CHAPTER XI.A LOYAL FRIEND.
AS soon as Luiza began to go out regularly every day, Juliana said to herself,—
“Good; now I am certain, when she goes out, that it is to meet that coxcomb.”
And her attitude towards her mistress became more servile than ever. She ran joyfully, with an obsequious smile upon her lips, to open the door for Luiza when she returned home at five o’clock. And what zeal in her service! What exactitude! If a button were wanting in a garment, if a bill had been mislaid, it was, “A thousand pardons, Senhora; forgive me this once,” followed by the humblest lamentations. She interested herself, with real devotion, in the matter of Luiza’s health, of her clothing, of what she ought to eat. Since her mistress had begun to go out daily, Juliana’s work had increased; she was obliged to iron every day; she was often obliged to wash stockings and cuffs till eleven o’clock at night, or even later.
At six o’clock in the morning, and sometimes still earlier, she was already with the smoothing-iron in her hand. Yet she did not complain. On the contrary, she would say to Joanna, when washing or ironing,—
“It is a pleasure to look at so elegant a lady. Will you believe me,—I can almost say that this gives me pleasure? And then, thank God! Ihave good health now, and work has never frightened me.”
She no longer criticised her mistress; she affirmed repeatedly,—
“The senhora is a saint. I have never seen any one better.”
Her countenance lost something of its bilious hue, and of its bitter contraction.
At times at dinner, or sewing in the evening, by the light of the kerosene lamp, a sudden smile would cross her face, and her glance would kindle with a genial light.
“The Senhora Juliana seems to be thinking of something pleasant,” Joanna would say to her.
“The procession is going on inside, Senhora Joanna,” she would answer, with an air of satisfaction.
To such a degree was her envious nature apparently changed, that she even spoke with indifference of a silk gown which the professor’s Gertrudes had worn for the first time on a certain holiday in September. All she said was,—
“The day will come when I too shall be able to wear silk gowns, and fine ones,—gowns made by a dressmaker.”
And by other words like these she betrayed her hopes in a time that was drawing near. Joanna went so far as to say to her,—
“Does the Senhora Juliana, then, expect a legacy?”
“Perhaps,” she answered dryly.
And, notwithstanding, she detested Luiza more and more every day. When she saw her in the morning adorning herself, perfuming herself withCologne-water, looking at herself in the mirror, going about singing, she would leave the room, for she was seized with a fit of hatred, and she feared to betray herself. She hated her for her dresses, for her fine linen, on account of the man she went to meet, on account of all her comforts and pleasures. When Luiza left the house she would stand at the window gazing after her as she walked up the street, exclaiming,—
“Amuse yourself, wanton, amuse yourself! My day, too, will surely come!”
Luiza did, in fact, amuse herself. She went out every day at two in the afternoon. The neighbors would say to one another, as they watched her,—
“The engineer’s wife has her S. Miguel now.”
Hardly had she turned the corner than the council would meet to sit in judgment on her. They held it for certain that she went to meet a gentleman. But where? This was the constant theme of the coal-vender.
“At a hotel,” Paula said on one of these occasions. “There is a great deal of scandalous work going on in the hotels of Lisbon.”
The keeper of the tobacco-shop grew indignant: “A lady who had always been so virtuous!”
“A cow let loose can easily take care of herself, Senhora Helena,” Paula growled. “Women are all the same.”
“Not all; for I have always been an honest woman,” the keeper of the tobacco-shop protested.
“And I,” added the coal-vender. “No one has anything to say against me.”
“I speak of high society, of ladies, of those who wear silks; it is a class that has gone to perdition. I know very well what I am speaking about;” and he added, with an air of gravity, “There is more morality among the people; the people are a different race.”
And with his hands buried in his pockets, and his legs wide apart, he remained lost in thought, his head bent down, his gaze fixed on the ground.
