[Transcriber’s note]

[Table of Contents]

LEON ROCH
A ROMANCE

BY
B. PÉREZ GALDÓS
Author of “Gloria,” etc.

From the Spanish by CLARA BELL

—AUTHORIZED EDITION—

IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I.

REVISED AND CORRECTED IN THE UNITED STATES

NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1888

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886
by William S. Gottsberger
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

THIS TRANSLATION WAS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THE PUBLISHER

CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.

Leon Roch

LEON ROCH

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

“Ugoibea, August 30th.

“Dear Leon: Think no more of my letter of yesterday; it must have crossed yours, which I have just received. Vexation, and a fit of petty jealousy, made me write a great deal of nonsense, and I am ashamed of having covered my paper with so many dreadful words, mixed up with such childish prevarications; but no—I am not ashamed; I can only laugh at myself and my style, and ask you to forgive me. If I had only had a little patience and waited for your explanations—but that again is nonsense.—Jealousy and Patience! Who ever saw the two things combined in one person? You see there is no end to my absurdities; this proves that after having been a fool, though only for a day, a woman cannot recover her natural balance of mind all at once.

“But now I am recovering mine. An end to recrimination; I am firmly resolved never again to be irritable and suspicious and inquisitive—as you say I am. Your explanations really and entirely satisfy me; their frankness and fulness impress me strongly—I hardly know why—and leave no room in my mind for doubt, but fill my soul with a conviction—how can I express it? that is in itself a sort of affection, that is its twin brother and as inseparable from it as—as—I cannot finish my sentence; but what does it matter?—To proceed; I was saying that I fully accept your explanation. A denial would have increased my suspicions; your confession has removed them. You tell me that you did love—no, that is not the word, that you had a fancy, a mere fancy, as a boy—as children together—for Pepa de Fúcar; that you have known her since she was little, and that you played together—I remember you used to tell me something about it in Madrid, when we first made your acquaintance. It was she, no doubt, who used to go with you to pick up the blossoms fallen from the orange-trees—who was frightened at the rustling made by the silk-worms when they were feeding, and for whom you used to make crowns of Marvel of Peru? Yes, you told me many funny stories of your companion as a child. You and she used to dye your cheeks with blackberries, and make paper crowns to wear; you loved to take birds’ nests, and her greatest delight was to pull off her shoes and stockings and paddle in the streams among the rushes and water-plants. One day, almost at the same instant, you fell from a tree and she was bitten by some reptile. That was Pepa de Fúcar, was it not? You see I remember very well, and could write your history quite accurately.

“The truth is that I really did not pay much attention to those baby stories; but when I saw the girl, and when they said you were in love with her.—It is ten days ago and I still feel as if I were being suffocated—as I did when I first heard it. Believe me; I felt as if the world were coming to an end, as if time were standing still—I cannot express the feeling—or had turned backward and revealed some horrible spot, some unknown desert where—another unfinished sentence! To proceed.

“I remember now some more stories of your childish amusements, which you told me not long ago. How such trifles cling to our memories! When you were a boy, and were studying that science of stones of which I can never see the use; when she—for I think that again it was Pepa de Fúcar—had left off putting her feet in the water and staining your cheeks with blackberry juice or decking herself with your paper crowns, that you played at being lovers with less innocence than before, but still—come, I will allow thus much—still with perfect innocence. She was at some school where there were a great number of lilac shrubs, and a porter who undertook to receive and deliver notes. Are you not astonished at my good memory? I even remember that porter’s name; it was Escoiquiz.

“Well—enough of ancient history. What you have just told me, what I did not know till I just now read your letter (and I repeat that I was not particularly pleased to hear it) was that two years ago you met again where the orange-trees blow and the silk-worms feed and the water flows in the brooks; that you suffered a slight illusion, so to speak, and at that time began to feel a sincere affection for her, which grew and grew until—and here I come to the story—until you knew me.—Thank you Sir, and I make you a pretty curtsy, for the string of compliments, polite hints, protestations, and loving words which here follow. This shower of praises fills a whole page. Such pages as these come before us like a face we love, and this one made me cry with joy. Thanks again, a thousand thanks. It is all charming, and what you say of me is much too kind and good. You are worth a hundred of me.—You live for me? Oh Leon! How can I do better than believe all these romantic speeches? My heart opens wide to accept them all. I am a good catholic and have been brought up to be a true believer.

“Yes, I will be so foolish—I have read that blessed page once more. Oh! it is good to be told that ‘a true, deep, and lofty devotion has blotted out that fancy and left no trace of it’—very good! ‘the illusions of childhood rarely last into mature years’ of course; ‘Your sentiments are sincere, and your intentions thoroughly honest’—yes no doubt; ‘The voice I heard, the words that made me feel as if the world had come to an end, were simply one of those wild suppositions thrown out at random, to be taken up by malice and used by her as terrible weapons’—so it is, so it is; ‘Pepa de Fúcar is as indifferent to you at this moment as any other woman living’—that is perfect, exquisite! and finally ‘I and I alone’—me and no one else.—What joy to press my hand closely to my heart while I think to myself—me, me alone, and no one in the world but me!

“A potent argument in your favour has just occurred to me; Pepa de Fúcar is immensely rich and I am almost poor. However, when one has faith no arguments are needed, and I have faith in you. Every one who knows you, says you are a model of uprightness and noble generosity—a rare thing in these days. I am as proud as I am flattered. How good God has been to me in bestowing on me a gift which, by all accounts, is so seldom found in this world!

“I cannot avoid telling you—though this letter already seems interminable—the impression that girl produced on me, even setting aside the rancour I could not help feeling at first. But now the storm is over; I can judge her coolly and impartially, and though, when I heard what you know, I thought she must be perfectly charming, I see her now in her true light. Every one talks of her shameful extravagance. It is an insult to Heaven and humanity! Papa says she spends enough in clothes in a week to support several families comfortably. She is elegant, no doubt; but sometimes very affected—as much as to say: ‘Gentlemen, I behave in this way that you may all see how rich I am.’ Mamma says, no man would ever think of marrying a girl who thinks of nothing but displaying the products of industry. Rothschilds are not to be met with at every turn, and Pepa de Fúcar is enough to frighten away her suitors. She is recklessly extravagant and wilful, full of whims, and very badly brought up, and will end by falling into the hands of some fortune-hunter. So Mamma says, and she knows the world; and I really believe she is right.

“I do not think her so pleasing even as some people do, nor as I thought her myself, when I was dying of jealousy. She is too tall and thin to be graceful. It is impossible to deny that she has a fine complexion, but one needs a microscope to see her eyes, they are so small. They say she is very amusing and agreeable, but this I know nothing about, as I never talked to her, and never wish to. I have seen her from a distance, on the sands and in the gallery of the bathing house, and her manners struck me as decidedly free and easy. I fancied she looked rather particularly at me; and I looked at her, intending to convey to her that I did not care a straw about her. I do not know whether I succeeded.

“She was here three days and I would not go out; I never cried more in my life. At last she went away; but the joy I felt in her absence is somewhat clouded by the knowledge that you and she are in the same place. All day yesterday I was wishing that there were some very, very high tower here, from which I could see what is going on at Iturburua. I would be at the top with one jump. But indeed I trust your loyalty—and if you will tell her that you love no one but me, if she has any affection for you still, and is furious when she hears it—yes, furious—do let me know; I long to have that satisfaction.

“We expect you on Monday. Papa says that if you do not come, you are not a man of your word. He is very anxious to see you to discuss some question of politics, for, by his account, there is a perfect plague of politicians here who utterly disgust him. If they would but make him a Senator!—and to tell you the truth, I almost fear for his reason if he does not attain to that bench of the blessed. He still suffers from a mania of writing letters to the papers. We have had some these last few days, and some articles as well. Mamma, of course, knows them, and they invariably begin with: “It is greatly to be regretted....”

“He came in to-day quite proud to show me your new book. He praised it highly and read the opening sentences aloud to Mamma. It was a most laughable scene; neither he, nor Mamma, nor I understood a single word of it; but, in spite of that, we had the highest opinion of the learning displayed in the book. You may fancy how much we should understand of an ‘Analysis of the Plutonic rocks in the Columbrete islands,’ and the interest I should take in quartinary deposits or in metamorphic or azoic strata. Why, I find it hard enough to spell the words, and have to copy them letter for letter. However, the mere fact that it was you who wrote this mass of mysterious learning, is enough to give it a charm in my eyes. I spent a long time poring over your pages, as though I were trying to learn Greek, and—you will not believe me, but it is quite true—I read and read, full of admiration and respect for you who had written them. Among all those monstrous names too I came on some which took my fancy in a vague fashion, such as syenite, variolite, amphibolite. They sound to me like the endearing names of fairies and cherubs who danced round you while you were studying the works of God down in the bowels of the earth.

“You see I have become poetical without intending it, a thing which is past endurance I admit, and yet this villainous letter will not get itself finished! But Mamma is calling me to go out with her; she is dreadfully bored here. She says it is the most detestable of bathing places, and that she would rather stay in Madrid than ever come here again. There is no casino, no society, no excursions to make, no shops with pretty things, no company worth looking at—in fact there is no second Biarritz in the world.

