I think so. I believe it is, and I wish to believe it.
The swiftness, the fugitive nature of the impression make me conjecture that it had no external reality, that it was only an illusion.
The serenity of heaven, the coldness of indifference, tempered, indeed, with sweetness and charity—this is what I always discern in Pepita's eyes.
Nevertheless, this illusion, this vision of a strange and ardent glance, torments me.
My father affirms that in affairs of the heart it is the woman, not the man, who takes the first step; and that she takes it without thereby incurring any responsibility, and with the power to disavow or retract it whenever she desires to do so. According to my father, it is the woman who first declares her passion through the medium of furtive glances that, later, she disavows to her own conscience if necessary, and of which he to whom they are directed divines, rather than reads, the significance. In this manner, by a species of electric shock, by means of a subtle and inexplicable intuition, he who is loved perceives that he is loved; and when at last he makes up his mind to declare himself, he can do so confidently, and in the full security that his passion is returned.
Perhaps it is these theories of my father, to which I have listened because I could not help it, that have heated my fancy and made me imagine what has no existence in reality.
Yet, after all, I say to myself at times, Is the thought so absurd, so incredible, that this illusion should have an existence in reality? And if it had, if I were pleasing in Pepita's eyes otherwise than as a friend, if the woman to whom my father is paying his addresses should fall in love with me, would not my position then be terrible?
But let us cast away these fears, the creation, no doubt, of vanity. Let us not make of Pepita a Phædra, or of me a Hippolytus.
What in reality begins to surprise me is my father's carelessness and complete consciousness of security. Pardon my pride, ask Heaven to pardon it; for at times this consciousness of security piques and offends me. What! I say to myself, is there something so absurd in the thought that it should not even occur to my father that, notwithstanding my supposed sanctity, or perhaps because of my supposed sanctity, I should, without wishing it, inspire Pepita with love?
There is an ingenious method of reasoning by which I explain to myself, without wounding my vanity, my father's carelessness in this important particular. My father, although he has no reason for doing so, begins to regard himself already in the light of Pepita's husband, and to share in that fatal blindness with which Asmodeus, or some other yet more malicious demon, afflicts husbands. Profane and ecclesiastical history is fall of instances of this blindness, which God permits, no doubt, for providential purposes. The most remarkable example of it, perhaps, is that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had for wife a woman so vile as Faustina, and yet so wise a man and so great a philosopher remained in ignorance to the end of his days of what was known to every one else in the Roman Empire; so that in the meditations or memoirs of himself that he composed he gives infinite thanks to the immortal gods for having bestowed upon him so faithful and so good a wife; thus provoking the smiles of his contemporaries and of future generations.
Every day since then we see examples of great men and men of exalted rank who make those who enjoy the favor of their wives their private secretaries, and bestow honors on them. Thus do I explain to myself my father's indifference and his failure to suspect that, even against my own will, it would be possible for him to find a rival in me.
Would it be a want of respect on my part, should I fall into the fault of presumption or insolence, if I were to warn my father of the danger which he himself does not see? But he gives me no opportunity to say anything to him. Besides, what could I say to him? That once or twice I fancy Pepita has looked at me in a way different from that in which she usually does? May not this be an illusion of mine? No; I have not the least proof that Pepita desires to play the coquette with me.
What, then, could I tell my father? Shall I say to him that it is I who am in love with Pepita; that I covet the treasure he already regards as his own? This is not the truth; and, above all, how could I tell this to my father, even if, to my misfortune and through my fault, it were the truth?
The best course I can adopt is to say nothing; to combat the temptation in silence, if it should indeed assail me, and to endeavor, as soon as possible, to leave this place and return to you.
May 19th.
I return thanks to Heaven and to you for the letters and the counsels you have lately sent me. To-day I need them more than ever.
The mystical and learned St. Theresa is right in dwelling upon the suffering of timid souls that allow themselves to be disturbed by temptation; but a thousand times worse than that suffering is the awakening from error of those who, like me, have permitted themselves to indulge in arrogance and self-confidence.
Our bodies are the temples wherein dwells the Holy Spirit; but when fire is set to the walls of the temple, though they do not burn, yet they are blackened.
The first evil thought is the head of the serpent; if we do not crush it with firm and courageous foot, then will the venomous reptile climb up and hide himself in our bosom.
The nectar of earthly joys, however innocent they be, is sweet indeed to the taste; but afterward it is converted into gall, and into the venom of the serpent.
It is true—I can no longer deny it to you—I ought not to have allowed my eyes to rest with so much complacency on this dangerous woman.
I do not deem myself lost; but I feel my soul troubled.
Even as the thirsty hart desires and seeks the water-brooks, so does my soul still seek God. To God does it turn that he may give it rest; it longs to drink at the torrent of his delights the gushing forth of which rejoices paradise, and whose clear waves make whiter than snow but deep calleth unto deep, and my feet have stuck fast in the mire that is hidden in their abysses.
Yet have I still breath and voice to cry out with the psalmist: "Arise, my joy! if thou dost take my part, who shall prevail against me?"
I say unto my sinful soul, full of the chimerical imaginations and sinful desires engendered by unlawful thoughts: "O miserable daughter of Babylon! happy shall he be who shall give thee thy reward! Happy shall he be that dasheth thy little ones against the rock!"
Works of penance, fasting, prayer, and penitence, are the weapons wherewith I shall arm myself to combat, and, with the Divine help, to vanquish.
It was not a dream; it was not madness; it was the truth: she lets her eyes rest upon me at times with the ardent glance of which I have told you. There is in her glance an unexplainable magnetic attraction. It draws me on, it seduces me, and I can not withdraw my gaze from her. On such occasions my eyes must burn, like hers, with a fatal flame, as did those of Amnon when he turned them upon Tamar; as did those of the prince of Shechem when they were fixed upon Dinah.
When our glances encounter each other thus, I forget even God. Her image rises up within my soul, the conqueror of everything. Her beauty outshines all other beauty; the joys of heaven seem to me less desirable than her affection. An eternity of suffering would be little in exchange for one moment of the infinite bliss with which one of those glances that pass like lightning inundates my soul.
When I return home, when I am alone in my room, in the silence of the night, I realize all the horror of my position, and I form good resolutions, only to break them again.
I resolve to feign sickness, to make use of any pretext so as not to go to Pepita's on the following night, and yet I go.
My father, confiding to the last degree, says to me when the hour arrives, without any suspicion of what is passing in my soul:
"Go you to Pepita's; I will go later, when I have finished with the overseer."
No excuse occurs to me; I can find no pretext for not going, and, instead of answering, "I can not go," I take my hat and depart.
On entering the room I shake hands with Pepita, and, as our hands touch, she casts a spell over me; my whole being is changed; a devouring fire penetrates my heart, and I think only of her. Moved by an irresistible impulse, I gaze at her with insane ardor, and at every instant I think I discover in her new perfections. Now it is the dimples in her cheeks when she smiles, now the roseate whiteness of her skin, now the straight outlines of her nose, now the smallness of her ear, now the softness of contour and the admirable modeling of her throat.
