
girl; “but I avow to you that these impious ones,--God pardon
them!--when they see us arrive together at the church, at the early
morning mass, they say, one to the other: ‘Sound the mass, here come the
_Mystic Rose_ and the _Tower of David_, in armor and in company, as in
the litanies.’ They have thus dubbed you, because your figure is so
erect, so tall, and so solid.”
Don Modesto remained, his mouth open, and his eyes fixed on the ground.
“Yes, señor,” continued the Mystic Rose; “the neighbor who told me this
was scandalized, and advised me to go and complain to the cura. I
replied to her it were better that I restrained myself, and suffered.
Our Lord suffered more than I, without complaining.”
“Well!” said Modesto; “I will not permit that they mock me, and still
less you.”
“The best will be,” continued Rosa, “to prove by our patience that we
are good Christians, and by our indifference that we care little for the
world’s opinion. Beyond this, if these wicked persons are punished, they
will be worse, believe me, Don Modesto.”
“You are, as always, right, Rosita. I know these babblers; if you cut
out their tongue, they will speak with their nose. But if, in by-gone
days, any of my comrades had dared to call me _Tower of David_, he
would have had to add, ‘Pray for us!’ How is it that you, a saint, have
any fear of these slanders?”
“You know, Don Modesto, what say the vulgar, who think evil of all the
world: ‘Between saint and saint there should be a strong wall.’”
“But between you and I there is no need of a wall. I am old, and never
in all my life was I ever, except once, in love; and then it was with a
very pretty young girl, whom I would have married, if I had not
surprised her in a counter-flirtation with the drum-major, who--”
“Don Modesto!” cried Rosita, choked with this discourse. “Honor your
name and your position, and abandon your souvenirs of love.”
“My intention was not to offend you,” replied Don Modesto, in a contrite
tone. “Know that well; and I swear to you that I never had, and never
will have, an evil thought.”
“Don Modesto,” replied Rosa, with impatience (she looked on him with her
eye of fire, while the other eye made vain efforts in the hope of being
inflamed in unison), “do you judge me so simple as to think that two
persons, like you and I, having both the fear of God, could conduct
ourselves like those hair-brained people who have neither shame nor
horror of sin? But in the world it is not sufficient to do well. We must
even not give cause for scandal, and guard on all sides even against
appearances.”
“That is another thing,” replied the commandant. “What appearances can
there be between us? Do you not know that they who excuse, accuse
themselves?”
“I tell you,” replied the devotee, “there will not be wanting persons to
blame us.”
“And what can I do without you?” demanded Don Modesto, afflicted.
“Alone in the world, what can you do without me?”
“He who gives food to the little birds,” said Rosita, in a solemn tone,
“will take care of those who trust in Him.”
Don Modesto, disconcerted, and knowing not what further to say, went to
consult with the cura, who was at the same time his friend and Rosita’s.
The cura persuaded the good girl that her scruples were exaggerated, and
her fears without reason; that the projected separation would much more
give rise to ridiculous comments.
They continued then to live together, as formerly, in peace, and in the
fear of God;--the commandant always good and useful; Rosa always
careful, attentive, and disinterested: because, on the one hand, Don
Modesto was not the man to take any recompense for his services; and, on
the other, if the handle of his gala-sword had not been silver, she
could well have forgotten the color of that metal.
CHAPTER VI.
When Stein returned to the convent, all the family were assembled in the
court. Momo and Manuel arrived at the same time, each from his
direction. The last had been going his rounds of the farm in the
exercise of his functions as gamekeeper; he held his gun in one hand,
and in the other three partridges and two hares.
The children ran to Momo, who at once emptied his wallet, from which
escaped, as from a horn of abundance, a multitude of winter fruits,
which, according to Spanish custom, served to celebrate All Saints’ Eve;
viz., nuts, chestnuts, and pomegranates.
“If Marisalada brings us the fish,” said the eldest of the little girls,
“to-morrow we will have a famous feast.”
“To-morrow,” said Maria, “is All Saints; father Pedro will certainly not
go out to fish.”
“Then,” said the little one, “it will be for the next day.”
“They no longer fish on the ‘Dia de los Difuntos.’”
“And why?” demanded the child.
“Because it would be to profane a day which the church consecrates to
sanctified souls. The proof is, that the fishermen having once cast
their lines on such a day, and delighted with the weight they were
drawing in, were doomed to find only snakes instead of fish. Is it not
true, brother Gabriel?”
“I did not see it, but I am sure of it,” replied the brother.
“And is it for that you make us pray so much on the ‘day of the dead?’”
asked the little girl.
“For that same,” said the grandma; “it is a holy custom, and God is not
willing that we should ever neglect it.”
“Certainly,” added Manuel, “nothing is more just than to pray to the
Lord for the dead; and I remember a fellow of the Congregation of Souls
who begged for them in these terms, at the door of the chapel: ‘He who
places a small piece of money in this place, withdraws a soul from
purgatory.’ There came along a wag who, after having deposited his
piece: ‘Tell me, brother,’ asked he, ‘do you believe the soul is yet
clear of purgatory?’ ‘Do you doubt it?’ replied the brother. ‘In that
case,’ replied the other, ‘I take back my piece; I know this soul; she
is not such a fool as to go back when she is once out.’”
“You may be assured, Don Frederico,” said Maria, “that with every thing,
good or bad, my son finds always something appropriate to a story, a
witticism, or a _bon-mot_.”
At this moment Don Modesto entered by the court; he was as stiff and
grave as when he was presented to Stein at the end of the village. The
only change was, that he carried suspended to his stick a large stock of
fish covered over with cabbage leaves.
“The commandant! The commandant!” was the general cry.
“Do you come from your citadel, San Cristobal?” asked Manuel of Don
Modesto, after exchanging the preliminary compliments, and an invitation
to be seated on the same stone bench where Stein was seated.
“You might join my mother, who is so good a Christian, to pray to the
saints to build again the walls of the fort, contrary to that which, by
report, Joshua did at the walls of Jericho.”
“I have to ask of the Lord things more important than that,” replied the
grandma.
“Certainly,” said brother Gabriel, “Maria has more important things than
the reconstruction of the walls of a fort to ask of the Lord. It would
be better of her to implore Him to reconstruct the convent.”
Don Modesto, on hearing these words, turned with a severe gesture
towards the monk, who, at this moment, went and placed himself behind
the old mother, and dissimulated so well, that he disappeared almost
entirely to the eyes of the others present.
“After what I see,” continued the old commandant, “brother Gabriel does
not belong to the church militant. Do you not remember that the Jews,
before building their Temple, had conquered the promised land, sword in
hand? Would there have been churches and priests in the Holy Land if the
crosses had not conquered it, lance in hand?”
“But,” then said Stein, with the laudable intention to divert from this
discussion the commandant, whose bile commenced to be stirred, “why does
Maria ask for what is impossible?”
“That signifies little,” replied Manuel; “all old women act the same,
except she who asked God to tell her a good number in the drawing of a
lottery.”
“Was it sent her?” they asked.
“It had been well kept, if I had gained the prize. He who could do all
things, where the miracle?”
“That which is certain,” declared Don Modesto, “is, that I will be very
grateful to the Lord, if he will inspire the government with the happy
idea of re-establishing the fort of San Cristobal.”
“To rebuild, would you say?” observed Manuel; “take care and repent at
once, as it happened to a woman consecrated to the Lord, and who had a
daughter so ugly, so stupid, and so awkward, that she could not find
even a despairing man to espouse her. The poor woman, much embarrassed,
passed all her days on her knees at prayer, asking a husband for her
daughter. At last one presented himself: the joy of the mother was
extreme, but of short duration. The son-in-law was so bad, he so
maltreated his wife and his mother-in-law, that the latter went to the
church, and there posted before the saint this inscription:
‘Saint Christopher! with hands and feet,
Whose measure could a giant’s meet!
(And with a head of bony horns),
Is’t thou among the saints I saw?
Thou--Jewish as my son-in-law.’”
While the conversation was going on, Morrongo, the house cat, awoke from
a long sleep, bent his croup like the back of a camel, uttered a sharp
mew, opened out his mustaches, and approached, little by little, towards
Don Modesto, just so as to place himself behind the perfumed pocket
suspended to the baton. He immediately received on his velvet paws a
little stone thrown by Momo, with that singular address which children
of his age so well know how to cast. The cat skipped off in a gallop,
but lost no time in returning to his post of observation, and made
believe to sleep. Don Modesto saw him, and lost his tranquillity of
mind.
“You have not said, Señor Commandant, how Marisalada is?”
“Ill, very ill, she grows weaker every day. I am much afflicted to see
her poor father, who has had so much to suffer. This morning his
daughter had a high fever; her cough did not quit her for an instant.”
“What do you say, Señor Commandant?” cried Maria.
“Don Frederico, you who have made such wonderful cures, you who have
extracted a stone from brother Gabriel and restored the sight of Momo,
can you not do something for this poor creature?”
“With great pleasure,” replied Stein; “I will do all in my power to
relieve her.”
“And God will repay you. To-morrow morning we will go and see her.
To-day you are too much fatigued from your walk.”
“I am not jealous of his kind,” said Momo, grumbling. “The proudest
girl--”
“That is not so,” exclaimed the old woman; “she is a little wild, a
little ferocious; one can see she has been educated alone, and allowed
to have her own way by a father more gentle than a dove, although a
little rough in manner, like all good sailors. But Momo cannot bear
Marisalada, since one day when she called him Romo (flat-nosed), as
indeed he is.”
At this moment a noise was heard; it was the commandant pursuing at a
quick pace the thief Morrongo, who had deceived the vigilance of his
master and ran off with the stock fish.
“My commandant,” cried out Manuel to him, laughing, “the sardine which
the cat carries will not come to the dish except late or never, but I
have here a partridge in exchange.”
Don Modesto seized the partridge, thanked him, took leave of the
company, and went away, inveighing against cats.
During all this scene, Dolores had given the breast to her nursing
infant; she tried to hush him to sleep, cradling him in her arms and
singing to him:
“There high on Calvary, in their fresh retreats,
Woods of olives, wood of perfume meets;
A nightingale--four larks--whose breath,
Would warble forth a Saviour’s death.”
For those who suppress the circulation of poetry of the people, as the
child crushes with its hand the feeblest butterfly, it would be
difficult to say why larks and nightingales warble the death of Christ;
why the swallow plucked out the thorns of his crown; why the rosemary is
an object of veneration, in the belief that the Virgin dried the
swaddling-clothes of the infant Jesus on a bush of this plant? Why, or
rather how do they know that the willow is a tree of bad augury, since
Judas hung himself on a branch of this tree? Why does no misfortune ever
happen in a house if it has been perfumed with rosemary during Christmas
eve? Why in the flower which is called the _passion-flower_ are found
all the instruments of the passion of Christ? In truth, there are no
answers to these questions. The people do not possess them, nor demand
them. These beliefs have accumulated like the vague sounds of distant
music, without research into their origin, without analyzing their
authenticity.
“But, Don Frederico,” said Maria, while Stein was occupied with
reflections on the proceedings, “you have not told us how you find our
village.”
“I have seen nothing,” replied Stein, “save only the chapel of our Lord
of Good-Help.”
“Miraculous chapel, Don Frederico. Hold,” pursued the old woman, after
some instants of silence, “the only motive why I am not as much pleased
here as in the village is, that I cannot follow out my devotions. Yes,
Manuel, thy father, who had not been a soldier, thought like me. My poor
husband!--he is in heaven--my poor husband was brother of Rosaire of the
dawn; Rosaire who went out after midnight to pray for souls. Fatigued
with a long day’s work he slept profoundly; and precisely at midnight a
brother rang a bell, came to the door, and chanted:
‘Here is then the faithful bell!
It is not she the warnings tell;
Of thy parents ’tis the voice!
The cross’s foot then make thy choice;
Raise thee, my son, so full of zeal,
And prayerful in the chapel kneel.
On thy knees in the holy place,
For parents supplicate God’s grace.’
When thy father heard this chant, he felt no longer fatigue nor need of
sleep. In the twinkling of an eye he got up and followed the other
brother. It seems to me I yet hear him singing in the distance:
‘The Virgin raised the Sovereign crown,
And meekly laid the sceptre down;
Presenting them to Christ was seen,
Exclaiming--I no more am Queen.
If not held back thy wrath from o’er the human race,
Then is thy crown divine with too just rigor placed.’
Jesus answered her:
‘My mother!
Without thy grace so pure, and thy sweet hallowed prayer,
The thunderbolt had hurled the sinner to despair.’”
The children, who love so much to imitate what they see as at all great
or remarkable, undertook to sing in a beautiful tone the couplets of the
aurora:
“Hark! how the trumpet’s shrill-blast clarion sounds!
The voice of the Angel through Heaven resounds:
Jerusalem! within thy walls,
An infant’s foot triumphant falls;
What was the people’s homage in that hour?
What grand equipments decked the kingly bower?
The all-powerful whom Heaven had sent,
Rode on an ass which men had lent.”
“Don Frederico,” said Maria, after a moment’s silence, “in the world
which God has made, is it true that there have been men without faith?”
Stein was mute.
“Can you not cure the blindness of their intelligence, as you have cured
the eyes of Momo?” replied, with sadness, the good old woman, who
remained altogether pensive.
CHAPTER VII.
The following day Maria set off for the house of the invalid, in company
with Stein and Momo, foot-equerry to his grandmother, who travelled
mounted on the philosophic Golondrina. The animal, always good, gentle,
and docile, trotted on the road, the head lowered, ears depressed,
without making a single rough movement, except when he encountered a
thistle in proximity with his nostrils.
When they were arrived, Stein was astonished to find, in the middle of
this arid country, of a nature so dry and so sterile, a village so leafy
and so coquettish.
The sea had formed, between two great rocks, a little circular creek,
and surrounded by a coast of the finest sand, which appeared like a
plateau of crystal placed on a table of gold. Several rocks showed
themselves timidly, as if they wished to repose themselves, and be
seated on the tranquil shore. At one of them was made fast a fisherman’s
bark; balancing herself at the will of the waves, she seemed as
impatient as a horse reined in.