Sebastião, who had remained nearly a fortnight at his villa in Almada, was terrified when, on his return, Aunt Joanna told him that Luiza left her house every day at two o’clock, and that the cousin had not returned there. Gertrudes had told her of it, and the neighbors talked of nothing else.
“Then a poor lady cannot even go to the shops to buy what she wants,” exclaimed Sebastião. “Gertrudes is a shameless creature; and I don’t know, Aunt Joanna, how you can consent that she should put her foot in this house, with her vile slanders.”
“No, you are unjust,” Joanna answered, angry in her turn. “The poor woman only repeats what she hears in the street. She defended her,—she defended her with obstinacy. But the neighbors say it, and every one repeats it, and if they say it—”
Sebastião, recovering his serenity, replied,—
“But who are those who say it, Aunt Joanna?”
“Who are they? Every one in the neighborhood says it; every one in the neighborhood,—every one in the neighborhood,” she repeated with emphasis.
Sebastião was confounded. Every one in the neighborhood! Perhaps, then, it was true! She went out every day now, and when Jorge was at homeshe hardly ever left the house. The neighbors, who had gossiped about the visits of theother one, began to make remarks about her going out. This would injure her reputation. And he could do nothing. Should he go and warn her? What for? To have another scene like the former one? That could not be. He tried to see her,—not that he wished to touch on this matter at all; he only wanted to see her. She was not at home. He returned two days later. Juliana said to him at the door, with her nauseously sweet smile,—
“She left the house a moment ago; she went in the direction of the Patriarchal.”
At last he met her one day at the head of the street of S. Roque.
Luiza appeared very much pleased at seeing him.
“Why did you remain so long in Almada? What a desertion!” she said.
He told her the carpenters had been there, that it was indispensable to superintend the work, and that he had, in truth, found it somewhat tiresome.
“Jorge writes that he will be obliged to remain away some time longer,” Luiza said; “I begin to lose patience, now. Without Julião, without the counsellor, without any one—”
Donna Felicidade was the only person who went to see her occasionally, and then only to stay a moment. She was always now at the Encarnação. Those pious people—
And she burst into a laugh.
Where was she going now? Sebastião asked her.
“To make some purchases, and afterwards to the dressmaker’s.”
“Come to see me, Sebastião,” she added.
“I will.”
“In the evening I am always alone.”
That same afternoon Sebastião received a letter from Jorge. “Have you seen Luiza?” it said. He was uneasy because he had not heard from her for five days. “And then,” it continued, “she seems to be always very busy, and writes only half a dozen lines, as the mail is just leaving. Go tell the mail to wait. What the deuce! She complains that she is lonely, that she isennuyée, that all her friends have abandoned her, that she lives in a desert. Go bear her company,” etc.
On the following day, towards evening, Sebastião went to see her. She made her appearance dressed in white, and looking very much flushed, as if she had been crying. She had reached home much tired, and had fallen asleep on the sofa after dinner. And what news was there? she asked. They spoke of the work done at Almada, of the counsellor, of Julião, and then they were silent. There was something that retained the words unspoken on the lips of both.
Luiza then lighted the candles on the piano; she showed Sebastião the new music she was practising,—the “Medjé” of Gounod; there was a phrase in it in which she always found some difficulty. She asked Sebastião to play it over for her; and, standing beside the piano, keeping time with her foot, she accompanied, in a low voice, the music, to which the skilful execution of Sebastião gave a touching charm. Shewished to try it after him; but found the same difficulty as before, and she went and sat down on the sofa, saying,—
“I hardly ever play now; my fingers are beginning to grow stiff.”
Sebastião did not venture to ask for her Cousin Bazilio. Luiza did not even mention his name; and Sebastião, seeing in this reserve either a diminution of friendship or a remnant of displeasure on her part, said that he was obliged to go to a meeting of the General Society of Agriculture. He went away very much grieved. Every day that passed brought with it some new annoyance. Sometimes it was Aunt Joanna, who would say to him in the afternoon,—
“Luizinha went out again to-day. With this heat, that is dangerous for her health.”