“Leopoldo, too, is bored to death. He says it is a population of savages, and he cannot understand how any decent person can like to bathe among the Caffirs—so he calls the poor Castilians who swarm on the sands. Gustavo is gone to France, to visit that good angelic creature Luis Gonzaga, who is very ailing. Poor little brother! A few days since he sent an Italian priest to call on us, Don Paoletti by name, a charming man who talked delightfully. But I want to tell you everything and really cannot. My paper is coming to an end, and Mamma is calling me again. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. Do not fail us on Monday, and we will talk of that—you know what. At night, when I say my prayers, I pray for you. Now do not put on that disagreeable face. There is a dark corner in your soul which I do not at all like. Well, I will say no more for fear of assuming the airs of a preacher, and for fear too of anticipating a great work—that sentence too may remain unfinished. Give my love to Syenite, Pegmatite and Amphibolite, the only fair beings of whom I am not jealous, and good-bye. I love you with all my heart; nay I am simpleton enough to believe all you tell me, and I expect you on Monday. So till Monday, farewell. Beware of failing me. If you do, you will see what you will see!

María.”

CHAPTER II.

LIFE AT A WATERING PLACE.

The young man who was reading this letter was walking while he read, up and down an avenue of tall trees. At one end there was a low building with a pretentious Greco-Roman façade, from which a sulphurous smelling vapour came out in tepid gusts, and at the other, one of those phalansteries in which Spaniards congregate during the summer carrying with them into the country all the restrictions, inconveniences, and unhealthy accessories of a town life. Rough slopes, covered with grass and mosses, came down close behind the bath house, as if trying to push it into the stream below; and the torrent itself, striving to make up for its smallness by the noise it made—like some human beings who are Manzanares[A] in size and Niagaras in noisiness—rushed tumultuously past the foundation-wall, swearing and muttering obstreperously that it would carry away the hotel, the promenade and the drinking-bar; the doctor, the inn-keeper and the visitors.

[A] The river on which Madrid stands, which in Summer is almost dried up.

The visitors were limping and coughing in the avenue, or sitting in various groups on the banks of turf under the trees. Whole monographs on every imaginable complaint were being delivered by the sufferers; elaborate calculations as to digestion, past or to come; grotesque diagnosis; narratives of sleepless nights, of spasms, headaches and hiccoughs; inventories of palpitations; dissertations on the irritability of the sympathetic nerve; mysterious hypotheses as to the nervous system, as impenetrably obscure as the arcana of Isis; observations formulated into aphorisms by optimist speculators; forebodings of the apprehensive who thought each cough was a step towards the grave; hopes from the credulous who believed the waters might work miracles and bring the dead to life again; suppressed sighs of these who were in pain; soliloquies of those who were past curing, and glad laughter of the convalescents.

No one who has not lived for some few days in the midst of such a panting and wheezing community—with its sick folks who look quite well and its healthy folks who fancy themselves ill; and men who are dying visibly by inches, eaten up by the diseases of vice—can form an idea of the dulness and monotony of this hotel life, which society has rushed into with such extraordinary unanimity since the invention and extension of railways, and which scarcely ever affords any of the pleasures or peaceful rest of the real country.

Nevertheless there is a certain charm to be found in this invalid community. The constant change of drama; the beautiful faces which arrive every day followed by more satellites than a planet; the luxury, the evening meetings; the delicate ambrosia of gossip, served up constantly fresh and spicy, never satiating and never exhausted in spite of the incessant demand; the flirtations begun or revived; the moral friction, sometimes against the grain but sometimes delightfully soothing; the thousand floating ends, as it were, that get tied or sundered; the little dances; the parties to see this or that grotto or panorama, or heap of ruins, which every one has seen a year ago but which must be once more admired in chorus; the harmless or very venial gambling; the jokes, the plots, the small intrigues, with which some members of this little world are so bold as to disturb the monotony of the common contentment, the common amusement, the common hygiene—for this sort of society is eminently a Commonwealth, and its gaiety and splendour hide a regimen as dreary as that of a hospital—all these accessories make such colonies highly attractive, to a certain class of mind at any rate, and, as it would seem, the commonest. For this reason the whole Spanish nation resort to such spots, some with their own money to spend, and some with that of others; and at the beginning of July, the ‘Governor’ or the money-lender is put under requisition to supply the funds necessary to the attainment of this great desideratum of modern life. It would seem that there is a certain form of dipsomania, a craving to drink of sulphurous waters; and, to slake that elegant thirst, a man is willing to become a sort of hydropathic Anacreon.

The young man who was reading the letter was dressed in deep mourning; having read and folded the three sheets, he was about to continue his walk, but was hindered by the approach and greetings of some of his fellow-visitors. It was now the hour when most of the patients came out to the spring to drink their quantum, and take a walk. Disconsolate and pinched were many of the faces, some old and yellow, others young and hectic, with forced smiles, clouded by a drawn look of suffering; and nothing was to be heard by way of conversation but an incessant flow of questions and answers as to every phase of illness, and manner of being ill.

But pathological small talk is altogether intolerable, and so the young man with the letter seemed to think, being himself on very good terms with Esculapius; for he turned off as if to leave the grounds. He was detained, however, by a party of three persons, two of whom were men of middle age and important appearance; nay, not without a certain dignity.

“Good-morning Leon,” said the youngest of the trio in a tone of confidential intimacy. “I saw you just now from my window, reading the usual three sheets.”

“What! friend Roch, up as early as ever,” cried the eldest who was also the least good-looking.

“Leon, my good fellow, choicest of souls—won’t you walk with us this morning?” said the tallest, a consequential personage, who was walking, as usual, between the other two, so that they looked as if they occupied their place on each side of him for purely ornamental purposes, and to throw his personal and social dignity into the strongest relief. The young man in mourning excused himself as best he might.

“I will return within an hour,” he said walking briskly away. “Au revoir.”

The other three went on along the promenade, and it will be proper here to give some account of this illustrious trio which formed, as the reader must understand, a constellation such as may be seen in Spain at any hour, in spite of the frequent cloudiness of our climate. The reader, like the writer, will of course say at once: We know them—let them pass and disappear. But then, they never disappear. This constellation never sets, is never dimmed by the radiance of the sun, never hidden behind a cloud, never in eclipse. It is always in the ascendant. Alas! yes, it never fails to shine with terrible splendour, and at the zenith of social life in Spain.

Who does not know the Marquis de Fúcar? Flattery speaks of him as an Oasis of Wealth in the midst of the desert of universal poverty; he holds the first place among the stars of the Spanish capital, and is the very Alpha of the society he moves in.

Who, again, does not know Don Joaquín Onésimo, that beacon light of Spanish bureaucracy, which burns so brightly wherever it shows itself, the central glory of the myriad Onésimos who, under different pretexts, fill various offices of the State? “Not a family, but an epidemic,” was said of the Onésimos. But there is no doubt whatever—Heaven knows—that if this luminary were to be extinguished, all the precincts of the administration would remain in darkness, and all social order, social institutions—nay, society itself, would revert to primæval chaos. The third side of this triangle was formed by a polished and well-dressed man, in whose pallid and languid features all the freshness and energy of his two and thirty years seemed prematurely quenched. His manners were insolent, and his whole aspect gave that impression of exhaustion and fatigue which is common enough in those who have wasted their moral strength in politics, their intellect in party journalism, and their physical vigour in vice. The type is peculiar to Spain, and to Madrid—nocturnal in its habits, perfervid, lean; the very incarnation of that national fever which betrays its burning and devouring heat in night work over newspapers, in gambling-houses where the lamps are put out only when the sun rises, in twilight rendezvous, and in mysterious meetings in the corridors of theatres, in the corners of cafés and in Minister’s offices. Such a specimen looks strangely out of place in this pure clear atmosphere, under these gigantic trees. It might almost be supposed that he would feel uncomfortable at such a distance from the dens of corruption and wickedness, that there could be no corner in his heart for the glories and graces of Nature, nor a perception of its beauties in his dulled eyes, with their red and swollen lids, heavy and bleared with late hours.

Federico Cimarra—the young man in question—Don Joaquín Onésimo, who expected ere long to rejoice in the title of Marqués de Onésimo, and Don Pedro Fúcar, Marqués de Casa-Fúcar, after having paced the avenue two or three times, sat down.

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH THE READER WILL ENJOY HEARING THE PRAISES LAVISHED BY SPANIARDS ON THEIR COUNTRY AND COUNTRY-MEN.

“It is quite clear that Leon is going to be married to the Marqués de Tellería’s daughter,” said Cimarra. “She is no great catch, for the marquis is more out at elbows than an actor during Lent.”

“He has nothing left but the house in the Calle (street) de la Hortaleza,” added Fúcar indifferently. “It is a good property—built at the same time as that of the Marqués de Pontejos; but before long that will go too. They say they are all a scatterbrained family, from the marquis down to Polito.”

“But has Tellería really nothing left but his house?” asked the man of politics with the anxious curiosity of a creditor appraising an estate.

“Nothing whatever,” repeated Fúcar, with the certainty of a man perfectly informed on the subject. “The land at Piedrabuena was sold two months ago by order of the commissioners. He gave up the houses and factory at Nules to my brother-in-law as long ago as last February, and he cannot have any money in the funds. I know that in June he was borrowing money at twenty per cent. on Heaven knows what security. In short, he is a thing of the past.”

“And it was such a great house!” said Onésimo. “I have heard my father say that in the last century these Tellerías laid down the law to all Extremadura. It was the second in point of wealth. For half a century they took all the taxes and duties of Badajoz.”

Federico Cimarra planted himself in front of the other two, his legs stretched out like a pair of compasses and twirling his stick in the air.