On one side of the rocks was elevated the fort of San Cristobal, crowned
by the peaks of wild figs, like the head of an old Druid adorned with
green oak-leaves.
The fisherman had constructed his cabin with the wrecked remains of his
vessel, which the sea had thrown on the coast; he had based all against
the rocks, which formed, in some sort, three stories of the habitation.
The roof was horizontal, and covered with _aquatica_, the first layer
of which, rotted by the rains, had given growth to a great quantity of
herbs and of flowers; so that in the autumn, when the dryness
disappeared with the heat of summer, the cabin appeared covered as with
a delicious garden.
When the persons just arrived entered the cabin, they found the
fisherman sad and cast down, seated near the fire, opposite to his
daughter; who, her hair in disorder, and falling down on both sides of
her pale face, bent up and shivering, her emaciated limbs enveloped in a
rag of brown flannel. She seemed to be not more than thirteen years of
age. The invalid turned, with an expression of but little kindliness,
her large, black, and sullen eyes upon the persons who entered, and
instantly sank down anew in the corner of the chimney.
“Pedro,” said Maria, “you forget your friends, but they do not forget
you. Will you tell me why the good God has given you a mouth? Could you
not have let me known of the illness of the little girl? If you had let
me known of it sooner, I had sooner come with this gentleman, who is
such a doctor as is seldom seen, and who in no time will cure your
daughter.”
Pedro Santalo rose brusquely, and advanced to Stein; he would speak to
him, but he was so overcome with emotion that he could not articulate a
single word, and he covered his face with his hands. He was a man
already advanced in life, his aspect sufficiently rude, and his form
colossal. His countenance, bronzed by the sun, was crowned by a gray
head of hair, thick and uncombed; his breast, red as that of an Ohio
Indian, was also covered with hair.
“Come, Pedro!” said Maria, from whose eyes the tears began to flow at
the sight of the poor father’s despair; “a man like you, big as a
church, a man they believe ready to devour infants uncooked, to be
discouraged thus without reason! Come! I see here nothing but what
appears solid.”
“Good mother Maria,” replied the fisherman, in a feeble voice, “I count,
with this one, five children in their tombs.”
“My God! and why thus lose courage? Remember the saint whose name you
bear, and who threw himself into the sea when he had lost the faith
which sustained him. I tell you that, with the grace of God, Don
Frederico will cure the child in as little time as you could call on
Jesus.”
Pedro sadly shook his head.
“How obstinate are these Catalans!” said Maria, with a little anger; and
passing before the fisherman, she approached the invalid: “Come,
Marisalada, come; rise up, daughter, that this gentleman may examine
you.”
Marisalada did not stir.
“Come, my daughter,” repeated the good woman; “you will see that he will
cure you as by enchantment.” At these words, she took the girl by the
arm, and wished to raise her up.
“I have no desire,” said the invalid, rudely disengaging herself from
the hand which held her.
“The daughter is as sweet as the father; ‘he who inherits steals not,’”
murmured Momo, who appeared at the door.
“It is her illness that renders her impatient,” added the father, to
exculpate his child.
Marisalada had an access of coughing. The fisherman wrung his hands with
grief.
“A fresh cold,” said Maria; “come, come, it is not a very extraordinary
thing. But then he will consent to what this child does; the cold she
takes, running, with naked feet and legs, on the rocks and on the ice.”
“She would do it,” replied Pedro.
“And why not give her healthy food--good soups, milk, eggs? But no, she
eats only fish.”
“She does not wish them,” replied the father, with dejection.
“She dies from negligence,” suggested Momo, who, with arms crossed, was
posted against the door-post.
“Will you put your tongue in your pocket!” said his grandma to him. She
returned towards Stein:
“Don Frederico, try and examine our invalid, as she will not move, for
she will let herself die rather than make a movement.”
Stein commenced by asking of the father some details of the illness of
his daughter. He then approached the young girl who was drowsy, he
remarked that the lungs were too compressed in their right cavity, and
were irritated by the oppression. The case was grave, the invalid was
feeble, from want of proper food; the cough was hard and dry, the fever
constant; the consumption indeed would not allow it to pause.
“Has she always had a taste for singing?” demanded the old woman during
the examination.
“She would sing crucified, like the bald mice,” said Momo, turning away
his head, that the wind would carry his hard speech, and that his
grandma could not hear him.
“The first thing to do,” said Stein, “is to forbid this girl to expose
herself to the rigors of the season.”
“Do you hear, my child?” said the father with anxiety.
“She must,” continued Stein, “wear shoes and dress warm.”
“If she will not?” cried the fisherman, rising suddenly, and opening a
box of cedar, from whence he took numerous objects of toilet.
“Nothing is wanting: all that I have and all that I can amass are hers.
Maria! my daughter! you will put on this clothing! Do this for the love
of heaven!--Mariquita, you see it is what the doctor orders.”
Marisalada, who was aroused by the noise made by her father, cast an
irritated look on Stein, and said to him in a sharp voice:
“Who governs me?”
“And say that they do not give this government to me, by means of a good
branch of wild olive!” murmured Momo.
“She must have,” continued Stein, “good nourishment, and substantial
soups.”
Maria made an expressive gesture of approbation at the same time.
“She should be nourished with milk diet, and chickens, and fresh eggs.”
“Did I not tell you so!” interrupted the old woman, exchanging a look
with Pedro: “Don Frederico is the best doctor in the world.”
“Take care that she does not sing,” remarked Stein.
“Am I never to listen to her again?” cried poor Pedro with grief.
“See, then, what a misfortune!” replied Maria. “Let her be cured, and
then she can sing night and day, like the ticking of a watch. But I
think it will be best to have her taken to me, for there is no one to
nurse her, nor any one who knows like me how to make good soup for her.”
“I can prove that,” said Stein, smiling, “and I assure you one might
set before a king a soup prepared by my good nurse.”
Maria never felt more happy.
“Thus, Pedro, it is useless talking of it; I will take her home.”
“Remain without her! no, no, it is impossible.”
“Pedro, Pedro, it is not thus we should love our children,” replied
Maria. “To love them is to do above all that which will benefit them.”
“So let it be!” replied the fisherman, rising with resolution; “I place
her in your hands, I confide her to this doctor’s care, and commend her
to the divine goodness.”
With difficulty could he pronounce these last words, which flowed
rapidly, as if he feared to recall his determination; and he went to
harness his ass.
“Don Frederico,” asked Maria, when they were alone with the invalid, who
remained drowsy, “is it not true, that, with God’s help, we will cure
her?”
“I hope so,” replied Stein; “I cannot tell you how much this poor father
interests me.”
Maria made a package of the linen which the fisherman had taken out of
the box, and Pedro came back leading the ass by the bridle. They placed
the invalid on the saddle: the young girl, enfeebled by the fever,
opposed no resistance. Before Maria had mounted Golondrina, who appeared
quite content to return in company with Urca (name given to a great
sea-fish, and which was that of Pedro’s ass), the fisherman took Maria
aside, and said to her, in trying to slip some pieces of gold in her
hand:
“This is all I could save from my shipwreck, take it, and give it to the
doctor, for all I have is for him who can give me back my daughter.”
“Keep your gold,” replied Maria, “and know, in the first place, it is
God who has conducted the doctor hither; in the second place--it is I.”
Maria pronounced these last words with a light tinge of vanity.
They commenced their journey.
“Do not stop, grandma,” said Momo, who walked behind; “however large may
be the convent, it must be filled with people. Eh! what? the cabin was
not good enough for the Princess Gaviota?”
“Momo,” replied the grandma, “mind your own affairs.”
“But what do you see in her? And what touches you in this wild Gaviota,
to take her thus under your care?”
“Momo, a proverb says, ‘Who is thy sister? thy nearest neighbor;’
another adds, ‘Wipe the nose of thy neighbor’s child, and take her to
thee.’ And here is the moral: ‘Treat thy neighbor as thyself.’”
“There is yet another proverb,” added Momo, “which says, ‘He is mad who
occupies himself about others.’ But it is of no use. You were obstinate
about raising the palm to _San Juan de Dios_.”
“You will not be the angel to aid me,” said Maria with sadness.
Dolores received the invalid with open arms, as approving the resolution
of her mother-in-law.
Pedro Santalo, who had accompanied his daughter, called the charitable
nurse before he returned, and, putting the pieces of gold in her hand,
said--
“This is to defray the expenses, and that she may want for nothing. As
to your care, God will recompense you.”
The good old woman hesitated an instant, took the gold, and said--
“It is well, she shall want for nothing. Depart without uneasiness,
Pedro, your daughter is in good hands.”
The poor father went away hurriedly, and did not stop till he reached
the coast. Then he returned to the side of the convent, and wept with
bitterness.
Maria said to Momo: “Bestir yourself. Go to the village, and bring me a
ham from Serrano’s, who will please send me a good one, when he knows it
is for a poor sick girl. Bring me at the same time a pound of sugar and
a quart of almonds.”
“Just so, always sent about! Throw away every thing you possess,” cried
Momo. “Think you they will give me all this on credit, and for my
handsome face?”
“Here is to pay for them,” replied the grandma, and she placed in his
hand a piece of gold of four _duros_ (about 4 dollars).
“Gold!” cried Momo, stupefied: for the first time in his life he saw
this metal in the form of money. “From what demons have you snatched
this?”
“What is it to you?” replied Maria; “don’t worry yourself.”
“It needs no more than this,” replied Momo, “that I serve as domestic to
this magpie, this accursed Gaviota! I will not go.”
“Go, boy, at once, and nimbly too.”
“Ha! Well--no, I will not go; I will not annoy myself,” repeated Momo.
“José,” said Maria, on seeing the shepherd go out, “do you go to the
village?”
“Yes, Señora; what orders have you for me?”
The good woman gave him the commission, and added--
“This Momo has a bad heart, and will not go. And I have not the strength
to complain to his father, who would make him march quickly, and caress
him in a manner to break his bones.”
“Yes, yes, do every thing to take care of this crow who will tear out
your eyes,” said Momo. “You will receive payment in the trouble she will
give you; if it is not so now, it will be in time.”
CHAPTER VIII.
A month after the scenes we have described, Marisalada was more
sensible, and did not show the least desire to return to her father’s.
Stein was completely re-established; his good-natured character, his
modest inclinations, his natural sympathies, attached him every day more
to the peaceful habits of the simple and generous persons among whom he
dwelt. He felt relieved from his former discouragements, and his mind
was invigorated; he was cordially resigned to his present existence, and
to the men with whom he associated.
One afternoon, Stein, leaning against an angle of the convent which
faced the sea, admired the grand spectacle which the opening of the
winter season presented to his view. Above his head floated a triple bed
of sombre clouds, forced along by the impetuous wind. Those lower down,
black and heavy, seemed like the cupola of an ancient cathedral in
ruins, threatening at each instant to sink down. When reduced to water,
they fell to the ground. There was visible the second bed, less sombre
and lighter, defying the wind which chased them, and separating at
intervals sought other clouds, more coquettish and more vaporous, which
they hurried into space, as if they feared to soil their white robes by
coming in contact with their companions.
“Are you a sponge, Don Frederico, so to like to receive all the water
which falls from heaven?” demanded José, the shepherd, of Stein. “Let us
enter, the roofs are made expressly for such nights as these. My sheep
would give much to shelter themselves under some tiles.”
Stein and the shepherd entered, and found the family assembled around
the hearth.
At the left of the chimney, Dolores, seated on a low chair, held her
infant, who, turning his back to his mother, supported himself on the
arm which encircled him, like the balustrade of a balcony; he moved
about incessantly his little legs and his small bare arms, laughing, and
uttering joyous cries addressed to his brother Anis. This brother,
gravely seated opposite the fire, on the edge of an empty earthen pan,
remained stiff and motionless, fearing that, losing his equilibrium, he
would be tossed into the said earthen pan, an accident which his mother
had predicted.
Maria was sewing at the right side of the chimney; her grand-daughters
had for seats dry aloe-leaves, excellent seats, light, solid, and sure.
Nearly under the drapery of the chimney-piece slept the hairy Palomo,
and a cat, the grave Morrongo, tolerated from necessity, but remaining,
by common consent, at a respectful distance from each other.
In the middle of this group there was a little low table, on which
burned a lamp of four jets; close to the table the brother Gabriel was
seated, making baskets of the palm-tree; Momo was engaged in repairing
the harness of the good “Swallow” (the ass); and Manuel, cutting up
tobacco. On the fire was conspicuous a stew-pan full of Malaga potatoes,
white wine, honey, cinnamon, and cloves. The humble family waited with
impatience till the perfumed stew should be sufficiently cooked.
“Come on! Come on!” cried Maria, when she saw her guest and the shepherd
enter. “What are you doing outside in weather like this? ’Tis said a
hurricane has come to destroy the world. Don Frederico, here, here!
come near the fire. Do you know that the invalid has supped like a
princess, and that at present she sleeps like a queen! Her cure
progresses well--is it not so, Don Frederico?”
“Her recovery surpasses my hopes.”
“My soups!” added Maria with pride.
“And the ass’s milk,” said brother Gabriel quietly.
“There is no doubt,” replied Stein, “and she ought to continue to take
it.”
“I oppose it not,” said Maria, “because ass’s milk is like the
turnip--if it does no good it does no harm.”
“Ah! how pleasant it is here!” said Stein, caressing the children. “If
one could only live in the enjoyment of the present, without thought of
the future!”
“Yes, yes, Don Frederico,” joyfully cried Manuel, “‘_Media vida es la
candela; pan y vino, la otra media._’” (Half of life is the candle;
bread and wine are the other half)
“And what necessity have you to dream of the future?” asked Maria. “Will
the morrow make us the more love to-day? Let us occupy ourselves with
to-day, so as not to render painful the day to come.”
“Man is a traveller,” replied Stein, “he must follow his route.”
“Certainly,” replied Maria, “man is a traveller; but if he arrives in a
quarter where he finds himself well off, he would say, ‘We are well
here, put up our tents.’”