Again it was the council of the neighbors, whom he saw, from a distance, gathered together, and who were, to a certainty, tearing to pieces the poor girl’s reputation. It seemed to him a repetition of the aria of theCalumniain the “Barber of Seville.” The voice of slander, at first soft as a zephyr, rises in a terriblecrescendo, until it bursts forth all at once like a clap of thunder. He took a roundabout way so as not to have to meet the eyes of Paula and the keeper of the tobacco-shop. He was ashamed of every one. He chanced to meet Teixeira Azevedo, who said to him,—
“Has not Jorge come home yet? What the deuce! Does he intend to remain away forever?”
And this trivial remark filled him with terror. At last he went one day to look for Julião. He found him in his room in his shirt-sleeves, andin slippers, uncombed, with a coffee-pot beside him. The dirty floor was strewn with cigar-ends. Books were lying open on the unmade bed, and on all sides were signs of great disorder.
At his entrance Julião straightened himself up; he shook himself, rolled a cigarette, and said that he had been at work since seven o’clock in the morning. Ah, it was a fine thing to work! He would like to see how the Senhor Sebastião would stand it!
“For the rest, you have come just in time. I was about to send a message to your house. I was to have received money, and it has not come. Give me alibra.”
And then he began to speak about his thesis. The thing was turning out well. He read paragraphs to Sebastião from the prologue, with paternal delectation, well pleased with his labor. In a burst of confidence resulting from his excitement he said, taking rapid strides up and down the room,—
“I am going to show them that there are still Portuguese in Portugal, Sebastião. I am going to open their eyes; you shall see.”
He sat down and began to number the sheets already written. Sebastião, reluctant to disturb with private anxieties these lofty scientific interests, said hesitatingly, and in a low voice,—
“I have come to talk to you about our friends.”
But the door opened suddenly, and a young man with a neglected-looking beard and weak eyes entered the room. He was a student at the School, and a friend of Julião. Almost immediately they recommenced adiscussion which they had begun in the morning, and which had been interrupted at eleven o’clock, at which hour the young man with the weak eyes was obliged to go to Aurea to breakfast.
“No, my dear fellow, no!” exclaimed the student, “I hold to my assertion. Medicine is only a half-science; physiology is another half-science; they are both conjectural sciences, because their foundation—which is a knowledge of the principle of life—eludes our research.”
And standing before Sebastião with folded arms, he added,—
“What do we know of the principle of life?”
Sebastião, with a sense of humiliation, lowered his eyes; but Julião grew indignant.
“You are demoralized by the vitalist doctrine, unhappy man!” he cried. “A theory which pretends that the laws which govern matter are not the same as those which govern life is a scientific heresy, and Bichat, who teaches it, an idiot.”
“Bah!” cried the student, beside himself with anger.
To call Bichat an idiot,—that was indeed idiocy. But Julião treated the insult with contempt, and continued excitedly,—
“What does the principle of life matter to us? It matters as much to me as the first shirt I put on. The principle of life is like every other principle,—a secret of which we must remain forever in ignorance. We cannot know the principle of anything. Life, death, the origin of things, the purpose of them, are mysteries, are first causes with which we have nothing to do, absolutely nothing. We may continue thestruggle for centuries, without advancing a step. The physiologist, the chemist, have nothing to do with the principles of things. What concerns them are phenomena. Very well, then. Phenomena and their proximate causes, my dear friend, may be determined with as much exactness in regard to dead matter as in regard to the living body; in regard to a stone, as in regard to a man. That physiology and medicine are sciences as exact as the science of chemistry has been proved from the time of Descartes.”