I enter her house against my will, as though summoned there by a conjurer, and no sooner am I there than I fall under the spell of her enchantment. I see clearly that I am in the power of an enchantress, whose fascination is irresistible.
Not only is she pleasing to my sight, but her words sound in my ears like the music of the spheres, revealing to my soul the harmony of the universe; and I even fancy that a subtle fragrance emanates from her, sweeter than the perfume of the mint that grows by the brook-side, or the wood-like odor of the thyme that is found among the hills.
I know not how, in this state of exaltation, I am able to playhombre,or to converse rationally, or even to speak, so completely am I absorbed in her.
When our glances encounter each other, our souls rush forth in them, and seem to join and interpenetrate each other. In that meeting a thousand feelings are communicated that in no other way could be made known; poems are recited that could be uttered in no human tongue, and songs are sung that no human voice could sing, no according zither accompany.
Since the day I met Pepita in thePozo de la Solana, I have not seen her alone. Although no word has passed between us, yet we have told each other everything.
When I withdraw myself from this fascination, when I am again alone at night in my chamber, I set myself to examine coolly the situation in which I am placed; I see the abyss that is about to ingulf me, yawning before me, and I feel my feet slip from under me, and that I am sinking into it.
You counsel me to reflect upon death—not on the death of this woman, but on my own. You counsel me to reflect on the instability, on the insecurity of our existence, and on what there is beyond it. But these considerations, these reflections neither terrify nor daunt me. Why should I, who desire to die, fear death? Love and death are brothers. A sentiment of self-abnegation springs to life within me, and tells me that my whole being should be consecrated to and annihilated in the beloved object. I long to merge myself in one of her glances; to diffuse and exhale my whole being in the ray of light shot forth from her eyes; to die while gazing on her, even though I should be eternally lost.
What is still to some extent efficacious with me against this love is not fear, but love itself. Superior to this deep-rooted love with which I now have the evidence that Pepita inspires me, Divine love exalts itself in my spirit in mighty uprising. Then everything is changed within me, and I feel that I may yet obtain the victory. The object of my higher love presents itself to my mental vision, as the sun that kindles and illuminates all things, and fills all space with light; and the object of my inferior love appears but as an atom of dust floating in the sunbeam. All its beauty, all its splendor, all its attraction are nothing but the reflection of this uncreated sun, the brilliant, transitory, fleeting spark that is cast off from that infinite and inexhaustible fire.
My soul, burning with love, would fain take to herself wings and rise to that flame, in order that all that is impure within her might be consumed therein.
My life, for some days past, is a constant struggle. I know not how it is that the malady from which I suffer does not betray itself in my countenance. I scarcely eat; I scarcely sleep. And if by chance sleep closes my eyelids, I awake in terror as from a dream in which rebel angels are arrayed against good angels, and in which I am one of the combatants. In this conflict of light against darkness, I do battle for the right, but I sometimes imagine that I have gone over to the enemy, that I am a vile deserter; and I hear a voice from Patmos saying, "And men preferred darkness rather than light"; and then I am filled with terror and I look upon myself as lost. No resource is left me but flight. If, before the end of the month, my father does not go with me, or consent to my going alone, I shall steal away like a thief, without a word to any one.
May 23d.
I am a vile worm, not a man; I am the opprobrium and disgrace of humanity. I am a hypocrite.
I have been encompassed by the pangs of death, and the waters of iniquity have passed over me.
I am ashamed to write to you, and yet I write. I desire to confess everything to you.
I can not turn away from evil. Far from abstaining from going to Pepita's, I go there each night earlier than the last. It would seem as if devils took me by the feet and carried me there against my will!
Happily, I never find Pepita alone; I do not desire to find her alone. I almost always find there before me the excellent vicar, who attributes our friendship to similarity of feeling in religious matters, and bases it on piety, like the pure and innocent friendship he himself entertains for her.
The progress of my malady is rapid. Like the stone that is loosened from the mountain-top and gathers force as it falls, so is it with my spirit now.
When Pepita and I shake hands, it is not now as before. Each one of us, by an effort of the will, transmits to the other, through the handclasp, every throb of the heart. It is as if, by some diabolical art, we had effected a transfusion and a blending together of the most subtle elements our blood. She must feel my life circulate through her veins, as I feel hers in mine.
When I am near her, I love her; when I am away from her, I hate her. When I am in her presence she inspires me with love; she draws me to her; she subjugates me with gentleness; she lays upon me a very easy yoke.
But the recollection of her undoes me. When I dream of her, I dream that she is severing my head from my body, as Judith slew the captain of the Assyrians; or that she is driving a nail into my temple, as Jael did to Sisera. But when I am near her, she appears to me the Spouse of the Song of Songs, and a voice within me calls to her, and I bless her, and I regard her as a sealed fountain, as an inclosed garden, as the flower of the valley, as the lily of the fields, my dove and my sister.
I desire to free myself from her, and I can not. I abhor, yet I almost worship her. Her spirit enters into and takes possession of me as soon as I behold her; it subjugates me, it abases me.
I leave her house each night, saying, "This is the last night I shall return here"; and I return there on the following night!
When she speaks, and I am near, my soul hangs, as it were, upon her words. When she smiles, I imagine that a ray of spiritual light enters into my heart and rejoices it.
It has happened, when playinghombre, that our knees have touched by chance, and then I have felt a thrill run through me impossible to describe.
Get me away from this place. Write to my father and ask him to let me return to you. If it be necessary, tell him everything. Help me! Be you my refuge!
May 30th.
God has given me strength to resist, and I have resisted.
It is now many days since I have been in the house of Pepita, many days since I have seen her.
It is scarcely necessary that I should feign sickness, for I am in reality sick. I have lost my color, and dark circles begin to show themselves under my eyes; and my father asks me, full of affectionate anxiety, what the cause of my suffering is, and manifests the deepest concern in my regard.
The kingdom of heaven is said to yield to violence, and I am resolved to conquer it. With violence I call at its gates that they may open to me.
With wormwood am I fed by the Lord, in order to prove me; and in vain do I supplicate him to let this cup of bitterness pass away from me. But, as I have passed and still pass many nights in vigil, delivered up to prayer, a loving inspiration from the Supreme Consoler has come to sweeten the bitterness of my cup.
I have beheld with the eyes of the soul the new country; and the new song of the heavenly Jerusalem has resounded within the depths of my heart.
If in the end I should conquer, glorious will be the victory; but I shall owe it to the Queen of Angels, under whose protection I place myself. She is my refuge and my defense; the tower and the house of David, on whose walls hang innumerable shields and the armor of many valiant champions; the cedar of Lebanon, that puts to flight the serpent.
The woman who inspires me with an earthly love, on the contrary, I endeavor to despise and abase in my thoughts, remembering the words of the sage, and applying them to her.
"Thou art the snare of the hunter," I say to her; "thy heart is a net of deceit, and thy hands are bands that imprison; he who fears God will flee from thee, and the sinner shall be taken captive by thee."
In my meditations on love, I find a thousand reasons for loving God, and against loving her.
