MARIANELA

BY

B. PEREZ GALDÓS
Author of "Gloria," etc.

From the Spanish by CLARA BELL

REVISED AND CORRECTED IN THE UNITED STATES

NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1883

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883
By William S. Gottsberger
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

THIS TRANSLATION WAS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THE PUBLISHER

Press of
William S. Gottsberger
New York

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Those who have read "Gloria" will, it is hoped, hail with pleasure another work by the same writer, Perez Galdós—different it is true, but in its way not less delightful.

The strongly-marked humor and darkly-painted tragedy of "Gloria" are not to be found in "Marianela;" the characters are distinct and crisply sketched, but with a tender hand, the catastrophe is pitiable, rather shocking; the whole tone is idyllic.

I have not hesitated to translate literally the Spanish words of endearment; for though they are foreign to the calmer spirit of our northern tongue they are too characteristic to be lost, and they are strangely pathetic as the only outlet found for the imprisoned spirit of the hapless little heroine.

CLARA BELL.

CONTENTS.

MARIANELA.

[CHAPTER I.]
GONE ASTRAY.

The sun had set. After the brief interval of twilight the night fell calm and dark, and in its gloomy bosom the last sounds of a sleepy world died gently away. The traveller went forward on his way, hastening his step as night came on; the path he followed was narrow and worn by the constant tread of men and beasts, and led gently up a hill on whose verdant slopes grew picturesque clumps of wild cherry trees, beeches and oaks.—The reader perceives that we are in the north of Spain.

Our traveller was a man of middle age, strongly built, tall and broad-shouldered; his movements were brisk and resolute, his step firm, his manner somewhat rugged, his eye bold and bright; his pace was nimble, considering that he was decidedly stout, and he was—the reader may at once be told, though somewhat prematurely—as good a soul as you may meet with anywhere. He was dressed, as a man in easy circumstances should be dressed for a journey in spring weather, with one of those round shady hats, which, from their ugly shape, have been nicknamed mushrooms (hongo), a pair of field-glasses hanging to a strap, and a knotted stick which, when he did not use it to support his steps, served to push aside the brambles when they flung their thorny branches across so as to catch his dress.

He presently stopped, and gazing round the dim horizon, he seemed vexed and puzzled. He evidently was not sure of his way and was looking round for some passing native of the district who might give him such topographical information as might enable him to reach his destination.

"I cannot be mistaken," he said to himself. "They told me to cross the river by the stepping-stones—and I did so—then to walk on, straight on. And there, to my right, I do in fact, see that detestable town which I should call Villafangosa by reason of the enormous amount of mud that chokes the streets.—Well then, I can but go 'on, straight on'—I rather like the phrase, and if I bore arms, I would adopt it for my motto—in order to find myself at last at the famous mines of Socartes."

But before he had gone much farther, he added: "I have lost my way, beyond a doubt I have lost my way.—This, Teodoro Golfin, is the result of your 'on, straight on.' Bah! these blockheads do not know the meaning of words; either they meant to laugh at you or else they did not know the way to the mines of Socartes. A huge mining establishment must be evident to the senses, with its buildings and chimneys, its noise of hammers and snorting of furnaces, neighing of horses and clattering of machinery—and I neither see, nor hear, nor smell anything. I might be in a desert! How absolutely solitary! If I believed in witches, I could fancy that Fate intended me this night to have the honor of making acquaintance with some. Deuce take it! why is there no one to be seen in these parts? And it will be half an hour yet before the moon rises. Ah! treacherous Luna, it is you who are to blame for my misadventure.—If only I could see what sort of place I am in.—However, what could I expect?" and he shrugged his shoulders with the air of a vigorous man who scorns danger. "What, Golfin, after having wandered all round the world are you going to give in now? The peasants were right after all: 'on, straight on.' The universal law of locomotion cannot fail me here."

And he bravely set out to test the law, and went on about a kilometre farther, following the paths which seemed to start from under his feet, crossing each other and breaking off at a short distance, in a thousand angles which puzzled and tired him. Stout as his resolution was, at last he grew weary of his vain efforts. The paths, which had at first all led upwards, began to slope downwards as they crossed each other, and at last he came to so steep a slope that he could only hope to get to the bottom by rolling down it.

"A pretty state of things!" he exclaimed, trying to console himself for this provoking situation by his sense of the ridiculous. "Where have you got to now my friend? This is a perfect abyss. Is anything to be seen at the bottom. No, nothing, absolutely nothing—the hill-side has disappeared, the earth has been dug away. There is nothing to be seen but stones and barren soil tinged red with iron. I have reached the mines, no doubt of that—and yet there is not a living soul to be seen, no smoky chimneys; no noise, not a train in the distance, not even a dog barking. What am I to do? Out there the path seems to slope up again.—Shall I follow that? Shall I leave the beaten track? Shall I go back again? Oh! this is absurd! Either I am not myself or I will reach Socartes to-night, and be welcomed by my worthy brother! 'On, straight on.'"

He took a step, and his foot sank in the soft and crumbling soil. "What next, ye ruling stars? Am I to be swallowed up alive? If only that lazy moon would favor us with a little light we might see each other's faces—and, upon my soul, I can hardly expect to find Paradise at the bottom of this hole. It seems to be the crater of some extinct volcano.... Nothing could be easier than a slide down this beautiful precipice. What have we here? ... A stone; capital—a good seat while I smoke a cigar and wait for the moon to rise."

The philosophical Golfin seated himself as calmly as if it were a bench by a promenade, and was preparing for his smoke, when he heard a voice—yes, beyond a doubt, a human voice, at some little distance—a plaintive air, or to speak more accurately, a melancholy chant of a single phrase, of which the last cadence was prolonged into a "dying fall," and which at last sank into the silence of the night, so softly that the ear could not detect when it ceased.

"Come," said the listener, well pleased, "there are some human beings about. That was a girl's voice; yes, certainly a girl's, and a lovely voice too. I like the popular airs of this country-side. Now it has stopped.... Hark! it will soon begin again.... Yes, I hear it once more. What a beautiful voice, and what a pathetic air! You might believe that it rose from the bowels of the earth, and that Señor Golfin, the most matter-of-fact and least superstitious man in this world, was going to make acquaintance with sylphs, nymphs, gnomes, dryads, and all the rabble rout that obey the mysterious spirit of the place.—But, if I am not mistaken, the voice is going farther away—the fair singer is departing.... Hi, girl, child, stop—wait a minute!..."

The voice which had for a few minutes so charmed the lost wanderer with its enchanting strains was dying away in the dark void, and at the shouts of Golfin it was suddenly silent. Beyond a doubt the mysterious gnome, who was solacing its underground loneliness by singing its plaintive loves, had taken fright at this rough interruption by a human being, and fled to the deepest caverns of the earth, where precious gems lay hidden, jealous of their own splendor.

"This is a pleasant state of things—" muttered Golfin, thinking that after all he could do no better than light his cigar.—"There seems no reason why it should not go on for a hundred years. I can smoke and wait. It was a clever idea of mine that I could walk up alone to the mines of Socartes. My luggage will have got there before me—a signal proof of the advantages of 'on, straight on.'"

A light breeze at this instant sprang up, and Golfin fancied he heard the sound of footsteps at the bottom of the unknown—or imaginary—abyss before him; he listened sharply, and in a minute felt quite certain that some one was walking below. He stood up and shouted:

"Girl, man, or whoever you are, can I get to the mines of Socartes by this road?"

He had not done speaking when he heard a dog barking wildly, and then a manly voice saying: "Choto, Choto! come here!"

"Hi there!" cried the traveller. "My good friend—man, boy, demon, or whatever you are, call back your dog, for I am a man of peace."

"Choto, Choto!..."

