PART III

I

Until the beginning of the following winter Renovales did not return to

Madrid. The death of his wife had left him stunned, as if he doubted its

reality, as if he felt strange at finding himself alone and master of

his actions. Cotoner, seeing that he had no ambition for work and would

lie on the couch in the studio with a blank expression on his face, as

if he were in a waking dream, interpreted his condition as a deep,

silent grief. Besides, it irritated him that as soon as Josephina was

dead, the countess began to come to the house frequently to see the

master and her dear Milita.

"You ought to go away,"--the old artist advised. "You are free; you will

be just as well off anywhere as here. What you need is a long journey;

that will take your mind off your trouble."

And Renovales started on his journey with the eagerness of a school-boy,

free for the first time from the vigilance of a family. Alone, rich,

master of his actions, he believed that he was the happiest being on

earth. His daughter had her husband, a family of her own; he saw himself

in welcome seclusion, without cares or duties, without any other ties

than the constant letters of Concha, which met him on his travels. Oh,

happy freedom!

He lived in Holland, studying its museums, which he had never seen:

then, with the caprice of a wandering bird, he went down to Italy where

he enjoyed several months of easy life, without any work, visiting

studios, receiving the honors due a famous master, in the same places

where once he had struggled, poor and unknown. Then he moved to Paris,

finally attracted by the countess, who was spending the summer at

Biarritz with her husband.

Concha's epistolary style grew more urgent. She had numerous objections

to a prolongation of the period of their separation. He must come back;

he had traveled enough. She could not stand it without seeing him; she

loved him; she could not live without him. Besides, as a last resource,

she spoke to him of her husband, the count, who, in his eternal

blindness, joined in his wife's requests asking her to invite the artist

to spend a while at their house in Biarritz. The poor painter must be

very sad in his bereavement and the kindly nobleman insisted on

consoling him in his loneliness. In his house, they would divert him;

they would be a new family for him.

The painter lived for a great part of the summer and all the autumn in

the welcome atmosphere of that home which seemed created for him. The

servants respected him, seeing in him the true master. The countess,

delirious after his long absence, was so reckless that the artist had to

restrain her, urging her to be prudent. The noble Count of Alberca was

unceasing in his sympathy. Poor friend! Deprived of his companion! And

by his expression he shared the horror he felt at the possibility of

being left a widower, without that wife who made him so happy.

At the beginning of winter Renovales returned to his house. He did not

experience the slightest emotion on entering the three great studios, on

passing through those rooms, which seemed more icy, larger, more hollow,

now that they were stirred by no other steps than his own. He could not

believe that a year had passed. All was the same as if he had been

absent for only a few days. Cotoner had taken good care of the house,

setting to work the concierge and his wife and the old servant who had

charge of cleaning the studios,--the only servants that Renovales had

kept. There was no dust, none of the close atmosphere of a house that

has long been closed. Everything appeared bright and clean, as if life

had not been interrupted in that house. The sun and air had been pouring

in the windows, driving out that atmosphere of sickness which Renovales

had left when he went away and in which he fancied he could feel the

trace of the invisible garb of death.

It was a new house, like the one he had known before in form, but as

fresh as a recently constructed building.

Outside of his studio nothing reminded him of his dead wife. He avoided

going into her chamber; he did not even ask who had the key. He slept in

the room that had formerly been his daughter's in a small, iron bed,

delighted to lead a modest, sober life in that princely mansion.

He took breakfast in the dining room at one end of the table, on a

napkin, oppressed by the size and luxury of the room which now seemed

vast and useless. He looked at the chair beside the fireplace, where the

dead woman had often sat. That chair with its open arms seemed to be

waiting for her trembling, bird-like little body. But the painter did

not feel any emotion. He could not even remember Josephina's face

exactly. She had changed so much! The last, that skeleton-like mask, was

the one he recalled the best, but he thrust it aside, with the

selfishness of a strong, happy man, who does not want to sadden his life

with unpleasant memories.

He did not see her picture anywhere in the house. She seemed to have

evaporated forever without leaving the least trace of her body on the

walls that had so often supported her tottering steps, on the stairways

that hardly felt the weight of her feet. Nothing; she was quite

forgotten. Within Renovales, the only trace of the long years of their

union that remained was an unpleasant feeling, an annoying memory that

made him relish all the more his new existence.

His first days in the solitude of the house brought new, intense joys.

After luncheon he would lie down on the couch in the studio, watching

the blue spirals of cigar smoke. Complete liberty! Alone in the world!

Life wholly to himself, without any care or fear. He could go and come

without a pair of eyes spying on his actions, without being reproached

with bitter words. That little door of the studio, which he used to

watch in terror, no longer opened, to let in his enemy. He could close

it, shutting out the world; he could open it and summon in a noisy,

scandalous stream, all that he fancied--hosts of naked beauties, to

paint in a wild bacchanalian rout, strange, black-eyed Oriental girls to

dance in morbid abandon on the rugs of the studio, all the disordered

illusions of his desire--the monstrous feasts of fancy which he had

dreamed of in his days of servitude. He was not sure where he could find

all this, he was not very eager to look for it. But the consciousness

that he could realize it without any obstacle was enough.

This consciousness of his absolute freedom, instead of urging him into

action, kept him in a state of calm, satisfied that he could do

everything, without the least desire to try anything. Formerly he used

to rage, complaining of his fetters. What things he would do if he were

free! What scandals he would cause with his daring! Oh, if he only were

not married to a slave of convention who tried to apply rules to his art

with the same formality which she had for her calls and her household

expenses!

And now that the slave of convention was gone, the artist remained in

sleepy comfort, looking like a timid lover, at the canvases he had begun

a year before, at his neglected palette, saying with false energy, "This

is the last day. To-morrow I will begin."

And the next day, noon came, and with it luncheon, before Renovales had

taken up a brush. He read foreign papers, magazines on art, looking up,

with professional interest, what the famous painters of Europe were

exhibiting or working on. He received a call from some of his humble

companions, and in their presence he lamented the insolence of the

younger generation, their disrespectful attacks, with the surliness of a

famous artist who is getting old and thinks that talent has died out

with him and that no one can take his place. Then the drowsiness of

digestion seized him, as it did Cotoner, and he submitted to the bliss

of short naps, the happiness of doing nothing. His daughter--all the

family he had--would receive more than she expected at his death. He had

worked enough. Painting, like all the arts, was a pretty deceit, for the

advancement of which men strove as if they were mad, until they hated it

like death. What folly! It was better to keep calm, enjoying your own

life, intoxicated with the simple animal joys, living for life's sake.