I feel, in the depths of my heart, an indescribable enthusiasm that convinces me that for the love of God I would sacrifice all things—fame, honor, power, dominion. I feel myself capable of imitating Christ, and if the tempter should carry me off to the mountain-top, and should there offer me all the kingdoms of the earth if I consented to bow the knee before him, yet would I not bend it. But were he to offer me this woman if I should do so, I feel that I should waver, that I should not reject his offer. Is this woman, then, worth more in my eyes than all the kingdoms of the earth? More than fame, honor, power, and dominion?
Is the virtue of love, I ask myself at times, always the same, even when applied to diverse objects; or are there two species and qualities of love? To love God seems to me to be the giving up of self and of selfish interest. Loving him, I desire to love, and I can love all things through him, and I am not troubled or jealous because of his love toward all things. I am not jealous of the saints, or of the martyrs, or of the blessed, or even of the seraphim. The greater I picture to myself to be the love of God for his creatures, and the graces and gifts he bestows upon them, the less am I troubled by jealousy; the more I love him, the nearer to me do I feel him to be, and the more loving and gracious does he seem toward me. My brotherhood, my more than brotherhood with all creatures, stands forth then in a most pleasing light. It seems to me that I am one with all things, and that all things are bound together in the bonds of love, through God and in God.
Very different is it when my thoughts dwell upon Pepita, and on the love with which she inspires me. This love is a love full of hatred, that separates me from everything but myself. I desire her for myself, altogether for myself, and myself altogether for her. Even devotion to her, even sacrifices made for her sake, partake of the nature of selfishness. To die for her would be to die of despair at not being able to possess her in any other manner—from the fear of not enjoying her love completely, except by dying and commingling with her in an eternal embrace.
By these reflections I endeavor to render the love of Pepita hateful to me. I invest my love in my imagination with something diabolical and fatal; but, as if I possessed a double soul, a double understanding, a double will, and a double imagination, in contradiction to this thought, other feelings rise up within me in its train, and I then deny what I have just affirmed, and insanely endeavor to reconcile the two loves. Would it not be possible, I ask myself, to fly from Pepita, and yet continue to love her, without ceasing therefore to consecrate myself with fervor to the love of God? For, as the love of God does not exclude love of country, love of humanity, love of learning, love of beauty in nature and in art, neither should it exclude another love, if it be spiritual and immaculate. I will make of her, I say to myself, a symbol, an allegory, an image of all that is good, of all that is beautiful. She shall be to me, as Beatrice was to Dante, the image and the symbol of country, of knowledge, and of beauty.
This intention suggests to me a horrible fancy, a monstrous thought. In order to make of Pepita this symbol, this vaporous and ethereal image, this sign and epitome of all that I can love under God, in God, and subordinate to God, I picture her to myself dead, as Beatrice was dead when Dante made her the subject of his song.
If I picture her to myself among the living, then I am unable to convert her into a pure idea, and if I convert her into a pure idea, I kill her in my thoughts.
Then I weep; I am filled with horror at my crime, and I draw near to her in spirit, and with the warmth of my heart I bring her back to life again; and I behold her, not errant, diaphanous, floating in shadowy outline among roseate clouds and celestial flowers, as the stern Ghibelline beheld his beloved in the upper sphere of purgatory, but coherent, solid, clearly defined in the pure and serene air like the masterpieces of Greek art, like Galatea already animated by the love of Pygmalion, and descending—full of fire, exhaling love, rich in youth and beauty—from her pedestal of marble.
Then I exclaim in the depths of my perturbed heart: "My virtue faints! My God, do not thou forsake me! Hasten to my help; show thy countenance, and I shall be saved."
Thus do I recover strength to resist temptation. Thus again does the hope spring to life within me, that I shall regain my former tranquillity when I shall have left this place.
The devil longs with ardor to swallow up the pure waters of Jordan, by which are symbolized the persons who are consecrated to God. Hell conspires against them, and lets loose all her monsters, upon them. St. Bonaventure says, "We should not wonder that these persons have sinned, but rather that they have not sinned."
Notwithstanding, I shall be able to resist and not sin. The Lord will protect me.
June 6th.
Pepita's nurse—now her housekeeper—is, as my father says, a good bag of wrinkles; she is talkative, gay, and skillful, as few are. She married the son of Master Cencias, and has inherited from the father what the son did not inherit—a wonderful facility for the mechanical arts, with this difference; that while Master Cencias could set the screw of a wine-press, or repair the wheels of a wagon, or make a plow, this daughter-in-law of his knows how to make sweetmeats, conserves of honey, and other dainties. The father-in-law practiced the useful arts, the daughter-in-law those that have for their object pleasure, though only innocent, or at least lawful pleasure.
Antoñona—for such is her name—is permitted, or assumes, the greatest familiarity with all the gentry here. She goes in and out of every house as if it were her own. She saysthouto all the young people of Pepita's age, or four or five years older; she calls themniñoandniña,and treats them as if she had nursed them at her breast.
She behaves toward me with the same familiarity; she comes to visit me, enters my room unannounced, and has asked me several times already why I no longer go to see her mistress, and has told me that I am wrong in not going.
My father, who has no suspicion of the truth, accuses me of eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my father was about to settle his accounts with the overseer.
Would God I had not gone!
Pepita was alone. When our glances met, when we saluted each other, we both turned red. We shook hands with timidity and in silence.
I did not press her hand, nor did she press mine, but for a moment we held them clasped together.
In Pepita's glance, as she looked at me, there was nothing of love; there was only friendship, sympathy, and a profound sadness.
She had divined the whole of my inward struggle; she was persuaded that divine love had triumphed in my soul; that my resolution not to love her was firm and invincible.
She did not venture to complain of me; she had no reason to complain of me; she knew that right was on my side. A sigh, scarcely perceptible, that escaped from her dewy, parted lips, revealed to me the depth of her sorrow.
Her hand still lay in mine; we were both silent. How say to her that she was not destined for me, nor I for her; that we must part forever?
But, though my lips refused to tell her this in words, I told it to her with my eyes; my severe glance confirmed her fears; it convinced her of the irrevocableness of my decision.
All at once her gaze was troubled; her lovely countenance, pale with a translucent pallor, was contracted with a touching expression of melancholy. She looked like Our Lady of Sorrows. Two tears rose slowly to her eyes, and began to steal down her cheeks.
I know not what passed within me—and how describe it, even if I knew?
I bent toward her to kiss away her tears, and our lips met in a kiss.
A rapture unspeakable, a faintness full of peril, invaded our whole being. She would have fallen, but that I supported her in my arms.
Heaven willed that we should at this moment hear the step and the cough of the reverend vicar, who was approaching, and we instantly drew apart.
Recovering myself, and summoning all the strength of my will, I brought to an end this terrible scene, that had been enacted in silence, with these words, which I pronounced in low and intense accents:
"The first and the last!"
I made allusion to our profane kiss, but, as if my words had been an invocation, there rose before me the vision of the Apocalypse in all its terrible majesty. I beheld Him who is indeed the First and the Last, and, with the two-edged sword that proceeded from his mouth, he pierced my soul, full of evil, of wickedness, and of sin.
All that evening I passed in a species of frenzy, an inward delirium, that I know not how I was able to conceal.
I withdrew from Pepita's house very early.