Golfin could make out the form of a large, black dog coming towards him, but after sniffing round him it retired at its master's call; and at that moment the traveller could distinguish a figure, a man, standing as immovable as a stone image, at about ten paces below him, on a slanting pathway which seemed to cut across the steep incline. This path, and the human form standing there, became quite clear now to Golfin, who, looking up to the sky, exclaimed:

"Thank God! here is the mad moon at last; now we can see where we are. I had not the faintest notion that a path existed so close to me, why, it is quite a road. Tell me, my friend, do you know whether the mines of Socartes are hereabout?"

"Yes, Señor, these are the mines of Socartes; but we are at some distance from the works."

The voice which spoke thus was youthful and pleasant, with the attractive inflection that indicates a polite readiness to be of service. The doctor was well pleased at detecting this, and still better pleased at observing the soft light, which was spreading through the darkness and bringing resurrection to earth and sky, as though calling them forth from nothingness.

"Fiat lux!" he said, going forward down the slope. "I feel as if I had just emerged into existence from primeval chaos.... Indeed, my good friend, I am truly grateful to you for the information you have given me, and for the farther information you no doubt will give me. I left Villamojada as the sun was setting.—They told me to go on, straight on...."

"Are you going to the works?" asked the strange youth, without stirring from the spot or looking up towards the doctor, who was now quite near him.

"Yes, Señor; but I have certainly lost my way."

"Well, this is not the entrance to the mines. The entrance is by the steps at Rabagones, from which the road runs and the tram-way that they are making. If you had gone that way you would have reached the works in ten minutes. From here it is a long way, and a very bad road. We are at the outer circle of the mining galleries, and shall have to go through passages and tunnels, down ladders, through cuttings, up slopes, and then down the inclined plane; in short, cross the mines from this side to the other, where the workshops are and the furnaces, the machines and the smelting-house."

"Well, I seem to have been uncommonly stupid," said Golfin, laughing.

"I will guide you with much pleasure, for I know every inch of the place."

Golfin, whose feet sank in the loose earth, slipping here and tottering there, had at last reached the solid ground of the path, and his first idea was to look closely at the good-natured lad who addressed him. For a minute or two he was speechless with surprise.

"You!" he said, in a low voice.

"I am blind, it is true, Señor," said the boy. "But I can run without seeing from one end to the other of the mines of Socartes. This stick I carry prevents my stumbling, and Choto is always with me, when I have not got Nela with me, who is my guide. So, follow me, Señor, and allow me to guide you."

[CHAPTER II.]
GUIDED RIGHT.

"And were you born blind?" asked Golfin, with eager interest, arising not only from compassion.

"Yes, Señor, born blind," replied the lad, with perfect simplicity. "I only know the world by fancy, feeling and hearing. I have learned to understand that the most wonderful portion of the universe is that which is unknown to me. I know that the eyes of other people are not like mine, since they are able to distinguish things by them—but the power seems to me so extraordinary, that I cannot even imagine the possibility of its existence."

"Who knows ..." Golfin began. "But what strange scene is this, my friend? What a wonderful place we are in!"

The traveller, who had been walking by the side of his companion, stood still in astonishment at the weird view which lay before him. They were in a deep basin resembling the crater of a volcano; the ground at the bottom was broken and rough, and the sloping sides still more so. Round the margin and in the middle of the vast caldron, which looked even larger than it was in the deceptive chiaroscuro of the moonlit night, stood colossal figures, deformed caricatures of humanity, monsters lying prone with their feet in the air, with arms spread in despair, stunted growths, distorted faces such as we see in the whimsical wreathing of floating clouds—but all still, silent, and turned to stone. In color they were mummy-like, a reddish bistre; their action suggested the delirium of fever arrested by sudden death. It was as though giant forms had petrified in the midst of some demoniacal orgy, and their gestures and the burlesque grimaces of the monstrous heads had been stricken into fixity, like the motionless attitudes of sculpture. The silence which prevailed in this volcanic-looking hollow was itself terrifying. One might fancy that the cries and shrieks of a thousand voices had been petrified too, and had been held there locked in stone for ages.

"Where are we, my young friend?" asked Golfin. "This place is like a nightmare."

"This part of the mine is called La Terrible," replied the blind boy, not appreciating his companion's frame of mind. "It was worked till about two years ago when the ore was exhausted, and now the mining is carried on in other parts which are more profitable. The strange objects that surprise you so much are the blocks of stone which we call cretácea, and which consist of hardened ferruginous clay, after the ore has been extracted. I have been told that the effect is sublime, particularly in the moonlight; but I do not understand such things."

"A wonderful effect,—yes—" said the stranger, who still stood gazing at the scene, "but which to me is more terrible than pleasing, for it reminds me of the horrors of neuralgia.—Shall I tell you what it is like? It is as if I were standing inside a monstrous brain suffering from a fearful headache. Those figures are like the images which present themselves to the tortured brain, and become confounded with the hideous fancies and visions created by a fevered mind."

"Choto, Choto, here!" called the blind lad. "Take care now, Señor, how you walk; we are going into a gallery." And, in fact, Golfin saw that his guide, feeling with his stick, was making his way towards a narrow entrance distinguished by three stout posts.

The dog went in first, snuffing at the black cavern; the blind boy followed him with the calm indifference of a man who dwells in perpetual darkness. Golfin followed, not without some instinctive trepidation and repugnance at an underground expedition.

"It is really wonderful," he said, "that you should go in and out of such a place without stumbling."

"I have lived all my life in these places, and know them as well as my own home. Here it is very cold; wrap yourself up if have you a cloak with you. We shall soon be out at the other end." He walked on, feeling his way with his hand along the wall, which was formed of upright beams, and saying:

"Mind you do not stumble over the ruts in the path; they bring the mineral along here from the diggings above. Are you cold?"

"Tell me," said the doctor, gaily. "Are you quite certain that the earth has not swallowed us up? This passage is the gullet of some monstrous insectivorous brute into whose stomach we miserable worms have inadvertently crept.—Do you often take a walk in this delectable spot?"

"Yes, often, and at all hours, and I think the place delightful. Now we are in the most arid part—the ground here is pure sand—now we are on the stones again. Here there is a constant drip of sulphurous water, and down there we have a block of rock in which there are petrified shells. There are layers of slate over there. Do you hear that toad croaking? we are near the opening now; the rascal sits there every night; I know him quite well. He has a hoarse, slow voice."

"Who—the toad?"

"Yes, Señor; we are near the end now."

"So I see; it looks like an eye staring at us—that is the mouth of the corridor."

No sooner were they out in the air again, than the first thing that struck the doctor's ear was the same melancholy song as he had heard before. The blind boy heard it too; he turned round to his companion and said, smiling with pride and pleasure:

"Do you hear her?"

"I heard that voice before and it charmed me wonderfully. Who is the singer?"

Instead of answering, the blind boy stopped and shouted with all the force of his lungs: "Nela! Nela!" and the name was repeated by a hundred echoes, some quite close, others faint and distant. Then, putting his hands to his mouth for a speaking-trumpet, he called out:

"Do not come to me, I am going that way. Wait for me at the forge—at the forge!"

He turned to the doctor again and explained:

"Nela is a girl who goes about with me; she is my guide—my Lazarillo. When it was dusk we were coming home together from the great meadow—it was rather cool, so, as my father forbids my walking out at night without a cloak, I waited in Romolinos' cabin, and Nela ran home to fetch it for me. After staying some little time in the hut, I remembered that I had a friend coming to see me at home and I had not patience to wait for Nela, so I set out with Choto. I was just going down La Terrible when I met you. We shall soon be at the forge now and there we must part, for my father is not pleased when I go home late, and Nela will show you the way to the works."

"Many thanks, my little friend."