Then they began an incidental dispute about Descartes, and all at once, without Sebastião, who listened in amazement, being able to discover the connection, they attacked each other fiercely about the idea of God. The student seemed to have need of God in order to explain the universe; but Julião attacked God with rage. He called him an “outworn hypothesis,” an “antiquated fable of the Miguelist party.” And then they attacked each other like two fighting cocks on the socialist question. The student, with bloodshot eyes, and bringing down his clenched fist upon the table with violence, sustained the principle of authority. Julião cried out in defence of “individual anarchy,” and after quoting with fury from Proudhon, Bastiat, and Jouffroy, they descended to the arena of personalities. Julião, who dominated the other by reason of the superior loudness of his voice, reminded the student roughly of his six-percent bonds, and of the absurdity of the position of the son of humble parents with aristocratic aspirations. At this they cast glances of hatred and contempt at each other, andshortly afterwards the student, letting fall a few disdainful words about Claude Bernard, the dispute was renewed again in all its former violence.
Sebastião took up his hat.
“Good-by,” he said to Julião, in a low voice.
“Good-by, Sebastião, good-by,” returned Julião, promptly.
He accompanied him to the head of the stairs.
“Ah, when do you think I had better speak to my cousin?” said Sebastião in a low voice.
“Ah, yes; we shall see; I will think about it,” returned Julião with an air of indifference, as if his pride in his labors had dissipated his fear of being treated with injustice.
Sebastião went downstairs in silence, thinking it useless to say anything to Julião now. But an idea suddenly presented itself to his mind. What if he were to speak to Donna Felicidade, to consult with her frankly? Donna Felicidade, it is true, was not very wise, but she was a woman of mature years, and she was a friend of Luiza. She had more influence with her, besides being possessed of more tact. He made up his mind to do so, called a carriage, and drove to the street of S. Bento. The servant of Donna Felicidade made her appearance at the door, tearful and disconsolate.
“But do you not know what has happened?” she said.
“No.”
“Ah, it seems impossible!”
“But what is it?”
The mistress—such a misfortune!—had dislocated her foot at the Encarnação. She had been ill, very ill; she was now staying at the Encarnação,—on the ground floor; she was unable to go upstairs. She was with the Senhora Donna Ana Silveira. Such a misfortune! And she was so distressed about it!
“And when did it happen?”
“The day before yesterday, in the evening.”
Sebastião sprang into the carriage and ordered the driver to go with all speed to Luiza’s. So Donna Felicidade was ill, at the Encarnação. Luiza, then, might well go out every day. She went, no doubt, to see her friend, to bear her company, to chat with her. The neighbors to gossip so wickedly, when the poor girl went to see her sick friend! It was two o’clock when the carriage stopped at Luiza’s door. Sebastião met her coming down the steps, dressed in black, with her veil down.
“Ah, come in, Sebastião, come in; won’t you come in?” she said.
“No; many thanks. I came to tell you,—do you not know that Donna Felicidade—”
“What about her?”
“She has dislocated her foot; she is very ill.”
“What do you tell me, Sebastião!”
Sebastião gave her all the details.
“You should go to see her,” he added.
“I will go there now.”
“I cannot go, for they do not allow men to enter the Encarnação. How unfortunate! They say she is very ill.”
He accompanied her to the corner of the street, giving her manymessages for Donna Felicidade. He was sorry not to be able to see her, poor lady!
He then went in the direction of the Patriarchal. Those daily excursions of Luiza would be henceforth justified in the eyes of the world,—she would go to nurse poor Donna Felicidade. It was necessary that every one should know it,—Paula, the keeper of the tobacco-shop, Gertrudes, the Azevedos, every one; so that when they saw her leave the house to-morrow they should say, “She is going to stay with the invalid, poor lady!”
Paula was standing at the door of his shop, and Sebastião, struck by a sudden idea, was astonished to find himself so fertile in expedients, so full of tact. He pushed his hat back a little from his forehead, and pointing with his umbrella to the portrait of João VI.,—
“How much do you ask for that, Senhor Paula?” he said.
Paula was struck with astonishment.
“Senhor Sebastião is in the mood for jesting,” he returned.