What good were a few more pictures in those huge palaces filled with

canvases, disfigured by the centuries, in which hardly a single stroke

was left as the author had made it? What good did it do the human race,

which changes its dwelling place every dozen centuries and has seen the

proud works of man, built of marble or granite, fall in ruins,--if a

certain Renovales produced a few beautiful toys of cloth and colors,

which a cigar stub could destroy, or a puff of wind, a drop of water

leaking through the wall, might ruin in a few years?

But this pessimistic attitude disappeared when some one called him

"Illustrious Master," or when he saw his name in a paper, and a pupil or

admirer manifested an interest in his work.

At present he was resting. He had not yet recovered from the shock. Poor

Josephina! But he was going to work a great deal; he felt a new strength

for works greater than any that he had thus far produced. And after

these exclamations, he would be seized with a mad desire for work and

would enumerate the pictures he had in mind, dwelling upon their

originality. They were bold problems in color, new technical methods

that had occurred to him. But these plans never passed the limits of

speech, they never reached the brush. The springs of his will, once

vibrant and vigorous, seemed broken or rusted. He did not suffer, he did

not desire. Death had taken away his fever for work, his artistic

restlessness, leaving him in the limbo of comfort and tranquillity.

In the afternoon, when he succeeded in throwing off his comfortable

torpor, he went to see his daughter, if she was in Madrid, for she very

frequently went with her husband on his automobile trips. Then he ended

the afternoon at the Albercas', where he often stayed till midnight.

He dined there almost every day. The count, accustomed to his society,

seemed as eager to see him as his wife. He spoke enthusiastically of the

portrait which Renovales was painting of him to go with Concha's. He

would make more progress when he secured some insignia of foreign orders

that were still lacking in his catalogue of honors. And the artist felt

a twinge of remorse as he listened to the good gentleman's simplicity,

while his wife, with mad recklessness, caressed him with her eyes,

leaned toward him as if she were on the point of falling into his arms.

Then, as soon as the husband went away, she would throw her arms about

him, hungry for him, defying the curiosity of the servants. Love that

was threatened with dangers seemed sweeter to her. And the artist took

pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who

implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority,

accepting Concha's homage.

Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation

Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to

respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great

work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He

would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came,

and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect

beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess.

Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his

lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that

people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should

admire him for what he had already produced.

He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation,

remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory,

like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He

was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy,

seeing the stage occupied by others.

He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed,

he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a

numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate

friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old

days.

"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man

who does not doubt his ability.

In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless,

fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and

peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of

greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not

find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles

attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it

furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had

had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my

time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true

artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing

to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to

exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness

were for him the internal goad of inspiration.

The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was

not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He

fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the

opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring

other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for

notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the

official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly

remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they

had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.

Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this

unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.

"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always

be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting

on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are

essentially respectable."

Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom

he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it

strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He

must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended

to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order

that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech

of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that

he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly

trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his

letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate

phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.

The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid

well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had

no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as

any one.

And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A]

a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of

self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very

first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with

ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed

that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but

after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity.

He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his

whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.

It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a

speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for

members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master

needed him--a painter!

And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive

in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the

majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for

admission, he was the man. But a speech!

"Agreed: you shall have the speech," said Maltrana. "It's an easy

matter, I know the recipe. We shall speak of the holy traditions of the

past, we shall despise certain daring innovations on the part of the

inexperienced youth, which were perfectly proper twenty years ago, when

you were beginning, but which now are out of place. Do you care for a

thrust at modernism?"

Renovales smiled, enchanted at the frankness with which this young

fellow spoke of his task, and he moved one hand to suggest a balance.

"Man alive! Like this. A just mean is what we want."

"Of course, Renovales; flatter the old men and not quarrel with the

young. You are a real master. You will be pleased with my work."

With the calmness of a shopkeeper, before the artist had a chance to

speak of the charge, he broached the matter. It would be two thousand

_reales_; he had already told Cotoner. The low tariff; the one he set

for people he liked.

"A man must live, Renovales. I have a son."

And his voice grew serious as he said this; his face, ugly and cynical,

became noble for a moment, reflecting the cares of paternal love.

"A son, dear master, for whom I do anything that turns up. If it is

necessary I will steal. He is the only thing I have in the world. His

mother died in misery in the hospital. I dreamt of being something, but

you can't think of nonsense when you have a baby. Between the hope of

being famous and the certainty of eating--eating is the first."

But his tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold,

mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of

cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts.

They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he handed over the

speech.

"And if you print it, as I hope," he said as he went away, "I will read

the proof without any extra charge. Of course that is a special favor to

you, because I am one of your admirers."

Renovales spent several weeks in the preparations for his reception, as

if it were the most important event in his life. The countess also took

a great interest in the matter. She would see to it that it was a

distinguished function, something like the receptions of the French

Academy, described in the papers or in novels. All of her friends would

be present. The great painter would read his speech, the cynosure of a

hundred interested eyes, amid the fluttering of fans and the buzz of

conversation. An immense success which would enrage many artists who

were eager to get a foothold in high society.

A few days before the function, Cotoner handed him a bundle of papers.

It was a copy of the speech,--in a fair hand; it was already paid for.

And Renovales, with the instinct of an actor anxious to make a good

show, spent an afternoon, striding from studio to studio, with the

manuscript in one hand and making energetic gestures with the other,

while he read the paragraphs aloud. That impudent Maltrana was gifted!

It was a work that filled the simple artist with enthusiasm, in his

ignorance of everything except printing, a series of glorious trumpet

blasts, in which were scattered names, many names; appreciations in

tremulous rhetoric, historical summaries, so well rounded, so complete

that it seemed as though mankind had been living since the beginning of

the world with no other thought than Renovates' speech, and judging its

acts in order that he might give them a definite interpretation.

The artist felt a thrill of elevation as he repeated in eloquent

succession Greek names, many of which were mere sounds to him, for he

was not certain whether they were great sculptors or tragic poets.

Again, he experienced a sensation of self-satisfaction when he

encountered the names of Dante and Shakespeare. He knew that they had

not painted, but they ought to appear in every speech which was worthy

of respect. And when he came to the paragraphs on modern art, he seemed

to touch terra firma, and smiled with a superior air. Maltrana did not

know much about that subject; superficial appreciation of a layman; but

he wrote well, very well; he could not have done better himself. And he

studied his speech, till he could repeat whole paragraphs by heart,

paying particular attention to the pronunciation of the difficult names,

taking lessons from his most cultured friends.

"It is for appearance's sake," he said naïvely. "It is because I don't

want people to poke fun at me, even if I am only a painter."