The tunnel had brought them out at a spot even more wonderful than that they had left. It was an enormous gulf or chasm in the earth, looking like the result of an earthquake; but it had not been rent by the fierce throbs of planetary fires, but slowly wrought by the laborious pick of the miner. It looked like the interior of a huge shipwrecked vessel, stranded on the shore, and broken across the waist by the breakers, so as to bend it at an obtuse angle. You could fancy you saw its ribs laid bare, and their ends standing up in an irregular file on one side. Within the hollow hull lay huge stones, like the relics of a cargo tossed about by the waves, and the deceptive light of the moon lent so much aid to the fancy that Golfin could have believed that he saw among the relics of a ship's fittings, corpses half devoured by fishes, mummies, skeletons—all dead, silent, half-destroyed and still, as if they had long been lying in the infinite sepulchre of the ocean. And the illusion was perfect when he presently heard a sound of waters, and a regular splash like the dash of ripples in the hollow of a rock, or through the skeleton timbers of a wrecked vessel.

"There is water hereabouts," he said to his guide.

"The noise you hear,"—replied the other, stopping,—"and which sounds like—what shall I say—like the gurgle you make when you gargle your throat?..."

"Exactly—and where is that gurgle? Is it some rivulet that runs near here?"

"No, Señor; over there to the left there is a slope, and beyond it a wide mouth opens in the ground, a cavern, an abyss without any known bottom. La Trascava they call it. Some say that it runs down to the sea at Ficóbriga, and others think that a river flows at the bottom of it which goes round and round, like a wheel, and never comes out anywhere. I fancy it must be like a whirlpool. Some again say that down there is a constant gust of air coming out of the interior of the earth—as we blow when we whistle—and that this blast meets a current of water; then they quarrel, and struggle, and fight, and produce that noise that we hear up here."

"And has no one ever been down into this cavern?"

"It can only be got into in one way."

"How?"

"By jumping into it. Those who have gone in have never come out again; and it is a great pity, for they might have told us what goes on in there. The other end of the cavern is a long way off from this, for two years ago, when some miners were working they came upon a rift in the rock where they heard the very same sound of water as you hear now. This rift must, no doubt, communicate with the inside galleries, out of which the blast blows and into which the water rushes. By daylight you can see it plainly, for you need only go a few steps to the left to reach the spot and there is a comfortable seat there. Some people are frightened to go there, but Nela and I sit there to listen to the voice down inside the cavern—for really, Señor, we can fancy we hear it talking. Nela declares and swears that she hears words, and can distinguish them quite plainly. I must confess I never heard any words; but it goes on murmuring like a soliloquy or a meditation, and sometimes it is sad and sometimes gay—sometimes angry, and sometimes good-humored and jolly."

"And yet I can make nothing of it but a gurgle," said the doctor laughing.

"It sounds so from this spot.—But we must not stop now, it is getting late. You must be prepared to go through another gallery."

"Another?"

"Yes—and this one branches off into two in the middle. Beyond that there is a labyrinth of turns and zigzags, because the miners have to make galleries which, when they are worked out, are deserted and left to their fate. Go on Choto."

Choto slipped into a little opening that looked scarcely bigger than a rabbit-hole, followed by the doctor and his guide, who felt his way along the dark, narrow, crooked passage with his stick. There could be no better evidence of the delicacy and subtlety of the sense of touch, extending beyond the skin of a human hand through a piece of senseless wood. They went forwards, at first in a curve, and then round corner after corner, and all the way between walls of damp, and half-rotten planking.

"Do you know what this reminds me of?" said the doctor, perceiving that his guide took pleasure in similes and comparisons. "Of nothing so much as the thoughts of perverse man. We represent the consciousness of evil, when he looks into his conscience and sees himself in all his vileness."

Golfin fancied that he had used a metaphor rather above his companion's comprehension; but the blind boy proved that he was mistaken, for he said at once:

"For those to whom that inner world looks dark and gloomy, these galleries must be dismal indeed; but I, who live in perpetual darkness, find here something which has an affinity with my own nature. I can walk here as you would in the broadest road. If it were not for the want of air in some parts and the excessive damp in others, I should prefer these subterranean passages to any place I know."

"That is an idea of brooding fancy."

"I feel as if there were in my brain a narrow passage—a rabbit-hole—like this that we are walking in, and there my ideas run riot grandly."

"Ah! what a pity that you should never have seen the azure vault of the sky at mid-day!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. "Tell me, does this dark hole—in which your ideas run riot so grandly—lead out anywhere?"

"Oh yes! we shall be outside quite soon now. The vault of the sky you said—I fancy it must be a perfect, equal curve, which looks as if we could touch it with our hands, but we cannot really."

As he spoke they got out of the tunnel; Golfin drawing a deep breath of relief, like a man who has cast off a burthen, exclaimed as he looked up at the heavens:

"Thank God that I see you once more stars of the firmament. Never have you seemed to me more beautiful than at this moment."

"As I was going along," said the blind boy, holding out his hand which held a stone, "I picked up this piece of crystal—now do you mean to say that these crystals, which to my touch are so sharply cut, so smooth and so neatly packed side by side, are not a very beautiful thing? They seem so to me at any rate." And as he spoke he broke off some of the crystals.

"My dear fellow," said the doctor with great feeling and compassion, "it is sad indeed that you should not be able to know that this stone is hardly worth looking at, while over our heads there hang the myriads of marvellous lamps that sparkle in the heavens." The boy threw back his head and said in a voice of deep regret:

"Is it true that you are there, you little stars?"

"God is infinitely great and merciful," said Golfin, laying his hand on his young companion's shoulder. "Who knows—who can say—much stranger things have happened—are happening every day." As he spoke, he looked close into his face, trying to see the lad's eyes by the dim light; fixed and sightless, he turned them in the direction in which he heard the speaker's voice.

"There is no hope," Golfin muttered.

They had come out on an open space. The moon, rising higher and higher, illuminated undulating meadows and high slopes, which looked like the ramparts of some immense fortification.—To the left, on a level plateau, the doctor saw a group of white houses crowning the slope.

"There, to the left," said the boy, "is my home—up at the top. Do you know that those three houses are what remain of the village of Aldeacorba de Suso. All the rest has been pulled down at different times in order to dig mines; all the soil underneath is iron ore, and our fore-fathers lived over millions of wealth without knowing it."

He was still speaking when a girl came running to meet them, a tiny scrap of a child, swift of foot and slightly built.

"Nela, Nela!" cried the blind boy. "Have you brought me a cloak?"

"Here it is," said the girl, putting it over his shoulders.

"Is this the songstress? Do you know you have a lovely voice?"

"Oh!" exclaimed the boy, in a tone of innocent admiration, "she sings beautifully! Now, Mariquilla, you must show this gentleman the way to the works, and I must go home. I can hear my father's voice already; he is coming to look for me, and he will be sure to scold me.... I am here, I am coming!"

"Make haste in, my boy!" said Golfin, shaking hands with him. "The air is fresh, and you might take cold. Many thanks for your company. I hope we may be good friends, for I shall be here some little time. I am the brother of Cárlos Golfin, the engineer of the mines."

"Oh! indeed.... Don Cárlos is a great friend of my father's. He has been expecting you these two days."

"I arrived this evening at the station at Villamojada, and they told me that Socartes was not far, and that I could come up on foot. So, as I like to see the country and get exercise, and as they told me it was 'on, straight on,' I set out, and sent my luggage in a cart. You saw how I had lost my way—but there is no evil out of which good does not come.... I have made your acquaintance, and we shall be friends, very good friends perhaps. Go in, good-bye; get home quickly, for the autumn evenings are not good for you. The little Señora here will be so good as to guide me."

"It is not more than a quarter of an hour's walk to the works, quite a short way. But take care not to stumble over the rails, and look out as you cross the inclined plane. There often are trucks on the road, and in this damp weather the ground is like soap.—Good-bye, Caballero, and my very good friend.—Good-night." He went up the slope by a narrow flight of steps cut in the soil and squared by beams of wood; Golfin went straight on, guided by Nela. Does what they said deserve a separate chapter? In case it should, I will give it one.