“Jesting!” exclaimed Sebastião; “I am very much in earnest. I want some pictures for the entrance-hall at Almada, but old ones, without lustre, that will harmonize with the dark paper on the wall.”
“I beg your pardon, Senhor Sebastião.”
“I like this João VI. How much is it worth?” Paula replied without hesitation,—
“Seven thousand two hundred; but it is a masterpiece.”
Sebastião thought it dear; but Paula showed him the price written ona slip of paper at the back. He explained to him the merits of the picture, pointed out its beauties, spoke of his honor as a merchant, characterized others of his fellow-merchants as bandits without conscience, gave him to understand that the portrait had belonged to the house of Queluz, and that he had bought it at public auction. Sebastião interrupted him, saying,—
“Very well, I will take it. Send it to my house, and the bill with it.”
“You will have a fine work of art.”
Sebastião looked around the shop. He wished to speak of Donna Felicidade’s dislocated foot, and sought for an opportunity of introducing the subject. He looked at some Indian vases, at a large china jar, and seeing an invalid’s chair,—
“How nice that would be for Donna Felicidade,” he exclaimed,—“a handsome and comfortable easy-chair!”
Paula opened wide his eyes.
“For Donna Felicidade Noronha,” replied Sebastião, in answer to his mute inquiry, “to recline in. Is it possible you do not know that she hurt her foot, and has been and is still very ill?”
“Donna Felicidade, the friend of the people here?” and he indicated with his thumb the house of the engineer.
“Yes, my friend, yes. She dislocated her foot in the Encarnação, and was obliged to remain there. Donna Luiza goes to see her every day. She has gone there just now.”
“Ah!” said Paula, slowly, after a moment’s silence. “Well, it is not aweek since I saw Donna Felicidade going in there.”
“The accident happened the day before yesterday,” said Sebastião. He coughed, and added, attentively examining some engravings, “Donna Luiza went every day to the Encarnação before, but it was to see Donna Ana Silveira, who was sick. It is three weeks now since the poor girl has been acting as sick-nurse. She hardly leaves the Encarnação; and now, to cap the climax, Donna Felicidade!”
“I knew nothing of it,—absolutely nothing,” said Paula, in a low voice, his hands in his pockets.
“Send me home that João VI.”
“At your orders, Senhor Sebastião.”
Sebastião returned home. He went up to the parlor, and throwing his hat on the sofa,—
“Good!” he said to himself. “How, at least, appearances are saved.”
He took a few turns up and down the room, with bent head, sad and thoughtful; for that he had been able by chance to justify those excursions of Luiza’s in the eyes of the neighbors made the thought only the more cruel to him that he was not able to explain them to himself. The suspicions the neighbors had for some time past entertained he had shown to be unjust; but what of his own? He desired to prove them false, childish, unreasonable, and against his will, his common-sense, and his principles he was involving himself in greater and greater difficulties. After all, he had done his duty, and with a sorrowful gesture he said aloud, breaking the silence around him,—
“The rest is a matter for her own conscience to settle.”
That same afternoon the whole neighborhood knew that Donna Felicidade had dislocated her foot in the Encarnação; some of the neighbors declared that she had broken her leg, and that Donna Luiza never left her bedside; and Paula affirmed in authoritative accents,—
“She is a very good girl, a very good girl!”
The professor’s Gertrudes went in the evening to ask Aunt Joanna if it was true that Donna Felicidade had broken her leg. Aunt Joanna set her right; it was a dislocated foot, and nothing more. Gertrudes went back to tell the professor, adding that the accident had taken place at the Encarnação, where the sick lady now was. All the neighbors praised Luiza. A few days afterwards Teixeira Azevedo, who of late had hardly saluted her, meeting her by chance in the street of S. Roque, stopped her, and with a profound bow said,—
“I beg your pardon, Senhora; how does your patient get on?”
“Better, thank you.”