The day of the reception he had luncheon long before noon. He scarcely

touched the food; this ceremony, which he had never seen, made him

rather worried. To his anxiety was added the irritation he always felt

when he had to attend to the care of his person.

His long years of married life had accustomed him to neglect all the

trivial, everyday needs of life. If he had to appear in different

clothes than usual, the hands of his wife and daughter deftly arranged

them for him. Even at the times of greatest ill-feeling, when he and

Josephina hardly spoke to each other, he noticed around him the

scrupulous order of that excellent housekeeper who removed all obstacles

from his way, relieving him of the ordinary cares of life.

Cotoner was away; the servant had gone to the countess's to take her

some invitations which she had asked for, at the last minute, for some

friends. Renovales decided to dress alone. His son-in-law and daughter

were going to come for him at two. López de Sosa had insisted on taking

him to the Academy in his car, seeking, no doubt, by this a little ray

of the splendor of official glory that was to be showered on his

father-in-law.

Renovales dressed himself, after struggling with the many difficulties

that arose from his lack of habit. He was as awkward as a child without

his mother's help. When at last he looked at himself in the mirror, with

his dress coat on and his cravat neatly tied, he heaved a sigh of

relief. At last! Now the insignia--the ribbon. Where could he find those

honorary trinkets? Since Milita's wedding he had not had them on, the

poor departed had put them away. Where could he find them? And hastily,

fearing the time would go by and his children would surprise him before

he finished the decoration of his person, out of breath, swearing with

impatience, wandering around in hopeless confusion, unable to remember

anything definitely, he entered the room his wife had used as a

wardrobe. Perhaps she had put away his insignia there. He opened the

doors of the great clothes-closets with a nervous pull. Clothes! Nothing

but clothes.

The odor of balsam, which made him think of the silent calm of the

woods, was mingled with a subtle, mysterious perfume, a perfume of years

gone by, of dead beauties, of forgotten memories, like the fragrance of

dried flowers. This odor came from the mass of clothes that hung there,

white, black, pink and blue dresses, with their colors dull and

indistinct, the lace crumpled and yellow, retaining in their folds

something of the living fragrance of the form they once had covered. The

whole past of the dead woman was there. With superstitious care, she had

stored away the gowns of the different periods of her life, as if she

had been afraid to get rid of them, to tear out a part of her life.

As the painter looked at some of these gowns, he felt the same emotion

as if they were old friends who had suddenly appeared like an unexpected

surprise. A pink skirt recalled the happy days in Rome; a blue suit

brought to his memory the Piazza di san Marco, and he thought he heard

the fluttering of the doves and the distant rumble of the noisy _Ride of

the Valkyries_. The dark, cheap suits that belonged to the cruel days of

struggle hung at the back of the closet, like the garb of suffering and

sacrifice. A straw hat, bright as a summer wood, covered with red

flowers and with cherries, seemed to smile to him from a shelf. Oh, he

knew that too! Many a time its sharp edge of straw had stuck into his

forehead, when at sunset on the roads of the Roman Compagna he used to

bend down, with his arm around his little wife's waist, to kiss her lips

that trembled softly, while from the distance in the blue mist came the

tinkle of the bells of the flocks and the mournful songs of the

drivers.

That youthful perfume, grown old in its confinement, which poured from

the closets in waves, with the rush of an old wine that escapes from the

dusty bottle in spurts, spoke to him of the past, calling up the joys

that were dead. His senses trembled, a subtle intoxication crept over

him. He fancied he had fallen into a sea of perfume that buffeted him

with its waves, playing with him as if he were an inert body. It was the

scent of youth that came back to him; the incense of the happy days,

fainter, more subtle with the regret of dead years. It was the perfume

of her beauty which one night in Rome had made him sigh admiringly.

"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Goya's little _Maja_. You

are the _Maja Desnuda_."

Holding his breath like a swimmer, he delved into the depths of the

closets, reaching out his hands greedily, yet eager to get out of there,

to return, as soon as he could, to the surface, to the pure air. He came

upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding

what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the

old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a

wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his

fancy than with his senses.

He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the

wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first

time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The

perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all

the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of

distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer

afraid to enter the chamber.

He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters

creaked and the sunlight rushed in, the painter's eyes, after a moment

of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian

furniture.

What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter

admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as

only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the

furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen

of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental

peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great

undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely

honors on his companion after years of strict economy.

They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at

the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the

attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from

the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable,

whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture

of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a

promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned

it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move

them to a palace.

The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual

there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in

which Josephina died.

The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and

brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap.

Renovales laughed at the terror which had so often made him stop in

front of the locked door. Death had left no trace. Nothing there

reminded him of Josephina. In the atmosphere floated that smell of

closeness, that odor of dust and dampness which one finds in all rooms

that have long been closed.

The time was passing, the insignia must be found, and Renovales, already

accustomed to the room, opened the clothes-press, expecting to find them

in it.

There, too, the wood seemed to scatter, as he opened the door, a perfume

like that of the other room. It was fainter, more vague, more distant.

Renovales thought it was an illusion of his senses. But no; from the

depths of the clothes-press came an invisible vapor wrapping him in its

caressing breath. There were no clothes there. His eyes recognized

immediately in the bottom of a compartment the boxes he was looking for;

but he did not reach out his hands for them; he stood motionless, lost

in the contemplation of a thousand trivial objects that reminded him of

Josephina.

She was there, too; she came forth to meet him, more personal, more real

than from among the heap of old clothes. Her gloves seemed to preserve

the warmth and the outline of those hands which once had run caressingly

through the artist's hair, her collars reminded him of her warm ivory

neck where he used to place his kisses.

His hands turned over everything with painful curiosity. An old fan,

carefully put away, seemed to move him in spite of its sorry appearance.

Among its broken folds he could see a trace of old colors--a head he had

painted when his wife was only a friend--a gift for Señorita de

Torrealta who wanted to have something done by the young artist. At the

bottom of a case shone two huge pearls, surrounded by diamonds; a

present from Milan, the first jewel of real worth which he had bought

for his wife, as they were walking through the Piazza del Duomo; a whole

remittance from his manager in Rome invested in this costly trinket

which made the little woman flush with pleasure while her eyes rested

on him with intense gratitude.

His eager fingers, as they turned over boxes, belts, handkerchiefs and

gloves, came upon souvenirs with which her person was forever connected.

That poor woman had lived for him, only for him, as if her own existence

were nothing, as if it had no meaning unless it were joined with his. He

found carefully put away among belts and band-boxes--photographs of the

places where she had spent her youth; the buildings of Rome; the

mountains of the old Papal States, the canals of Venice--relics of the

past which no doubt were of great value to her because they called up

the image of her husband. And among these papers he saw dry, crushed

flowers, proud roses, or modest wild flowers, withered leaves, nameless

souvenirs whose importance Renovales realized, suspecting that they

recalled some happy moment completely forgotten by him.