“It is really incredible,” he said with a smile, “that that poor fellow Leon should be about making such a fool of himself. I am really very fond of him, he is a great crony of mine; but who would venture to contradict him? What is the good of trying to argue with those wooden-headed creatures who call themselves mathematicians? Did you ever know a single savant who had a grain of common-sense?”

“Never, never,” cried the marquis, laughing loudly, as he always did. “And is it true, as I hear, that the girl is a perfect bigot? It will be a funny thing to see a full-blown freethinker caught by a little chit with Paternosters and Avemarias.”

“I do not know whether she is a bigot, but I know that she is very pretty,” said Cimarra smacking his lips. “She may be pardoned her sanctimoniousness on the score of her good looks. But her character is not formed yet—she is a mere child, and since she has been in love she has forgotten her piety. The woman who seems to me to be really on the high road to saintliness is her mother, who cannot escape the law by which a dissipated youth ends in a strictly pious old age! How she has changed! I saw her last week at Ugoibea, and she is a wreck, a perfect wreck! María, on the contrary has grown to a goddess. Such a head, such an air, and such style!”

“There you are right,” said Fúcar with a rather satirical smile. “María Sudre is worth looking at. I fancy the mathematician must have lost his bearings and had his head turned by her bright eyes. I should not like such a girl for a wife. Very handsome no doubt, excitable, romantic, reticent—very different from what she seems—in short I do not like her—I do not like her.”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed the official slapping his knee emphatically. “The idea of speaking ill of María Sudre. I know her well, she is a miracle of goodness—much the best of the family.”

“Bless me!” said the marquis with a roar of laughter. “The family is the most perfect family of fools I know; not excepting Gustavo whom they think such a prodigy.”

“No, no; the girl is a good girl, a very good girl.” Onésimo insisted. “I cannot say so much for Leon. He is one of your new-fangled savants, a product of the University, the Atheneum and the School of Mines, and I have no confidence in them whatever. A great deal of German science that the devil only can understand; obscure theories and preposterous words; an affectation of despising the whole Spanish nation as a pack of ignoramuses; a great deal of pride, and above all that infusion of scepticism which annoys me above everything. I am not one of those who profess themselves catholics while they admit theories that contradict the faith—I am catholic, catholic!” And he slapped his breast defiantly.

“My dear Sir, be as catholic as you please,” said Fúcar, laughing less boisterously than usual, nay with a certain solemnity. “We are all catholics.—But let us avoid exaggeration. Exaggeration, Sir, is the bane of the country. Let us put religious beliefs out of court, not but that they are to be respected, deeply respected. What I say is that Leon is a man of mark, a man of very great merit. He is the best specimen the School of Mines has turned out at all since it was founded. His enormous talents find no difficulties in any branch of study; he is as good a botanist as he is a geologist. As I hear, he is familiar with all the latest discoveries in Natural History, besides being a capital astronomer.”

“Oh yes!” exclaimed Cimarra, with the patronising pomposity that ignorance assumes when it is driven to do justice to learning. “Leon Roch is a first-rate fellow. He is one of the few good men we have produced in Spain. We are great friends; we were at school together. In point of fact he did not distinguish himself at school, but since then....”

“He does not suit me; I cannot get on with him....” said Onésimo, with the accent of a man who refuses to swallow a bitter pill.

“But my dear Onésimo,” said the marquis solemnly, “there is no need of exaggeration. Exaggeration is the bane of the country. Because we are catholics we condemn every man who cultivates natural science without doing penance for it as a sin; and they go astray; I admit that they go a little astray; or very far astray perhaps, from the ways of Catholicism.—But, after all, what does that matter to me. The world will go its way. The chief thing is not to exaggerate. It seems to me that Leon’s chief fault—and I have known him from childhood, for he and my daughter played together as children, at Valencia—well his chief fault is his readiness to sacrifice himself, his youth, his wealth, and his prospects to a connection with a reckless and ruined family, who will simply devour him beyond all rescue.”

“Is he rich?”

“Oh! very rich,” said Fúcar emphatically. “I knew his father at Valencia—poor Don Pepe, who died three months ago after spending fifty years in toiling like a negro. I used to deal with him when he had a chocolate mill in the Calle de las Barcas. As a matter of fact, Don Pepe’s chocolate was in high estimation there. I remember at that time I used to see Leon, a scrap of a boy, with a dirty face and ragged elbows studying arithmetic in a corner behind the counter. At Christmas, Don Pepe sold marchpane (cakes). Indeed he dealt in such goods till about fifteen years ago, and it is not thirty since he transferred his business to Madrid. When he had accumulated some capital he began to wish to increase it more rapidly. The amount of money is incalculable that has been made in this country by manufacturing chocolate out of canary-seed, out of pine-kernels, out of red ochre, out of everything rather than out of cocoa. We live in a land of bricks,[B] and we not only build our houses of them, but we eat them! Señor Pepe worked hard; at first with his own hands, then with those of others; finally with a steam engine. The result being (and the marquis pushed his hat back to the roots of his hair) that he bought land by the acre and sold it by the foot; that in ’54 he built a house in Madrid, that he got the management of the best lands belonging to the nation, and that by his command of public funds he added considerably to his fortune. In short, I should think Leon Roch must be worth eight or nine millions.”

[B] Ladrillo: cakes of chocolate are also called ladrillos.

“But you have left the choicest bit of the biography untold,” said Cimarra, seating himself by his friends. “I mean the intense vanity of the deceased worthy. In most cases these manufacturers who have enriched themselves—though they are the bane of the whole human race—are modest enough, and only care to end their days in peace, living in humble discomfort, and in the same narrow circumstances as they were used to, when they were working for their daily bread. But poor Don Pepe was quite the contrary, and his weak point was to be called marquis.”

“Indeed,” said Fúcar gravely, with the air of a man who felt it his duty to suppress such levity in the young. “I can assure you Don José Roch was a good-natured soul, kind and simple in all the relations of life; I knew him well. He made chocolate of the flower-pots in his wife’s balcony, or so said the spiteful gossips in the neighbourhood; but he was a worthy old plodder for all that, and so wrapped up in his boy that he thought of nothing else. There was in his mind but one creature in the world: his son Leon; he was insanely devoted to him. He regarded every man as his enemy who did not consider Leon the handsomest, the most learned, the first and greatest of all men on earth. All his pride and vanity were centred in being his son’s father.—We met one evening last year at Aranceles. I wanted to discuss a sale of cork with him—for he had a large property in cork-woods—but he would talk of nothing but his son. It was almost with tears in his eyes that he said to me: ‘My friend Fúcar, I want nothing for myself; six feet of earth and a stone at the top will do for me. My one desire is that Leon should have some title in this country.—It is the only thing I wish for.’

“I began to laugh: A Spanish title! Is that all you ask?—My dear Señor Don José, if you told me you longed to be handsome or to be young again—but to be a marquis! Coronets are given away now as freely as orders, and before long it will be a matter of pride not to have one. We are fast coming to a time when if a diploma of rank is sent to us we shall be ashamed to give a dollar to the porter who brings the document. Well, you shall be a marquis....”

At these words Fúcar went into one of his fits of laughing; it began with a shrill chuckle, and ended with a general contortion of his features and a sort of convulsive explosion, while he turned very red in the face. Even when this violent hilarity was over it was some time before he recovered his natural colour and his normal aspect of dignified gravity.

“Gentlemen,” said the official, hitherto silent, but not a little annoyed, perhaps, by a consciousness of his own craving for the marquisate, “however lavishly titles may have been distributed, I am not aware that any have been bestowed on chocolate makers. We are a long way....”

“Friend Onésimo,” said the marquis with cool irony, “they are bestowed on all who like to take them. And if Don Pepe never took the title of Marquis de Casa-Roch it was only because his son positively refused to be as ridiculous as the rest of the world. He is a man of principle.”

“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed Onésimo, who was always ready to support a time-honoured institution. “But in general, these learned men who are constantly manipulating principles in scientific matters lack them utterly in social questions. There are plenty of instances here; and I believe it is the same everywhere. We have seen how they govern when the country is so unfortunate as to fall into their hands, and they govern their own homes in the same way. Learned men, take my word for it, are as great a calamity in private as in public life. I do not know one who is not a fool—a perfect and utter fool.”

“You speak figuratively.”

“It is the simple truth.”

“We live in the land of Vice-versa.”

“No exaggeration, no exaggeration pray,” said the marquis, in the tone of voice he always adopted for his favourite protest. “We make a sad misuse of words nowadays and apply them too recklessly. Envy on one hand, Ignorance on the other—What is the matter?”

The question was addressed with an expression of alarm to a servant who was hurrying towards them.

“The Señorita has sent for you, Excellency. She is very unwell again.”

“I must go, my daughter is in a terrible state to-day!” said the marquis rising. “You will ask me what is the matter with her and I can only say I do not know; I have not the remotest idea. I will go and see her.”

The two friends watched him depart in silence. The marquis walked slowly, on account of his obesity, and his gait reminded one of the stately motion of some ancient ship or galleon freighted with the rich spoils of the Indies. He seemed to be carrying on board, as it were, all the weight of his immense fortune, collected during twenty years of such unfailing prosperity that the outer world could only look on and tremble and wonder.

CHAPTER IV.

MORE CONVERSATION, GIVING US SOME IDEA OF THE SPANISH CHARACTER.