“If you wish us to lose our evening by talking of travelling,” said
Dolores, “we will believe that we have offended you, or that you are not
pleased here.”
“Who speaks of travelling in the middle of December?” demanded Manuel.
“Goodness of heaven! Do you not see what disasters there are every day
on the sea? hear the singing of the wind! Will you embark in this
weather, as you were embarked in the war of Navarre, for, as then, you
would come out mortified and ruined.”
“Besides,” added Maria, “the invalid is not yet entirely cured.”
“Ah! there,” said Dolores, besieged by the children, “if you will not
call off these creatures, the potatoes will not be cooked until the last
judgment.”
The grandmother rolled the spinning-wheel to the corner, and called the
little infants to her.
“We will not go,” they replied with one voice, “if you will not tell us
a story.”
“Come, I will tell you one,” said the good old woman.
The children approached. Anis took up his position on the empty earthen
pot; and the grandma commenced a story to amuse the little children.
She had hardly finished the relation of this story, when a great noise
was heard.
The dog rose up, pointed his ears, and put himself on the defensive. The
cat bristled her hair, and prepared to fly. But the succeeding laugh
very soon was frightful: it was Anis, who fell asleep during the recital
of his grandmother. It happened that the prophecy of his mother was
fulfilled as to his falling into the earthen pan, where all his little
person disappeared, except his legs which stuck out like plants of a new
species. His mother, rendered impatient, seized with one hand the collar
of his vest, raised him out of this depth, and, despite his resistance,
held him suspended in the air for some time--in the style represented in
those card dancing-jacks, which move arms and legs when you pull the
thread which holds them.
As his mother scolded him, and everybody laughed at him, Anis, who had a
brave spirit, a thing natural in an infant, burst out into a groan
which had nothing of timidity in it.
“Don’t weep, Anis,” said Paca, “and I will give you two chestnuts that I
have in my pocket.”
“True?” demanded Anis.
Paca took out the two chestnuts, and gave them to him. Instead of tears,
they saw promptly shine with joy the two rows of white teeth of the
young boy.
“Brother Gabriel,” said Maria, “did you not speak to me of a pain in
your eyes? Why do you work this evening?”
“I said truly,” answered brother Gabriel; “but Don Frederico gave me a
remedy which cured me.”
“Don Frederico must know many remedies, but he does not know that one
which never misses its effect,” said the shepherd.
“If you know it, have the extreme kindness to inform me of it,” replied
Stein.
“I am unable to tell you,” replied the shepherd. “I know that it exists,
and that is all.”
“Who knows it then?” demanded Stein.
“The swallows,” said José.
“The swallows?”
“Yes, sir. It is an herb which is called _pito-real_, which nobody sees
or knows except the swallows: when their little ones lose their sight
they rub their eyes with the _pito-real_, and cure them. This herb has
also the virtue to cut iron--every thing it touches.”
“What absurdities this José swallows without chewing, like a real
shark!” interrupted Manuel laughing. “Don Frederico, do you comprehend
what he said and believes as an article of faith? He believes and says
that snakes never die.”
“No, they never die,” replied the shepherd. “When they see death coming
they escape from their skin, and run away. With age they become
serpents; little by little they are covered with scales and wings: they
become dragons, and return to the desert. But you, Manuel, you do not
wish to believe any thing. Do you deny also that the lizard is the enemy
of the woman, and the friend of man? If you do not believe it, ask then
of Miguel.”
“He knows it?”
“Without doubt, by experience.”
“Whence did he learn it?” demanded Stein.
“He was sleeping in the field,” replied José. “A snake glided near him.
A lizard, which was in the furrow, saw it coming, and presented himself
to defend Miguel. The lizard, which was of large form, fought with the
snake. But Miguel not awaking, the lizard pressed his tail against the
nose of the sleeper, and ran off as if his paws were on fire. The lizard
is a good little beast, who has good desires; he never sleeps in the sun
without descending the wall to kiss the earth.”
When the conversation commenced on the subject of swallows, Paca said to
Anis, who was seated among his sisters, with his legs crossed like a
Grand Turk in miniature, “Anis, do you know what the swallows say?”
“I? No. They have never spoken to me.”
“Attend then: they say (the little girl imitated the chirping of
swallows, and began to sing with volubility),
‘To eat and to drink!
And to loan when you may;
But ’tis madness to think
This loan to repay.
Flee, flee, pretty swallow, the season demands,
Fly swift on the wing, and reach other lands.’”
“Is it for that they are sold?”
“For that,” affirmed his sister.
During this time, Dolores, carrying her infant in one hand, with the
other spread the table, served the potatoes, and distributed to each one
his part. The children ate from her plate, and Stein remarked that she
did not even touch the dish she had prepared with so much care.
“You do not eat, Dolores?” he said to her.
“Do you not know the saying,” she replied laughing, “‘He who has
children at his side will never die of indigestion,’ Don Frederico? What
_they_ eat nourishes _me_.”
Momo, who found himself beside this group, drew away his plate, so that
his brothers would not have the temptation to ask him for its contents.
His father, who remarked it, said to him--
“Don’t be avaricious; it is a shameful vice: be not avaricious; avarice
is an abject vice. Know that one day an avaricious man fell into the
river. A peasant who saw it, ran to pull him out; he stretched out his
arm, and cried to him, ‘_Give me your hand!_’ What had he to give? A
miser--give! Before giving him any thing he allowed himself to be swept
down by the current. By chance he floated near to a fisherman; ‘_Take my
hand!_’ he said to him. As it was a question of taking, our man was
willing, and he escaped danger.”
“It is not such wit you should relate to your son, Manuel,” said Maria.
“You ought to set before him, for example, the bad rich man, who would
give to the unfortunate neither a morsel of bread, nor a glass of water.
‘God grant,’ answered the beggar to him, ‘that all that you touch
changes to this silver which you so hold to.’ The wish of the beggar was
realized. All that the miser had in his house was changed into metals
as hard as his heart. Tormented by hunger and thirst, he went into the
country, and having perceived a fountain of pure water, clear as
crystal, he approached with longing to taste it; but the moment his lips
touched it, the water was turned to silver. He would take an orange, and
the orange was changed to gold. He thus died in a frenzy of rage and
fury, cursing what he had desired.”
Manuel, the strongest-minded man in the assembly, bowed down his head.
“Manuel,” his mother said to him, “you imagine that we ought not to
believe but what is a fundamental article, and that credulity is common
only to the imbecile. You are mistaken: men of good sense are
credulous.”
“But, my mother, between belief and doubt there is a medium.”
“And why,” replied the good old woman, “laugh at faith, which is the
first of all virtues? How will it appear to you, if I say to you: ‘I
have given birth to you, I have educated you, I have guided your
earliest steps--I have fulfilled my obligations!’ Is the love of a
mother nothing but an obligation! What say you?”
“I would reply that you are not a good mother.”
“Well, my son, apply that to what we were speaking of: he who does not
believe except from obligation, and only for that, cannot cease to
believe without being a renegade, a bad Christian; as I would be a bad
mother, if I loved you only from obligation.”
“Brother Gabriel,” interrupted Dolores, “why will you not taste my
potatoes?”
“It is a fast day,” replied brother Gabriel.
“Nonsense! There is no longer convent, nor rules, nor fasts,” cavalierly
said Manuel, to induce the poor old man to participate in the general
repast. “Besides, you have accomplished sixty years: put away these
scruples, and you will not be damned for having eaten our potatoes.”
“Pardon me,” replied brother Gabriel, “but I ought to fast as formerly,
inasmuch as the Father Prior has not given me a dispensation.”
“Well done, brother Gabriel!” added Maria; “Manuel shall not be the
demon tempter with his rebellious spirit, to incite you to gormandize.”
Upon this, the good old woman rose up, and locked up in a closet the
plate which Dolores had served to the monk--
“I will keep it here for you until to-morrow morning, brother Gabriel.”
Supper finished, the men, whose habit was always to keep their hats on
in the house, uncovered, and Maria said grace.
CHAPTER IX.
Marisalada was already convalescent, as if nature had desired to
recompense the excellent treatment of Stein, and the charitable care of
the good Maria. She was decently dressed; and her hair, well combed and
gathered behind her neck, bore evidence of the attention which Dolores
had shown in putting her _coiffure_ in order.
One day when Stein was reading in his chamber, whose window overlooked
the grand court where the children amused themselves in company with
Marisalada, he heard her imitate the songs of various birds with such
rare perfection, that he closed his book to admire this really
extraordinary talent.
Soon after commenced one of those recitations so common in Spain, and
which consist of playing and singing at the same time. Marisalada took
the part of the mother; Pepe that of a young cavalier who came to demand
of her the hand of her daughter; the mother refused him; the young man
would take possession of her by force of his love; and all this
dialogue, composed of couplets, was sung with exquisite melody.
The book fell from the hands of Stein, who, like all good Germans,
passionately loved music.
Never had so beautiful a voice struck his ear. It was a metal pure and
ringing like crystal, smooth and flexible as silk. Stein hardly dared to
breathe, so much did he fear to lose a single note.
“You are there, all ears,” said Maria, who entered the chamber unknown
to Stein. “Have I not warned you that she is a canary set free?”
And upon this she descended to the court and asked Marisalada to sing
her a song.
She refused, with her accustomed tartness.
At this moment Momo entered, singularly dressed and driving before him
the ass laden with charcoal. He had his hands and face bedaubed and
black as ink.
“_El Rey Melchor! El Rey Melchor!_” cried Marisalada on seeing him. “_El
Rey Melchor! El Rey Melchor!_” repeated the children.
“If I had nothing else to do,” replied Momo furiously, “but to sing like
you, great mountebank, I would not be daubed from head to foot.
Fortunately, Don Frederico has forbidden you to sing, and you will not
stun my ears.”
Marisalada, as a response, struck out in a song in her loudest tones.
The Andalusian people have at their command an infinite quantity of
songs. There are the _boleros_, now joyous, now sad; the _ole_, the
_fandango_, the _cano_, so pretty and so difficult to execute; and many
others, among which is distinguished the _romance_. The tone of the
romance is monotonous, and we dare not affirm that this song, receiving
the honors of written notation, could satisfy the dilettante and the
melodrama. But its charm, or, if you will, its enchanting grace,
consists in the modulations of the voice in singing, as it were to cast
out certain notes, to blend them, to _balance_ them, so to say, very
softly, in raising or lowering the tone, in swelling it or allowing it
to die. It is thus that the _romance_, composed of a number of notes
strongly bound, presents the great difficulties of expression, and the
purity of execution.
The song belongs so essentially to the peasantry, that the common class
of the people alone, and very few among them, attain perfection. Those
who sing well appear to sing by intuition. When towards evening, in the
country, one hears at a distance a fine voice singing the _romance_ with
a melancholy full of originality, he feels an extraordinary emotion,
which can only be compared to that produced in Germany by the sounds of
the postilion’s cornet, so deliciously repeated by the echoes in the
magnificent forests, and on the splendid lakes. The words of the
_romance_ refer generally to some history of the Moors, or recount
either pious legends or the sad exploits of brigands. That ancient and
celebrated romance which we have received from our fathers like a
melodious tradition, has been more lasting as to some of its notes than
all the grandeur of Spain achieved by her cannon, and sustained by the
mines of Peru. There are still many other popular songs, very pretty,
very expressive, of which the music is specially adapted to words.
Witness that which was sung by Marisalada, and which we transcribe here
in all its simplicity.
“A cursed cavalier
Loved a noble dame;
Who to his love gave ear,
Echoing his flame.
“Her manor, happy once,
Silent entered he;
And in her lord’s absence,
Found security.
“And now the wrapt embrace
Seemed from danger free;
When knelled the master’s voice,
‘Open quick to me.’
“He gayly cried, ‘Sweet dove!
Let me thee embrace;
Fever is it, or love,
Palors now thy face?’
“‘Scold me thou would’st again,
Fear then pales me thus;
The key? Let me explain?
Thy treasure key is lost.’
“‘Gold is preferred to steel,
Then still be calm, my dear;
But say why, if you will,
Is this proud courser here?’
“‘Yours is yon race horse, lord,
Presented by papa;
Who asks, with knightly word,
Your presence shortly there.’
“‘Your father is most kind,
Such noble gift to make;
This pistol, too, I find!
Is there not some mistake?’
“‘’Tis yours, please comprehend,
From him: he bade me say,
He hopes you will attend
My sister’s wedding day.’
“‘Contemptuous of law,
Thus in my wedded bed;
Who is the wretch to dare,
My fatal ire to goad?’
“‘My youngest sister ’tis,
Whom father to me sent;
To share with me my bliss,
And see how sweet life went.’
“But suddenly the truth,
Flashed on the husband’s mind;
‘Father! take back thy Ruth,
I but a traitress find!
“‘No longer is she mine,
Betwixt us is a gulf;
But vain ’tis to repine,
Be man! avenge thyself.’
“The wife paid for her wrong,
At the sharp poignard’s point;
And the false knight was hung,
The only death he’d grant.”
Marisalada had scarcely finished singing this ballad, when Stein, who
had an excellent ear for music, took his flute and repeated, note by
note, the song he had just heard. At this the young girl nearly fainted
with astonishment; she looked around on all sides to discover whence
came this echo so pure and faithful.
“It was not an echo,” cried the little girls, “it was Don Frederico, who
whistled in a reed pierced with holes.”
Marisalada then quietly entered the chamber of Stein, and began to
listen with the greatest attention, her body bent forward, a smile on
her lips, and her soul in her eyes.
Within this instant the rude ferocity of the fisherman’s daughter was
changed, and her regard for Stein induced a certain confidence and
docility which caused the greatest surprise to all the family.
Maria advised Stein to profit by the ascendency he obtained day by day
over the mind of Marisalada, to engage her to be instructed and employ
her time in learning the law of God, and to try and become a good
Christian; a woman of sense and reason; a good manager.