The anguish of my soul was yet more poignant in solitude.
When I recalled that kiss, and those words of farewell, I compared myself with the traitor Judas, who made use of a kiss to betray; and with the sanguinary and treacherous assassin Joab, who plunged the sharp steel into the bowels of Amasa while in the act of kissing him.
I had committed a double treason; I had been guilty of a double perfidy. I had sinned against God and against her.
I am an execrable wretch.
June 11th.
Everything may still be remedied.
Pepita will, in time, forget her love and the weakness of which we were guilty.
Since that night I have not returned to her house. Antoñona has not made her appearance in ours.
By dint of entreaties I have obtained a formal promise from my father that we shall leave here on the 25th, the day after St. John's day, which is here celebrated with splendid feasts, and on the eve of which there is a famous vigil.
Absent from Pepita, I begin to recover my serenity, and to think that this first appearance of love was a trial of my virtue.
All these nights I have prayed, I have watched, I have performed many works of penance.
The persistence of my prayers, the deep contrition of my soul, have found favor with the Lord, who has manifested to me his great mercy.
The Lord, in the words of the prophet, has sent fire to the stronghold of my spirit, he has illuminated my understanding, he has kindled my resolution, and he has given me instruction. The working of the Divine love which animates the Supreme Will has had power, at times, without my deserving it, to lead me to that condition of prayerful contemplation in which all the faculties of the soul are in repose. I have cast out from the lower faculties of my soul every species of image—even her image; and I am persuaded, if vanity does not deceive me, that, mind and heart in reconciliation, I have known and enjoyed the Supreme Good that dwells within the depths of the soul.
Compared with this good, all else is worthless; compared with this beauty, all else is deformity. Who would not forget and scorn every other love for the love of God?
Yes, the profane image of this woman shall depart, finally and forever, from my soul. I shall make of my prayers and of my penance a sharp scourge, and with it I will expel her therefrom, as Christ expelled the money-lenders from the temple.
June 18th.
This is the last letter I shall write to you. On the 25th I shall leave this place without fail.
I shall soon have the happiness of embracing you. Near you I shall be stronger; you will infuse courage into me, and lend me the energy in which I am wanting.
A tempest of conflicting emotions is raging now in my soul. The disorder of my ideas may be known by the disorder of what I write.
Twice I returned to the house of Pepita. I was cold and stern. I was as I ought to have been, but how much did it not cost me!
My father told me yesterday that Pepita was indisposed, and would not receive.
The thought at once assailed me that the cause of her indisposition might be her ill-requited love.
Why did I return her glances of fire? Why did I basely deceive her? Why did I make her believe I loved her? Why did my vile lips seek hers with ardor, and communicate the ardor of an unholy love to hers?
But no; my sin shall not be followed, as its unavoidable consequence, by another sin!
What has been, has been, and can not be undone; but a repetition of it may be avoided, shall be avoided in future.
On the 25th, I repeat, I shall depart from here without fail.
The impudent Antoñona has just come to see me. I hid this letter from her, as if it were a crime to write to you.
Antoñona remained here only for a moment.
I arose, and remained standing while I spoke to her, that the visit might be a short one.
During this short visit she gave utterance to a thousand absurdities that afflict me profoundly. Finally, as she was going away, she exclaimed, in her half-gypsy jargon:
"Get away, you deceiver! you villain! my curse upon you! You have made the child sick, and now you are killing her with your subterfuges. May witches fly away with you, body and bones!"
Having said this, the fiendish woman gave me, in a coarse plebeian fashion, six or seven ferocious pinches below the shoulders, as if she would like to tear the skin from my back in strips; and then went away, looking daggers at me.
I do not complain. I deserve this brutal jest, granting it to be a jest. I deserve that fiends should tear my flesh with red-hot pincers.
Grant, my God, that Pepita may forget me; let her, if it be necessary, love another, and be happy with him!
Can I do more than ask thee this, O my God?
My father knows nothing, suspects nothing; it is better thus.
Farewell for a few days, till we see and embrace each other again.
How changed will you find me! How full of bitterness my heart! How lost my innocence! How bruised and wounded my soul!
Here end the letters of Don Luis de Vargas. We should therefore be left in ignorance of the subsequent fortunes of these lovers, and this simple and ardent love-story would have remained without an ending, if one familiar with all the circumstances had not left us the following narrative:
No one in the village found anything strange in the fact of Pepita's being indisposed, or thought, still less, of attributing her indisposition to a cause of which only we, Pepita herself, Don Luis, the reverend dean, and the discreet Antoñona, are thus far cognizant.
They might rather have wondered at the life, of gayety that Pepita had been leading for some time past, at the daily gatherings at her house, and the excursions into the country in which she had joined. That Pepita should return to her habitual seclusion was quite natural.
Her secret and deeply rooted love for Don Luis was hidden from the searching glances of Doña Casilda, of Currito, and of all the other personages of the village of whom mention is made in the letters of Don Luis. Still less could the public know of it. It never entered into the head, of any one—no one imagined for a moment that the theologian, thesaint,as they called Don Luis, could become the rival of his father, or could have succeeded where the redoubtable and powerful Don Pedro de Vargas had failed—in winning the heart of the lovely, graceful, coy, and reserved young widow.
Notwithstanding the familiarity of the ladies of the village with their servants, Pepita had allowed none of hers to suspect anything. Only the lynx-eyed Antoñona, whom nothing could escape, and more especially nothing that concerned her young mistress, had penetrated the mystery.
Antoñona did not conceal her discovery from Pepita, nor could Pepita deny the truth to the woman who had nursed her, who idolized her, and who, if she delighted in finding out and gossiping about all that took place in the village, being, as she was, a model scandal-monger, was yet, in all that related to her mistress, reticent and loyal as but few are.
In this manner Antoñona made herself the confidante of Pepita; and Pepita found great consolation in unburdening her heart to one who, though she might be cross and vulgar in the frankness with which she expressed her sentiments, was not so either in the sentiments or the ideas that she expressed.
In this may be found the explanation of Antoñona's visits to Don Luis, as well as of her words, and even of the ferocious and disrespectful pinches, given in so ill-chosen a spot, with which she bruised his flesh and wounded his dignity, on the occasion of her last visit to him.
Not only had Pepita not desired Antoñona to carry messages to Don Luis, but she did not even know that she had gone to see him. Antoñona had taken the initiative, and had interfered in the matter simply because she herself had wanted to do so.
As we have already said, she had, with wonderful perspicacity, made herself acquainted with the state of affairs between her mistress and Don Luis.
While Pepita herself was still scarcely conscious of the fact that she loved Don Luis, Antoñona already knew it. Scarcely had Pepita begun to cast on him those furtive glances, ardent and involuntary, that had wrought such havoc—glances which had been intercepted by none of those present when they were given—than Antoñona, who was not present, had already spoken of them to Pepita. And no sooner had those glances been returned in kind, than Antoñona also knew it.
There was but little left, then, for the mistress to confide to a servant of so much penetration, and who was so skilled in divination of what passed in the inmost recesses of her breast.
Five days after the date of Don Luis's last letter, our narrative begins.