The artist's portraits, at different ages, rose from all the corners,

entangled among belts or buried under the piles of handkerchiefs. Then

several bundles of letters appeared, the ink reddened with time, written

in a hand that made the artist uneasy. He recognized it; it was dimly

associated in his memory with some person whose name had escaped him.

Fool! It was his own handwriting, the laborious heavy hand of his youth

which was dexterous only with the brush. There in those yellow folds was

the whole story of his life, his intellectual efforts to say "pretty

things" like men who write. Not one was missing; the letters of their

early engagement when, after they had seen and talked to each other,

they still felt that they must put on paper what their lips did not

venture to say; others with Italian stamps, exuberant with extravagant

expressions of love, short notes he sent her when he was going to spend

a few days with some other artists at Naples, or to visit some dead

city in the Marcha; then the letters from Paris to the old Venetian

palace, inquiring anxiously for the little girl, asking about the

nursing, trembling with fear at the possibility of the inevitable

diseases of childhood.

Not one was lacking; all were there, put away like fetishes, perfumed

with love, tied up with ribbons like the balsam and swathings of a

mummified life. Her letters had had a different fate, her written love

had been scattered, lost in the void. They had been left forgotten in

old suits, burned in the fireplaces, or had fallen into strange hands,

where they provoked laughter at their tender simplicity. The only

letters he kept were a few of the other woman's and, as he thought of

this, he was seized with remorse, with infinite shame at his evil

doings.

He read the first lines of some of them, with a strange feeling, as if

they were written by another man, wondering at their passionate tone.

And it was he who had written that! How he loved Josephina then! It did

not seem possible that this affection could have ended so coldly. He was

surprised at the indifference of the last years; he no longer remembered

the troubles of their life together; he saw his wife now as she was in

her youth, with her calm face, her quiet smile and admiration in her

eyes.

He continued to read, passing eagerly from letter to letter. He wondered

at his own youth, virtuous in spite of his passionate nature, at the

chastity of his devotion to his wife, the only, the unquestionable one.

He experienced the joy, tinged with melancholy, which a decrepit old man

feels at the contemplation of his youthful portrait. And he had been

like that! From the bottom of his soul, a stern voice seemed to rise in

a reproachful tone, "Yes, like that, when you were good, when you were

honorable."

He became so absorbed in his reading that he did not notice the lapse of

time. Suddenly he heard steps in the distant hallway, the rustle of

skirts, his daughter's voice. Outside the house a horn was tooting; his

haughty son-in-law telling him to hurry; trembling with fear at the

prospect of being discovered, he took the insignia and the ribbons out

of their cases and hastily closed the door of the clothes-press.

The reception of the Academy was almost a failure for Renovales. The

countess found him very interesting, with his face pale with excitement,

his breast starred with jewels and his shirt front cut with several

bright lines of colors. But as soon as he stood up amid general

curiosity, with his manuscript in his hand, and began to read the first

paragraphs, a murmur arose which kept increasing and finally drowned out

his voice. He read thickly, with the haste of a school-boy who wants to

have it over, without noticing what he was saying, in a monotonous

sing-song. The sonorous rehearsals in the studio, the careful

preparation of dramatic gestures was forgotten. His mind seemed to be

somewhere else, far away from that ceremony; his eyes saw nothing but

the letters. The fashionable assemblage went out, glad they had gathered

and seen each other again. Many lips laughed at the speech behind their

gauze fans, delighted to be able to scratch indirectly his friend the

Alberca woman.

"Awful, my dear! Insufferably boring!"

II

As soon as he awoke the next day, Renovales felt that he must have open

air, light, space, and he went out of the house, not stopping in his

walk, up the Castellana, until he reached the clearing near the

Exhibition Hall.

The night before he had dined at the Albercas'--almost a formal banquet

in honor of his entrance into the Academy, at which many of the

distinguished gentlemen who formed the countess's coterie were present.

She seemed radiant with joy, as if she were celebrating a triumph of her

own. The count treated the famous master with greater respect than ever;

he had just advanced another step in glory. His respect for all honorary

distinctions made him admire that Academic medal, the only distinction

he could not add to his load of insignia.

Renovales spent a bad night. The countess's champagne did not agree with

him. He had gone home with a sort of fear, as if something unusual was

awaiting him which his uneasiness could not explain. He took off the

dress clothes which had been torturing him for several hours and went to

bed, surprised at the vague fear that followed him even to the

threshhold of his room. He saw nothing unusual around him, his room

presented the same appearance it always did. He feel asleep, overcome by

weariness, by the digestive torpor of that extraordinary banquet, and he

did not awake at all during the night; but his sleep was cruel, tossed

with dreams that perhaps made him groan.

On awakening, late in the morning, at the steps of his servant in the

dressing room, he realized by the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes,

by the cold sweat on his forehead and the weariness of his body what a

restless night he had passed amid nervous starts.

His brain, still heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the

night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had

wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among

the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were

centered. It was not Josephina; the face had the expression of a person

of another world.

But as his mental numbness gradually disappeared, while he was washing

and dressing, and while the servant was helping him on with his

overcoat, he thought, summoning his memories with an effort, that it

might be she. Yes, it was she. Now he remembered that in his dream he

had been conscious of that perfume which had followed him since the day

before, which accompanied him to the Academy, disturbing his reading,

and which had gone with him to the banquet, running between his eyes and

Concha's like a mist, through which he looked at her, without seeing

her.

The coolness of the morning cleared his mind. The wide prospect from the

heights of the Exhibition Hall seemed to blot out instantly the memories

of the night.

A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the

Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears,

like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes

with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks,

the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue

sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of

salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the

covering of Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers--all indistinct

in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of

the mountains.

The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly

frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the

ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if

they were precious metals.

Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace;

the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge

of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the

central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves,

like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came

the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment

of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were

flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.

The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the

rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming

the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up

in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not

last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was

beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in

the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the

sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of

Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.

As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of

exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and

flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of

Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in

their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust

he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists

crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his

position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he

who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who

followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the

prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the

news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of

respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales?

The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velásquez." And at the end of

the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns

of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped

out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist

has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences

were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the

statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping

at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery

they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished.

Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale,

looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they

wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek façade

and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of

the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old

fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything

worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the

annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an

unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in

some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that

stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their

sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those

youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving

their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture,

less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the

ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a

meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He

too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like

amoebæ who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may

conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these

regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove

to be her interpreters?