The grandmother added, that to obtain the end proposed, to bend the
entire character of Marisalada, and to make her abandon her bad habits,
the best thing would be to pray the Señora Rosita, the mistress of the
school, to be so good as to take charge of her, because she was a very
honest woman, fearing God, and very expert in all her handy-work.
Stein much approved of this idea, and obtained the consent of
Marisalada. He promised, in return, to go and see her every day, and
play airs on the flute to divert her.
The disposition of the young girl awakened in her an extraordinary taste
for the study of music, and the first impulse was given her by the
ability of Stein.
When Momo found that Marisalada had put herself under the tuition of
Rosa Mistica, to learn there to sew, to sweep, to cook, and above all,
as he said, to have judgment; when he knew that it was the doctor who
had decided this, he declared he believed what Don Frederico had
recounted respecting his country, where there were certain men whom all
the mice followed when they heard a whistle.
Since the death of her mother, Señorita Rosa had established a school
for little girls. School is the name which they give in villages; but
the school in cities bears a more pompous title, and it is called an
academy. The little village children attend school from the morning
until midday; all the information is composed of Christian doctrine and
of sewing. In cities they learn to read, to write, to embroider, and to
sketch. It is true that these schools cannot create the wells of
science, nor become the nurseries of artists, or produce models of an
education equal to that of a _mujer emancipada_; but in return they
produce ordinarily good workers and excellent mothers of families, which
is still better.
The invalid perfectly cured. Stein urged upon her father that he would
confide his daughter for some time, to the honest woman who would
replace the mother she had been deprived of, and who would instruct her
in the duties of her sex.
When it was proposed to the Señorita Rosa to admit to her house the
_indomitable_ daughter of the fisherman, her first reply was decidedly
negative, as she was accustomed to make, in such circumstances, to
persons of her character.
Notwithstanding, she finished by consenting, when she was made to
understand the good effects expected to result from this work of
charity. It is impossible to recount all that the unfortunate
schoolmistress suffered during the time she had Marisalada in charge. On
one side were mockeries and rebellion; on the other, sermons without
profit, and exhortations without result. Two causes exhausted the
patience of Rosa; with her patience was not an inborn virtue, but
laboriously acquired.
Marisalada had succeeded in organizing a kind of conspiracy in the
little battalion commanded by Rosa. This conspiracy burst forth one fine
morning, timid and undecided at first, then audacious and walking with a
lofty head. Thus was the event:
“The rose mallow does not please me,” suddenly said Marisalada.
“Silence!” cried the mistress, whose severe discipline forbade
conversation during school-hours.
Silence was re-established.
Five minutes after a voice, sharp and insolent, was heard:
“The moon-roses do not please me.”
“No one asked your opinion,” said the Señorita Rosa, believing that this
declaration had been provoked by Marisalada.
Five minutes after, another conspirator said, on picking up her thimble
which had fallen--
“I do not like white roses.”
“What does it signify?” cried Rosa, whose black eye shone like a beacon.
“You mock me!”
“Moss roses do not please me,” said one of the smallest girls, hastily
hiding under the table.
“Nor the passion roses, me.”
“Nor the roses of Jericho, me.”
“Nor the yellow roses, me.”
The strong and clear voice of Marisalada drowned all other voices--
“I cannot bear dry roses,” cried she.
“I cannot bear dry roses,” repeated all the scholars in chorus.
Rosa Mistica, who at the commencement was only astonished, rose up on
seeing so much insolence, ran to the kitchen, and returned armed with a
broom.
At sight of this all the conspirators fled like a flock of birds. Rosa
remained alone, let fall her broom and crossed her arms.
“Patience, Lord!” she exclaimed, after having done every thing possible
to subdue her emotion. “I will support a sobriquet with resignation, as
thou, Lord, supported thy cross; but I yet lack that crown of thorns.
Thy will be done!”
Perhaps she might have decided to pardon Marisalada this escapade, but
the adventure which soon after followed obliged her to send her away.
The son of the barber, Ramon Perez, a great amateur of the guitar, came
every night to touch the chords of his guitar and sing amorous couplets
under the strongly fastened windows of the devotee.
“Don Modesto,” said she to him one day, “when you hear this bird of
night, Ramon, whose voice wounds your hearing, do me the kindness to go
out and order him to carry his music elsewhere.”
“But, Rosita,” replied Don Modesto, “would you that I get on bad terms
with this eccentric fellow, when his father (may God repay him!) has
shaved me for nothing since my arrival in Villamar? And, see how it is.
_I_ like to listen to it, because none can deny that he draws from his
voice and instrument modulations of excellent taste.”
“I congratulate you,” said Rosa. “It is possible that your ears are
proof against a bomb-shell. If it pleases you, it is not convenient to
me that he comes and sings under the windows of an honest woman. It
produces neither honor nor profit.”
The physiognomy of Don Modesto expressed a mute answer divided into
three parts. In the first place--astonishment, which seemed to say,
What! Ramon make love to my hostess! In the second place--doubt; as if
he had said, Is it possible? Lastly--the certainty embodied in these
phrases: The thing is sure; Ramon is audacious.
After this reflection, Rosa continued:
“You might cool yourself in passing from the heat of your bed to the
fresh sea air; you had better remain quiet, and it is I who will say to
this magpie, Do you wish to divert yourself? then buy yourself a doll.”
Precisely at midnight was heard the sounds of a guitar, and a voice
which sang--
“The black of thy black hair I love,
Believe me, much more fully,
Than ivory whiteness e’er can prove,
Or the majestic lily.”
“What folly!” cried Rosa Mistica, springing out of her bed. “See how he
continues this annoyance which he sings so profitlessly.”
The voice continued:
“To thy prayers, to the church so superb,
All resplendent thou seemest in vain;
Tread thou gracefully then the light herb,
For the herb will be green soon again.”
“God assist us!” murmured Rosa, in putting on her third petticoat: “he
mixes up the Church with his profane couplets, and those who hear him
will say that he sings thus to insult me. This beardless barber! does he
believe he can mock me? It required only that.”
Rosa entered into the saloon, and caught a view of Marisalada, who,
leaning against the shutter, listened to the singer with all the
attention she was capable of. Then she made the sign of the cross,
exclaiming--
“And she is not yet thirteen years old! There are no more children.”
Taking her scholar by the arm, she drew her away from the window, and
placed herself there at the moment when Ramon powerfully touched his
guitar, and strained his throat to entone the following couplet:
“My loved one to the window came,
Now all around here is obscure;
But thy bright eyes will soon illume,
For love will be the Cynosure.”[3]
Then the music of the guitar continued the air with more vehemence and
ardor than ever.
“It is I who will lighten thee with a torch of hell!” cried Rosa
Mistica, in a sharp and angry voice. “Libertine! Profaner! Everlasting
and insupportable singer!”
Ramon Perez, recovered from his first surprise, set off to run lighter
than a buck, and without casting a single look behind.
This was the decisive _coup_. Marisalada was sent back to her room, in
spite of the timid efforts at reconciliation tendered in her favor by
Don Modesto.
“Señor,” replied Rosita to her guest, “charges are charges, and while
this shameless girl is under my responsibility, I must render account of
her actions to God and to men; each one has enough of his own sins,
without charging himself or herself, in addition, with those of others.
You view it otherwise, she is a creature who will never follow the good
path. When she is pointed to the right, she turns always to the left.”
CHAPTER X.
Stein had inhabited his peaceful retreat during three years. He had
adopted the customs of the country in which he had found himself; he
lived, day after day, or, in other terms, according to the counsels of
his good hostess Maria, who said that the morrow should not so disquiet
us as to lose the present day, and that we should occupy us with but one
thing, viz., that to-day should not make us lose to-morrow.
During those three years, the young doctor had been in correspondence
with his family. His parents had died while he was with the army of
Navarre; his sister Charlotte was married to a farmer in easy
circumstances, who had made of his wife’s two brothers cultivators--not
much instructed, but handy and assiduous at their work. Stein,
therefore, believed himself free and sole arbiter of his fate.
He devoted himself to the education of the young invalid, who owed her
life to him, and although he cultivated a soil ungrateful and sterile,
he succeeded, by patience, to ingraft on her mind the elements of a
preliminary education. But what surpassed his expectations was the
development of the musical faculties, really extraordinary, with which
nature had endowed the fisherman’s daughter. Her voice was incomparable,
and Stein, who was a good musician, could easily and surely direct her,
as one trains the branches of the vine, which are at once flexible and
vigorous, strong and elastic.
But the master had a heart soft and tender, and a craving for confidence
which turned to blindness. He was devoted to his scholar, stimulated by
the exalted love of the fisherman for his daughter, and by the
admiration of the good Maria for Marisalada. Stein and his scholar
possessed a certain powerful communicative sympathy, which could
exercise its influence upon a soul frank and open, candid and
good-humored as that of the young German. He then persuaded Pedro
Santalo that his daughter was an angel, and Maria, that she was a
prodigy. Stein was one of those men who could assist at a masked ball
without convincing himself that under these absurd masks, under these
caricatures of painted cardboard, there were other physiognomies and
other faces--the work of nature, in one word. And if impassioned
affection blinded Santalo, if extreme goodness of soul blinded Maria,
both succeeded in putting a bandage over the eyes of the good doctor.
But that which bewitched, above all, our hero, was the pure, sweet,
expressive, and eloquent voice of his scholar.
“It must be,” he said to himself, “that she who expresses in a manner so
admirable, sentiments the most sublime, must be gifted with a soul full
of elevation and tenderness.”
Like as the grain of corn, in the fruitful soil, germinates and takes
root before the stem sprouts above the ground, so this love, so calm and
true, took root in the heart of Stein: love which he felt without having
yet defined it.
Marisalada, on her part, was equally attached to Stein, not because she
was grateful to him for his attentions, but that she appreciated his
excellent qualities, and because she comprehended his great superiority
of soul and intelligence: nor yet even because she obeyed an attractive
charm which imparted love to the person who inspired it; but because
that the musician, the master who had initiated her in the art, felt,
himself, all these sentiments of gratitude and admiration. The isolation
in which she lived tended to put far away any other object that could
excite her preference.
Don Modesto was not of an age to figure in this tournament of love. Momo
was not only disqualified by his extreme ugliness, but he preserved all
his hatred for Marisalada, never ceasing to call her Gaviota, and she
had for him the greatest contempt. Certainly gallants were not wanting
in the village; to commence with the barber, who was obstinate in his
sighs after Marisalada; but no one would oppose Stein.
This tranquil state of things had continued three springs and three
winters, which had glided by like three days and three nights, when that
came to pass which we will now relate.
An intrigue (who could have predicted it?) dawned on the peaceful
village of Villamar.
The promoter and the chief (who would have thought it?) was the good
Maria. The confidant (who will not be astonished?) was Don Modesto!
Although it was an indiscretion, or, the better to express it, a
baseness to watch, listening to the conspirators hidden behind that
orange-tree, whose trunk is still solid, while the flowers are withering
and the leaves falling--image of the resignation which rests in the
heart when joy is fled, when hopes are vanished; listening to a
conversation, which, in reconcilable secrecy, held the two accomplices,
while brother Gabriel, who is a thousand miles off and all near to the
speakers, was busy in binding up the lettuces to make them white and
tender.
“It is not an idea that I have, Don Modesto,” said the instigatress, “it
is a reality. Not to see it, is to have no eyes. Don Frederico loves
Marisalada, who regards the doctor no more than a bundle of straw.”
“Good Maria, who thinks of love?” replied Don Modesto, who, all his
life, calm and tranquil, had not seemed to realize the eternal, classic,
and invariable axiom of the inseparable alliance of Mars and Cupid. “Who
thinks of love?” repeated Don Modesto, in the same tone as if he had
said--
“Who thinks of shearing a tambourine?”
“The young people, Don Modesto, the young people; and if it were not so,
the world would come to an end. But the case is thus: we must give a
spur to these young folks; they get on too slowly. For two years our man
has loved his nightingale, as he calls her; that is evident in his
looks, and as for me, I see it clearly. You who are a considerable
personage, and whom Don Frederico loves so much, you ought to brisk up a
little this affair, giving him good advice for their good and ours.”
“Dispense with me, Maria,” replied Don Modesto. “Ramon Perez is an
obstacle; we are friends, and I would not counteract his projects. He
shaves me for my good appearances, and to thwart his interests, Maria,
would be, on my part, a bad action. He sees with much pain that
Marisalada does not love him, and he has become so thin and yellow that
he is frightful. The other day he said that if he cannot marry
Marisalada he will break his guitar, and that, no longer able to become
a monk, he will become a rebel. You see, good Maria, that in every way I
will compromise myself if I mix in this affair.”
“Señor,” said Maria, “do you take for cash in hand what lovers sing?
Ramon Perez, the poor little thing! is not capable of killing a
sparrow, and you believe he will attack Christians? But take this into
consideration: if Don Frederico marries he will remain with us always.
What a happy chance will it not be for everybody? I assure you that when
he talks of leaving us I feel all over _goose-flesh_. And the young
girl, what a magnificent position for her! For you must know that Don
Frederico gains a great deal of money. When he attended the son of the
alcalde, Don Perfecto, he gave him a hundred _reals_, which shone like a
hundred stars. What a beautiful couple they will make, my commandant!”
“I do not say nay, Maria,” replied Don Modesto; “but do not force me to
play a part in this affair, and leave me to preserve a strict
neutrality. I have not two faces, I have only that one over which the
barber passes his razor--it is my only one.”
At this moment Marisalada entered the garden. She was certainly no
longer the young girl we had known, dishevelled and badly clothed. She
came every morning to the convent, _coiffured_ with great care, and
neatly dressed. Neither affection for those who inhabited it, nor the
gratitude she owed, attracted her to this place. It was but the desire
to hear music, and to receive her lessons from Stein. Beyond this,
_ennui_ drove her from her cabin, where she had for society only her
father who did not much divert her.
“And Don Frederico?” she said on entering.
“He has not yet returned from visiting his patients,” answered Maria.
“To-day he has a dozen children to vaccinate. What an extraordinary
thing, Don Modesto! He draws the _pus_, as you call it, from the teat of
a cow: the cows have a counter-poison to oppose the small-pox! and it
must be so, since Don Frederico has said it.”