[CHAPTER III.]
A DIALOGUE WHICH EXPLAINS MUCH.

"Wait a moment my child, do not go so fast," said Golfin, himself standing still. "I want to light a cigar."

The night was so still, that no precautions were needed in striking the light to guard it from the wind, and when the doctor had lighted his cigar he held the wax match in front of Nela, saying kindly:

"Show me your face, little one."

He looked in the child's face with astonishment; her black eyes shone with a red spot, like a spark, for the instant while the match lasted. She looked a child, for she was but a tiny creature, extremely thin and undeveloped; but she seemed like a little woman, for her eyes had not a childlike expression, and her face had the mature look of a nature which has gone through experience and acquired judgment—or will have acquired it soon. In spite of this anomaly, she was well-proportioned and her small head sat gracefully on her lean little body. You might have said she was a woman seen through a diminishing-glass; or, again, that she was a child with the eyes and expression of a grown-up person. In your uncertainty, it was hard to say whether she was astonishingly forward or lamentably backward.

"How old are you?" asked Golfin, shaking his fingers free of the match which was beginning to burn them.

"They say I am sixteen," said Nela, gazing in her turn at the doctor.

"Sixteen!" exclaimed Golfin. "Much less than that, child! You are twelve at most to judge by appearances."

"Holy Virgin! They say I am quite a phenomenon," said the girl in a tone of weariness of the subject.

"A phenomenon!" repeated Golfin laying his hand on her hair. "Well, perhaps so. Now, come along—show me the way."

Nela set out resolutely, keeping but a little way in front of the traveller but rather on one side of him, to show her just appreciation of such illustrious company. Her nimble little feet, which were bare, were evidently familiar with the ground they trod, with the stones, the puddles and the thistles. She wore a plain frock of scanty breadth, and the rudimentary simplicity of her garb, as well as the loose flow of her thick, short hair, which fell in natural waves, had a stamp of savage independence rather than of abject poverty. Her speech, on the other hand, struck Golfin by its modest propriety, indicating a formed and thoughtful mind. Her voice had a gentle inflection of kindliness, which could not be the result of education, and her glance was restless and shy, whenever she was not looking at the sky or the earth.

"Tell me," said Golfin. "Do you live in the mines? Are you the child of any of the workmen employed here?"

"They say I have neither father nor mother."

"Poor little girl! and you work in the mines?"

"No, Señor. I am of no use at all," she replied without raising her eyes.

"Well, you are modest, at any rate."

The doctor bent down to look closely at her face; it was small and freckled all over with little mole-like spots. Her forehead was narrow, her nose sharp but not ill-shaped, her eyes black and brilliant, but their light shone but sadly. Her hair, naturally of a golden brown, was dull for want of care, and from exposure to the sun, wind and dust. Her lips were so thin as to be hardly visible, and always wore a smile, but it was like the faint smile of the dead who have died dreaming of Heaven. Nela's mouth was, strictly speaking, ugly, still it deserved a word of praise from the point of view expressed in the line from Polo de Medina: "A mouth is sweet that asks for nothing." [1] In fact, neither in word, look, or smile, did the poor child betray any of the degrading habits of the beggar. Golfin stroked the sad little face, holding it under the chin and almost encircling it with his big fingers.

"Poor little body!" he said. "Providence has not been over-generous to you. Who do you live with?"

"With Señor Centeno, the overseer of the beasts belonging to the mines?"

"You do not seem to have been born in luxury.—Who were your parents?"

"They say my mother sold peppers in the market at Villamojada. She was not married. She had me one All-Saints' day, and then she went to be wet-nurse at Madrid."

"A highly estimable woman!" muttered Golfin ironically.

"And no one knows who your father was?"

"Yes, Señor," said Nela with some pride. "My father was the first who ever lighted the lamps of Villamojada."

"Wonderful!"

"I ought to tell you," said the little girl with the gravity befitting the dignity of history, "that when the town council first had lamps hung up in the streets, my father was entrusted with the care of lighting and cleaning them. I was nursed by a sister of my mother's—not that she was married either, as they tell me. My father had quarrelled with her—they all lived together as I have heard—and when he went out to light the lamps he used to put me in his basket, with his lamp-chimneys and cottons and oil. One day when he went up to light the lamp on the bridge, he put the basket on the parapet, and I rolled out and fell into the river."

"And you were not drowned!"

"No, Señor; for I fell on the stones. Holy Mother of God! I was a dear little thing before that, they tell me."

"Yes, I am sure you were," said the stranger with an impulse of loving-kindness. "And so you are still.—But tell me what next. Have you lived long in the mines?"

"Thirteen years, they say. My mother took me back after my tumble. My father fell ill, and as my mother would not do anything for him, because he was wicked to her, he was taken to the hospital where they say he died. Meanwhile my mother came to work in the mines. They say the overseer discharged her one day because she drank so much."

"And your mother went.... Go on, I take a real interest in the good woman; she went...."

"She went to a very big hole over there," said the child, standing still and speaking with intense pathos, "and she threw herself in."

"The devil she did! That was coming to a bad end. I suppose she did not come out again?"

"No, Señor," said Nela with perfect simplicity. "She is there still."

"And since that catastrophe, poor child," said Golfin kindly, "you have stayed at work here. Mining work is very hard labor and you have taken the hue of the soil; you are thin and ill-nourished. This life is enough to ruin the strongest constitution."

"No, Señor; I do not labor. They say I am not good for anything and never shall be."

"God forbid, silly child! why you are a treasure."

"No indeed," insisted the girl, "I cannot work at all. If I take up ever so small a load, I fall down, and if I am set to any hard work I faint away before long."

"You are as God made you—and if you fell into the hands of any one who knew how to treat you, you would work very well."

"No, Señor, no indeed," she repeated as energetically as though it were in her own praise that she spoke, "I am no good to any one—only in the way."

"Then you are a mere vagabond?"

"No, Señor, for I attend on Pablo."

"And who is Pablo?"

"That young blind gentleman, whom you met in La Terrible. I have been his guide for the last year and a half. I take him everywhere; we go for long walks in the fields."

"He seems a good fellow, this Pablo."

Nela again stood still and looked up at the doctor, and her face glowed with enthusiasm as she exclaimed:

"Holy Virgin! He is the best and dearest creature in the whole world! Poor fellow!—and he is cleverer without eyes than all those who can see."

"Yes, I liked your master. Does he belong to the place?"

"Yes, Señor; he is the only son of Don Francisco Penáguilas, a very kind and very rich gentleman who lives in the houses at Aldeacorba."

"Tell me, why are you called Nela? What does it mean?"

The child shrugged her shoulders, and after a pause, she said:

"My mother's name was María Canela, and so she was called Nela; they say it is a dog's name. My name is María."

"Mariquita."

"María Nela they call me, or sometimes Canela's girl, and some say Marianela, and some merely Nela."

"And your master, is he fond of you?"

"Yes, Señor; he is very good to me. He says he sees with my eyes, for I take him everywhere, and tell him what everything is like."

"Everything that he cannot see?" The stranger seemed much interested in this conversation.

"Yes—I tell him everything. He asks me what a star is like, and I tell him all about it in such a way that it is the same to him as if he could see it. I explain it all—what the planets are like, and the clouds, and the sky, and the water, and the lightning, the weather-cocks, the butterflies, the mists, the snails, and the shapes and faces of men and animals. I tell him what is ugly and what is pretty, and so he gets to understand everything."

"I see; your work is no trifle. What is ugly and what is pretty! There is nothing.... You decide upon that question? Tell me, can you read?"

"No, Señor.—I tell you I am good for nothing."