The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the

night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge

this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the

blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a

wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every

organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.

As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the

concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly

watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He

opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep,

convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds

were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up

to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture

frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that

the master had painted; studies or whims, finished or unfinished, was

placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some

famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a

long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even

to poorly lighted hallways.

As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master

fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention

among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should

now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without

seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of

experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near

to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted

then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his

memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy

eyes, wondering who the model could have been.

Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused,

ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days,

when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her

face.

He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the

study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the

hall, beside the hat-rack.

After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture

and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.

"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so

many times, sir. The house is full."

Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew

how many times he had painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going

to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her

callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his

wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black

ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan--a veritable Goya.

He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace,

its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How

beautiful Josephina was in those days!

He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell

on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.

Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one.

Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with

astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all

sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of

the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the

stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the

parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or

showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.

He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face,

painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.

When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at

the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed

to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.

Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were

hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or

smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple,

unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a canvas, but

always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of

melancholy tenderness, sometimes with intense reproach. Where had his

eyes been? He had lived amid all this without seeing it. Every day he

had passed by Josephina without noticing her. His wife was resurrected;

henceforth, she would sit down at table, she would enter his chamber, he

would pass through the house always under the gaze of two eyes which in

the past had pierced into his soul.

The dead woman was not dead; she hovered about him, revived by his hand.

He could not take a step without seeing her face on every side. She

greeted him from above the doors, from the ends of the rooms she seemed

to call him.

In his three studios, his surprise was still greater. All his most

intimate painting, which he had done as study, from impulse, without any

desire for sale, was stored away there, and all was a memory of the dead

woman. The pictures which dazzled the callers were hung low, down on the

level of the eyes, on easels, or fastened to the wall, amid the

sumptuous furniture; up above, reaching to the ceiling were arranged the

studies, memories, unframed canvases, like old, forgotten works, and in

this collection at the first glance Renovales saw the enigmatic face

rising towards him.

He had lived without lifting his eyes, accustomed as he was to

everything about him, and looking around, without seeing, without

noticing those women, different in appearance but alike in expression,

who watched him from above. And the countess had been there several

afternoons, to see him alone in the studio! And the Persian silk

draperies, hung on lances before the deep divan, had not hidden them

from that sad, fixed gaze which seemed to multiply in the upper stretch

of the walls.

To forget his remorse, he amused himself by counting the canvases which

reproduced his wife's dainty little face. They were many--the whole life

of an artist. He tried to remember when and where he had painted them.

In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an

irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted

to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter

her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that

she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague

likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of

idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he

used as models the people around him. His daughter had carried to her

new home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches,

water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to

play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud

young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.

The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in

oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given

Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm

every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a

new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for

admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.

Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one

canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the

poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat

covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a

manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as

a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had

her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her

feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in

her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the

adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days,

the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with

her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might

lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to

distract him from his supreme efforts for success.

This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of

bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his

brave companion brought with it once more remorse.

"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"

When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch

with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest

him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success;

the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great

writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he

not read them?

Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he

went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a

glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech but

he had put off reading the praises until later. They did not interest

him; he was thinking of something else--he was sad.

And in answer to Cotoner's anxious questions, who thought he must be

ill, he said quietly:

"I am well enough. It's melancholy. I'm tired of doing nothing. I want

to work and haven't the strength."

Suddenly he interrupted his old friend, pointing to all the portraits

of Josephina, as if they were new works which he had just produced.

Cotoner expressed surprise. He knew them all; they had been there for

years. What was strange about them?

The master told him of his recent surprise. He had lived beside them

without seeing them, he had just discovered them two hours before. And

Cotoner laughed.

"You are rather unsettled, Mariano. You live without noticing what is

around you. That is why you don't know of Soldevilla's marriage to a

rich girl. The poor boy was disappointed because his master was not

present at the wedding."

Renovales shrugged his shoulders. What did he care for such follies?

There was a long pause and the master, pensive and sad, suddenly raised

his head with a determined expression.

"What do you think of those portraits, Pepe?" he asked anxiously. "Is it

she? I couldn't have made a mistake in painting them, I couldn't have

seen her different from what she really was, could I?"

Cotoner broke out laughing. Really, the master was out of his mind. What

questions! Those portraits were marvels, like all of his work. But

Renovales insisted with the impatience of doubt. His opinion! Were those

Josephinas like his wife!

"Exactly," said the Bohemian. "Why, man alive, their fidelity to life is

the most astonishing thing about your portraits!"

He declared this confidently, but a shadow of doubt worried him. Yes, it

was Josephina, but there was something unusual, idealized about her. Her

features looked the same, but they had an inner light that made them

more beautiful. It was a defect he had always found in these pictures,

but he said nothing.

"And she," insisted the master, "was she really beautiful? What did you

think of her as a woman? Tell me, Pepe,--without hesitating. It's

strange, I can't remember very well what she was like."

Cotoner was disconcerted by these questions, and answered with some

embarrassment. What an odd thing! Josephina was very good--an angel; he

always remembered her with gratitude. He had wept for her as for a

mother, though she might almost have been his daughter. She had always

been very considerate and thoughtful of the poor Bohemian.

"Not that," interrupted the master. "I want to know if you thought she

was beautiful, if she really was beautiful."

"Why, man, yes," said Cotoner resolutely. "She was beautiful or, rather,

attractive. At the end she seemed a bit changed. Her illness! But all in

all, an angel."

And the master, calmed by these words, stood looking at his own works.

"Yes, she was very beautiful," he said slowly, without turning his eyes

from the canvases. "Now I recognize it; now I see her better. It's

strange, Pepe. It seems as if I have found Josephina to-day after a long

journey. I had forgotten her; I was no longer certain what her face was

like."

There was another long pause, and once more the master began to ply his

friend with anxious questions.

"Did she love me? Do you think she really loved me? Was it love that

made her sometimes act so--strangely?"

This time Cotoner did not hesitate as he had at the former questions.

"Love you? Wildly, Mariano. As no man has been loved in this world. All

that there was between you was jealousy--too much affection. I know it

better than anyone else; old friends, like me, who go in and out of the

house just like old dogs, are treated with intimacy and hear things the

husband does not know. Believe me, Mariano, no one will ever love you as

she did. Her sulky words were only passing clouds. I am sure you no

longer remember them. What did not pass was the other, the love she bore

you. I am positive; you know that she told me everything, that I was the

only person she could tolerate toward the end."

Renovales seemed to thank his friend for these words with a glance of

joy.