“Nothing is more true,” continued Don Modesto, “than that it was a Swiss
who discovered it. When I was at Gaëte I have seen the Swiss who
constituted the Pope’s guard, but neither of them could tell me who was
the author of the discovery.”
“If I were his Holiness,” pursued Maria, “I would reward the inventor by
a plenary indulgence. Seat yourself, my dear, I am dying with desire to
see you.”
“No! I am going.”
“Where do you wish to go?--no one loves you better than we do here.”
“What am I to do when people love me? What can I do since Don Frederico
is not here?”
“What is that? You only come here then for Don Frederico, little
ingrate?”
“Why not? why should I come? to find myself with Momo?”
“Then you love Don Frederico much?” hazarded the good old woman.
“I love him; and if it were not for him I would never put foot inside
these doors, for fear of encountering that demon Momo, whose tongue
resembles the sting of a wasp.”
“And Ramon Perez?” mischievously demanded Maria, as if she would
convince Don Modesto that his _protégé_ might give up his hopes.
Marisalada burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“If this _Raton_ (_he-mouse_) Perez--Momo had given the young barber
this _sobriquet_--happens to fall into the porridge-pot, I will not be
the ant who will sing or weep over him: less still will I be she who
will listen to his singing; for his singing attacks my nervous system,
as Don Frederico expresses it, which he assures me is now more
stretched than the strings of a guitar. You shall see how this Raton
Perez sings.”
Marisalada rapidly took a leaf of aloe, which lay on the ground among
those which served brother Gabriel as screens to protect, in their first
growth, the tomato plants against the attacks of the north wind. She
placed this leaf between her arms in the manner of a guitar, and began
to imitate with a grotesque air the gestures of Ramon Perez, with a
talent most perfect for imitation; then she sang this couplet with
strong trills:
“Young meagre Minstrel without gladness,
What have you there? why this distress, why these deep sighs?
Is it the cause of this dire sadness,
That on too high a castle you have cast your eyes?”
“Yes,” said Modesto, who remembered the serenades at the door of Rosita,
“this Ramon has always had grand pretensions.”
The events could not persuade Modesto that these serenades were not
designed for Rosita. From thence but one idea entered the head of this
man; it was, that if she fell into a love snare, he himself could not
extricate her. The calibre of his intelligence was so straitened, and so
invariably fixed, that as soon as an idea penetrated his brain it became
set, and remained there for life.
“I go,” said Marisalada, throwing the leaf of aloe in such way that it
fell with force against brother Gabriel, who, on his knees, and with his
back turned, attached his hundred and twenty-fifth knot.
“Jesus!” cried out brother Gabriel, turning around frightened. Then,
without uttering another word, he again set to work to tie up his
lettuces.
“What aiming!” said Marisalada, laughing. “Don Modesto, take me for
artilleryman when you obtain cannon for your fort.”
“Such things are not gracious; they are in bad taste, which, you must
know, please me in no way,” replied Maria a little coldly. “Say to me
what you like, but as to brother Gabriel, trouble not his peace, it is
the only good left to him.”
“Do not get angry,” replied the Gaviota, “you well know that brother
Gabriel is not made of glass.” Then, said she, making a courteous
reverence, “My commandant, say to Rosa Mistica that she transfer her
school to your fort, when it has some 24-pounders, that she may be well
defended against the snares of the demon. I must go, because Don
Frederico does not come; I am disposed to believe that he is vaccinating
all the village, including Rosa Mistica, the schoolmaster, and the
alcalde.”
But the good old woman, who was accustomed to the rather free manners of
Marisalada,--which, however, did not wound,--called the young girl and
told her to sit down near her.
Don Modesto, warned by this that Maria was about to open her
batteries,--faithful to the neutrality he had promised,--took leave of
the old woman, made a turn to the right and beat a retreat, not,
however, without having received from the monk a couple of lettuces and
a bunch of turnips.
“My daughter,” said Maria, when they were alone, “what will you not be
if Don Frederico marries you? You will be with this man, who is a St.
Louis de Gonzague, who knows every thing, who is a good musician, and
who gains plenty of money; you will be the doctor’s wife, the happiest
of women. You will be dressed like a dove, nurtured like a duchess; and
you could then, above all, help your poor father, who is growing old;
and it pains our hearts that he is obliged to be on the sea despite rain
and wind, so that his child may want for nothing. Thus would Don
Frederico remain among us, like an angel of the good God, consoling and
taking care of all who suffer.”
Marisalada listened attentively to the old woman, affecting great
distraction. When Maria had ceased to speak, the young girl was silent
for an instant, and then, with an air of indifference, said--
“I do not wish to marry.”
“Listen then!” exclaimed the good woman. “It is, perchance, you wish to
be a nun?”
“Not at all,” replied the Gaviota.
“What then?” demanded Maria, really angry. “You do not wish to be either
flesh or fish! One thing only I know--woman belongs to God or to man; if
not, she does not accomplish her mission, either towards God or towards
society.”
“What would you, Maria?” replied Marisalada; “I feel that neither
marriage nor the convent is my vocation.”
“Then, little girl,” replied the old woman, “thy vocation is that of the
mule. Nothing pleases me which is out of the regular order; above all,
in that which we other women regard.
“She who does not do what we all do, I would flee from, if I were a man,
as one flees from an infuriated bull. In a word--my hand on my
heart--you act wrong. But you are yet but a child,” she added, with her
habitual goodness, “there is much for you yet to learn. Time is a great
teacher.”
Marisalada arose and departed.
“Yes,” thought she, covering her head with her handkerchief, “he loves
me, I have known it for a long time--but--I love him as old Maria loves
brother Gabriel, as the aged love. He would receive a shower under my
window without fearing to take cold. Now--if he marries me, he will
render my life happy I am sure; he will let me do as I like: he will
give me music whenever I ask him, and purchase for me every thing I may
desire. If I were his wife, I would have a neckerchief of crape, like
Quela, the daughter of old Juan Lopez; and a mantle, blonde of Almagro,
like that of the Alcaldesa.
“They would both die with rage; but it seems to me that Don Frederico,
agitated as he is when he listens to my singing, thinks as much of
marrying me as Don Modesto thinks of taking for his wife his dear
Rosa--chief of all the devils.”
During the whole of this beautiful mental dialogue, Marisalada had not
one thought, not one recollection of her father, whose well-being and
whose solace had been the chief motives adduced by Maria.
CHAPTER XI.
Convinced that she could neither be aided nor supported by the
influential man who would not join her in these matrimonial projects,
Maria determined to act by herself, with the certainty of overcoming the
objections of the Gaviota, and those which Stein would oppose. Nothing
stopped her, neither the boldness of Marisalada, nor the stolidity of
Stein, because love is persevering as a sister of charity, and intrepid
as a hero; and love was the grand spring of all this good old woman did.
It was thus she said to Stein, and to the point:
“Do you know, Don Frederico, several days ago Marisalada was here, and
she explained to us very clearly, and with a grace altogether natural,
that she came here only on your account?”
“How do you find this frankness? I say that, if it be true, it was an
ingratitude that my pretty nightingale was not capable of; she was no
doubt jesting.”
“Don Frederico, the old are more experienced than the young, and the
first impulses are the best. Does it cause you much grief to learn that
you are beloved?”
“No--certainly. We are agreed upon this axiom which you repeat so often:
‘Love does not speak enough.’ But, good Maria, make of love constancy: I
would sooner give than receive.”
“They do not talk thus to me,” cried the brave woman, with impatience.
“It is still true, my dear and good mother,” answered Stein, taking and
pressing the hands of old Maria, “we have a running account of
affection, we two, but the balance is against me. God grant that I may
some day be able to furnish the proof of my attachment and my
gratitude!”
“It is very easy, Don Frederico, and I am about to demand it.”
“At once, my good Maria; and what is this proof? say quickly.”
“Remain with us; and to that end get married, Don Frederico. You inspire
us with continual uneasiness in this living in the idea of your
departure, and you would then realize the proverb, ‘Which is your
country? That of my wife.’”
Stein smiled.
“Whom shall I marry? with whom, my good mother, with whom shall it be?
With your linnet?”
Maria replied: “With her, who is in your heart an eternal spring. She is
so beautiful and so graceful: she is so moulded to your habits that she
could not live without you! And what would you do without her? You love
each other like two turtles--this is seen in your eyes.”
“I am too old for her, Maria,” replied Stein, sighing and blushing in a
manner to prove that, as to him at least, the old woman had spoken
truly; “I am too old,” he repeated, “for a girl of sixteen years. My
heart is an invalid, to whom I desire to accord a sweet and tranquil
existence; I would not expose it to new wounds.”
“Old!” exclaimed Maria, “what nonsense! you have scarcely attained to
thirty years. Come--you reason like the leg of a table, Don Frederico.”
“What could I desire more,” replied Stein, “than to taste with an
innocent young girl the sweet and holy felicity of domestic life, which
is the only true, the only perfect, the only real, because it is that
which God has taught us. But, good Maria, she cannot love me.”
“That is too strong; she has a very delicate taste, by my faith, she who
would be ashamed of you! Say not to the contrary; you have the air of
joking. Yes, the wife that you love will be the happiest in the whole
world.”
“Do you believe so, Maria?”
“I believe it as I believe my salvation; and she who, in such a case,
does not esteem herself happy, should be crucified alive.”
* * * * *
The following day, when Marisalada came, she met, on entering the court,
face to face with Momo, who was seated on a stone of the mill,
breakfasting on bread and sardines.
“You here already, Gaviota!” this was the sweet salutation Momo gave
her; “if this continues, we will find you one day in our soup. You have
then nothing to do at home?”
“I abandon all,” replied Marisalada, “to come and contemplate your face,
which enchants me, and thine ears, which excite the envy of Golondrina,
thine ass.”
In so saying she took hold of Momo’s ears, and pulled them.
The young girl had the chance at the first roar which Momo made with all
the strength of his big lungs, for a mouthful of bread and sardines had
stuck in his throat, and occasioned such a fit of coughing, that the
Gaviota, light as a fawn, escaped the talons of the vulture.
“Good-day, my linnet,” said Stein, who, on hearing Marisalada, entered
the court.
“She is beautiful, this linnet!” growled Momo, in his fit of coughing;
“she is the most hoarse magpie which has sung this summer.”
“Come, Maria,” continued Stein, “come write, and read the verses I
translated yesterday.”
“I do not remember them,” replied the young girl. “Were they not of that
country where grow the oranges? These trees do not grow here; or they
have withered: brother Gabriel’s tears are not sufficient to nourish
their vitality. Let the verses go, Don Frederico, and play me the
nocturn of Weber which these are the words of: ‘Listen, listen, my
beloved! the chant of the nightingale is heard; on each branch
flourishes a flower; before the nightingale ceases to sing, before the
flowers wither, sing, sing, my best beloved.’”
“What ugly words,” murmured Momo, “this Gaviota remembers, and which are
to her like bon-bons to a clove of garlic.”
“After that you have read, I will play thee the serenade of Carl Weber,”
replied Stein, who by this single recompense could compel Marisalada to
learn that which he would instruct her in. The young girl took, with an
irritated gesture, the paper which Stein presented to her, and read it
fluently, although with a bad grace.
“Mariquita,” said Stein, when the young girl had finished reading, “you
who do not know the world, you cannot appreciate what grand and profound
truth, what philosophy there is in these verses. Do you remember that I
explained to you what philosophy is?”
“I recollect,” replied the Gaviota, “it is the science of happiness. But
in that, señor, there are neither rules nor science which can constitute
it: each one is happy after his own manner. Don Modesto places his
happiness in possessing cannons in the fort as ruined as himself;
brother Gabriel, to see return to the convent the holy Prior and the
bells; the good Maria, that you do not quit her; my father, to take a
_corbina_; and Momo, to do all the evil he can.”
Stein laughed, and placing affectionately his hand on Mariquita’s
shoulder, “And you,” said he to her, “in what do you make happiness to
consist?”
Mariquita hesitated an instant before finding a reply, raised her large
black eyes, and looked at Stein; then her eyelids fell, and her glance
rested on Momo; the young girl smiled to herself at the appearance of
those ears which were redder than tomatoes.
“And you, Don Frederico,” she at last replied, “in what would you make
it to consist? To return to your country?”
“No,” sighed Stein.
“In what then?” repeated Marisalada.
“I will tell thee, my linnet; but beforehand tell me in what thou makest
thine to consist.”
“To always hear you play the flute,” she replied with sincerity.
At this moment Maria came from the kitchen with the good intention to
terminate the affair; but she occasioned that which happens to a great
many: excess of zeal spoiled all.
“Do you not see, Don Frederico, how pretty Marisalada is, and what a
beautifully formed woman?”
“Yes, yes,” continued Stein to Maria, “she is handsome, and her eyes are
the type of Arabian eyes so celebrated.”
“They say of the hedgehogs, each looks at a thorn,” growled Momo.
“And this mouth so pretty, which sings like a seraphim,” pursued the old
woman, caressing the chin of her _protégé_.
“See there, a mouth like a basket, which knows how to speak wrong and
contrary.”
“And thy mouth,” said the Gaviota to Momo, with a fury which this time
she could not control, “and thy horrible mouth, which cannot extend from
one ear to the other because that thy face is so large it is fatigued
when half way over.”
Momo, for his only reply, sang in three different tones--
“Gaviota! Gaviota! Gaviota!”
“Romo! Romo! Romo!” sang Marisalada in her magnificent voice.
“Is it possible,” said Stein to his linnet, “that you notice what Momo
says expressly to enrage you. These witticisms are stupid and gross, but
without wickedness.”
“It must seem to you, Don Frederico, that this must be very stupid,”
replied the Gaviota; “and to inform you that I have no desire to support
this lout harder than a stone, I go.”
Upon this, the Gaviota went away; Stein followed her.
“You are a profligate,” said Maria to her grandson; “you have more
spleen in your heart than good blood in your veins. You owe respect to
women, villain gosling! there is not in the village one more wicked or
more detested than thou.”