She said this in a tone of perfect conviction, and the gesture that emphasized her protestation seemed to add: "You must be a great blockhead to fancy that I am good for anything."

"Would you not be glad if your friend, by the grace of God, should recover his sight?"

The girl did not answer at once, but after a pause she said:

"It is impossible."

"No, not impossible, only difficult and doubtful."

"The engineer who manages the mines did give my master's father some hope of it."

"Don Cárlos Golfin?"

"Yes, Señor. Don Cárlos has a brother who is an eye-doctor, and they say he gives sight to the blind, and makes those who squint look straight."

"What a clever man!"

"Yes; and when the eye-doctor wrote to Don Cárlos that he was coming to see him, his brother wrote to him to bring his instruments with him to try if he could make Pablo see."

"And has this good man been here yet?"

"No, sir; for he is always travelling about in England and America, and it seems it will be some time yet before he comes. Pablo laughs at it all, and says no man can give him what the Holy Virgin has denied him from his birth."

"Well—perhaps he is right. But are we not nearly there? For I see some chimneys which pour forth smoke darker than the bottomless pit, and a light too, which looks like a forge."

"Yes—here we are. Those are the roasting furnaces, which burn day and night. There, in front, are the machines for washing the ore; they only work by day. To the right-hand is the chemical workshop, and down there, last of all, the counting-house and offices."

The place seemed to lie in fact as Marianela indicated. In the absence of any wind a mist hung over the spot, shrouding the buildings in heavy, gaseous fog, and giving them a confused and fantastic outline against the moonlit sky.

"This is a pleasanter place to see for once than to live in," said Golfin, hastening onwards. "The cloud of vapor wraps round everything, and the lights have dim circles round them, like the moon on a sultry night. Which is the office?"

"Here, we are almost there."

After passing in front of the furnaces, where the heat made them hurry on, the doctor perceived a house which was no less dingy and smoky than the others, and at the same instant he heard a piano being played with a vigor bordering on frenzy.

"We have music here. I recognize my sister-in-law's touch and execution."

"It is Señorita Sofía who is playing," said María.

The lights of a busy household shone in the windows, and the balcony on the ground-floor was wide open. A small spark was visible, the spark of a cigar. Before the doctor could reach the spot, the spark flew off, describing a parabola of fire, and breaking into a thousand twinkling specks—the smoker had shaken the end off.

"There is that everlasting smoker!" cried the doctor, in a tone of affectionate delight. "Cárlos, Cárlos!"

"Teodoro!" exclaimed a voice from the balcony. The piano ceased like a singing-bird scared by a noise. Steps sounded through the house. The doctor gave his guide a silver coin, and ran up to the door.

[CHAPTER IV.]
STONY HEARTS.

Retracing her steps and jumping over the obstacles in her path, Nela made her way to a house on the left of the machine-sheds, and close to the stables where the sixty mules belonging to the establishment stood in grave meditation. The residence of the overseer, though of modern construction, was neither elegant nor even commodious. The roof was low, and it was too small by far to give adequate shelter to the parent couple of the Centenos—to their four children—to their cat—and to Nela into the bargain; but it figured, nevertheless, on the parchment plans of the settlement under the ostentatious name of "overseer's residence."

Inside, the house seemed to afford a practical illustration of the saying which we have already heard so emphatically stated by Marianela; namely, that she, Marianela, was of no good to anyone, only in the way. Somehow, in there, room was found for everything—for the father and mother, for their sons and their sons' tools, for a heap of rubbish, of the use of which no irrefragable proof has been found, for the cat, for the dish off which the cat was fed, for Tanasio's guitar, for the materials of which Tanasio made his garrotes—a kind of lidless hamper—for half a dozen old mule-halters, for the blackbird's cage, for two useless old boilers, for an altar—at which Dame Centeno worshipped the Divinity with offerings of artificial flowers and some patriarchal tapers, a perennial settlement for flies—in short, for everything and everybody excepting little María Canela. Constantly some one was heard to say: "You cannot take a step without falling over that confounded child, Nela!" or else:

"Get into your corner, do.—What a plague the creature is; she does nothing, and lets no one else do anything."

The house consisted of three rooms and a loft. The first of these served not only as dining-room and drawing-room, but also as the bedroom of the two elders; in the second slept the two young ladies, already grown-up women, and named La Mariuca and La Pepina. Tanasio, the eldest of all, stored himself in the garret, and Celipin, the youngest of the family and nearly twelve years old, had a bed in the kitchen—the innermost room, the dingiest, dampest and least habitable of the three rooms which composed the mansion of the Centenos.

Nela, during the many years of her residence there, had inhabited various nooks and corners, going from one to another, according to the exigencies of the moment, to make way for the thousand objects which served only to curtail the last scanty accommodation left for human beings. On some occasion—the precise facts are unknown to history—Tanasio, whose feet were as crippled as his brain, and who devoted himself to the manufacture of large hampers made of hazel rods, had placed in the kitchen a pile of at least half a dozen of these bulky trophies of his art. Marianela looked on, casting her eyes sadly around, and finding no corner left into which to creep; but the predicament itself inspired her with a happy idea, which she at once acted upon. She simply got into one of the baskets, and there passed the night in sound and blissful sleep. In fact, it was comfortable enough, and when it was cold she pulled another basket on the top. From that time, so long as there were garrotes (a local name for these coarse, open baskets) to be found, she never was at a loss for a crib, and the others would say of the child: "She sleeps like a jewel."

During meals, in the midst of a noisy discussion on the morning's work, a voice would suddenly say in rough tones: "Here!" and Nela would have a plate given her by one of the family, big or small, and would seat herself against the big chest to eat what she had got, in silence. But towards the end of the meal sometimes the master's harsh bleating voice would be lifted up saying, with a perfunctory air of benevolence: "Mother, you have given poor Nela nothing." And then Señana, a compound name abbreviated from Señora Ana, would move her head about as if trying to see some minute and remote object between the bodies of her own children, saying as she did so: "What, are you there? I thought you had stayed at Aldeacorba."

At night, after supper, the family repeated the Paternoster over their beads and then, staggering like bacchantes, and rubbing their eyes with their fists, Mariuca and Pepina went to their beds, which were snug and comfortable and covered with patchwork quilts. In a few minutes a duet of contralto snoring was heard which lasted without intermission till morning dawned. Tanasio went up to the higher regions and Celipin curled himself round on a heap of rags, not far from the basket into which Nela disappeared from sight.

The family thus being disposed of, the parents sat up for a while in the living-room, and while Centeno, seating himself with a stretch close to the little table and taking up a newspaper, made a series of grimaces to convey his bold intention of reading it, his wife took a stocking full of money out of the family chest, and after counting it and adding or taking out a few pieces, carefully restored it to its place. Then she took out sundry paper packets containing gold pieces and transferred some from one parcel to another. Meanwhile such remarks as these were made. "Mariuca's petticoat cost thirty-two reales. I gave Tanasio the six reales he had to pay. We only want eleven duros [2] to make up the five hundred."

Or, on the other hand:

"The deputies agreed."—"Yesterday a conference was held, etc...."

Señana's fingers did her sums, while her husband's forefinger passed doubtfully and waveringly along the lines, to guide his eye and mind through the labyrinth of letters. And these sentences gradually died away into monosyllables; one yawned, then the other, and at last all sunk into silence, after extinguishing the lamp by which the overseer of the mules had been cultivating his mind.

One night, when all was quiet, a creaking of baskets became audible in the kitchen. It was not perfectly dark there, for the shutters of the little window were never shut, and Celipin Centeno, who was not yet asleep, saw the topmost baskets, which were packed one inside the other, rising slowly like a gaping oyster-shell, and out of the opening peeped the nose and black eyes of Nela.

"Celipin," she said, "Celipinillo, are you asleep?" and she put a hand out.