In front of the grotto where the water-drinkers swallowed glass after glass, eager to counteract the oidium in their blood, there was a summer-house. It was now ten o’clock, the hour when all the visitors came out to the spring, and a party had gathered in this pleasant spot, consisting of Don Joaquín Onésimo, Leon Roch and Federico Cimarra, who was sitting astride on his chair and making it creak and groan as he seesawed.

“Do you know Leon what ails Fúcar’s daughter?”

“She left the drawing-room early last evening; she must be ill.” And having thus spoken Leon sat looking at the ground.

“But her complaint is a very strange one, as the marquis says,” added Onésimo. “Consider the symptoms. As you know, she collects china; last month, on her way back from Paris, she spent two days at Arcachon, and the Count de la Reole’s daughters gave her three pieces of Palissy-ware. They are considered handsome; to me they are no better than common crockery. Besides these she brought from Paris eight specimens of Dresden so fine and delicate you can hardly feel their weight. Well, Pepa’s whole mind seemed set on these precious works of art; she talked of nothing but her china. She took them out to look at, fifty times a day. And then—this morning she collected all this rubbish, went up to the topmost room in the hotel, opened the window and flung them into the court-yard, where they broke in a thousand pieces.”

Federico looked at Leon who merely said: “Yes, so I heard.”

“Yesterday evening,” Onésimo went on, “when we were returning from the Grotto—where, by the way, there is no more to be seen than in my bed-room—one of the large pearls dropped out of her earring. We hunted for it, and at last I found it close to a stone. I stooped to pick it up, as was natural, but she was quicker than I was; she set her foot on it and crushed it, saying: ‘Of what use is it?’—Then, they say, she tore up some costly laces. But did not you see her last night in the drawing-room? I could swear she is out of her mind.” Neither Leon nor Cimarra made any reply.

“I can tell you one thing,” continued the intelligent official, “the man who marries the damsel will have hard work with her. What bringing up! my dear fellow what training! Her father, who knows the value of money uncommonly well himself, has never taught her the difference between a bank-note and a copper piece. She is a real treasure is the Señorita de Fúcar! I had heard that she was capricious, extravagant and had the most preposterous and outrageous fancies you can imagine. Poor husband—and poor father! If she were only pretty; but she is not even that.—She will vex Don Pedro at last.—And no one listens when I thunder and declaim against these modern and foreign fashions which have spoiled all the modesty of our Spanish women—all their christian humility; their delightful ignorance, their love for a retired and domestic life, their indifference to luxury, their sobriety in dress, their neatness and economy. Only look at the hussies that are the result of modern civilisation. I quite understand the dread of matrimony which is spreading among us and which, if it is not checked, will compel the government to pass a law for betrothals and a law for marriages and create a president over bachelors.”

“But, bless me!” cried Cimarra, slapping Leon on the shoulder. “Here is the man who can tell us all about Pepa’s eccentricities, for he has known her ever since they were both children.”

Leon answered coldly:

“Whether Pepa’s attacks or eccentricities consist in breaking china or destroying her ornaments, it matters little after all. Her father is rich enough—enormously rich and richer every day.”

“On the subject,” said the phœnix of the bureaux, “of the immense wealth of Fúcar, the most characteristic thing ever said, was spoken by our friend here, who is a man of epigrams.”

“I? I never said anything, not a word about Don Pedro,” declared Federico with becoming modesty.

“Nay, nay, biting tongue! Was it not you who said at Aldearrubia’s house—I heard it myself—apropos of Fúcar’s vast fortune: ‘We must have a new formula in political economy: National bankruptcy is the fount of riches?’”

“But that might be said of so many men,” remarked Leon.

“Of so very many,” Cimarra hastened to add. “If Fúcar has amassed a fortune at the expense of the public treasury—as they say he has?—then I say: so far as the augmentation of his fortune in dealing with public moneys is concerned, he is by no means the only man to whom the remark as to National bankruptcy applies.”

Onésimo winced; but recovering himself at once he added:

“I have heard you render a merciless account of the millions amassed by the marquis, my dear Cimarra. But a wit is always allowed to find fault. You need not prevaricate, though I know that at this time you and your victim are excellent friends. Still, you described him admirably when you said: ‘He is one of those men who make money out of solids, liquids and gases, or—which comes to the same thing—out of paving-stones, wine for the troops, and gas for lighting the streets.’ The tobacco he provides by contract is a particular kind which has the property of turning bitter in the mouth and the advantage of being useful as timber; his rice and his beans are equally unique, the beans are quite famous in Ceuta; the convicts call them Apothecary Fúcar’s sprouting pills.”

“That is talking for talking’s sake,” replied Cimarra. “In spite of all this I appreciate and esteem the marquis highly; he is a most worthy man. And which of us has not, at some time or other, trodden on a neighbour’s corns?”

“I know quite well that this is all merely in joke. In this country everything must be sacrificed to a witticism. It is the way with us Spaniards. We flay a man alive, and then give him our hand. I am criticising no one in saying so—we are all alike.”

At this moment the marquis himself entered the summer-house.

“And Pepa?” asked Leon.

“She is very happy now. She passes from sadness to merriment with a rapidity that amazes me. She was crying all the morning; she says she is thinking of her mother, that she cannot get her mother out of her mind—I do not understand her. Now she wants to leave this place, at once, without waiting for me to take the baths. I did not want to come—I detest the horrible, inconvenient hotels in this country. As for my daughter’s freaks and follies! No sooner were we in France than she took it into her head to come to Iturburua. I could not help myself—Iturburua, to Iturburua Papa—What could I do? I am getting accustomed to this vagabond life, but to tell the truth it vexes me now just as much to go away as it did to come—to go without having taken six baths even. For I do not believe there are any waters to compare with these in the world.—And then where are we to go? I have not the remotest idea, for my daughter’s vagaries make all reasonable plans impossible. I am hardly allowed time enough to secure a saloon carriage; Pepa is in as great a hurry to be off as she was to come. I am to be ready at once, to-day, early to-morrow at the latest—the mountains oppress her, the hotel is crushing her, the very sky seems falling on her, and she hates all the visitors, and it is killing her—suffocating her....”

While Don Pedro was thus pouring out his paternal troubles, his three friends sat silent; only Onésimo now and again murmured a few commonplaces about nervous irritation, the result, as he stated, of some strange influences to which the fairer half of humanity are exposed. The marquis took Cimarra’s arm saying:

“Come, my dear fellow, do me the favour of amusing Pepa for a short time. At present she is very well content, but she will be bored to the last degree in a short time. You know she always laughs at your amusing notions; she said to me just now: ‘If only Cimarra would come and whisper a few spiteful things about the neighbours....’ For we all know you have a special gift that way. Come my dear fellow; she is alone.—Good-bye gentlemen; I am carrying off this rascal, for he is more wanted elsewhere than here.”

Don Joaquín and Leon Roch were left together.

“What do you think of Pepa?” asked Onésimo.

“That she has been very badly brought up.”

“Just so—very badly brought up.—And now I think of it, tell me: Is it true that you are going to be married?”

“Yes—my hour is come,” said Leon with a smile.

“To María Sudre?”

“To María Sudre.”

“A very sweet girl—and what a Christian education! Honestly my good fellow, it is more than a heretic like you deserves.” He tapped Leon kindly on the shoulder and the men parted.

CHAPTER V.

ILLUSTRATING ANOTHER TRAIT OF SPANISH CHARACTER.

It was getting late and the dancing was beginning to flag. The last whirling couples were gradually disappearing, as do the last circles of a pool into which a stone has been dropped die away on the margin; the conventional embrace which does not offend even the most coy was finally relaxed, and at length the murderous pianist, whose ear-splitting music inspired the dancers, consented to retire. A fair visitor however took his place and endeavoured to prolong the entertainment by wringing a doleful Notturno from the chords of the instrument—the most dreary and dismal form of second-rate music ever devised. This parade of lamentation however was happily short, for the mothers were out of patience and the gay groups of girls began to move away across the polished floor. The legs of the chairs creaked and clattered on the boards; with the babble of young voices mingled a hollow chorus of coughing, and the fair bevy threaded their way through the door where their exit was impeded by a knot of the elderly men—the orators, lawyers and politicians who were the glory and lustre of the company at the hotel.

In the next room the clink of the counters as they changed hands at the card-tables made a noise like that of false teeth gnashing and chattering. The coughing and throat clearing increased as the older people followed the young ones out of the dancing room, and the little tumult of youthful chatter mingled with the sad sighing undertone of premature decrepitude which seems to afflict the flower of the younger generation spread along the wide corridor, mounted the stairs, and died away by degrees in the different rooms of the many-celled phalanstery. An ingenious fancy might have likened it to a vast organ in which, after every sound had been roused to symphony, each note, deep or shrill, sank back into its own pipe again.

In the card-room sat the Marqués de Fúcar, reading the newspapers. His invariable attitude when engaged in this patriotic exercise was one of perfect rigidity; he held the paper almost at arm’s-length, while a pair of glasses assisted his sight, riding on the tip of his nose and pinching his nostrils. If he wanted to look at anything but his paper, he did it over the top of the glasses or with a furtive glance on each side. He was very apt to laugh aloud whilst reading, for he was keenly alive to a joke—more particularly when the point of it—as is not uncommon in a newspaper—was not only palpable but envenomed. Two other gentlemen were also reading, and four or five were engaged in conversation, lolling at their ease on the lounges. Federico Cimarra, after walking up and down two or three times outside, with his hands in his pockets, came into the card-room at the moment when the marquis laid down his last newspaper, and taking his pince-nez off his nose, closed them up and stowed them away carefully in his waistcoat pocket.