“You are in your turn tainted,” replied Momo, “with the beauty of this
sea-magpie, who have put my ears in the condition you see! All others,
according to your ideas, are gross people. This _agua mala_ (polypus)
bewitches you. See then a _gaviota_ (sea-gull) which reads and writes!
Has any one ever seen that? She does not employ herself all day but to
grumble as water hisses on the fire; she does not cook for her father,
who is obliged to prepare his own meals; she does not take care of his
linen, and it is on you falls the work. You nourish a serpent.”
Stein having rejoined Marisalada, said to her--
“Of what avails it, Mariquita, that I have endeavored to tone down your
spirit, if you have not learned at least to acquire the little
superiority necessary to place yourself above these miseries, which are
in themselves so trifling and unimportant?”
“Listen, Don Frederico,” replied Marisalada: “I comprehend that this
superiority ought to serve to place me above others, but not below
them.”
“God help me, Mariquita! is it thus you change things? Superiority
teaches us not to be proud of our qualities, and not to revolt against
injustices opposed to us. But,” added he smiling, “these are the faults
of your youth, and of the vivacity of your southern blood. You will know
all that when you have gray hairs, as I have. Have you remarked,
Mariquita, that I have gray hairs?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“See then, I am very young, but sufferings have made my head like that
of an aged man. My heart has remained pure, Mariquita, and I offer you
the flowers of spring, if you do not believe you will be alarmed at the
symbols of winter which circle my forehead.”
“It is true,” replied the Gaviota, who could not restrain the natural
ejaculation, “that a lover with gray hairs would not please me.”
“I have thought it would be thus,” said Stein with sadness. “My heart is
loyal, and the good Maria, when she assured me that my happiness was
still possible, instilled in my heart some hope, but which is as the
flowers of the air without roots, and as the breath of the breeze.”
Mariquita, who saw that she had wounded, with her accustomed rudeness, a
soul too delicate to insist, and a man so modest as to persuade himself
that this sole objection annulled the other advantages, immediately
said--
“If a lover with gray hairs pleases me not, a husband with such hair
would not frighten me.”
Stein was taken by surprise at this brusque remark of Mariquita, and
above all at the decision and impassibility with which she had
enunciated it. Soon he smiled at Marisalada, and said to her--
“And then you will marry me, beautiful child of nature?”
“Why not?”
“Mariquita, she who accepts a man for a husband, and unites herself to
him to pass her life, or, the better to express it, to make of two
existences one only, as in a torch two lights blended make but one
flame, such a person, I say, accords to this man a greater favor than
she who accepts him for a lover.”
“And of what use,” replied the young girl with a mixture of innocence
and indifference, “of what use are the guitarists, who sing badly and
play badly, if not to frighten away the cats?”
They had arrived at the beach, and Stein begged Mariquita to sit beside
him on a rock. On the part of both there was a long silence. Stein was
profoundly agitated. The young girl with stoical indifference had taken
a stick, and traced figures on the sand.
“How nature speaks in the heart of a man!” at last exclaimed Stein.
“What sympathy reigns in all that God has created! A pure life is like a
serene day; a life of unloosed passions resembles a tempestuous day. See
those sombre clouds which slowly approach to interpose between the
earth and the sun, they are such as should interpose between a heart and
an illicit love, and let fall on the heart their cold but pure
emanations. Happy the land on which they fall not! But our felicity will
be unalterable like the sky in May, because you will always love me. Is
it not so, Mariquita?”
This girl, whose rude and untutored soul comprehended neither the poetry
nor the elevated sentiments of Stein, did not care to answer; but as she
could not withdraw herself from this obligation, she wrote upon the sand
the word _siempre_ (always) with the stick which distracted her
idleness.
Stein, whose emotion increased, mistook _ennui_ for modesty.
“Look,” pursued he, “look at the sea! Listen to the murmur of the waves,
murmurs so full of charms and of terrors! ’Tis said they confine grave
secrets in an unknown language. The waves, Mariquita, are those
dangerous and perfidious sirens, personified by the flowery and
fantastic imagination of the Greeks; creatures of a rare beauty, but
without hearts, as seductive as terrible, and whose sweet voices attract
men to their perdition. But thy sweet voice, Mariquita, seduces not to
deceive; you attract like the siren, you will not be perfidious like
her. Is it not true, Mariquita, you will never be ungrateful?”
_Nunca_ (never), wrote Mariquita on the sand. And the rising waves
amused themselves in effacing the word the young girl had written, as if
they would parody the waves of time, which flowing on efface in the
heart what is sworn to endure thereon forever.
“Why does not thy voice reply to me, Mariquita?”
“What would you, Don Frederico? I cannot say to a man that I love him. I
am unfeeling and unnatural, Maria says, who, however, does not the less
love me. I am, like my father, economical in words.”
“If you were like him, I could desire nothing more, because the good
Pedro--I say my father, Mariquita--has a heart the most loving that has
ever beaten in the breast of a man; such hearts belong to angels, and to
a few chosen men!”
“My father a superior man!” thought Mariquita, repressing with
difficulty a mocking laugh. “So be it! so much the better, if he has the
air of one.”
“Mariquita,” said Stein in approaching her, “let us offer to God our
pure and holy love; let us promise Him to render ourselves acceptable by
our fidelity, and by the discharge of those duties which will be imposed
on us when this love shall have been consecrated at the divine altar.
Now let me embrace you as my wife and companion.”
“No!” cried Mariquita, drawing back suddenly, and knitting her eyebrows.
“No person shall touch me.”
“It is well, my pretty fugitive,” answered Stein with sweetness, “I
respect all your delicacy, and submit myself to your will. Is it not
appropriate to say, with one of our ancient and sublime poets, that the
greatest of all felicities is, to ‘obey in loving?’”
CHAPTER XII.
The gratitude which the fisherman felt for him who had saved Marisalada,
was complete when he saw him so attached to his daughter: an impassioned
friendship which could only be compared to the admiration excited in him
by the brilliant qualities of Stein.
From thence they were devoted to each other: the brusque mariner and the
man of science sympathized, because men of kindred natures and gifted
with good sentiments feel, when they come in contact, such an
attraction, that, scorning the distance which separates their positions,
they meet as brothers.
It thus happened when Stein offered himself as the old man’s son-in-law:
the good father could not articulate a word, so much was he overcome
with the joy which filled his heart. He besought Stein only, when taking
his hand, to come and live in his cabin. Stein cordially assented. The
fisherman appeared then to recover all his strength and all the agility
of his youth, to employ them in ameliorating and embellishing his
habitation. He cleared away the little garret to make there his personal
lodging, leaving the first story for his children; he whitened and
ornamented the walls; he levelled the ground, and covered it with a
precious mat of palms, which he weaved for that purpose; he engaged
Maria to make up for him a _trousseau_ for the bride in character with
the simplicity of his dwelling.
Great was the news caused by the rumored approaching marriage of Stein,
to all those who knew and loved him. Old Maria was so joyous that she
passed three nights without sleep. She predicted that when Don Frederico
permanently established himself in the country none of the inhabitants
would die except from old age. Brother Gabriel manifested so much
contentment and such pleasure in seeing Maria so sprightly, that he
entered into the feelings of his protectress, and ventured to say a
witty thing, the first and the last in all his life; he said in a loud
voice, “that the cura had forgotten the _De profundis_.”
This remark became of some consequence, inasmuch as Maria, for fifteen
days, was earnest in reporting, after the usual compliments, the famous
forgetfulness of the _De profundis_, which remark she considered as the
glory and honor of her _protégé_. He himself was so embarrassed with the
success attendant upon his innocent wit, that he vowed never again to
succumb to a similar temptation.
Don Modesto was of opinion that the Gaviota had gained the first prize
in the lottery, and the people of the village the second: “Because,”
said he, “I would never have been maimed if I had met at Gaëte a surgeon
as skilful as Stein.”
Dolores added, that if the fisherman had twice given life to his
daughter, the will of God had twice given her happiness, in conferring
on her such a father and such a husband.
Manuel observed, that there was in Heaven a cake reserved for husbands
who never repented of their marriage, and which, up to this moment, no
one had yet put his teeth into.
His wife said, it was because husbands never entered there!
As to Momo, he concluded that since the Gaviota had found a husband, the
Plague need not lose hope of finding one also.
Rosa Mistica took the affair differently. Mariquita had, by a recent
act, increased her list of evil deeds; some devotees were assembled to
sing, in honor of the Virgin, couplets accompanied by a wretched
harpsicord, played by an old blind man. Rosita presided at this
ceremony. Not being able to ignore the aptitude of Marisalada, she
silenced her ancient resentments, and thought, by the mediation of Don
Modesto, to induce the fisherman’s daughter to take part in the pious
concert.
Don Modesto took his cane, and set out on his campaign. Marisalada
replied to the old commandant a dry “_No_,” without prologue or
epilogue.
This monosyllable frightened Modesto more than a discharge of artillery;
the negotiator knew not what to do. Don Modesto was one of those men who
are sufficiently good-hearted to desire the good of their friends, but
who want strength to achieve it, and imagination to find the means of
obtaining it.
“Pedro,” said he to the fisherman, after this peremptory refusal, “do
you know I tremble in all my limbs? What will Rosita say? What will all
the village say? Can you not then influence her?”
“If she will not, what can I do?” replied the fisherman.
And the poor Don Modesto resigned himself to report this ungracious
message, which would not only offend, but scandalize the mysticism of
his hostess.
“I would prefer a thousand times,” said he, in returning to Villamar,
“to present myself before all the batteries of Gaëte, than before Rosita
with a _no_ on my lips. In what a state she will be!”
And Don Modesto was right; for it was in vain that he essayed to
ornament her answer by an exordium which merely insinuated, to comment
by vague hints, to embellish by verbose paraphrases: he did not less
keenly offend Rosita, who cried out in a loud tone--
“They who would not employ in the service of God the gifts they have
received of Him, merit perdition.”
Also, when she learned the project of marriage, she sighed, and raised
her eyes to Heaven:
“Poor Don Frederico!” she said.
Momo, according to his bad habits, took pleasure in conveying the news
of this marriage to Ramon Perez.
“Really!” cried the barber, in consternation.
“You are sad; I am much more sad in seeing that there are people who
ought to be beaten for the absurdity of their tastes. See a little! To
be smitten of this saucebox! but Don Frederico proves the proverb, ‘Late
married, badly married.’”
“I am not sad,” replied Ramon Perez, “because Marisalada is loved by Don
Frederico, but because she loves this stranger who has hair of hemp and
fishes’ eyes. Why does not the ingrate recollect this sentence, ‘Who
marries late becomes either a dupe or a deceiver.’”
“It will not be he who will be the first to deceive. For as to Don
Frederico, he is a brave man, nothing can be said to the contrary; but
this vixen has bewitched him with her singing, which lasts from the
rising to the setting sun. I have already said to him: Don Frederico,
listen to the proverb, ‘Take a house with a hearth: take a wife who
knows how to spin.’ He has not attended to either: it is a misfortune.
As to thee, Ramon Perez, they have simply made a great mistake.”
“That is easily seen,” replied the barber, giving so hasty a turn to the
key of his guitar that the treble-string broke: “he whom we would drive
from our house must be a stranger. But you ought to know, Momo, that I
care for very little. The year will finish one day, and if the king is
dead, long live the king!”
Then he commenced to strike his guitar with rage, singing with bombastic
voice:
“Cold creature! what of thy contempts,
My heart, no longer irate, is now cured;
Stains which no mulberry exempts,
By the mulberry green are no longer endured.
* * * * *
“Love is fled! three pirouettes, and then--
Crack! and my happy days return;
I have gold to please young girls I ween,
To purchase other loves I’ll learn.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The marriage of Stein and the Gaviota was celebrated in the church of
Villamar. The fisherman, instead of a red flannel shirt, wore a white
shirt, irreproachably starched, and a vest of dark blue cloth. In this
gala costume he was so embarrassed that he could hardly move.
Don Modesto, one of the witnesses, presented himself in all the _éclat_
of his old uniform, rendered threadbare by constant brushing, and become
too large by reason of his having grown so thin. The nankeen pantaloons
which Rosita had washed for the thousandth time, had shrunken so as to
descend only half way down his legs. His epaulets had become
copper-colored. The cocked hat, which had survived eight lustres, and
had not altered its pride, occupied dignifiedly its elevated position.
But in the mean time there sparkled on the honorable breast of the poor
soldier the cross of honor, valiantly gained on the field of battle, as
shines a pure diamond in a fine setting. The women, according to custom,
assisted, all dressed in black during the ceremony, but they changed
their toilets for the _fête_.
Marisalada was all in white. The dresses which Maria and Dolores had
received as presents from Stein on the occasion, were made of wove
cotton smuggled into Gibraltar. The design was called _scarfs of iris_,
because of the assemblage of colors the most opposite and the least
harmonizing. One would believe the manufacturer wished to mock his
Andalusian customers. In fine, everybody thought them handsome, except
Momo, who would not put himself out on this occasion, and dressed
himself to look as eccentric as possible.
“This is well for you, bad droll fellow. ‘The ape, though dressed in
silk, is nothing but an ape.’”
“You cut a figure! You, who to be the wife of the doctor have ceased to
be the Gaviota, and dress yourself in new clothes to render yourself
handsomer! Oh! yes--white becomes you so well! Put a red cap on your
head, and you will resemble a phosphoric match.”
Then he began to sing in a false voice--
“Oh! oh!
Like a crow--
You are pretty, girl, all in white,
Coquettish, like hunger, you siren;
Like wax with clear color at night.
And in bulk like a thread of iron.”
Marisalada immediately replied--
“Thy mouth, ugly ape,
Like a basket in shape,
Therein linen to lie;
This you cannot deny.
And thy teeth can tell,
They’ve no parallel!
And thine ear-rings, I know.
But three pendants can show.”
After this compliment she turned her back on him.
Momo, who was never behindhand when he meditated insolence and sallies,
replied bravely--
“Go--go; when they give thee the benediction, it will be the first time
thou hast received it during thine whole life, and I predict that it
will be the last.”