"No, I am awake; Nela, you look like a mussel in its shell. What do you want?"

"Here, take this, it is a peseta [3] that a gentleman gave me this evening—the brother of Don Cárlos. How much have you got now? This is something like a present; now I have given you something better than coppers!"

"Give it here and thank you very much, Nela," said the boy, sitting up to reach the money. "You have given me nearly thirty-two reales now, a copper at a time. [4] I have it all safe here, inside my shirt, in the little bag you gave me. You are a real good girl."

"I do not want money for anything; but take good care of it, for if Señana were to find it, she would think you would get into some mischief with it and thrash you with the big stick."

"No, no, it is not to get into mischief," said the boy vehemently, and clenching the money to his breast with one hand, while he supported himself on the other. "It is to make myself a rich man, Nela, a clever man like some I know. On Sunday, if they will let me go to Villamojada, I must buy a spelling-book to learn to read, although they will not teach me here. Who cares! I will learn by myself. Do you know, Nela, they say that Don Cárlos is the son of a man who swept the streets in Madrid, and he, all by himself, learnt everything he knows."

"And so you think you can do the same, noodle."

"I believe you! If father will not take me away from these confounded mines, I will find some other way; ah! you shall see what sort of a man I am. I was never meant for that Nela. You just wait till I have collected a good sum, and then you will see—you will see how I will find a place in the town there, or take the train to Madrid, or a steamboat to carry me over to the islands out there, or get a place as a servant to some one who will let me study."

"Dear Mother of Heaven!" exclaimed Nela, opening her oyster-shell still wider and putting out her whole head. "How quiet you have kept all these sly plans."

"Do you take me for a fool? I tell you what Nela, I am in a mad rage. I cannot live like this; I shall die in the mines. Drat it all! Why, I spend my nights in crying, and my hands are all knocked to pieces and—but do not be frightened, Nela, at what I am going to say, and do not think me wicked—I would not say it to any other living soul...."

"Well?"

"I do not love father and mother—not as I ought."

"Oh! if you say such things I will never give you another real. Celipin, for God's sake, think of what you are saying."

"I cannot help it. Why, just look how we go on here. We are not human beings, we are brutes. Sometimes I almost think we are less than the mules, and I ask myself if I am in any way better than a donkey—fetching a basket of the ore and pitching it into a truck; shoving the truck up to the furnaces; stirring the mineral with a stick to wash it!—Oh dear, oh dear!" ... and the hapless boy began to sob bitterly. "Drat—drat it all! but if you spend years upon years in work like this, you are bound to go to the bad at last, your very brains turn to iron-stone.—No, I was never meant for this. I tell my father to let me go away and learn something, and he answers that we are poor, and that I am too full of fancies.—We are nothing, nothing but brutes grinding out a living day by day.—Why do you say nothing?"

But Nela did not answer—perhaps she was comparing the boy's hard lot with her own, and finding her own much the worse of the two.

"What do you want me to say?" she replied at last. "I can never be any good to any one—I am nobody. I can say nothing to you.... But do not think such wicked things—about your father I mean."

"You only say so to comfort me; but you know quite well it is true, and I do believe you are crying."

"I ... no."

"Yes, you are, I am sure."

"Every one has something to cry for," said María in a broken voice. "But it is very late, Celipin; we must go to sleep."

"No indeed, not if I know it!"

"Yes, child; go to sleep and do not think of such miserable things. Good-night."

The shell closed and all was silent.

We hear a great deal said about the hard and narrow materialism of cities, a dry rot which, amid all the splendor and pleasures of civilization, eats into the moral cohesion of society; but there is a worse and deeper disease; the parochial materialism of country villages—which ossifies millions of living beings, crushes every noble ambition in their souls and shuts them into the petty round of a mechanical existence, reducing them to the meanest animal instincts. There are many more blatant evils in the social order as, for instance, speculation, usury, the worship of mammon among men of high culture; but above all these, broods a monster which secretly and silently ruins more than all else, and that is the greed of the peasant. The covetous peasant acknowledges no moral law, has no religion, no clear notions of right and wrong; they are all inextricably mixed up in his mind with a strange compound of superstition and calculating avarice. Behind an air of hypocritical simplicity, there lies a sinister arithmetic which, for keenness and intelligibility, far transcends the methods of the best mathematicians. A peasant who has taken a fancy to hoard copper coin, and dreams of changing it presently into silver and then the silver into gold, is the most ignoble creature in creation; he is capable of every form and device of malice known to man, combined with an absence of feeling that is appalling. His soul shrinks and shrivels till it is nothing more than a minim measure. Ignorance, coarseness, and squalor complete the abominable compound and deprive it of all the means of veiling the desolation within. He can only count on his fingers, but he is capable of reducing to figures all moral sense, conscience and the soul itself.

Señana and Centeno, who, after many struggles, had contrived to earn their "morsel of bread" in the mines of Socartes, were able to make, with the added toil of their four children, a daily wage which they would have regarded as a princely fortune in the days when they wandered from fair to fair selling pots and pipkins. It should be mentioned with regard to the intellectual powers of Centeno, that his head, in the opinion of many persons, rivalled the steam-hammer in the workshops for sheer hardness; with no disparagement to that of dame Ana, his wife, who seemed to be a woman of much prudence and discrimination, and who governed her household as carefully as the wisest prince could govern his dominions. She bagged the wages, earned by her husband and children, with the best grace in the world, and they amounted to a neat little sum; and each time the money was brought home, she felt as if the very sacrament itself were being carried in, so intense was her delight at the mere sight of coin.

Señana afforded her children very little comfort in return for the fortune she was accumulating by the labor of their hands; however, as they never complained of the utter and debasing misery in which they lived, as they betrayed no wish for emancipation, nor for a breath of any nobler life worthier of intelligent beings, Señana let the days slip on. Many indeed had slipped away before her children slept in beds, and many, many more before their brawny limbs were covered with decent garments. She gave them regular and wholesome meals, following in this respect the rules most in vogue; but eating in her house was a melancholy ceremony nevertheless, a mere doling out of fodder, as it were, to human animals.

So far as mental nourishment was concerned, Señana firmly believed that her husband's erudition, acquired by much miscellaneous reading, was amply sufficient to credit the whole family with learning, and for that reason she forbore to cram the minds of her progeny even with the amount of instruction which is given in schools. The elder ones helped her, and the youngest lived free of pedagogues, buried alive for twelve hours out of every twenty-four in brutalizing toil in the mines, so that the whole family swam at large and at leisure in the vast and stagnant ocean of dulness.

The two girls, Mariuca and Pepina, were not destitute of charms, though youth and robust growth were the chief. One of them read fluently, but not the other, and, so far as knowledge of the world was concerned, it is easy to suppose that some rudimentary information, at least, was not lacking to girls who lived with a perfect chorus of nymphs of all ages and every grade of respectability—or the contrary—perpetually employed in mechanical work which left their tongues free to wag. Mariuca and Pepina were buxom and well grown, and as erect and strong as Amazons. They wore short petticoats, displaying half the calf of the leg which, as well as their broad feet, was bare, and their rough heads might have supported an architrave as stoutly as those of Caryatides. The russet dust of the iron ore which colored them from head to foot, like all in the mines, gave them the appearance of massive figures in terra-cotta.

Tanasio was a lethargic being; his want of character and ambition verged on idiocy. Confined to the house from his earliest years, incapable of taking any exercise, of feeling either annoyance or pleasure, or of fulfilling any task, the boy, who was born to be a machine, had sunk into something not superior to the roughest tool. The day which found such a creature able to originate an idea, would infallibly see the total subversion of the order of nature; for, hitherto, no stone has been known to think.