They went out to walk at the end of the afternoon, going toward the

center of Madrid. Renovales talked of their youth, of their days in

Rome. He laughed as he reminded Cotoner of his famous stock of Popes, he

recalled the funny shows in the studios, the noisy entertainments, and

then, after he was married, the evenings of friendly intercourse in that

pretty little dining-room on the Via Margutta; the arrival of the

Bohemian and the other artists of his circle to drink a cup of tea with

the young couple; the loud discussions over painting, which made the

neighbors protest, while she, his Josephina, still surprised at finding

herself the mistress of a household, without her mother, and surrounded

by men, smiled timidly to them all, thinking that those fearful

comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as

children, were very funny and interesting.

"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has

gone!"

Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed

in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves

at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were

coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.

Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.

"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"

Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he

was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if

he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.

The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between

Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he

felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell

everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a

disgrace, treachery--that life _à trois_ which the society woman

accepted as the happiest of states.

"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't

stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."

He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but

he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.

"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I

admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."

The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a

desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.

"Nothing but a façade. A face and a figure."

And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if

he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.

"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."

A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It

was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret

defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.

The master did not want to leave his friend. He needed him, he looked

at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife.

When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on

edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With

whom could he talk about her better?

"We will dine together, Pepe; we will go to the _Italianos_--a Roman

banquet, _ravioli_, _piccata_, anything you want and a bottle of Chianti

or two, as many as you can drink, and at the end sparkling Asti, better

than champagne. Does that suit you, old man?"

Arm in arm they walked along, their heads high, a smile on their lips,

like two young painters, eager to celebrate a recent sale with a

gluttonous relief from their misery.

Renovales went back into his memories and poured them out in a torrent.

He reminded Cotoner of a _trattoria_ in an alley in Rome, beyond the

statue of Pasquino, before you reach the Via Governo Vecchio, a chop

house of ecclesiastical quiet, run by the former cook of a cardinal. The

shelves of the establishment were always covered with the headgear of

the profession, priestly tiles. The merriment of the artists shocked the

sedate frugality of the habitues, priests of the Papal palace or

visitors who were in Rome scheming advancement; loud-mouthed lawyers in

dirty frock-coats from the nearby Palace of Justice, loaded with papers.

"What _maccheroni!_ Remember, Pepe? How poor Josephina liked it!"

They used to reach the _trattoria_ at night in a merry company--she on

his arm and around them the friends whose admiration for the promising

young painter attracted them to him. Josephina worshiped the mysteries

of the kitchen, the traditional secrets of the solemn table of the

princes of the Church, which had come down to the street, taking refuge

in that little room. On the white table cloth trembled the amber

reflection of the wine of Orvieto in decanters, a thick, yellow, golden

liquid, of clerical sweetness, a drink of old-time pontiffs, which

descended to the stomach like fire and more than once had mounted to

heads covered with the tiara.

On moonlit nights, they used to go from there and walk to the Colosseum

to look at the gigantic, monstrous ruin under the flood of blue light.

Josephina, shaking with nervous excitement, went down into the dark

tunnels, groping along among the fallen stones, till she was on the open

slope, facing the silent circle, which seemed to enclose the corpse of a

whole people. Looking around with anxiety, she thought of the terrible

beasts which had trod upon that sand. Suddenly came a frightful roar and

a black beast leaped forth from the deep vomitory. Josephina clung to

her husband, with a shriek of terror, and all laughed. It was Simpson,

an American painter, who bent over, walking on all fours, to attack his

companions with fierce cries.

"Do you remember, Pepe?" Renovales kept saying, "What days! What joy!

What a fine companion the little girl was before her illness saddened

her!"

They dined, talking of their youth, mingling with their memories the

image of the dead. Afterwards, they walked the streets till midnight,

and Renovales was always going back to those days, recalling his

Josephina, as if he had spent his life worshiping her. Cotoner was tired

of the conversation and said "Good-by" to the master. What new hobby was

this? Poor Josephina was very interesting, but they had spent the whole

evening without talking of anything else, as though memory of her was

the only thing in the world.

Renovales started home impatiently; he took a cab to get there sooner.

He felt as anxious as if some one were waiting for him; that showy

house, cold and solitary before, seemed animated with a spirit he could

not define, a beloved soul which filled it, pervading all like perfume.

As he entered, preceded by the sleepy servant, his first glance was for

the water-color. He smiled; he wanted to bid good-night to that head

whose eyes rested on him.

For all the Josephinas who met his gaze, rising from the shadow of the

walls, as he turned on the electric lights in the parlors and hallways,

he had the same smile and greeting. He no longer was uneasy in the

presence of those faces which he had looked at in the morning with

surprise and fear. She saw him; she read his thoughts; she forgave him,

surely. She had always been so good!

He hesitated a moment on his way, wishing to go to the studios and turn

on the lights. There he could see her full length, in all her grace; he

would talk to her, he would ask her forgiveness in the deep silence of

those great rooms. But the master stopped. What was he thinking of? Was

he going to lose his senses? He drew his hand across his forehead, as if

he wanted to wipe these ideas out of his mind. No doubt it was the Asti

that led him to such absurdities. To sleep!

When he was in the dark, lying in his daughter's little bed, he felt

uneasy. He could not sleep, he was uncomfortable. He was tempted to go

out of the room and take refuge in the deserted bed-chamber as if only

there could he find rest and sleep. Oh, the Venetian bed, that princely

piece of furniture which kept his whole history, where he had whispered

words of love; where they had talked so many times in low tones of his

longing for glory and wealth; where his daughter was born!

With the energy which showed in all his whims, the master put on his

clothes, and quietly, as if he feared to be overheard by his servant

who slept nearby, made his way to the chamber.

He turned the key with the caution of a thief, and advanced on tiptoe,

under the soft, pink light which an old lantern shed from the center of

the ceiling. He carefully stretched out the mattresses on the abandoned

bed. There were no sheets nor pillows. The room so long deserted was

cold. What a pleasant night he was going to spend! How well he would

sleep there! The gold-embroidered cushions from a sofa would serve as a

pillow. He wrapped himself in an overcoat and got into bed, dressed,

putting out the light so as not to see reality, to dream, peopling the

darkness with the sweet deceits of his fancy.

On those mattresses, Josephina had slept. He did not see her as in the

last days,--sick, emaciated, worn with physical suffering. His mind

repelled that painful image, bent on beautiful illusions. The Josephina

whom he saw, the Josephina within him, was the other, of the first days

of their love, and not as she had been in reality but as he had seen

her, as he had painted her.

His memory passed over a great stretch of time, dark and stormy; it

leaped from the regret of the present to the happy days of youth. He no

longer recalled the years of trying confinement, when they quarreled

together, unable to follow the same path. They were unimportant

disturbances in life. He thought only of her smiling kindness, her

generosity, and submissiveness. How tenderly they had lived together for

a part of their life, in that bed which now knew only the loneliness of

his body.