It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Pepita was in an apartment on an upper floor, contiguous to her bedroom and dressing-room, where no one ever entered without being summoned, save Antoñona.
The furniture of this apartment was simple, but comfortable and in good taste. The curtains and the covering of the easy-chairs, the sofas and the arm-chairs, were of a flowered cotton fabric. On a mahogany table were writing materials and papers, and in a book-case, also of mahogany, were many books of devotion and history. The walls were adorned with pictures—engravings on religious subjects, but with this particularity in their selection, unheard-of, extraordinary, almost incredible in an Andalusian village, that, instead of being bad French lithographs, they were engravings in the best style of Spanish art, as theSpasimo di Sicilia, of Rafael; theSt. Ildefonso and the Virgin, theConception, theSt. Bernard, and the twoLunettesof Murillo.
On an antique oak table, supported by fluted columns, was a small writing-desk, or escritoire, inlaid with shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and brass, and containing a great many little drawers, in which Pepita kept bills and other papers. On this table were also two porcelain vases filled with flowers; and, finally, hanging against the walls, were several flower-pots of Seville Carthusian ware, containing ivy, geranium, and other plants, and three gilded cages, in which were canaries and larks.
This apartment was the retreat of Pepita, where no one entered during the daytime except the doctor and the reverend vicar, and, in the evening, only the overseer to settle accounts. This apartment was called the library, and served the purpose of one.
Pepita was seated, half reclining, on a sofa, before which stood a small table with some books upon it.
She had just risen, and was attired in a light summer wrapper. Her blonde hair, not yet arranged, looked even more beautiful in its disorder. Her countenance, somewhat pale, and, although it still preserved its fresh and youthful aspect, showing dark circles under the eyes, looked more beautiful than ever under the influence of the malady, that robbed it of color.
Pepita showed signs of impatience; she was waiting for some one.
At last the person she was awaiting, who proved to be the reverend vicar, arrived, and entered without announcement.
After the usual salutations the reverend vicar settled himself comfortably in an easy-chair, and the conversation thus began:
"I am very glad, my child, that you sent for me; but, even without your doing so, I was just coming to see you. How pale you are! What is it that ails you? Have you something of importance to tell me?"
Pepita began her answer to this series of affectionate inquiries with a deep sigh; she then said:
"Do you not divine my malady? Have you not discovered the cause of my suffering?"
The vicar made a gesture of denial, and looked at Pepita with something like terror in his gaze; for he knew nothing of all that had taken place, and was struck by the vehemence with which she spoke.
Pepita continued:
"I ought not to have sent for you, father. I should have gone to the church myself instead, to speak with you in the confessional, and there confess my sins. But, unhappily, far from repenting of them my heart has hardened itself in wickedness. I have neither the courage nor the desire to speak to the confessor, but only to the friend."
"What are you saying about sins and hardness of heart? Have you taken leave of your senses? What sins can you have committed, you who are so good?"
"No, father, I am not good. I have been deceiving you; I have been deceiving myself; I have tried to deceive God."
"Come, come, calm yourself; speak with moderation and common sense, and don't talk foolishly."
"And how shall I avoid talking foolishly when the spirit of evil possesses me?"
"Holy Virgin! Don't talk nonsense, child; the demons most to be feared that take possession of the soul are three, and none of them, I am certain, can have dared to enter into yours. One is Leviathan, or the spirit of Pride; the other is Mammon, or the spirit of Avarice; and the other is Asmodeus or the spirit of Unholy Love."
"Well, I am the victim of all three; all three hold dominion over me."
"This is dreadful! Calm yourself, I repeat. The real trouble with you is that you are out of your head."
"Would to God it were so! The contrary, unhappily for me, is the case. I am avaricious, because I possess riches, and do not perform the works of charity I ought to perform; I am proud, because I scorn the addresses of my many suitors, not through virtue, not through modesty, but because I thought them unworthy of my love. God has punished me; God has permitted the third enemy you have named to take possession of me."
"How is this, child? What diabolical notion has entered into your mind? Have you by chance fallen in love? And, if you have, what harm is there in that? Are you not free? Get married, then, and stop talking nonsense. I am certain it is my friend Don Pedro de Vargas who has wrought the miracle. That same Don Pedro is the very devil! I confess I am surprised, though. I did not think matters had gone quite so far as that already."
"But it is not Don Pedro de Vargas I am in love with."
"And with whom, then?"
Pepita rose from her seat, went to the door, opened it, looked to see if any one was listening outside, drew near to the reverend vicar, and, with signs of the deepest distress, in a trembling voice, and with tears in her eyes, said, almost in the ear of the good old man:
"I am hopelessly in love with his son."
"With whose son?" cried the reverend vicar, who could not yet bring himself to believe what he had heard.
"With whose son should it be? I am hopelessly, desperately in love with Don Luis."
Consternation and dolorous surprise were depicted on the countenance of the kind and simple priest. There was a moment's pause; the vicar then said:
"But this is a love without hope; a love not to be thought of. Don Luis will not love you in return."
In the midst of the tears that clouded the beautiful eyes of Pepita gleamed a joyful light; her rosy, dewy lips, contracted by sorrow, parted in a smile, disclosing to view her pearly teeth.
"He loves me," said Pepita, with a faint and ill-concealed accent of satisfaction and triumph that rose exultant over her sorrow and her scruples of conscience.
The consternation and the astonishment of the reverend vicar here reached their highest pitch. If the saint to whom he paid his most fervent devotions had been suddenly cast down from the altar before him, and had fallen, broken into a thousand fragments at his feet, the reverend vicar could not have felt greater consternation than he did. He still looked at Pepita with incredulity, as if doubting whether what she had said were true, or only a delusion of feminine vanity, so firmly did he believe in the holiness of Don Luis, and in his spiritual-mindedness.
"He loves me," Pepita repeated, in answer to his incredulous glance.
"Women are worse than the very devil!" said the vicar. "You would set a snare for the old boy himself."
"Did I not tell you already that I was very wicked?"
"Come, come! calm yourself. The mercy of God is infinite. Tell me all that has happened."
"What should have happened? That he is dear to me; that I love him; that I adore him; that he loves me, too, although he strives to conquer his love, and, in the end, may succeed in doing so; and that you, without knowing it, are very much to blame for it all!"
"Well, this caps the climax! What do you mean by saying I am very much to blame?"
"With the extreme goodness that is characteristic of you, you have done nothing but praise Don Luis to me; and I am sure that you have pronounced still greater eulogies on me to him, although very much less deserved. What is the natural consequence? Am I of bronze? Have I not the passions of youth?"
"You are more than right; I am a dolt: I have contributed, in great part, to this work of Lucifer."
The reverend vicar was so truly good, and so full of humility, that, while pronouncing the preceding words, he showed as much confusion and remorse as if he were the culprit and Pepita the judge.