“It is truly a very charitable action on your part, Senhora, to go every day to the Encarnação.”
“She does not want for society,” returned Luiza.
“A very charitable action, indeed,” repeated Azevedo, with emphasis. “I have said so everywhere,—a very charitable action on your part. Good-day.”
And he went on his way much moved.
Luiza went, in fact, shortly afterwards to see Donna Felicidade. A simple sprain was all that was the matter with her; but lying inbed, in the Senhora Silveira’s room, with compresses of arnica on her foot, she thought with terror that she was going to lose her leg; and she spent the day, surrounded by friends, crying, eating Recolhimento peaches, and nibbling azaroles. No sooner did any new visitor arrive than she redoubled her exclamations and her complaints; then followed a minute, circumstantial, and prolix history of the misfortune. Then, when she saw the excitement was beginning to die away, she would raise herself on her elbow to exclaim,—
“Ah, our Lady of Health! this was a miracle; I might have died.”
All the ladies agreed that it was indeed a miracle; they were full of sympathy for her, and went in turn to kneel before the saints to ask their intercession for the alleviation of Senhora Noronha’s suffering.
Luiza’s first visit was a great consolation for Donna Felicidade, who complained greatly of being obliged to remain in bed without hearing of or being able to speak of him. On the succeeding days, as soon as Luiza entered the room, she would call her to her bedside to ask her in low and mysterious accents,—
“Have you seen him? Have you heard from him?”
Her chief trouble was that the counsellor did not know she was ill, and that consequently he could not dedicate to her those compassionate thoughts to which her foot had a right, and which would be a consolation to her heart. But Luiza had not seen him, and Donna Felicidade, throwing herself back in the bed, exhaled bitter sighs.
On two or three occasions Luiza, returning home, had come face to facewith Juliana, returning also in great haste by the Moinho de Vento.
“Where do you come from?” she had asked her, on reaching the house.
“From the doctor’s, Senhora,—from the doctor’s.”
She complained of sharp pains, of palpitations, of a want of breath.
“Flatulence, flatulence,” Luiza said.
For some days past Juliana would set the house in order in the morning, and no sooner had Luiza turned the corner of the street at one o’clock than she would go to her room to dress herself, and then, looking very fine in her merino gown, her hat, and her parasol, would go say to Joanna,—
“I am going to the doctor’s.”
And Joanna would answer, delighted, “Yes; go.”
Juliana’s way led her by S. Pedro de Alcantara into the Rua do Carmo, and finally to an alley in front of the barracks. There, on a third floor, lived her intimate friend Aunt Victoria. She was an old woman who had once kept an employment agency, but of late years her business had been of a more complicated and varied character. For some time past Juliana had been in the habit of visiting her frequently; and no sooner did she make her appearance than the old woman, notwithstanding her many occupations, would rise, take her to her private room, shut the door, and remain closeted with her for half an hour or more. Juliana always came out from these interviews flushed, her eyes sparkling, and looking happy. She would return home in haste, and her first words on entering the house always were,—
“Has the mistress returned, Joanna?”
“Not yet; she is in the Encarnação.”
“Poor thing! And afterwards she will naturally take a walk. She is very right to amuse herself.”
Joanna was by nature stupid and obtuse. Nevertheless she noticed that of late the Senhora Juliana manifested great affection for her mistress, and she said to her one day,—
“It seems that you are better friends with the mistress now than formerly, Juliana.”
“Better friends?”
“Yes; I mean more—more—”
“More attached to the mistress?”
“Yes; more attached.”
“I always was so. Besides, people have their whims and caprices. But I am now convinced, Joanna, that I could nowhere be better off than I am here. The mistress is very good-tempered; she is not exacting or capricious. I return thanks to Heaven daily for the comfort and happiness I enjoy here.”