“What a country this is!” exclaimed the great merchant, his face still beaming with a smile at the last epigram he had read. “Do you know, Cimarra, what strikes me? Every one here speaks ill of political men, of the ministers, of the employés, of Madrid—but I begin to think that Madrid and the ministers and all the ruck of politicians—as they call them, are the pick of the nation. The representatives are bad enough, but the electors are worse.”

“Then everything is bad together,” said Federico, with the cold philosophy which is the sarcasm of a worn-out heart and an atrophied intellect, united to dwell in a sickly frame. “Equally bad—and nothing to choose from.”

“And at the bottom of all the mischief is laziness.”

“Laziness! That is as much as to say the national idiosyncracy—the very Spirit of Spain. Yes I say: Laziness, thy name is Spain. We have a great deal of smartness—so I hear; I do not perceive it anywhere. We are all alike; we hide I believe....”

“Oh! if only we had a government that would give a spur to industry and labour....”

Cimarra put on a very grave face; it was his way of making fun of his neighbours.

“Labour!—Why we scarcely know how to weave homespun cloth; hemp-shoes are fast disappearing; our home-made water-jars are growing quite scarce and even our brooms are brought from England.—Still, we can fall back upon Agriculture; that is the favourite theory with all these fools. There is not an idiot in the country who will not talk to you of agriculture. I should like them to tell me what agriculture you can have without irrigation, how you can have irrigation without rivers, or rivers without forests, or forests without men to plant them and look after them—and how are you going to get men when there are no crops? It is a vicious circle from which there is no issue—no escape! My dear Marquis, it is a matter of race I tell you.—It is one of the few things which are of the nature of primary truth: the fatality of inheritance. We have nothing to rely upon but communism supported by the Lottery—that is our future. The State must take the national wealth into its own hands and distribute it by means of raffles.

“What—you are astonished? But you will live to see it, take my word for it. Why it is a splendid idea—and as good a theory as any other. Ask your friend Don Joaquín Onésimo, who is a beacon-light of knowledge in such matters, and who, in my opinion, has one of the best heads that ever thought in Spain.”

“Is he here?” said Fúcar laughing and looking round. “He should come and hear your theory.”

“He is discussing social science with Don Francisco Cucúrbitas, an equally great man according to the Spanish standard. He is one of these men who are always talking a great deal about administration and management which simply means expedients. What would this world become but for expedients! The Almighty created these gentlemen for the express purpose of preaching social Quietism; and they might do worse. My scheme of communism and lotteries will float, my dear Sir. The taxes will bring the money, the lotteries will redistribute it.—By Jupiter! Do you know my friend we might have a very snug little game here.” And before Fúcar could answer Federico went to the door to call the men who were still in the next room; then returning to the marquis, he took a pack of cards out of his pocket and spread them on the table; they lay in a curve, overlapping each other, like an angular serpent.

“Here too!” exclaimed Fúcar with some annoyance.

Cimarra went back to the drawing-room where the lights were now being put out and presently four other men came in at his request. Only Leon Roch remained walking up and down the darkened room. After speaking a few words to the waiter, Cimarra took the young man’s arm and walked with him for a few minutes. The words that passed between them were somewhat sharp; however, Leon at length went up to his room from which, in a few minutes he returned.

“Here—vampire!” he said contemptuously to his friend, filling his hand with gold coin;—and then he was alone again.

Looking into the card-room he could see the group in the centre,—six men, some of whom bore names not unknown to fame among their countrymen. One or two, to be sure enjoyed not a very enviable reputation; but there were others too who had gained credit by their splendid speeches, amply spiced with high-sounding words on social anarchy and the national vice of indolence. Of them all the Marqués de Fúcar was the only one who played for the sake of the game and shuffled the cards with a frank smile and a jest at each turn of fortune. Cimarra dealt—he had his hat on, his brows were knit, his eyes sparkled keenly with an expression at once alert and absorbed, a solemn look of divination—or idiocy? His thin lips murmured inarticulate syllables, which an uninitiated bystander might have taken for some formula of invocation to call a spirit up. It was the jargon of the professional gambler who keeps up a running dialogue with the cards as they slip through his hands, sometimes growling, sometimes only breathing hard, as they alternately smile upon him or mock him with impish grimaces.

The contest with Chance is one of the maddest and fiercest battles in which the human mind ever engages. Chance, which is neither more nor less than an incessant and incalculable contradiction of facts, is never tired out; we can never meet her face to face, and to defy her is folly. She is as nimble and supple as a tiger, she fells and clutches her prey, while her favours—if by a whim she bestows them—light a flame in her victim’s soul that consumes him from within. His brain reels and he raves in dreams like those of the drunkard—for a vague picture of the Gorgon with whom he is contending takes possession of him and reduces him to bestial madness. Fighting in the dark, desperately and wildly, the gambler is the victim of a hideous incubus; he finds himself started in an orbit of torturing unrest, like a stone flung off into measureless space.

And at each deal the marquis would say:

“Gentlemen, it is getting late—it is time to go to bed. It is good to have a little amusement—but we must not have too much of a good thing. We must not exaggerate.”

CHAPTER VI.

PEPA.

Leon Roch having seen enough, left the house. A calm mild night invited him to walk along the terrace where there was not a living soul to be seen, and not a sound to be heard but the croaking of the toads. After pacing the avenue to the end and back for the second time, he thought he discovered a figure at one of the nearest ground-floor windows. It was in white, a woman beyond a doubt, whose arm rested on the sill, above which she was visible as a half-length. Leon went towards her and perceiving that she did not move, he went quite near. She might have been carved in marble but for her black hair and a slight motion of her hand among the leaves of a plant that grew near.

“Pepa?” he said.

“Yes, Pepa—I have turned romantic and am gazing at the stars. To be sure, there is not a star to be seen—but it is all the same.”

“It is a very dark night; I did not recognise you,” said Leon, putting his hand on the top of the window railing. “The damp air is not good for you. Why do you not shut the window? It is of no use to wait for your father. That rascally Cimarra has got him to gamble and they are all quite happy—Go indoors.”

“It is so hot inside!”

The night was in fact pitch dark and Leon could not see the girl’s face; but he could study the tone of her voice, for the voice is singularly treacherous. Pepa’s voice quavered. Her head, leaning on one side, rested against the window-frame. In her hand she held a flower with a long stem—Leon thought it was a rose. She kept raising it to her lips and biting off a petal which she blew off again. Leon noted the situation and understood that it was the moment to say something appropriate, but he racked his brain in vain; he could think of nothing, and so he said nothing. Both were silent; Leon quiet and motionless, both his hands resting on the cold iron railing, Pepa pulling out the rose petals and blowing them away.

“I hear strange stories of your whims and fancies, Pepa,” he said at last, thinking that he might presently say something to the point, if he began by saying something foolish. “You break your china, you tear your lace....”

“And what a specimen she is!” cried Pepa interrupting him with a bitter laugh that made Leon shudder. “The poor lady is never to be seen except in church! You do not understand!—You seem to have lost your wits. I am speaking of your future mother-in-law, the marquesa de Tellería. When I was stopping at Ugoibea I had a fancy to see her. They told me all the nonsense she talked about me. The usual thing—that I am badly brought up, that I am wildly extravagant, that my manners are too free, and my style of dress disgusting—yes, disgusting. But the poor woman herself has been so very different ever since she began to lose her beauty—Besides, you see, she cannot live such a worldly life now that she has such a saintly son—for of course you know that Luis Gonzaga, your María’s twin brother who is at the college of the Sacred Heart at Puyóo, is said to be a perfect angel in a cassock? Why, my dear fellow, you are going to live in the very courts of Heaven! Your mother-in-law even wears a hair shirt. You do not believe me? But I know it—her lovers say so....” And Pepa blew away a rose petal which fell on Leon’s forehead.

“Pepa,” he said with some annoyance, “I do not like to hear any friend of mine speak in that way of a respectable family....”

“But they may talk of me! They may call me violent and crazy and I must not say a word. Of course! Everything I do is ill-manners, wild behaviour, ignorance, insolence....! Change the subject then. I am very sorry never to have seen your future Saint Mary face to face. They say she is very elegant-looking—she always was. But she goes out very little at Ugoibea; she and her fool of a mother only walk out together to get fresh air. They say they give themselves no end of airs;—however, you are rich and the marquis—they say he is the only idiot known who has failed to get a place in the government.”

“Pepa, Pepa, for pity’s sake do not talk so wildly; you really hurt me deeply with your heedless speeches.” Pepa pulled at the rose which was now much reduced.

“But you see I am badly brought up,” she retorted bitterly. “And now people are discovering that I have no heart, that I am spiteful, rebellious, and capricious....”

“That is not the truth; but you should not behave so that people cannot believe it.”

“Much I care what people believe. Do I want any thing they can give me?”

“You are too proud.”

“And they say I shall never find a man of any sense to marry me!” she went on with the same angry laugh, which seemed almost convulsive. “As if there were such a thing as a man of sense. Well, I am not one of those girls who pretend to be very meek and goody-goody just to catch a husband; and I can tell you one thing: I will never marry a learned man—I loathe a savant. Perfect happiness for a woman consists in having heaps of money and marrying a fool.”