Pepita, conscious of her injustice and want of generosity in thus making the reverend vicar the accomplice, and scarcely less than the chief author of her fault, spoke to him thus:
"Don't torment yourself, father; for God's sake, don't torment yourself! You see now how perverse I am. I commit the greatest sins, and I want to throw the responsibility of them on the best and the most virtuous of men. It is not the praises you have recited to me of Don Luis that have been my ruin, but my own eyes, and my want of circumspection. Even though you had never spoken to me of the good qualities of Don Luis, I should still have discovered them all by hearing him speak; for, after all, I am not so ignorant, nor so great a fool. And, in any case, I myself have seen the grace of his person, the natural and untaught elegance of his manners, his eyes full of fire and intelligence, his whole self, in a word, which seems to me altogether amiable and desirable. Your eulogies of him have indeed pleased my vanity, but they did not awaken my inclinations. Your praises charmed me because they coincided with my own opinion, and were like the flattering echo—deadened, indeed, and faint—of my thoughts. The most eloquent encomium you have pronounced, in my hearing, on Don Luis, was far from being equal to the encomiums that I, at each moment, at each instant, silently pronounced upon him in my own soul."
"Don't excite yourself, child," interrupted the reverend vicar.
Pepita continued, with still greater exaltation:
"But what a difference between your encomiums and my thoughts! For you Don Luis was the exemplary model of the priest, the missionary, the apostle, now preaching the gospel in distant lands, now endeavoring in Spain to elevate Christianity, so degraded in our day through the impiety of some, and the want of virtue, of charity, and of knowledge, of others. I, on the contrary, pictured him to myself handsome, loving, forgetting God for me, consecrating his life to me, giving me his soul, becoming my stay, my support, my sweet companion. I longed to commit a sacrilegious theft: I dreamed of stealing him from God and from his temple, like the thief who, proclaiming himself the enemy of Heaven, robs the sacred monstrance of its most precious jewel. To commit this theft I have put off the mourning garments of the widow and orphan, and have decked myself with profane adornments; I have abandoned my seclusion, and I have sought and gathered around me society. I have tried to make myself look beautiful; I have cared for every part of this miserable body—that must one day be lowered into the grave, and be converted into dust—with an unholy devotion; and, finally, I have looked at Don Luis with provoking glances, and on shaking hands with him I have sought to transmit from my veins to his, the inextinguishable fire that is consuming me."
"Alas! my child, what grief it gives me to hear this! Who could have imagined it?" said the vicar.
"But there is still more," resumed Pepita; "I succeeded in making Don Luis love me. He declared it to me with his eyes. Yes, his love is as profound, as ardent as mine. His virtues, his aspirations toward heavenly things, his manly energy, have all urged him to conquer this insensate passion. I sought to prevent this. One day, at the end of many days during which he had stayed away, he came to see me, and found me alone. When he gave me his hand, I wept; I could not speak, but hell inspired me with an accursed, mute eloquence that told him of my grief that he had scorned me, that he did not return my love, that he preferred another love—a love without stain—to mine. Then he was unable to resist the temptation, and he approached his lips to my face to kiss away my tears. Our lips met. If God had not willed that you should approach at that moment, what would have become of me?"
"How shameful! my child, how shameful!" said the reverend vicar.
Pepita covered her face with both hands and began to sob like a Magdalen. Her hands were, in truth, beautiful, more beautiful even than Don Luis had described them to be in his letters. Their whiteness, their pure transparency, the tapering form of the fingers, the roseate hue, the polish and the brilliancy of the pearl-like nails, all were such as might turn the head of any man.
The virtuous vicar could understand, notwithstanding his eighty years, the fall, or rather the slip, of Don Luis.
"Child!" he exclaimed, "don't cry so! It breaks my heart to see you. Calm yourself; Don Luis has no doubt repented of his sin; do you repent likewise, and nothing more need be said. God will pardon you both, and make a couple of saints of you. Since Don Luis is going away the day after to-morrow, it is a sure sign that virtue has triumphed in him, and that he flies from you, as he should, that he may do penance for his sin, fulfill his vow, and return to his vocation."
"That is all very well," replied Pepita; "fulfill his vow, return to his vocation, after giving me my death-wound! Why did he love me, why did he encourage me, why did he deceive me? His kiss was a brand, it was as a hot iron with which he marked me and stamped me as his slave. Now that I am marked and enslaved, he abandons and betrays and destroys me. A good beginning to give to his missions, his preachings, and gospel triumphs! It shall not be! By Heaven, it shall not be!"
This outbreak of anger and scorned love confounded the reverend vicar.
Pepita had risen. Her attitude, her gesture, had something in them of tragic animation. Her eyes gleamed like daggers; they shone like two suns. The vicar was silent, and regarded her almost with terror. She paced with hasty steps up and down the apartment. She did not now seem like a timid gazelle, but like an angry lioness.
"What!" she said, once more facing the vicar, "has he nothing to do but laugh at me, tear my heart to pieces, humiliate it, trample it under foot, after having cheated me out of it? He shall remember me! He shall pay me for this! If he is so holy, if he is so virtuous, why did he, with his glance, promise me everything? If he loves God so much, why does he seek to hurt one of God's poor creatures? Is this charity? Is this religion? No; it is pitiless selfishness."
Pepita's anger could not last long. After she had spoken the last words, it turned to dejection. She sank into a chair, weeping bitterly, and abandoning herself to an anguish heart-breaking to witness.
The vicar's heart was touched with pity; but he recovered himself on seeing that the enemy gave signs of yielding.
"Pepita, child," he said, "be reasonable; don't torment yourself in this way. Console yourself with the thought that it was not without a hard struggle he was able to conquer himself; that he has not deceived you; that he loves you with his whole soul, but that God and his duty come first. This life is short, and soon passes. In heaven you will be reunited, and will love each other, as the angels love. God will accept your sacrifice; he will reward you, and repay you with interest. Even your self-love ought to be satisfied. How great must be your merit, when you have caused a man like Don Luis to waver in his resolution, and even to sin! How deep must be the wound you have made in his heart! Let this suffice you. Be generous! be courageous! Be his rival in firmness. Let him depart; cast out from your heart the fire of impure love; love him as your neighbor, for the love of God. Guard his image in your memory, but as that of the creature, reserving to the Creator the noblest part of your soul. I know not what I am saying to you, my child, for I am very much troubled; but you have a great deal of intelligence and a great deal of common sense, and you will understand what I mean. Besides, there are powerful worldly reasons against this absurd love, even if the vocation and the vow of Don Luis were not opposed to it. His father is your suitor. He aspires to your hand, even though you do not love him. Does it look well that the son should turn out now to be the rival of his father? Will not the father be displeased with the son for loving you? See how dreadful all this is, and control yourself for the sake of Jesus and his blessed Mother."
"How easy it is to give advice!" returned Pepita, becoming a little calmer. "How hard for me to follow it, when there is a fierce and unchained tempest, as it were, raging in my soul! I am afraid I shall go mad."