The artist shivered under his inadequate covering. In this abnormal

situation, exterior impressions called up memories--fragments of the

past that slowly came to his mind. The cold made him think of the rainy

nights in Venice, when it poured for hour after hour on the narrow

alleys and deserted canals in the deep, solemn silence of a city without

horses, without wheels, without any sound of life, except the lapping of

the solitary water on the marble stairways. They were in the same calm,

under the warm eider-down, amid the same furniture which he now half saw

in the shadow.

Through the slits of the lowered blind shone the glow of the lamp which

lighted the nearby canal. On the ceiling a spot of light flickered with

the reflection of the dead water, constantly crossed by lines of shadow.

They, closely embraced, watched this play of light and water above them.

They knew that outside it was cold and damp; they exulted in their

physical warmth, in the selfishness of being together, with that

delicious sense of comfort, buried in silence as if the world were a

thing of the past, as if their chamber were a warm oasis, in the midst

of cold and darkness.

Sometimes they heard a mournful cry in the silence. _Aooo!_ It was the

gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of

light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian

gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of

a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain,

lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung

closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met,

disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth and

love.

Renovales no longer felt cold. He turned restlessly on the mattresses;

the metallic embroidery of the cushions stuck in his face; he stretched

out his arms in the darkness, and the silence was broken by a despairing

cry, the lament of a child who demands the impossible, who asks for the

moon.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

III

One morning the painter sent an urgent summons to Cotoner and the latter

arrived in great alarm at the terms of the message.

"It's nothing serious," said Renovales. "I want you to tell me where

Josephina was buried. I want to see her."

It was a desire which had been slowly taking form in his mind during

several nights; a whim of the long hours of sleeplessness through which

he dragged in the darkness.

More than a week before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing

among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the

servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their

embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets

which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the

illusion, the certainty that she had many a time touched them.

After soberly and severely telling Cotoner of his wish, Renovales felt

that he must offer some excuse. It was disgraceful that he did not know

where Josephina was; that he had not yet gone to visit her. His grief at

her death had left him helpless and afterward, the long journey.

"You always know things, Pepe! You had charge of the funeral

arrangements. Tell me where she is; take me to see her."

Up to that time he had not thought of her remains. He remembered the day

of the funeral, his dramatic grief which kept him in a corner with his

face buried in his hands. His intimate friends, the elect, who

penetrated to his retreat, clad in black, and wearing gloomy faces,

caught his hand and pressed it effusively. "Courage, Mariano. Be strong,

master." And outside the house, a constant trampling of horses' feet;

the iron fence black with the curious crowd, a double file of carriages

as far as the eye could see; reporters going from group to group, taking

down names.

All Madrid was there. And they had carried her away to the slow step of

a pair of horses with waving plumes, amid the undertaker's men in white

wigs and gold batons--and he had forgotten her, had felt no interest in

seeing the corner of the cemetery where she was buried forever, under

the glare of the sun, under the night rains that dripped upon her grave.

He cursed himself now for this outrageous neglect.

"Tell me where she is, Pepe. Take me. I want to see her."

He implored with the eagerness of remorse; he wanted to see her once, as

soon as possible, like a sinner who fears death and cries for

absolution.

Cotoner acceded to this immediate trip. She was in the Almudena

cemetery, which had been closed for some time. Only those who had long

standing titles to a lot went there now. Cotoner had desired to bury

Josephina beside her mother in the same inclosure where the stone that

covered the "lamented genius of diplomacy" was growing tarnished. He

wanted her to rest among her own.

On the way, Renovales felt a sort of anguish. Like a sleep-walker he saw

the streets of the city passing by the carriage window, then they went

down a steep hill, ill-kempt gardens, where loafers were sleeping,

leaning against the trees, or women were combing their hair in the sun;

a bridge; wretched suburbs with tumble-down houses; then the open

country, hilly roads and at last a grove of cypress trees beyond an

adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their

wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted

on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman

indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales.

He was going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body;

to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that

warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say

to her?

As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old

fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived

constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had

to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given

him all the money he had with him.

Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an

abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues

than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps

strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,--the void,

trembling at the light touch of life.

The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least

resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal

decay,--unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by,

no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral

personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.

Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of

insects in their fragments. The exuberant vegetation, where no one ever

passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its

roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly

filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs

were cracked open, revealing deep holes.

They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would

suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with

letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.

The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense

disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And

this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human

mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!

"Here it is!" said Cotoner.

They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as

they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and

fell at the touch.

It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few

inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster

of a bed and surmounted by a cross.

Renovales was cold. There was Josephina! He read the inscription several

times, as if he could not convince himself. It was she; the letters

reproduced her name, with a brief lament of her inconsolable husband,

which seemed to him senseless, artificial, disgraceful.

He had come trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment

when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he

was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not

be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he

would fall on his knees, sobbing in deadly anguish.

Well, he was there; the tomb was before his eyes and still, they were

dry; they looked about coldly in surprise.

She was there! He knew it from his friend's statement, from the

declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her

presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining

graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only

his sardonic buffoon's mask.

At one side, a gentleman who rested under the endless list of his titles

and honors, a sort of Count of Alberca, who had fallen asleep in the

solemnity of his greatness, waiting for the angel's trumpet-blast to

appear before the Lord with all his parchments and crosses. On the

other, a general who rotted under a marble slab, engraved with cannon,

guns and banners, as though he hoped to terrify death. In what ludicrous

promiscuity Josephina had come to sleep her last sleep, mingled with,

forms she had not known in life! They were her eternal, her final

lovers; they carried her off from his very presence and forever,

indifferent to the pressing concerns of the living. Oh, Death! What a

cruel mocker! The earth! How cold and cynical!

He was sad and disgusted at human insignificance--but he did not weep.

He saw only the external and material--the form, always the concern of

his thoughts. Standing before the tomb he felt merely his vulgar

meanness, with a sort of shame. She was his wife; the wife of a great

artist.

He thought of the most famous sculptors, all friends of his; he would

talk to them, they should erect an imposing sepulcher with weeping

statues, symbolical of fidelity, gentleness and love, a sepulcher worthy

of the companion of Renovales. And nothing more; his thought went no

farther; his imagination could not pass beyond the hard marble nor

penetrate the hidden mystery. The grave was speechless and empty, in the

air there was nothing which spoke to the soul of the painter.