“I see you are in the mood to talk at random to-night,” said Leon pleasantly. “But you do not mean what you say, and your sentiments are better than your words.”

His eyes had by this time become accustomed to the darkness, or the night was perhaps a little clearer; Leon could, at any rate, make out Pepita Fúcar’s face against the black interior behind her like the dim blurred outline of an old picture. The whiteness of her skin, her chestnut hair, the brilliancy of her small eyes, where in each pupil burned a tiny spark, the pout of her parted lips and the savage whiteness of her teeth as she still blew away the rose-petals, above all her petulant air made her seem almost pretty, though in fact she was very far from it.

“You might make other people fancy that you were as wild as you pretend to be,” Leon went on, “but I know you better. I have known you since we were children together, and I know you have a good heart. A good mother would have taught you some things you sadly lack and have corrected some faults of manner which make you appear worse than you are; but you have been neglected as a child and now when you are growing up your father has suddenly flung you into the world in a perfect vortex of luxury, folly and riches. You know, better than I, what a state of confusion your household is in—even strangers cannot help reminding you that you are spending at the rate of three months’ income in a week, while your father is too entirely absorbed in making money to think of anything but business. Poor Pepita—so rich and so lonely! I can quite understand all the vagaries which the outside public comment on so severely; I can excuse you—yes, quite excuse you. First you built a hot-house in the garden; then you had it moved to the other side—then you gave up your plants and began to collect china—then bronzes, carvings, old stuffs, what not, and sold them again for a quarter of what they had cost you. They say you established a photographer in your house that he might take views of the garden and portraits of the horses, and all the time you never looked into a single book unless it were some silly almanac or rubbishy novel.

“You are charitable I know, for you are tender-hearted; but Pepa, in what a foolish way! A woman comes to you for help to get masses said; you put two thousand reales into her hand. The same day comes the widow of a bricklayer who has died of an accident while at work on your house, and you give her only a dollar. You have no idea of the magnitude and proportion of the needs and miseries of the poor.

“Poor Pepita—do not wonder at my speaking to you so harshly; it is out of a sincere desire for your good. I speak as your brother might—a brother who wishes to see you wiser and happier.—I tremble for you Pepita; I dread lest hard and bitter experience should teach you, by some awful shock, these realities of life of which you are still ignorant. It really troubles me to see you go so far astray—so lonely too in the midst of your wealth, and to be unable to help you; for our roads lie apart. But I feel for you deeply, and if I may speak to you truly I pity you, yes—I pity you. I admire and esteem you greatly; I can never forget that we have been play-fellows—nay—why should we deny it?—that as boy and girl we had a warmer liking, though a transient one, and that the outside world imagined we were lovers.—All this I can never forget. I have always been, and always shall be your best friend.”

Pepa bit furiously at the stem of the flower, and snatching off the few remaining leaves she almost spit them away again. One or two fell on the young man’s beard. Pepa put her handkerchief to her mouth.

“Bleeding!” exclaimed Leon, seizing the hand that held it.

“A thorn has pricked my lips,” said Pepa, in such a choked voice that Leon Roch was startled and grieved. After a short pause the girl spoke again:

“Do you know,” said she, “that your household will be a funny one?”

“Why?”

Pepa had clasped her hands to stop the beating of her heart.

“Because when your brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who is preparing to be a missionary, begins to preach on one side, and you begin to utter heresies on the other, you will be a match for each other. Leon, I tell you plainly, you are an insufferable prig and your learning makes me sick.”

“But I happen to know that your real opinion of me is a more flattering one.”

Pepa leaned out over the balcony and Leon felt her breath on his face; it seemed to scorch him like a passing flame.

“A man who has studied nothing but stones is an idiot,” said Pepa with a bitter accent.

“There I agree with you—Come, dear Pepa, be friends with a man who has a true and frank regard for you. Give me your hand.”

Pepa started to her feet.

“Give me your hand and say good-bye. Do you not feel in your heart that some day you will want me—perhaps to give you some honest advice, perhaps even some help, such as mortals must ask of each other in the shipwrecks of life.”

Pepa angrily flung away the spray she still held, and it struck Leon on the forehead. He started as if he had been lashed with a whip.

“I—want you!” she exclaimed. “What conceit! Upon my word you must have lost your senses. It is more likely that I shall one day meet a pompous prig with a simpleton on his arm and ask: ‘Pray who is this?’—say good-bye?—Good-bye; and whether it is till to-morrow or for all eternity, it is all the same to me.”

“As you please,” said Leon putting out his hand. “Good-bye. You are off to-morrow with your father. I shall not be going to Madrid at present. We may not meet for some time.”

Pepa turned away and disappeared in the darkness of the room; Leon gazed after her but could see nothing. A faint perfume—as subtle as a dream was all the trace the Marquesita de Fúcar had left as she quitted the window.

“Pepa, Pepilla!” he called in a coaxing tone. But there was no reply, no sound, no sign from the darkness within. Presently, however, he heard a low sob. He remained some time calling her name at intervals, but receiving no answer. Still he heard the sighing, betraying that in the depths of that blackness lurked a sorrow.

At last he went away slowly and softly—as stealthily as a criminal and as gloomily as an assassin.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO MEN AND THEIR SCHEMES IN LIFE.

He stumbled over a root and at the same time felt a heavy hand laid on his shoulder, with the words: “Your money or your life.”

“Leave me in peace,” said Leon shaking off his friend and walking on.

But Cimarra put his hand through his arm and held him so that he was forced to spin round on one foot. Their tottering gait, and their position, arm in arm, might have led a spectator to fancy that the pair were tipsy; but this evil suspicion would have been dissipated by Cimarra’s next speech as he said, very gravely and with an accent of reproof in his harsh metallic voice:

“I have had desperate ill-luck! I am distinguishing myself greatly in Iturburua.”

“Let me be, gamester!” said Leon angrily shaking the arm his companion was holding. “I am not in the humour for jesting—and do not intend to lend you any more money. Has the Marqués de Fúcar left the table?”

“He is just going to his room. I never saw a man have such crushing good-luck. This is the way with the country—to-night I represent the country. Alas! poor Spain!—Solés has won enormously; since they made him governor of a province he has had tremendous luck; his victims are Fontán, X—— and I. But it is early yet. Leon, go up and fetch some more shot from the locker.”

Leon did not reply; his mind was disturbed; but his thoughts were far from the ignoble ideas which agitated his companion. Instead of going upstairs as Federico had asked him, he went with him into the card-room. One of the ‘victims’ was snoring on a sofa; the other was saying good-night, with a voice and demeanour that did justice to a diabolical temper; but he did not hurry himself and wrapped up elaborately, as a protection against the night air.

The two friends were left alone.

“I shall not play,” said Leon shortly.

Cimarra, knowing Leon Roch’s tenacious nature resigned himself to his fate, and seating himself by the table he took up the cards and began turning them over in his slender and exquisitely-kept hands. A large ring on his little finger reflected a pale light from the lamp, by this time burning low, and with his eyes fixed on the pack, he dealt and shuffled and shuffled and dealt so as to make an infinite variety of combinations. The cards seemed plastic in his hands and obedient to his touch.

“It is not my fault—it is not my fault!” muttered Leon gloomily from the corner of a sofa on which he had dropped, evidently much disturbed and agitated.

“What is not your fault?” asked Federico looking up in amazement. “Something has gone wrong with you old fellow—where have you been?”

“No—there is nothing the matter with me; I cannot tell you what has gone wrong. It is a strange sensation, a kind of remorse—and yet, no, not remorse for I have done nothing wrong—it is a pain, a regret—But you would not understand even if I were to explain it to you; you are a libertine; your feelings are depraved, your heart is dead, your emotions are all selfish and sensual.”

“Much obliged I am sure. If I am unworthy of a friend’s confidence....”

“Friend! you are not my friend.—No friendship can subsist between us two. Chance made us friends in childhood, but our natures have made us indifferent to each other. In that atmosphere of frivolity, of mere superficial virtue, if not of actual corruption in which you have your being I can neither move nor breathe. My poor father’s vanity flung me into its midst; his devotion to me led him into many follies and illusions. He—who had made his fortune by the sweat of his brow in a chocolate factory—wanted to make a fine gentleman of his son, a finikin and aristocratic creature such as he pictured in his deluded fancy. ‘Be a marquis,’ said he, ‘enjoy yourself; ride your horses to death, drive your carriage, make love to other men’s wives, marry into a noble family. Get into the Ministry, make a noise in the world, let your name stand at the head of every list.’—These were not his words, but that was what he wanted.”

Leon was too excited to sit still and he stood up as he spoke. There are times when we must give vent to our thoughts lest they should gather into so heavy a cloud as to darken the brain with a dense fog of murky smoke.

“And what is the end of all this?” asked Federico with some disgust. “Talk no more nonsense, but come and....”

“I say all this to you because I have made up my mind to desert. The inhabitants of the social sphere into which my father insisted on bringing me, I find simply unendurable. I cannot breathe this air; all my surroundings depress and weary me—the people I meet, their actions, their manners, their language—their very feelings, though they are all well regulated, and in the very best taste. It positively saddens me to look on at the extravagant fancies, the capricious or sickly sentiment which possesses every mind that is not sunk in selfish indifference.”