"The advice I give you is for your own good. Let Don Luis depart. Absence is a great remedy for the malady of love. In giving himself up to his studies, and consecrating himself to the service of the altar, he will be cured of his passion. When he is far away, you will recover your serenity by degrees, and will preserve in your memory only a grateful and melancholy recollection of him that will do you no harm. It will be like a beautiful poem whose music will harmonize your existence. Even if all your desires could be fulfilled—earthly love lasts, after all, but a short time. The delight the imagination anticipates in its enjoyment—what is it in comparison with the bitter dregs that remain behind, when the cup has been drained to the bottom? How much better is it that your love, hardly yet contaminated, hardly despoiled of its purity, should be dissipated, and exhale itself now, rising up to heaven like a cloud of incense, than that, after it is once satisfied, it should perish through satiety! Have the courage to put away from your lips the cup while you have hardly tasted of its contents. Make of them a libation and an offering to the Divine Redeemer. He will give you, in exchange, the draught he offered to the Samaritan—a draught that does not satiate, that quenches the thirst, and that produces eternal life."
"How good you are, father! Your holy words lend me courage. I will control myself; I will conquer myself. It would be shameful—would it not?—that Don Luis should be able to control and conquer himself, and that I should not be able to do so? Let him depart. He is going away the day after to-morrow; let him go with God's blessing. See his card. He was here with his father to take leave of me, and I would not receive him. I do not even want to preserve the poetical remembrance of him of which you speak. This love has been a nightmare; I will cast it away from me."
"Good! very good! It is thus that I want to see you—energetic, courageous."
"Ah, father, God has cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my self-abasement. Could I be more humbled or more resigned than I am now? Don Luis is right: I am not worthy of him. However great the efforts I might make, I could not succeed in elevating myself to him and comprehending him, in putting my spirit into perfect communication with his. I am a rude country girl, unlearned, uncultured; and he—there is no science he does not understand, no secret of which he is ignorant, no region of the intellectual world, however exalted, to which he may not soar. Thither on the wings of his genius does he mount; and me he leaves behind in this lower sphere, poor, ignorant woman that I am, incapable of following him even in my hopes or with my aspirations."
"But, Pepita, for Heaven's sake don't say such things, or think them! Don Luis does not scorn you because you are ignorant, or because you are incapable of comprehending him, or for any other of those absurd reasons that you are stringing together. He goes away because he must fulfill his obligation toward God; and you should rejoice that he is going away, for you will then forget your love for him, and God will reward you for the sacrifice you make."
Pepita, who had left off crying, and had dried her tears with her handkerchief, answered quietly:
"Very well, father; I shall be very glad of it; I am almost glad now that he is going away. I long for to-morrow to pass, and for the time to come when Antoñona shall say to me on wakening, 'Don Luis is gone.' You shall see then how peace and serenity will spring up again in my heart."
"God grant it may be so!" said the reverend vicar; and, convinced that he had wrought a miracle and almost cured Pepita's malady, he took leave of her and went home, unable to repress a certain feeling of vanity at the thought of the influence he had exercised over the noble spirit of this charming woman.
Pepita, who had risen as the reverend vicar was about to take his leave, after she had closed the door, stood for a moment immovable in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed on space, her eyes tearless. A poet or an artist, seeing her thus, would have been reminded of Ariadne, as Catullus describes her, after Theseus has abandoned her on the island of Naxos. All at once, as if she had but just succeeded in untying the knot of a cord that was strangling her, Pepita broke into heart-rending sobs, let loose a torrent of tears, and threw herself down on the tiled floor of her apartment. There, her face buried in her hands, her hair unbound, her dress disordered, she continued to sigh and moan.
She might have remained thus for an indefinite time if Antoñona had not come to her. Antoñona had heard her sobs from without and hurried to her apartment. When she saw her mistress extended on the floor, Antoñona gave way to a thousand extravagant expressions of fury.
"Here's a pretty sight!" she cried; "that sneak, that blackguard, that old fool, what a way he has to console his friends! I shouldn't wonder if he has committed some piece of barbarity—given a couple of kicks to this poor child, perhaps; and now I suppose he has gone back to the church to get everything ready to sing the funeral chant, and sprinkle her with hyssop, and bury her out of sight without more ado."
Antoñona was about forty, and a hard worker—energetic, and stronger than many a laborer. She often lifted up, with scarcely more than the strength of her hand, a skin of oil or of wine, weighing nearly ninety pounds, and placed it on the back of a mule, or carried a bag of wheat up to the garret where the grain was kept. Although Pepita was not a feather, Antoñona now lifted her up in her arms from the floor as if she had been one, and placed her carefully on the sofa, as though she were some delicate and precious piece of porcelain that she feared to break.
"What is the meaning of all this?" asked Antoñona. "I wager anything that drone of a vicar has been preaching you a sermon as bitter as aloes, and has left you now with your heart torn to pieces with grief."
Pepita continued to weep and sob without answering.
"Come, leave off crying, and tell me what is the matter. What has the vicar said to you?"
"He said nothing that could offend me," finally answered Pepita.
Then, seeing that Antoñona was waiting anxiously to hear her speak, and feeling the need of unburdening herself to some one who could sympathize more fully with her, and, humanly speaking, could better comprehend her than the vicar, Pepita spoke as follows:
"The reverend vicar has admonished me gently to repent of my sins; to allow Don Luis to go away; to rejoice at his departure; to forget him. I have said yes to everything; I have promised him to rejoice at Don Luis's departure; I have tried to forget him, and even to hate him. But look you, Antoñona, I can not; it is an undertaking superior to my strength. While the vicar was here, I thought I had strength for everything; but no sooner had he gone than, as if God had let go his hold of me, I lost my courage, and fell, crushed with sorrow, on the floor. I had dreamed of a happy life at the side of the man I love; I already saw myself elevated to him by the miraculous power of love; my poor mind in perfect communion with his sublime intellect; my will one with his; both thinking the same thought; our hearts beating in unison. And now God has taken him away from me, and I am left alone, without hope or consolation. Is not this frightful? The arguments of the reverend vicar are just and full of wisdom; for the time, they convinced me. But he has gone away, and all those arguments now seem to me worthless—a tissue of words, lies, entanglements, and sophistries. I love Don Luis, and this argument is more powerful than all other arguments put together. And if he loves me in return, why does he not leave everything and come to me, break the vows he has taken, and renounce the obligations he has contracted? I did not know what love was; now I know; there is nothing stronger on earth or in heaven. What would I not do for Don Luis? And he—he does nothing for me! Perhaps he does not love me. No; Don Luis does not love me. I have deceived myself; I was blinded by vanity. If Don Luis loved me, he would sacrifice his plans, his vows, his fame, his aspirations to be a saint and a light of the Church, he would sacrifice all to me. God forgive me, what I am about to say is horrible, but I feel it here in the depths of my heart, it burns here in my fevered brow: for him I would give even the salvation of my soul!"
"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Antoñona.
"It is true; may our blessed Lady of Sorrows pardon me—I am mad—I know not what I say. I blaspheme!"
"Yes, child; you are talking indeed a little naughtily. Heaven help us! To think how this cox-comb of a theologian has turned your head! Well, if I were in your place, I would not take Heaven to task, which is in no wise to blame, but this jackanapes of a collegian, and I would have it out with him, or never again call myself Pepita Ximenez. I should like to go hunt him up, and bring him here to you by the ear, and make him go down on his knees before you, and beg your pardon."