The relation of this family to their mother was that of abject submission on their part, and unlimited despotism on hers. The only child who ever dared to show symptoms of rebellion was the little one. Señana, with her narrow capacities, could not at all understand this diabolical ambition to be something better than a stone. Was there—did he suppose—any happier or more exemplary life than that of a stone? She would not admit that it might be changed, even for that of a rolling stone. Señana loved her children—but there are so many ways of loving. She placed them above every other consideration—so long as they submitted to work perpetually in the mines, to pour all their earnings into one bowl, to obey her blindly, to cherish no wild aspirations nor wish to appear in fine clothes, not to marry too young, nor to learn any mischievous trash and cram their heads with school-work, since "poor folks"—she would say—"must always remain poor and behave as such, and not be wanting to jabber in the style of the rich city folks, who were eaten up with vices and rotten with sin."

I have described the manners and customs which prevailed in the Centeno's house in order that the reader may understand the life to which Nela was doomed, a helpless, forsaken creature, alone, useless, incapable of earning a day's wages; alike without a past and without a future, with no right to anything on earth beyond a bare subsistence. Señana gave her this, and firmly believed that her generosity was nothing short of heroic. Many a time would she say, as she filled Nela's little platter: "What a reward I am laying up for myself hereafter in Heaven!" And she believed it as if it were Gospel. No true light could penetrate her thick skull as to the saintly exercise of charity; she could never have understood that a kind word, a caress, a loving and gentle action, which may make a wretch forget his misery, are infinitely more precious—aye, and more heroic—than the broken meat left from a bad meal. It was but a chance that she did not give them to the cat, who, at least, was far more kindly spoken to. Nela never heard herself addressed as michita, little pet, precious darling—nor by any other of the sweet and endearing names that were lavished on the cat.

Nothing ever suggested to Nela that she was born of human beings, like the other inhabitants of the house. She was never punished; but she felt that this immunity arose from their contemptuous pity for her feeble frame, and certainly not from any special esteem or care for her person. No one had ever taught her that she had a soul ready to bring forth good fruit if she cultivated it with care, nor that she bore within herself, like other mortals, that spark of the divine fire which is called human intelligence, and that this spark might be fanned to beneficent light and flame. No one had ever told her that her grotesque smallness included in itself the germ of every noble and delicate sentiment, and that those tiny buds might open out to lovely flowers, with no more cultivation than a herb that we glance at now and again. No one had told her that she had a right, by the very sternness of Nature in creating her, to certain tender cares which the strong can dispense with—the healthy and those who have parents and a home; since under the laws of Christian jurisprudence the helpless, the poor, the orphan, and the destitute, are all alike worthy of protection.

On the other hand, everything combined to impress upon her, her absolute resemblance to a rolling stone, which has not even a shape of its own, but takes that which the waters give it or the kick of the man that spurns it. Everything told her that her place in the house was something below the cat, whose sleek back received the only caresses ever bestowed on anyone, and the blackbird that hopped about its cage. And of them, at any rate, no one said in heartless compassion: "Poor creature! it is a pity she did not die!"

[CHAPTER V.]
LABOR AND A LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

The smoke of the furnaces, which all night through were wide awake and panting out their hot, hoarse breath, caught a silvery gleam as its wreaths rolled into the distance; the faint smile of dawn fell upon the remotest peaks of the mountains, and, by degrees, the hills that guard Socartes came out of the darkness, the huge slopes of rust-colored earth and the blackened buildings. The bell of the works rang out shrilly its call "to work, to work," and hundreds of sleepy souls came out of the houses, huts, hovels, holes even. Doors creaked on their hinges; the mules came reluctantly out of the stables, making their way to their watering-place, and the whole establishment, which had just now looked like a city of the dead lighted up by the infernal glare of the furnaces, came to life and began to stir its thousand arms.

The steam soon was seething in the boilers of the great steam-engine, which supplied the motive power both for the workshops and the washing-mills. The water, which performed the principal part in the operations, began to flow through the raised conduits from which it fell on the cylinders. Files of men and women just risen from their beds, made their way down to the scene of labor, and at length the cylindrical sieves began to revolve with hideous groaning; the water rushed from one to the other, pulverizing the dark earth which tumbled on in muddy eddies and cataracts, from trough to trough, till it settled at last in a fine chocolate-brown powder. The sound was as of a thousand hungry jaws chewing grit and sand; the play of light on water and soil made it as dazzling as a kaleidoscope, and the clatter was like some enormous hollow drum, filled with pebbles and potsherds. It was impossible to look on without turning giddy at the incessant whirl of a vast skein, as it were, of threads of water, some clear and transparent, others stained red by the ferruginous clay; nor could any human brain that was not accustomed to the spectacle, picture to itself this mad struggle of toothed wheels which never ceased biting at each other, of cogs, that met, and caught, and rolled away again, of screws which, as they turned, shrieked in pitiless clamor for oil.

The washing was all done in the open air. The connecting belts came humming down from the machinery sheds; other belts began to revolve, and at the same time a rhythmical stamping was heard, a slow and awful tramp like a giant's step, or a fearful throbbing inside mother earth. This was the great hammer which had begun to beat; its stupendous blows moulded the iron like a paste, and those huge wheels, and beams, which look as if made to last forever, began to twist and writhe like the limbs of men in torment, while the hammer, with its monotonous impact, created new forms as strong as the rocks which are the work of ages. For the results of labor have a strange resemblance to the results of patience.

Men so black, that they look like hewn and animated coal, gathered round the fiery objects that were taken from the forges, and seizing them with those prolonged hands known as tongs, set to work to hammer them. It is a strange kind of sculpture, this, which has fire for its inspiring genius and a steam-hammer for its chisel. Wheels and axle-trees for thousands of trucks, and the damaged portions of the washing-machinery, were repaired here, and picks, spades and barrows were made. At the back of the workshops saws hissed through blocks of timber, and the iron, which had been formed for labor by fire of wood, now cut through the sturdy fibre of trees hewn by the axe from their native spot.

Meanwhile, the mules had been harnessed to long trains of trucks which carried off the waste earth to add it to the slopes already made, or fetched the mineral to be washed. They looked like immense reptiles, crawling up and down to meet each other, and always passing close but without any jar or collision. They crept into the mouths of the tunnels, and their resemblance was really perfect to the wriggling creatures that shelter in such damp clefts and caves; and when the recalcitrant mules kicked and shied in the bowels of the earth, it was easy to fancy the Saurians were fighting and screaming at each other. In the deepest recesses of all, hundreds of men were tearing up the earth with picks, inch by inch, to win the hidden treasure; these were the sculptors of the strange and enormous figures which stood in awful gravity and silence to confront the man who should venture to invade their mysterious domain. The miners hewed down here, bored holes there, dug farther on in one place, scraped down the wall in another, broke up the limestone, chipped out the pretty flakes of mica and shale, pounded down the calcareous clay, picked out the hematite and pyrites, crushed the fine, white marble—rolling and stirring it incessantly till it should yield zinc silicate—for zinc may be called the silver of Europe, which, being a metal of which you cannot make saucepans, is destined to become the fount of wealth and civilization. Is it not on zinc that Belgium has hoisted her standard of moral and political greatness? Aye, tin even has its epic!

The sky was clear and bright; the sun rose unclouded on the scene, and the wide settlement of Socartes flashed from dark neutrality into redness. The sculptured rocks, the heaps of ore, the hillocks of waste soil that rose on every side like Babylonian mounds, were red; the ground, the trucks and carts, the machinery, the water and the laborers that gave life to Socartes. The brick-colored tone was universal, with faint shades of difference in the earth and the houses, the metal and the people's garments. The women at work at the washing looked like a crowd of nymphs, come down in the world, and cast in red ironstone. A rivulet of crimson fluid ran through the bottom conduit to join a crimson river—you might fancy it the sweat of these toiling men and machines, of muscles and of iron.