He remained indifferent, unmoved by any emotion, without ceasing for a

single moment to see reality. The cemetery was a hideous, gloomy,

repulsive place, with an odor of decay. Renovales thought he could

perceive a stench of putrefaction scattered in the wind which bent the

pointed tops of the cypresses, and swayed the old wreaths and the

branches of the rose bushes.

He looked at Cotoner with a sort of displeasure. He was to blame for his

coldness. His presence was a check on him which prevented him from

showing his feelings. Though a friend, he was a stranger, an obstacle

between him and the dead. He interfered with that silent dialogue of

love and forgiveness of which the master had dreamed as he came. He

would come back alone. Perhaps the cemetery would be different in

solitude.

And he came back; he came back the next day. The keeper greeted him with

a smile, realizing that he was a profitable visitor.

The cemetery seemed larger, more imposing in the silence of the bright,

quiet morning. He had no one to talk with; he heard no human sound but

that of his own steps. He went up stairways, crossed galleries, leaving

behind him his indifference, thinking anxiously that every step took him

farther from the living, that the gate with its greedy keeper was

already far away and that he was the only living being, the only one who

thought and could feel fear in the mournful city of thousands and

thousands of beings, wrapped in a mystery which made them imposing amid

the strange, dull sounds of the land beyond that terrifies with the

blackness of its bottomless abyss.

When he reached Josephina's grave, he took off his hat.

No one. The trees and the rose bushes trembled in the wind among the

cross paths. Some birds were twittering above him in an acacia, and the

sound of life, disturbing the rustling of the solitary vegetation, shed

a certain calm over the painter's spirit, blotted out the childish fear

he had felt before he reached there, as he crossed the echoing pavements

of the colonnades.

For a long time he remained motionless, absorbed in the contemplation of

that marble case obliquely cut by a ray of sunlight, one part golden,

the other blue in the shadow. Suddenly he shivered, as if he had

awakened at the sound of a voice,--his own. He was talking, aloud,

driven to cry out his thoughts, to stir this deathly silence with

something that meant life.

"Josephina. It is I. Do you forgive me?"

It was a childish longing to hear the voice from beyond that might pour

on his soul a balm of forgiveness and forgetting; a desire of humbling

himself, of weeping, of having her listen to him, smile to him from the

depth of the void, at the great revolution which had been carried out in

his spirit. He wanted to tell her--and he did tell her silently with the

speech of his feelings--that he loved her, that he had resuscitated her

in his thoughts, now that he had lost her forever, with a love which he

had never had for her in her earthly life. He felt ashamed before her

grave; ashamed of the difference of their fates.

He begged her forgiveness for living, for still feeling vigorous and

young, for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had

been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another

woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And he was

still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the

depths of eternal, ruthless death!

He wept; at last he wept those hot, sincere tears which compel

forgiveness. It was the weeping which he had so long desired. Now he

felt that they approached each other, that they were almost together,

separated only by a strip of marble and a little earth. His fancy saw

her poor remains and in their decay he loved them, he worshiped them

with a calm passion that rose above earthly miseries. Nothing which had

once been Josephina's could cause him repugnance or horror. If he could

but open that white case! If he could kiss her, take her ashes with him,

that they might go with him on his pilgrimage, like the household gods

of the ancients! He no longer saw the cemetery, he did not hear the

birds nor the rustling of the branches; he seemed to live in a cloud,

looking only at that white grave, the marble slab,--the last resting

place of his beloved.

She forgave him; her body rose before him, such as it had been in her

youth, as he had painted it. Her deep eyes were fixed on his, eyes that

shone with love. He seemed to hear her childish voice laughing, admiring

little trifles, as in the happy days. It was a resurrection,--the image

of the dead woman was before him, formed no doubt by the invisible atoms

of her being which floated over her grave, by something of the essence

of her life which still fluttered around the material remains, reluctant

to say farewell before they started on the way that leads to the depths

of the infinite.

His tears continued to fall in the silence, in sweet relief; his voice,

broken by sobs, stilled the birds with fear. "Josephina! Josephina!" And

the echo answered with dull, mocking cries, from the smooth walls of the

mausoleums, from the invisible end of the colonnades.

The artist could not resist the temptation to step over the rusted

chains which surrounded the grave. To feel her nearer! To overcome the

short distance which separated them! To mock death with a loving kiss of

intense gratitude for forgiveness!

The huge frame of the master covered the slab of marble, his arms

encircled it as if he would pick it up from the ground and carry it away

with him. His lips eagerly sought the highest part of the stone.

He wished to find the spot which covered her face and he began to kiss

it, moving his head as if he were going to dash it against the marble.

A sensation of stone, warmed by the sun, on his lips; a taste of dust,

insipid and repulsive in his mouth. Renovales sat up, rose to his feet

as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was

suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck

him.

Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer

wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he

felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina

was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the

past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold

ground, stirred by worms and decay. Oh, where had he come to seek his

dreams! From what a foul dunghill he had tried to raise the roses of his

memories!

In fancy he saw her beneath that repugnant marble in all the

repulsiveness of death, and this vision left him cold, indifferent. What

had he to do with such wretchedness? No; Josephina was not there. She

was truly dead, and if he ever was to see her it would not be beside her

grave.

Once more he wept--not with external tears but within; he mourned the

bitterness of solitude, the inability to exchange a single thought with

her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How

he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back

for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would throw himself

at her feet, lamenting the error of his life, the painful deceit of

having remained beside her, indifferent, fostering hopes which had no

fulfillment, only to groan now in the torment of irreparable loss, with

a mad, thirsting love which worshiped the woman in death after scoring

her in life.

He would swear a thousand times the truth of this posthumous worship,

this desire aroused by death. And then he would lay her once more in her

eternal bed, and would depart in peace after his wild confession.

But it was impossible. The silence between them would last forever. He

must remain for all eternity with this confession of his thoughts,

unable to tell it to her, crushed beneath its weight. She had gone away

with rancor and scorn in her soul, forgetting their first love, and she

would never know that it had blossomed once more after her death.

She could not cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never

again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights

when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood

gazing at her pictures,--all would be unknown to her. And when he died

in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The

things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they

would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other,

prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each

other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the

fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament passed unnoticed

the desires and griefs of men.

The unhappy artist walked up and down enraged at his impotence. What

cruelty surrounded them? What dark, hard-hearted, implacable mockery was

that which drove them toward one another and then separated them

forever, forever! forbidding them to exchange a look of forgiveness, a

word to rectify their errors and to permit them to return to their

eternal sleep with new peace?

Lies--deceit that hovers about man, like a protecting atmosphere that

shields him in his path through the void of life. That grave with its

inscription was a lie; she was not there; it contained merely a few

remnants, like those of all the others, which no one could recognize,

not even he, who had loved her so dearly.