The house had, indeed, an air of tranquil happiness. Luiza went out every day, and found fault with nothing. Her antipathy to Juliana seemed to have disappeared; and she seemed to regard her now as an inoffensive creature. Juliana continued to take her soups, to go out, and to complain of her ailments. Joanna, who had much greater liberty than formerly, and who was almost always alone in the house, enjoyed the society of her carpenter. There were no visitors. Donna Felicidade was in the Encarnação steeped in arnica. Sebastião was in Almada, where he had gone to superintend the repairs going on at his villa;the counsellor had left the city for Cintra, “to feast his spirit,” as he had told Luiza, to “gladden himself in contemplating the wonders of that Eden;” Senhor Julião, “the doctor,” as Joanna called him, was working at his thesis. The household kept regular hours; silence and repose reigned everywhere. In the kitchen one day Juliana, vividly impressed with the quietude and contentment that pervaded the house, exclaimed,—
“Ah, Joanna, one could not be better off! Our boat sails in a sea of roses.” And she added, with a little laugh, “This is happiness!”
At about this time, as Luiza was one day going to meet Bazilio, she suddenly saw emerge from a gateway, a little beyond Santa Barbara, the figure of Ernesto.
“You here, Cousin Luiza,” he exclaimed in astonishment,—“in this neighborhood! What brings you here? It is a surprise indeed to see you in such a street!”
His face was flushed; he held up the skirts of his great-coat behind with one hand, and with the other brandished in his excitement a thick roll of paper. Luiza paused, very much startled. She told him she was going to see a friend.
“You do not know her,” she added; “she has just arrived from Oporto.”
“Ah, very well; very well! And what have you been doing? How have you spent your time? When is Jorge coming home?”
Then he began to excuse himself for not having gone to see her. He hadnot a free moment, he said, from morning till night,—always busy with the rehearsals.
“So the drama progresses?” said Luiza.
“Yes, indeed!” And he added enthusiastically, “And how! It is a masterpiece! when one works, one works.” He had just come from the house of the actor Pinto, who took the lover’s part,—that of the Count of Monte Redondo. He had been listening to him reciting the final words of the third act. “Malediction! Fate pursues me; be it so then; I shall fight hand to hand with Fate! To the combat!” It was wonderful. He had just been receiving notice, too, to remodel the monologue in the second act. The manager thought it a trifle long.
“So then the manager continues to annoy you with his exactions,” said Luiza.
Ernesto shrugged his shoulders with a look of irritation. Then he said, with a joyful countenance,—
“Every one is wild about it. Yesterday he said to me, ‘Ledesma, all Lisbon will come in a body to the first representation; you will ruin the other theatres.’ He is not a bad sort of man. I am going now to the house of Bastos, who writes for the ‘Verdade.’ Do you know him?”
Luiza could not well remember.
“Bastos, of the ‘Verdade,’” he repeated. And seeing that Luiza was trying in vain to recollect, he added, “There is no one you know better.” And he went on to describe him.
But Luiza, impatient to put an end to the conversation, interrupted him,—
“Ah, yes; now I remember.”
“Yes; I am going to his house.” And he added confidentially, “We are great friends. He is a very good fellow, and he has a beautiful boy.” He pressed her hand, and said, “Good-by, Cousin Luiza; I have not a moment to lose. Would you like me to accompany you?”
“No; it is quite near.”
“Good-by. Remembrances to Jorge.”
She had only taken a few steps when he ran after her.
“Ah, I forgot,” he cried. “Do you know that I have forgiven her?”
Luiza looked at him in astonishment.
“The heroine—the countess,” said Ernesto.
“Ah!”
“Yes; the husband forgives her. He obtains a diplomatic mission, and goes to live abroad. It is more natural.”
“Assuredly,” Luiza assented in confusion.
“The piece ends by the Count of Monte Redondo, the lover, saying, ‘He has gone to die in solitude, the victim of this fatal passion.’ It produces a great effect.” And looking at her a moment, he added, “Good-by, Cousin. Remembrances to Jorge.”