The marriage was held in the village, at the house of Maria, the cabin
of the fisherman being too small to contain all the assembly. Stein,
who, in the exercise of his profession, had saved some money, although
in most cases he gave his services gratuitously, desired to do the thing
in grand style, and not to restrict the invitations. He had abundance of
wine, lemonade, biscuits, and cakes, and three guitars. The guests sang,
danced, screamed, without omitting wit and pleasantry, joyous and gay.
Maria came and went, served the refreshments, played the part of
_godmother of the wedding_, and never ceased to repeat, “I am as content
as if I were the bride;” to which brother Gabriel invariably added, “I
am as content as if I were the husband.”
“Mother,” said Manuel to Maria, on seeing her pass near him, “the color
of this dress is very gay for a widow.”
“Hold your tongue,” replied the mother. “Every thing ought to be gay on
a day like this. Besides, ‘we must not look a gift horse in the mouth.’
Brother Gabriel, come along, take this glass of lemonade and this cake,
and drink to the health of the newly married couple, before returning to
the convent.”
“I drink to the health of the new-married couple before I return to the
convent,” said brother Gabriel.
The good monk emptied his glass, and escaped before any one, except
Maria, remarked his absence.
The reunion became animated by degrees.
“Bomba!” cried the sacristan, a little humpbacked man, crooked and lame,
“Bomba!” (This is the exclamation which announces ordinarily in Spain at
a dinner or at _fête_, a little excited, that a guest is about to
propose a toast.)
Every one was silent at this signal.
“I drink,” said the sacristan, “to the health of the bride and groom,
and to this honorable company, and to the repose of all Christian
souls!”
“Bravo! let us drink! and long live La Mancha! who gives us wine in lieu
of water.”
“In your turn, Ramon Perez, sing a couplet, and do not keep your voice
for a better occasion.”
Ramon sang--
“A happy future--all good wishes
To the pretty wife!
And to her husband I’ve no species
Of envy or of strife.”
“Bravo! well sung!” cried all the assembly. “Now the fandango and the
ball!”
After the prelude to this eminently national dance, a man and a woman
rose simultaneously, and placed themselves face to face. Their graceful
movements accomplished, so to speak, an elegant balancing of bodies, to
the sound of their gay castinets.
In an instant the two dancers yielded their places to two others, who
placed themselves in front, while the first couple retired. This
divertisement, according to the usages of the country, was often
repeated.
The guitarist had again his song--
“To him who weds a beauteous bride,
And to the holy temple hied:
She has sworn, and now stands with wedded heart:
She enters free--in irons must depart.”
“Bomba!” soon cried one of the most expert in matters of toasts. “I
drink to this excellent doctor, whom God sent to our country that we
might attain a greater age than Methuselah! But I add one condition,
that in case of longevity to me, he will not prolong either the life of
my wife, or my purgatory.”
This toast provoked an explosion of applause.
“What do you say to all this?” demanded all the guests at the wedding of
Manuel.
“What do I say? That I say nothing.”
“Badly answered! Get along--wake up, and propose a toast.”
Manuel took a glass of lemonade, and said--
“I drink to the newly married, to our friends, to our commandant, and to
the resurrection of Fort St. Cristobal!”
“Long live the commandant!” cried all present. “And you, Manuel, who
know how to compose couplets, sing something.”
Manuel sang the following couplet:
“Of these allurements men take care,
Hymen’s intoxication sweet:
’Tis done! and ’till old age, beware,
The fright will ne’er thy bosom quit.”
After some other couplets had been sung, the greatest orator of the
assembly said to Manuel:
“These people only sing trifles without head or tail. You who know how
to say good things, above all when the wine gets a little in your head,
make a stanza of ten lines in honor of the newly married, and take this
glass of wine to loosen your tongue.”
Manuel took the glass of wine, and commenced:
“Bomba!
Viva!
Sweet vanquisher of secret pains,
Physician gay of blackest dreams,
I’ve seen thee born between green leaves,
And, pressed, thy bosom madly heaves:
Give to my voice the needful force,
To the bride and groom I’d raise my voice!
Here’s Hymen! let’s our glasses drain,
To bride and groom, again, again.”
“It is your turn, Ramon the devil. Has the liquor obstructed your
throat? You are more insipid than a salad of tomatoes.”
Ramon took his guitar and sang:
“She to the church and sacrifices bold,
Herself surrenders, and I am consoled;
My lips with kisses delicately hushed,
Press the green grass which her small feet have pressed.”
This couplet having been followed by another of little value, Maria
approached Stein and said to him:
“Don Frederico, the wine commences to _tell_ on our guests. It is
midnight, and the poor children are alone in the house with Momo and
brother Gabriel. I fear Manuel raises his elbow too often. Pedro is
asleep in the corner, and I think it will not be bad to sound the
retreat. Our asses are harnessed, will you that we take ‘French leave?’”
An instant after, the three women, mounted on their asses, were on their
way to the convent. The men accompanied them on foot, while Ramon, in a
fit of jealousy and of chagrin, on seeing the married couple depart,
struck his guitar with an insolent air and bellowed rather than sang:
“Thou the _calabash_ hast given me;
Or rather, I my _congé_ see;
Great good this _congé_ does meeting,
The tomatoes I have eaten!
In thy family, at which I dine,
Admitted once, revenged I am.”
“What a beautiful night!” said Stein to his wife, raising his eyes
towards heaven. “See the starry firmament! See the evening star shining
in its magnificence like the brightness of my happiness! My heart has
now no want unsupplied, and I have nothing to regret.”
“And I who amused myself so much,” replied Marisalada, impatiently, “I
do not see why we have left the _fête_ so soon.”
“Good Maria,” said Pedro Santalo, “now we can die in peace.”
“Yes,” replied the old woman, “but we can as well live in joy; that
would be much better.”
“How is it that you do not know how to restrain yourself when you have
the glass in your hand?” said Dolores to her husband. “From the moment
you slacken sail, there is not a cable that could bring you up.”
“_Caramba!_” replied Manuel: “I am here, what would you more? Still, one
word more--I live on the brim and I return to the _fête_.”
The cries of the drinkers being continually heard, Dolores held her
tongue, fearing that Manuel would put his threats into execution.
“José,” said Manuel to his brother-in-law, who had also been to the
wedding, “is the moon full?”
“Certainly,” replied the shepherd. “Can you not see with your eyes? Do
you not know what it is?”
“It should be a tear,” said Manuel, laughing.
“It is not a tear; it is a man.”
“A man!” exclaimed Dolores, altogether convinced by what her brother had
said. “And what is this man?”
“I do not know--but I know his name.”
“And how is he called?”
“He is called Venus,” replied José.
Manuel began to laugh: he had drank more than usual, and, as they said,
he was gay.
“Don Frederico,” said Manuel to the new-made husband, “shall I give you
a piece of advice, in my quality of being older than you in this grand
Confederacy?”
“Hold your tongue, for God’s sake, Manuel!” said Dolores.
“Will you leave me in peace? Listen, Don Frederico; to begin--with a
wife and a dog, the bread in one hand, and a stick in the other.”
“Manuel!” repeated Dolores.
“Will you leave me tranquil? or I return to the wedding.”
Dolores thought it prudent to hold her peace.
“Don Frederico,” pursued Manuel, “wives or slaves, women are the most
powerful enemies.”
“Do me the favor to hold your tongue, Manuel,” interrupted his mother.
“This is odd,” grumbled Manuel; “we were told we were assisting at an
entertainment.”
“Do you not know, Manuel,” remarked the shepherd, “that these witticisms
of thine are not to the taste of Don Frederico?”
“Señor,” said Manuel, in taking leave of the married pair, who proceeded
towards the cabin, “when you repent of what you have done we will be
united again, and we will together sing the same complaint.”
And he continued his route towards the convent. In the silence of night
he was heard singing, in his clear and sonorous voice--
“Alas, poor wife and cherished horse!
Who the same hour died:
I sorely weep, but for which loss?
My poor horse shall decide.”
“Go to bed, Manuel, and nimbly,” his mother said to him, when they
arrived at home.
“My wife takes care of that,” he replied; “is it not true, brunette?”
“What I wish is, that you were already asleep,” replied Dolores.
“Liar! how can you thus speak in opposition to your heart?”
“Do you not know how to hold your peace?” said his brother-in-law to
him, laughing.
“Listen, José,” continued Manuel, “have you found in the thickets of the
fields, or in the grottoes, any thing which could close the mouth of a
woman? If you have found it, there will not be wanting people who will
pay you for the information in solid gold. As to me, I have never met
with it in this world, and I have learned nothing of it in the life of
God.”
Thereupon he began to sing--
“The sun’s sublimest heat,
’Tis easier to put out,
Than e’er with fear to worry,
A woman in her fury.
Try the caress, be gay;
She with a stick will play:
A traitress she will be,
For good or bad, we’ll see.”
CHAPTER XIV.
Three years had passed. Stein, who could sojourn among these few men who
required so little, believed himself happy. He loved his wife with
tenderness, and was attached more every day to his father-in-law; and as
to the excellent family, those who had rescued him, a dying man, his
affection for them had never wavered. His uniform and rural life was in
harmony with the modesty of his tastes, and with the tranquillity of his
honest soul. And, besides, the monotony wanted not for attractions: an
existence always uniformly calm resembles the man who peacefully sleeps
without dreaming, or those melodies composed of a few words, but which
charm us with so much sweetness. Perhaps there is nothing which leaves
more agreeable souvenirs than this monotony of existence--this
successive enchainment of days which have nothing to distinguish one
from that which precedes, or from that which follows it.
What must have been the surprise to the inhabitants of the cabin when,
one morning, Momo rushed in out of breath, calling to Stein to go to the
convent without losing a single instant.
“Has any one of the family fallen ill?” asked Stein alarmed.
“No,” answered Momo, “it is a lord, whom they address as ‘your
excellency,’ who has been hunting the wild boar and roebuck in the
hillock with his friends; in leaping the ravine the horse missed, and
both fell. The horse is slashed, the cavalier has broken as many bones
as he has in his body, and they have conveyed him to the convent on a
litter. The monastery was transformed into a real Babylon. They believed
it was the day of judgment. People went and came like a crowd among
which a wolf had forced his way. The only one who retained his
tranquillity was he who had caused the excitement, and who at a glance
it was seen was a man of the grand world, a real young man. There they
were all in confusion, without knowing what to do. My grandma had told
them that there was here a surgeon like whom there were few seen: they
would not believe her; but as to obtain one from Cadiz would occupy two
days, and three more to obtain one from Seville, his excellency said he
would have the one recommended by my grandma. It is for this I am come
here. Now I will give you my opinion. If I were in your place, at
present, when they have despised you, I would not go to the convent if
they dragged me there with two horses.”
“I am not capable,” replied Stein, “of forgetting my duties as a
Christian, nor those of a surgeon. I should have a heart of bronze to
see one of my kind suffer without alleviating his sufferings when I have
the power to do it. Beyond this, they cannot have confidence in me, as I
am unknown to them; it is not therefore an offence, it would not even be
one if they knew me.”
Stein and Momo arrived promptly at the convent. Maria, who awaited the
doctor with impatience, conducted him to the wounded man, who had been
placed in the cell of the prior, where they had made up for him the best
bed possible. Maria and Stein passed through the crowd of sportsmen and
servants, by whom the invalid was surrounded. He was a tall young man;
on his pale but tranquil face fell a profusion of black hair. So soon
as Stein looked at him he uttered a cry, and rushed towards him; but,
fearing to touch him, he suddenly stopped, and crossing his trembling
hands he cried out--
“My God! the duke!”
“You know me?” demanded the stranger, for the person Stein had
recognized was the Duke d’Almanza. “You know me?” repeated the duke,
raising his head, and casting his large black eyes on Stein, without
power to recall to his mind who it was that had addressed him.
“He does not recollect me,” murmured Stein, while the large tears
trembled in his eyes; “that is not strange: generous souls forget the
good they confer, preserving eternally the favors they receive.”
“Wretched beginning,” said one of the assistants; “a surgeon who weeps!”
“What sad chance!” added another.
“Doctor,” said the duke to Stein, “I place myself in your hands, I
confide myself to God, to you, and to my lucky star. I am ready, do not
lose time.”
At these words Stein raised his head; his countenance remained calm, and
by a silent gesture, but imperative and firm, he banished the spectators
to a distance. Then he felt the duke with an accustomed and experienced
hand. He displayed so much assurance and dexterity that every one kept
silent. No sound was heard in the cell but the agitated breathing of the
patient.
“Duke,” said Stein, after having completed his examination of the
sprained ankle and the broken leg, “without doubt it is here the weight
of the horse has fallen. Still, I believe I shall succeed in effecting a
complete cure.”
“Will I become a cripple for life?” asked the duke.
“In my opinion, I can assure you, no.”
“Prove it so, and I will say that you are the best surgeon in the
world.”
Stein, without stirring, sent for Manuel, whose strength and punctuality
he knew. With his assistance he commenced operations which were more
painful than can be imagined; but Stein seemed to take no notice of the
pain the invalid felt, and whom he made almost to lose consciousness.
In about half an hour the duke reposed, suffering, but relieved.
In lieu of marks of contempt and fear, Stein received from the duke’s
friends congratulations and the most lively expressions of esteem and
admiration; the good doctor, restored to his natural modesty and
timidity, replied politely to all.
But do you know who “took a bath of roses?” it was Maria.
“Did I not tell you so?” she incessantly repeated to all the sportsmen,
“did I not tell you so?”
The duke’s friends, entirely tranquillized, went to attend the prayers
about to be offered up. The invalid had demanded to be left alone, under
the care of his excellent doctor, his old friend as he called him, and
sent away nearly all his servants.