"No, Antoñona; I see that my madness is contagious, and that you are raving, too. There is, in fact, nothing left for me to do but what the reverend vicar advises. And I will do it, even though it should cost me my life. If I die for him, he will then love me; he will cherish my image in his memory, my love in his heart; and God, who is so good, will permit me to see him again in heaven with the eyes of the soul, and will let our spirits mingle together and love each other there."
Antoñona, although of a rugged nature, and not at all sentimental, on hearing these words felt the tears start to her eyes.
"Good gracious, child!" she said; "do you want to make me take out my handkerchief and begin to bellow like a calf? Calm yourself, and don't talk about dying, even in jest. I can see that your nerves are very much excited. Shan't I bring you a cup of linden tea?"
"No, thanks; leave me; you see how calm I am now."
"I shall close the window, then, to see if you can sleep. How should you feel well, when you have not slept for days? The devil take that same Don Luis, with his fancy for making himself a priest! A nice price you are paying for it!"
Pepita had closed her eyes; she was calm and silent, weary now of her colloquy with Antoñona.
The latter, either thinking she was asleep, or hoping her to be so, bent over Pepita, imprinted a kiss softly and slowly on her white forehead, smoothed oat the folds of her dress, arranged the windows so as to leave the room in semi-obscurity, and went out on tiptoe, closing the door behind her without making the slightest noise.
While these things were taking place at the house of Pepita, Don Luis de Vargas in his was neither happier nor more tranquil than was she herself.
His father, who scarcely let a day pass without riding out into the country, had to-day wished to take Don Luis with him; but, with the pretext of a headache, he had excused himself, and Don Pedro had gone without him. Don Luis had spent the whole morning alone, delivered up to his melancholy thoughts, and continuing firm as a rock in his resolution of blotting from his soul the image of Pepita, and of consecrating himself wholly to God.
Let it not be supposed, however, that he did not love the young widow. We have already, in his letters, seen the proof of the vehemence of his passion for her, but he continued his efforts to curb it by means of the devout sentiments and elevated reflections of which he has given us in his letters so extended a specimen, and of which we may here omit a repetition, in order not to appear prolix.
Perhaps, if we examine into this matter closely, we shall find that the reasons which militated in the breast of Don Luis against his love for Pepita were not only his vow to himself, which, though unconfirmed, was binding in his eyes, or the love of God, or respect for his father, whose rival he did not wish to be, or, finally, the vocation which he felt himself to have for the priesthood. There were other reasons of a more doubtful character than these.
Don Luis was stubborn; he was obstinate; he had that quality of soul which, well directed, constitutes what is called firmness of character, and there was nothing that lowered him more in his own eyes than to feel himself obliged to change his opinions or his conduct. The purpose of his life, a purpose which he had declared and maintained on all occasions, his moral ideal, in a word, was that of an aspirant to holiness, of a man consecrated to God, of one imbued with the sublimest religious teachings. All this could not fall to earth, as it would fall, if he allowed himself to be carried away by his love for Pepita, without great discredit. Although the price, indeed, was in this case incomparably higher, yet Don Luis felt that, should he yield to his passion, he would be following the example of Esau, selling his birthright and bringing opprobrium on his name.
Men, as a rule, allow themselves to be the plaything of circumstances; they let themselves be carried along by the current of events, instead of devoting all their energies to one single aim. We do not choose our part in life, but accept and play the part allotted us, that which blind fortune assigns to us. The profession, the political faith, the entire life of many men depend on chance circumstances, on what is fortuitous, on the caprice and the unexpected turns of fate.
Against all this the pride of Don Luis rebelled with titanic power. What would be thought of him, and above all, what would he think of himself if the ideal of his life, the new man that he had created in his soul, if all his plans of virtue, of honor, and even of holy ambition, should vanish in an instant, should melt away in the warmth of a glance, at the fugitive flame of a pair of beautiful eyes, as the hoar-frost melts in the yet mild ray of the morning sun?
These and other reasons of a like egotistic nature also militated, in the breast of Don Luis, side by side with more weighty and legitimate ones, against the widow; but every argument clothed itself in the same religious garb, so that Don Luis himself was unable to recognize and distinguish between them, believing to be the love of God not only what was in truth the love of God, but also self-love. He recalled to mind, for instance, the examples of many saints who had resisted greater temptations than his, and he did not wish to be less than they. And he recalled to mind, above all, the notable firmness of St. Chrysostom, who was able to disregard the caresses of a tender and good mother, and her tears and gentle entreaties, and all the eloquent and touching words she spoke to him, in the very room where he was born, to the end that he might not abandon her and become a priest. And, after reflecting on this, Don Luis could not tolerate in himself the weakness of being unable to scorn the entreaties of a woman who was a stranger to him, whom he had known for so short a time, and of still wavering between his duty and the attractions of one who was, perhaps, after all, rather than enamored of him, merely a coquette.
Don Luis then reflected on the supreme elevation of the sacerdotal dignity to which he was called, regarding it in his thoughts as superior to all the dignities and unsatisfying honors of the world; since it was founded, neither by any mortal man, nor by the caprice of the variable and servile populace, nor by the irruption or invasion of barbarians, nor by the violence of rebellious armies urged on by greed, nor by angel nor archangel, nor by any created power, but by the Paraclete himself. How, for a motive so unworthy, for a mere woman, for a tear or two, feigned, perhaps, scorn that august dignity, that authority that was not conceded by God even to the archangels nearest to his throne? How should he descend to be confounded among the obscure people, and become one of the flock—he who had dreamed of being the shepherd, tying and untying on earth what God should tie and untie in heaven, pardoning sins, regenerating the people by water and by the spirit, teaching them in the name of an infallible authority, pronouncing judgments that should be ratified and confirmed by the Lord of the heavens—he, the instructor and the minister in tremendous mysteries inscrutable by human reason, calling down from heaven, not, like Elias, the flame that consumes the victim, but the Holy Spirit, the Word made flesh, the river of grace that purifies hearts and makes them clean like unalloyed gold?
When Don Luis let his mind dwell on these thoughts, his spirit took wings and soared up above the clouds into the empyrean, and poor Pepita Ximenez remained below, far away, and hardly within sight.
But the wings of his imagination soon drooped, and the spirit of Don Luis touched earth again. Again he saw Pepita, so graceful, so young, so ingenuous, and so enamored. Pepita combated in his soul his firmest and most deep-seated resolutions, and Don Luis feared that in the end she would put them all to flight.
In this way was Don Luis allowing himself to be tormented by opposing thoughts, that made war on each other, when Currito, without asking leave or license, entered his room.
Currito, who had held his cousin in very slight esteem so long as he was only a student of theology, now regarded him with wonder and veneration, looking upon him, from the moment when he had seen him manage Lucero so skillfully, as something more than human.
To know theology, and to be ignorant of horsemanship, was something unflattering to Don Luis in the eyes of Currito; but when Currito saw that, in addition to his learning, and to all those other matters of which he himself knew nothing, although he supposed them to be difficult and perplexing, Don Luis knew, besides, how to keep his seat so admirably on the back of a fiery horse, his veneration and his affection for his cousin knew no bounds. Currito was an idler, a good-for-nothing, a very block of wood, but he had an affectionate and loyal heart.