“You are energetic in your denunciation,” said Cimarra, laughing at his friend’s emphatic tirade. “Something serious has happened to you Leon; you have had some sudden blow. This evening you were calm, reasonable, friendly, a little sad perhaps, with the peevish melancholy of a man who is engaged to be married and who is eight leagues away from his lady-love—and then, all of a sudden, I meet you in the promenade, agitated and excited—you blurt out a few incoherent words, and I see you are pale, with an expression—how shall I describe it.—Whom have you been talking to?” And as he spoke he gazed at him curiously, but without ceasing to shuffle the cards.

“I have nothing to tell you,” said Leon, already more composed, “but that as I am tired I will cut the matter short. I intend henceforth to mould my life on my own pattern, as the birds build their nests where their instinct leads them. I have laid my plans with the calm reason of a practical man—eminently and strictly practical.”

“Ah—well, I have heard it said that the whole race of practical men is the veriest set of dolts on the face of the earth.”

“I have laid my plans,” continued Leon, paying no heed to his friend’s interruption. “I am going straight on with it—straight ahead. It will not disappoint me; I have thought of it a great deal, and have weighed the pros and cons with the accuracy of a chemist who weighs the elements of a compound, drop by drop. I know what my aim is—a lofty and a noble one, tending to the good of society and of humanity, advantageous to my prospects as a man, to the health of body and mind alike.—In a word I am going to be married.” Federico looked and listened with an expression of covert amusement.

“And in choosing my wife,” Roch went on—“I ought not to say choosing for I fell in love like any fool—but that did not prevent me from realising my position and calmly and coldly reviewing the character and qualities of my future wife. It is my duty to marry her, Federico, distinctly my duty; there I am on firm ground and that much is beyond a doubt. María captivated me by her beauty it is true; but that is not all—far from it. I smothered my passion, I studied her closely and I found behind that beauty, a mind in no respect unworthy of it. María’s goodness, her sense, her modesty, the submissiveness of her intelligence, her exquisite ignorance of life added to the seriousness of her tastes and instincts—all made me feel that she was the wife for me—I will be perfectly frank with you: her family are not at all to my liking. But what does that matter? I can separate from my relations. I only marry my wife and she is delightful—she has feeling and imagination, and that sweet credulousness which is the most ductile element in human nature. Her education has been neglected and she is as ignorant as can be; but on the other hand, she is free from all false ideas and frivolous accomplishments, and from those mischievous habits of mind which corrupt the judgment and nature of the girls of our day. Do you not think me a happy man? Do you not see that this is the very woman I want; that I shall be able to form my wife’s character, which is the most glorious task a man can have—form it to my own mind and on my own image—the highest achievement I can aspire to, and the only guarantee of a peaceful life.—Do not you think so?”

“You ask me—a hardened and selfish worldling!” said Federico ironically. “My dear fellow you are out of your mind.”

“I ask you as I might ask this bench!” retorted Leon turning his back contemptuously. “There are occasions in life when a man feels that he must speak his thoughts aloud to convince himself of their validity. It is as if I were talking to myself. You need not answer me unless you like.—I mean to mould her in my own way. I do not want a ready-made wife, but a wife to make. I want a woman with a firm basis of character—strong feelings and perfect moral rectitude. Any extensive knowledge of the world, or the absurd teaching of a girl’s school, would hinder rather than help my purpose. I should have to pull down too much and to build on the ruins; I should have to dig deep down to find a safe foundation for the edifice.”

Federico had risen during this harangue and thrown down the cards: after walking two or three times round and about Leon who had not moved; and now, laying his hand on Roch’s shoulder, he said in a low voice:

“Most worthy and wisest of men, we, the depraved and ignorant, look into the future as well as you; we too lay our plans, not indeed mathematically but perhaps with better hopes of security than you practical men. We are apt indeed to think of the ass as a practical animal. We do not condemn matrimony; on the contrary, we regard it as indispensable to the progress of society and the improvement of the condition....” He paused a few moments and then went on—“of the condition of the individual. You will understand what I mean. We, to be sure, are not learned and when we have fallen in love like a schoolboy we do not make an elaborate analysis of the qualities of the women whom we choose to be our wives. We do not aspire to form their character; we take the article ready made, as God or the devil has wrought it. This marrying to become a school-master is in the very worst taste. There is something else to be thought of in these latter days besides a woman’s character. The inequality of fortune among human beings, and the luckless fate to which some are born, the hideous disparity between a man’s fortune and the ‘material of war’ which he requires to fight against and for life—the miserable ‘Struggle for existence’ as the evolutionists have it—that is what weighs on me—the scarcity of work to be done in this accursed country, and the impossibility of making money without having money.—Do you hear what I say?—All these things and many others make it necessary to look out for something besides virtue in our future brides.”

“What?”

Cimarra shook his hands as if he were clinking coin.

“Cash,” he said, “hard cash and ready.” Cimarra talked the mongrel language of a man of fashion, mixing the style of an orator with the slang of a gambler, and quotations in foreign languages with the low blasphemies of a street boy, which shall not be recorded here.

“Life,” he went on, “is getting more difficult every day. It is all very well for rich folks like you to send moral platitudes flying about the world, and never to feel a base desire or harbour a thought that is not the quintessence of the purest ether. However, we need not exaggerate, as Fúcar is so fond of saying. I maintain that what sanctimonious fools call filthy lucre may be a potent element of morality. I, for example....”

“You! And what are you an example of pray?”

“I was going to say that I, if I found myself the possessor of a fortune, should be a model gentleman, and might even be known to posterity as the Illustrious Cimarra. For is it not a matter of course, a phrase ready coined?—Tom, Dick and Harry are Illustrious nowadays.”

“Though you may try to conceal it, I see some remains of shame in you,” said Roch. “Your laxity of morals is not as great as you try to make the world believe.”

“Everything is relative, as my friend Fontán always says in jest,” replied Federico shrugging his shoulders. “You cannot judge off-hand, in that light and easy way, of a man like me who lives with the rich and is poor himself. Get that well into your head. I talk to you with perfect frankness. My projects after all are as yet merely visions—sketches, my dear fellow. We shall see—I flatter myself I have made a good beginning. Time will show. Some day perhaps when you have quite forgotten me, lost in the bliss of pedagogic matrimony, you may hear that that reprobate Cimarra has found a wife. We all have to come to it—sooner or later. Even a poor devil like me has his schemes and his philosophy. We are all tortoises together, but some have more shell to cover them than I have.—Do not take it into your head that I am indifferent to the moral graces of my wife—nor that I propose to marry a monster. I shall have a virtuous wife, my learned friend, thoroughly respectable, take my word for it, and a fine family of children and grand-children.”

“Then you have made your choice.”

“I have.—But I must warn you that I make no great point of personal beauty. I am not like you; I have a soul above being caught by a pair of fine eyes and a mouth that time can only spoil. Beauty is only skin deep. It lasts, as the poet says ‘l’espace d’un matin.’ But she has a pleasant and attractive expression, distingué manners, a quantum of dignity, a quantum of liveliness, wit and even chic—Education? Well nothing much to speak of, but we do not intend to set up for Professors. She has a great deal of good in her with a spice of the devil too; she has wild ways occasionally, freaks of temper, habits of extravagance....”

Leon turned pale and fixed a gloomy eye on his companion.

“What do I care if she smashes a lot of rubbishy plates, or cuts a Murillo into strips, or makes mince-meat of her lace? There are some things in which no husband should interfere.”

Leon sat staring dully at the green cloth of the table on which he had propped his elbows.

“Mercy, how the time goes, man!” he exclaimed rising abruptly and throwing open the window. “It is day!”

The white dawn fell into the room and its light fell on two pale and haggard faces. The dying lamp still burnt forlorn and dingy; a long sooty flame flared up the chimney, smelling detestably.

“What a life—by way of recovering one’s health!” said Leon.

Outside, the sky was gray and rainy, a dismal background to the gloomy faces of the two men who had been up all night. Leon stood a few minutes, lost in that vague meditation which leaves no mark on the mind in moments of extreme fatigue, a state half-way between dreaming and suffering, when it is hard to be sure whether we are sleeping or only enduring. Federico gazed at his friend who stood the living image of melancholy; everything about him was black—his dress, his hair and his beard; his handsome features, and clear olive skin were marked with dark lines for want of sleep. His fine forehead, dignified though charged with painful doubts, might suggest a lowering and threatening sky where the light of day was hidden behind a shroud of clouds.

Suddenly he turned to Cimarra and said:

“Well, I wish you luck!”

“I wish I could get a little rest,” said Federico. “I am simply dying for want of sleep; but I must start at once with Fúcar.”

“You are going too?”

“Did I not tell you?—Yes, they made a point of my going with them. We are getting on you see—like a house on fire!”

Cimarra emphasised his words with a cunning smile.

“Bon voyage!” said Leon turning his back on him.

At this juncture they heard the rumble of the Fúcars’ carriage coming up to convey the travellers to the station of Iparraicea. Federico rushed up to his room to prepare to start, and for a short time the hotel was full of the bustle that always accompanies the arrival or departure of guests—the dragging of luggage, the chatter of boys and the calling of servants. Leon did not stir from the card-room, and even when he heard the voices of Fúcar and his daughter at breakfast in the dining-room, he did not care to go out and bid them farewell. In half an hour an omnibus was sent off, packed with servants and baggage, and the travelling-carriage followed with the Fúcars and Cimarra. Leon saw the first vehicle pass close by the window and before the second could come past he turned away, put his hands into his pockets and walked to the opposite corner of the room.

“What need I care?” he muttered to himself. “It is no fault of mine.”