In this way the duke and his doctor could renew their acquaintance at
their ease. The first was one of those men of a character, elevated, and
but little material, with whom neither habit the attachment injured his
physical well-being; one of those privileged beings who knew how to come
down to the level of circumstances, not by a start or caprice, but
constantly, by an energetic nature, and by a firm will, an impenetrable
breastplate of iron, which may be symbolized in these words--“What
matters it?” His was one of those hearts which beat under the armor of
the fifteenth century, and the traces of which cannot now be met with
except in Spain.
Stein related his campaigns, his misadventures, his arrival at the
convent, his love, and his marriage.
The duke listened with much interest; and the recital gave him a great
desire to know Marisalada, the fisherman, and the cabin which Stein
preferred to a palace. Thus, on the occasion of his first going out, he
directed his walk, accompanied by his doctor, to the sea-coast. Spring
had commenced, and the freshness of the breeze, the pure breath of the
immense element, lent its charm to their pilgrimage. The fort of St.
Cristobal appeared to be ornamented with a green crown, in honor of the
noble personage in regard to whom it is presented for the first time.
The flowers which covered the roof of the cabin, real garden of
Semiramis, crowded against each other, were agitated by the zephyrs, and
resembled timid young girls who have love whispered in their ears. The
sea, beautiful and calm, wafted its waves just to the feet of the duke,
as if they would bid him welcome. The lark careering through space sent
forth his sweet and faint notes, until he was lost to sight. The duke, a
little fatigued, seated himself on a piece of rock: he was poetic, and
he silently enjoyed the magnificent spectacle. Suddenly was heard a
voice, simple and melancholy. The duke, surprised, looked at Stein. The
doctor sighed. The voice continued to be heard.
“Stein,” said the duke to him, “are these sirens on the waves or angels
in the air?”
Stein, as his response, took his flute, and repeated the same melancholy
strain. Then the duke saw approaching, half running, half leaping, a
young woman, who stopped suddenly on perceiving him.
“This is my wife,” said Stein, “my Mariquita.”
“Who possesses,” said the duke with enthusiasm, “the most wonderful
voice in the world. Señora, I have visited all the theatres of Europe,
but never have enchanting accents excited me to this point of
admiration.”
If the brown and lustrous skin of Marisalada could change to another
color, the blush of pride and pleasure would have shown in her cheeks,
when she heard these exalted praises from the lips of so eminent a
person, and so competent a judge.
“You two,” continued the duke, “have all that you could require to make
your way in the world; and you would remain hidden in obscurity, and
forgotten! This must not be. Will you not let society share in your
brilliant qualities? I repeat, this cannot be, this must not be.”
“We are so happy here, duke,” replied Stein, “that if I make the least
change in my situation I would believe myself an ingrate towards my
destiny.”
“Stein,” exclaimed the duke, “where is that firm and calm courage which
I admired in you when we were on the voyage together on board the ‘Royal
Sovereign?’ What have you done with your love of science, the desire to
consecrate yourself to suffering humanity? Have you allowed yourself to
be enervated by your happiness? Can it be true that felicity renders a
man selfish?”
Stein drooped his head.
“Señora,” continued the duke, “at your age, and with these happy gifts
of nature, can you decide to remain forever attached to this rock, and
to these ruins?”
Mariquita, whose heart beat under the influence of an ardent joy and a
tempting hope, replied with, however, an apparent coldness--
“What will I gain by it?”
“And your father,” her husband asked of her; “do you believe he will
give his consent?”
“He is a fisherman,” replied the Gaviota, feigning not to understand the
true sense of the question.
The duke then entered into a long explanation of all the advantages
which might arise for her distinction and a fortune.
Mariquita listened with avidity, while the duke contemplated with
rapture the play of this countenance, alternately cold and full of
enthusiasm, alternately impassible and energetic.
When the duke retired, Mariquita pinched the ear of Stein, and said to
him eagerly--
“We will go! we will go! and whatever happens, I feel called to go.
Crowns are promised me, and will I remain deaf to all that? No! no!”
Stein sorrowfully followed the duke.
CHAPTER XV.
When they entered the convent, old Maria demanded of the noble
convalescent, who always received his nurse with much kindness, how he
had found her dear Marisalada.
“Is she not a beautiful creature?” she said.
“Certainly,” replied the duke. “Her eyes, as a poet says, are such as an
eagle only can look at.”
“And her grace?” pursued the old woman; “and her voice?”
“Her voice! it is too beautiful to be lost in this solitude. You have
nightingales enough, and goldfinches. Husband and wife must go with me.”
The thunder had fallen at the feet of Maria; and all the other words he
spoke were as nothing.
“And do they wish it?” she cried in affright.
“They must wish it,” replied the duke, leaving the room.
Maria remained some moments confused and in a state of consternation.
Then she went to find brother Gabriel.
“They are going,” she said to him, her eyes filled with tears, “they are
going!”
“Thank God!” replied the brother. “They have enough deteriorated the
marble pavement of the Prior’s cell. What will his reverence say when he
comes back?”
“You have not understood me. Those who are going are Don Frederico and
his wife.”
“They are going away! It’s impossible,” said the brother.
“Is it true?” asked Maria of Stein, who came in.
“She wishes it,” he replied dejectedly.
“That is what her father has always said,” continued Maria; “and with
this response he would have let her die, if it had not been for us. Ah!
Don Frederico, you are so well here! You would be like that Spaniard who
being well would be better.”
“I hope for nothing better; I believe in nothing better in the world, my
good Maria.”
“One day you will repent it. And poor Pedro! My God! why has this
earthquake fallen on us?”
Don Modesto entered. For some time his visits had been very rare, not
but the duke would have received him most amiably, nor but that his
lordship would have exercised on him the same irresistible attraction
which was felt by all who approached him, but Modesto was the slave of
ceremony, and he imposed upon himself the rule not to present himself
before the duke, general, and ex-minister of war, but in grand and
rigorous ceremony.
Rosa Mistica had told him that his grand uniform could not stand active
service, and this was the cause of the suspension of his visits. When
Maria learned that the duke contemplated to depart in two days, Don
Modesto retired immediately. He had formed a project, and he required
time to realize it.
When Marisalada announced to her father the resolution she had taken to
follow the advice of the duke, the grief which attacked the poor old
Pedro would have softened a heart of stone.
He listened silently to the magnificent plans of his child, without
either condemning or approving them; to her promises to revisit him in
his cabin, he neither made request nor refusal. He regarded his child as
a bird regards her offspring, when they try to quit the nest which they
may never again enter. In one word, this excellent father wept in
secret.
Next day the servants, horses, and mules which the duke had ordered for
his departure arrived.
The cries, the good wishes, and the preparations for travel resounded
throughout the convent.
Morrongo climbed upon the top of the roof and slept in the sun, and cast
a look of contempt upon the tumult raised below him.
Palomo barked, growled, and protested so energetically against the
strange invasion, that Manuel ordered Momo to fasten him up.
“There is no doubt,” said Momo, “but my grandma, who is a _charlatan_
the most skilful to be found under the canopy of heaven, has no lover
now to attract invalids to this house.”
The day of departure arrived. The duke was ready in his room. Stein and
the Gaviota had arrived, followed by the poor fisherman, whose looks
were on the ground, and his body bent double under the weight of his
grief. This grief had made him old more than his years, more than
ocean’s tempests; he let himself fall on the steps of the marble cross.
As to Modesto, he was there also; consternation was painted in his face.
The infinitely small lock of hair on his head fell flabby and soft on
one side; profound sighs escaped him.
“What ails you, my commandant?” asked Maria of him.
“Good Maria,” he replied, “to-day is the 15th of June, the day of my
holy patron, a day sad and memorable in the past of my life. O San
Modesto! is it possible that you treat me thus, even on the day which
the church celebrates?”
“But what new thing has happened?” asked Maria, with impatience.
“See!” said the veteran, raising his arms and displaying a large rent,
across which was seen the white lining of his uniform, like a row of
teeth behind a laughing mocker.
Don Modesto was identified with his uniform; in losing it, there would
have vanished the last hope of his profession.
“What a misfortune!” Maria sadly sighed.
“Rosita is laid up with a cold,” continued Don Modesto.
A servant entered.
“His excellency prays the commandant to have the goodness to go to him.”
Don Modesto rose proudly, took in his hand a letter carefully folded and
sealed, pressed as near as possible the arm nearest his unfortunate
rent, and presented himself to the duke, and saluted him respectfully in
the strict military position.
“I wish your excellency,” he said, “a pleasant journey; and I hope that
you will find the duchess and all your family in good health. I take,
also, the liberty to pray your excellency to deliver into the hands of
the minister of war this report, relative to the fort which I have the
honor to command. Your excellency can be convinced by personal
observation, of the urgency for repairs to re-establish the fort San
Cristobal, now above all, when there is the question of a war with the
Emperor of Morocco.”
“My dear Don Modesto,” the duke replied to him, “I cannot risk the
promise of success to your report, but I advise you to plant a cross
upon the battlement of your fort, as upon a sepulchre. In any case, I
promise to recommend you, so that you will be paid the arrears for your
services.”
This agreeable promise was not sufficiently powerful to efface the sad
impression made on his heart by the sentence of death which the duke had
pronounced against the citadel.
“Meantime,” said the duke, “I pray you to accept this as the _souvenir_
of a friend.”
And, so saying, he pointed with his finger to a chair which was near to
him. What was the surprise of this brave man when he saw exposed on that
chair a complete uniform, new and bright, with two epaulets worthy to
adorn the greatest captain of the age! Don Modesto, it was very natural,
remained confused, astonished, dazzled at the sight of so much splendor
and magnificence.
“I hope, commandant,” said the duke, “that you will live to such an age
that this uniform may last you at least as long as its predecessor.”
“Ah! excellent señor,” replied Don Modesto, recovering by degrees the
use of speech, “it is far too much for me.”
“Not at all,” replied the duke; “how many people are there who wear more
splendid uniforms than this, who do not merit it as you do! I know,
also, that you have a friend, an excellent hostess, to whom you would
not be sorry to convey a _souvenir_. Do me the pleasure to convey this
_bijou_ to her.”
It was a chaplet of filigree, in gold and coral.
Then, without giving Don Modesto time to recover from his astonishment,
the duke joined the family, which he had called together, to express to
them his gratitude, and to leave them some gifts.
This noble lord did not confer his gifts with that disdainful
generosity, and therefore wounding, which is so often met with among the
rich; he conferred them knowing how to address those on whom fortune had
not lavished her favors; he studied the needs and the tastes of each
one. Thus all the inhabitants of the convent received what was the most
necessary and the most agreeable to them. Manuel had a clock and a good
watch; Momo a complete suit of clothes, a belt of yellow silk, and a
fowling-piece; the women and children stuffs for their toilet and
playthings; Anis, a kite of such vast dimensions that she disappeared
behind this plaything as a rat would disappear behind the shield of
Achilles. To the grandma Maria, the indefatigable nurse, the skilful
maker of substantial soups, the duke gave a regular pension. As to poor
brother Gabriel, he had nothing. He made so little noise in the world,
and was so much hidden from the eyes of the duke, that he had never been
seen by him. The grandma cut, at the suggestion of everybody, some ells
from a piece of cloth the duke had given her; she added two cotton
handkerchiefs, and went to find her _protégé_.
“Here, brother Gabriel,” she said to him, “here is a little present the
duke makes you; I will take care to make the shirt.”
The poor brother remained as confused as the commandant. Gabriel was
more than modest, he was humble.
All being ready to depart, the duke entered the court.
“Adieu, Momo,” said Marisalada. “Honor to Villamar! If I have ever seen
you, I have forgotten you.”
“Adieu, Gaviota,” replied Momo, “if everybody weeps your departure as
my mother’s son weeps, they will ring the bells to the whole bevy.”
Old Pedro remained seated on the steps of the cross. Maria was near him,
and wept burning tears.
“Do not believe,” said the Gaviota, “that I depart for China, and that
we will never come back again, when I tell you that I will come back!
See--one would think you were assisting at the death of Bohemians! Have
you taken a vow to spoil my pleasure in going to the city?”
“Mother,” said Manuel, much affected in witnessing the grief of the good
Maria, “if you weep so much now, what will you do when I die?”
“I will not weep, son of my heart,” replied the mother, smiling in spite
of her grief; “I shall not live to weep for thy death.”
The horses arrived. Stein cast himself into Maria’s arms.
“Do not forget us, Don Frederico,” said the old woman, sobbing:
“return!”
“If I return not,” replied Stein, “it will be because I am dead.”
The duke, to distract Marisalada, in this painful separation, wished her
at once to mount the mule which, by his orders, was destined for her
use. The animal set off on a trot, the others followed, and all the
_cortège_ soon disappeared behind the angle of the convent. The poor
father stretched out his arms towards his daughter.
“I shall never see her more!” he cried, suffocated by his grief; and he
let fall his head on the steps of the cross.
The travellers continued their route, falling into a trot. Stein,
arrived at Calvary, soothed his heart in addressing a fervent prayer to
the Lord of Good-help, whose kind influence spread over all this
country like the light around the sun.
Rosa Mistica was at her window when the travellers passed through the
village.
“God pardon me!” she exclaimed, on seeing Marisalada on her mule at the
duke’s side, “she does not even look at me! She does not even salute me!
The demon of pride has already whispered in her heart. I bet,” she said,
advancing nearer the window, “that she will not either salute the cura,
who is below under the porch of the church; but the duke has set her the
example. Hollo! he stops to speak to the pastor. He hands him a purse
for the poor. He is so good, so generous a man! he does well, and God
will recompense him!”
Rosa Mistica knew not yet the double surprise which was to happen to
her. When Stein passed, he sadly saluted her with his hand.
“God accompany thee,” said Rosita, waving her handkerchief. “He is the
best of men! Yesterday on quitting me he wept like a child. What a
misfortune that he remains not in the village! He would not have left if
he had not espoused this fool of a Gaviota, as Momo so well calls her.”
The little troop had arrived at the summit of a hill, and commenced to
descend it. The houses of Villamar soon disappeared to Stein’s view, who
could not tear himself away from this spot where he had lived so happily
and so tranquilly.
The duke, all this time, imposed on himself the useless task of
consoling Marisalada, and painting to her, in colors the
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