Nela stepped out of the house. Even she, though she did not work in the mines, was faintly tinged with the universal ruddle, for the finely-powdered metal spared no one. In her hand she held a hunch of bread which Señana had given her for breakfast, and as she ate it she walked on quickly, lost in thought and not lingering to amuse herself. She had soon passed the workshops and, going up the inclined plane and the steps before mentioned, she reached the houses of Aldeacorba. The first of these was a handsome and stately mansion, large, well-built, and cheerful looking, but lately restored and painted; with stone boundary walls, decorated eaves and a broad escutcheon surrounded by granite foliage. And the escutcheon itself would be less missed than the climbing vine, whose long and leafy branches looked like whiskers—growing, as whiskers do, on each side of a face, of which the two windows served as eyes, while the escutcheon was the nose and the long balcony the mouth, always widely grinning. And to complete this whimsical air of personality, a beam stuck out from the balcony intended to attach a rope to support an awning, and with this addition the face was seen as smoking a cigar. The roof was in the shape of a cap and in it there was a window that might represent the tassel. The chimneys could only be the ears. It was one of those faces in which a physiognomist reads plainly, peace of mind, ease of circumstance and a quiet conscience.

In front of it was a little court-yard enclosed by a wall of adobe, and on one side was a pretty orchard. As Nela went in she met the cows coming out to pasture, and after exchanging a few words with their driver—a formidable youth, about four feet high and ten years old—she went straight up to a stout gentleman, whiskered, grey-haired and florid, with a kind face and pleasant smile, and a half-military and half-rustic air; he was in his shirt sleeves and braces, and his hairy arms were bared to the elbow. Before the little girl addressed him, he looked up at the house and called out: "Here is Nela, my boy!"

A lad at once made his appearance, remarkably tall, grave and erect, his head held somewhat stiffly and his eyes fixed and vacant like lenses. His face was like marble, carved with exquisite sharpness, and his skin was as fine and soft as a girl's; there was not a feature or a line which was not of that supremely beautiful type of manliness which was the outcome of a thousand years of Hellenic thought. Those eyes even, so purely sculpturesque in their lack of sight, were large, grand and brilliant. Their fixity lost its strangeness when you remembered that behind them all was night. In the absence of the faculty which is the cause and origin of facial expression, this blind Antinous had the cold serenity of marble, endowed with form by the genius of sculpture and with life by a vital spark. A breath, a ray of warmth, a mere sensation would suffice to animate the beautiful stone which, while it possessed every charm of form, was devoid of that consciousness of its own beauty, which is born of the faculty of seeing it.

He looked about twenty, and his strong and graceful frame was in every respect worthy of the incomparable head that crowned it. Never was a more lamentable injustice done by Nature, than to this perfect example of humanity as to beauty, blest, on one hand, with every gift, and bereft, on the other, of the sense by which man has most in common with his fellow-man and gains familiarity with all the marvels of creation at large. The injustice was such, that these splendid gifts were useless—it was as though after creating all things the Creator had left them in darkness, so that he could not himself take pleasure in his works. And to make the privation more conspicuous, the young man had mental lights of the highest order and a very superior intelligence. To have this and to lack the faculty of conceiving the idea of visibility, of form as distinct from mere matter, and at the same time to be as beautiful as an angel; to have all the faculties of a man and be as blind as a vegetable! It was strange and hard. We, alas! know not the secret of these terrible injustices; if we did, then indeed the gates would be open to us which hide the primordial secrets of moral and physical duty; we should understand the fathomless mysteries of inherited woe, of evil and of death, and might take measure of the dark shadow which always haunts life and all that is good in it.

Don Francisco Penáguilas, the young man's father, was more than good, he was admirable; judicious, kind, genial, honorable and magnanimous, and well educated too. No one disliked him; he was the most respected of all the rich land-owners in the country side, and more than one delicate question had been settled by the mediation—always equitable and intelligent—of the Señor de Aldeacorba de Suso. The house in which we now find him had been the home of his infancy. In his youth he had been to America, and on returning to Spain without having made his fortune, he had joined the National Guard. He then returned to his native town where, having inherited a good fortune, he devoted himself to husbandry and to breeding cattle, and at the period of our story he had just come into another and even larger sum.

His wife, who was an Andalusian, had died very young, leaving him the one son who, from his birth, was found to be deprived of the most precious of the five senses. This was the one drop which embittered the tender father's cup. What was the use of reminding him that he was wealthy, that fortune favored all his undertakings and smiled on his house? For whose sake did he care about it all? For one who could see neither the thriving beasts, the flowery meadows, the overflowing granaries, nor the orchard with its abundant crop. Don Francisco would gladly have given his own eyes to his son, and have remained blind for the rest of his days, if such an act of generosity were possible in this work-a-day world; but, as it was not, Don Francisco could only carry his devotion into practice by giving the hapless youth every pleasure which could alleviate the gloom of the darkness in which he lived. For him he was indefatigable in the cares and the endless trifling details of forethought and affection of which mothers have the secret—and fathers sometimes, when the mother is no more. He never contradicted his son in anything which might console or entertain him within the limits of propriety and morality. He amused him with narratives and reading, watched him with studious anxiety, considering his health, his legitimate amusements, his instruction and his Christian education; for, said Señor de Penáguilas, whose principles were strictly orthodox: "I would not have my son doubly blind."

Now, as he came out of the house, he said affectionately:

"Do not go too far to-day, and do not run—good-bye."

He watched them from the gate till they had turned the corner of the garden wall, and then he went indoors, for he had many things to do; to write to his brother Manuel, to buy a cow, to prune a tree, and to see whether the guinea-hen had laid.

[CHAPTER VI.]
ABSURDITIES.

Pablo and Marianela went out into the country, preceded by Choto, who ran on and danced round them, leaping with delight, and sharing his caresses with great impartiality between his master and his master's guide.

"Nela," said Pablo,—"it is a lovely day; the air is soft and fresh, and the sun warm without being scorching. Where shall we go?"

"Let us go straight on through the meadows," replied Nela, poking her hand into one of the pockets of the lad's coat. "What have you brought me to-day?"

"Search and you will find," said Pablo laughing.

"Ah! Holy Virgin! chocolate! how I love chocolate!—nuts—and something done up in paper. What is it? Oh, Blessed Virgin! a sweetie! Do not I like sweeties! How rich I am! We do not have such good things to eat at home, Pablo. There is no luxury in our food; there is no luxury in our clothes either, to be sure. In fact, no luxury of any sort."

"Where shall we go to-day?" repeated the blind lad.

"Wherever you like, child of my heart," replied Nela, eating the sugar-plum and tearing up the paper it had been wrapped in. "I hear and obey, king of the world."

The child's black eyes sparkled with happiness; her sprightly little birdlike face smiled and wrinkled with satisfaction, and was not still for an instant, as though fitful flashes came and went there like dimpling light on wavelets in a pool. This helpless little creature, whose spirit seemed imprisoned and confined in the feeble body, expanded and rose elastic when she was alone with her master and friend. With him she at once became original, bright and intelligent; she had feeling, grace, refinement and fancy. When she left him, the dark doors of a prison seemed to close on her once more.

"But I tell you we will go wherever you like," remarked the blind youth. "I like to do what you like. If you wish we will go to the clump of trees beyond Saldeoro—but just as you like."

"Yes, yes, delightful!" exclaimed Nela, clapping her hands. "And as there is no hurry, we can sit down whenever we are tired."

"There is a nice place near the spring—do you remember, Nela? And there are some large tree-trunks, which seem to have been left there on purpose for us to sit upon, and we hear so many, many birds singing, that it is quite glorious."

"And we can go past the mill-stream that, you say, talks and mumbles the words out like a tipsy man. Oh! what a lovely day and how happy I am!"

"Is the sun very bright, Nela? Though if you say 'yes,' I shall be none the wiser, since bright has no meaning for me."