Then he went out into the hall, where the most inveterate bathers were beginning to put in an appearance, in motley deshabille. The bath servants, with their aprons tucked up, went into the dens where yawned the marble vats; through the doors came the noise of the bubbling mineral water and the swish of the brooms in the baths, with a strong whiff of sulphur. He loitered down to the avenue and seeing in the distance the two carriages slowly mounting the hill of Arcaitzac, he could not help saying to himself with a sigh: “Alas, for those who have no control over their imagination!”

For a couple of hours he lay down to sleep, and at nine o’clock took a place in the coach that was starting for Ugoibea. His whole appearance was altered; he looked the happiest man on earth.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARÍA EGYPTIACA.

Several months had passed since that spring season by the sea; Leon Roch—on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, and in the appointed church—had been duly married, without any hindrance to the fulfilment of the plan he had made. His soul was full of the calm satisfaction which steals over it softly and silently like the breath of spring; a peace which brings refreshment and not intoxication, and which, as it is innocent of excess, never satiates the heart, and so leaves no aftertaste of tedium. Leon, as a philosopher and a student of nature, thought that nothing could be better and wished for nothing more. His wife’s beauty had improved wonderfully since her marriage and in these additional charms the husband discovered an appropriate tribute paid by nature to an union so judiciously planned in theory and wrought out in practice.

“We form a compound being,” he would say, “each the complement of the other, and it is hard sometimes to say whether the image produced is mine or hers, our feelings are so intimately blended.”

María’s affection for him, which at first had been bashful and cold as that of a well brought up Cupid who has just had his eyes unbandaged, was soon as ardent as he could wish. The passion, that at first had sat shyly behind a blind, soon peeped out, with its flaming torch, its ambrosial chalice and its chain of yearning anxieties, choking its victim with the pain of a too great happiness; so that for some time her husband forgot his educational schemes, though, in his more lucid moments, his common-sense reminded him that it would be needful to put them into practice and realise the effects of his very superior system. By degrees he recovered his habitual equanimity and his excited feelings subsided into the subordinate place which he had always assigned to them as compared with his intellect. At last he felt like a man who wakes from a long dream; he regarded his mind as a wide and fruitful territory which has been for a time drowned out by an inundation, and where, as the waters subside, at first the highest points become visible, then the hills and at last the plains.

“This will pass away,” he said to himself, “it must. When the land is clear I will attack the dreaded subject and begin to mould”—he was fond of this form of speech—“to mould María’s character. It is of exquisite clay, but formless—almost formless.”

Leon Roch’s young wife was slightly and elegantly-built, every part in such perfect proportion that a sculptor could have hoped for no better model. Her hair was black and her skin white with very little colour, giving such refinement to her grave, fervent expression that all her admirers were her lovers and envied her husband his happiness. It was not a face of Spanish type, and the outline of her profile was an uncommon one in our country, for it was that of the Athenian goddess, so rare here though occasionally met with, even in Madrid. Her eyes were large and open, of a sea-blue colour with changing tawny lights, and their gaze had a sentimental serenity which might have been thought insipid among a crowd of black eyes, firing endless volleys of flashing glances. But María’s looks gained her the reputation of being proud rather than stupid, her lips were brilliantly red, her throat slender, her figure round, and her hands small and “moulded of soft flesh” like those of Melibea. She spoke in measured tones with a sort of deliberate plaintiveness that went to the souls of her hearers; she laughed but little—so little that it added to her reputation of pride, and she was so reserved in her friendships that in fact she had no friends. Even while quite a child she had always been credited with so much good sense that her parents themselves regarded her as the choicest production of their illustrious race, throughout the whole course of its glorious existence. To this almost superhuman beauty—this woman, in whose form and face were combined, as in a perfect æsthetic union, all the charms of antique sculpture, Leon Roch, after ten months of a most platonic engagement, found himself married. Love at first sight had enslaved him: he had met her and spoken to her at a court ball, when she, having only recently been presented, was at that wondering and budding stage when a girl’s beauty still bears the stamp of innocence and still blushes with the reflection of the rosy dawn of infancy. Leon fell in love like a country swain, to his shame be it whispered, and he was himself astonished to find that his theodolite and his blow-pipe had turned to a shepherd’s crook and pipe in his hands. Did he see anything in his wife beyond her uncommon beauty? What share had his heart in this dream of ecstasy? It would be amusing indeed if he, whose boast it was that he was master of his imagination, should find that it had fairly run away with him.

María had been brought up on an estate near Avila by her maternal grandmother, a woman of great tenacity and determination, who talked a great deal about her principles without ever defining what they were or in what they differed from those of her neighbours. Under the protection of this very superior woman, who, at the age of sixty, made up her mind to renounce the vanities of the world for the narrow life of a country house—fashion and society for the dull solitude of a desert—and the chronique scandaleuse of Madrid for the gossip of a village—María learnt her first lessons. She could read well, write badly and say her creed and catechism without missing a comma. Beyond a few notions of grammar and geography, which were infused by a governess of unusual learning, she knew nothing else whatever. However, as she grew older, María, as she turned over the leaves of the books she happened to meet with, gained some items of knowledge on such subjects as do not require any very high degree of intellect.

Her companion during these years passed in the wilderness was her twin brother, Luis Gonzaga. Their grandmother worshipped them both and called them “her death sighs,” because she declared that at her last hour, if they could but stand by her side, she would be able to lift up her last thoughts to God with purer devotion.

The two children were inseparable, sharing their games and their lessons, their bread and cheese at luncheon, and their grandmother’s caresses. They would walk arm-in-arm along the horrible lanes of Avila, and would sit at night, with their heads close together, to count the stars, which shine more brightly in that part of the country than anywhere else in the world. You might have heard them saying: “you must count on that side and I will count on this—you are not to come out of your piece of sky into mine—there, all on this side are mine—we can each have half the sky.”

“No, no, it is all for you both,” said a clacking voice from a window behind them. “Now, my pretties, come in to supper, it is getting late.”

Their only reading in that remote spot consisted in the Lives of the Saints, and the two children took the amazing narrative so deeply to heart, with its tales of suffering, toil, and death, that all they themselves learned to long for was to be martyrs too; and they were possessed by the same idea that mastered St. Theresa in her infancy, when she and her brother discussed the possibility of travelling all over the infidel world that they might at last have their heads cut off.

María and Luisito set out one morning for those heathen lands, fully determined not to return—not to stop, till they should fall in with a troop of Moors who should hew them in pieces. They lay down to sleep that evening under shelter of a rock, where the God who protects the innocent softly kissed their baby lips, and—betrayed them into the hands of the night-patrol, who recognised the pair and took them home.

That home was in a very remote spot from the rest of humanity. The parish priest used to call them “the children of the wilderness” and he would seat them on his knees to amuse himself with their baby games: they would stick up their little fingers and call each by a name, performing a kind of drama with them, known to the children of most lands: the middle finger is a friar who comes to the door of a convent and calls in a big voice, and the third finger answers in a feeble squeak:

“Rat, tat!”

“Who is there?”

“Your brother, who wants to be let in.” And the end of the story is that friar Pedro is sent off with a flea in his ear, the nuns thrashing him with sticks, and he disappears grumbling.

At this the twins would still laugh with glee at an age when most children begin to crave for better playthings than their own fingers; but, as they grew up, their games lost their primitive simplicity and their reading and their characters became more serious. Luis Gonzaga was the delight of his seniors from his quiet good sense and his incapacity for getting into mischief; the only fault to be found with him was his love of solitary wanderings among the rocks, breathing the keen and bracing air that perpetually fans our granite ramparts, which look like the ruins of some cyclopean fortress, or the broken teeth of a giant’s jaws from which the flesh has long since disappeared. He delighted in being alone, and his chief ambition was to be a goat-herd and follow the kids that spring from peak to peak in that dead and dessicated arcadia; he heeded neither cold nor heat.

One day he was discovered lying at the foot of a pine-tree, the solitary specimen of vegetable life within sight, that stood melancholy, senile and leafless, as though in dismal warning, like the motto on a tombstone: “we all must die.” The boy was writing “something” on a scrap of paper with a black lead pencil which he frequently moistened by putting in his mouth. It was the priest who found him, and who took possession of the manuscript, which consisted of a number of lines without rhyme or rhythm, devoid alike of grammar and spelling, which made the worthy man laugh heartily—for he knew something, if not much, of the humanities.

“This is neither verse nor prose,” he said.

No, it was neither verse nor prose; but it was poetry. These were stanzas on the model of verses from the Bible expressing the feelings of a contemplative nature. How the priest laughed as he read:

“When the darkness of night falls, the flocks of Heaven are scattered over the vast blue field and watched over by the gentle angels.—

“The Lord passed by yesterday in a chariot of thunder drawn by lightning which cast down hail and sweated rain; I trembled like a flame in the wind and my mind was tossed like a pebble carried away by a flood.

“I am like dried flax that catches fire, and turning to smoke, rises from the ashes and ascends to Heaven.”

One day their grandmother rose much later than usual, her face was flushed, her speech slow and strange, while her eyes glistened like two old metal buttons that have been rubbed very bright. All the servants observed to their great consternation that their mistress talked a great deal of nonsense—not that this in itself was an alarming novelty—but she repeated the same thing again and again, without any interval of better sense. When the priest felt her pulse, the good lady grasped his arm and throwing a cloak over her shoulders exclaimed with a wild laugh: