THE FINAL TRAGEDY
Gonzalo did not leave his father-in-law's house; and at the end of five
or six days after the duel, Don Rosendo returned from taking Ventura to
the Ocana Convent. But his life was sad and depressed. He declined
Pablo's persuasions to go shooting or walking, and the thousand pretexts
made by his father-in-law and his friends, who came to see him at
Tejada, to induce him to get out, proved fruitless.
Although Gonzalo did not openly refuse to accompany his friends, he
managed to elude them and remained at home, where he sat alone.
His uncle, Don Melchor, came to see him, and advised him to travel for a
time; Gonzalo did not reject the idea, but he always postponed it on the
pretext of want of health.
Don Rosendo, upon the advice of Las Cuevas and other friends, decided to
move to Sarrio to see if the society of acquaintances might not cheer
the young man up a little. But all attempts to rouse him proved
failures. Gonzalo let himself be taken to town without offering any
objection, but he continued just as anxious to be alone, and to live
retired from social life.
He only went out early in the morning and took a few turns at the end of
the landing-stage, where he contemplated the sea with far-away eyes,
sometimes so full of sadness that they would have alarmed any onlooker.
As soon as the place became frequented, and the town awoke from its
sleep, he hastily returned home.
Why did he not leave Sarrio, the scene of his troubles, and go for a
time to Madrid, Paris, or London? This was the question asked by all the
people of the town, without receiving any satisfactory answer, nor was
it easy for one to be found. There are very few competent to explain the
secret origin, the final cause of human actions, because very few study
psychology, deeming it useless, and those who are endowed with an
understanding, both subtle and perspicacious, devote it solely to the
study of self-interest, so that hardly anybody sounds this magic casket
of feelings, desires, hopes, and contradictions called the human heart.
How ashamed Gonzalo would have been if any one had told him that he did
not leave Sarrio because he did not wish to quit the place associated
with his wife, whom he still adored in secret, while feigning to hate
her before the world! And nevertheless it was certainly so. As long as
he remained in that house, all the bonds uniting him to her did not
seem to be broken. The people about him were of her flesh and blood;
they loved her still, culpable as she was and they did not abuse her in
his presence.
Ventura seemed to have left part of herself in the rooms and in the
furniture; the bottles of essences and pots of pomades still stood
half-used on the dressing-table; some of her cloaks and hats were still
hanging on the pegs, and it seemed as if her fair, sunny head might
appear at any moment from behind the curtains, while the air was still
sweet with her favorite perfume. The husband, who had been disgracefully
outraged, inhaled with delight this atmosphere of his wife, and lived in
the shadow of her life, unwilling as he would have been to acknowledge
it; and he lived, moreover, in the hope of one day pardoning her. This
nobody knew--he had probably not formulated it to himself--nobody knew
it but Cecilia, whose eyes, sharpened by love, divined her
brother-in-law's most secret thoughts; and he evinced such an
affectionate, enthusiastic, venerating feeling for her that it might
easily have been confounded with love. Everybody's companionship, even
that of his uncle, bored him more than hers.
However cast down he was with sad thoughts, which made scalding tears
flow down his cheeks, the appearance of Cecilia in his room had a
calming, soothing effect upon his grief.
He followed her counsels with respect, and let himself be guided and
coaxed by her like a sick child. When she delayed coming to him he grew
impatient and made tender complaints about it, as if he had been a
devoted lover.
When she was in the room his eyes never left her for an instant, so
great was the influence of the charm or fascination she exercised on
him; those eyes expressed deep affection, admiration, respect,
enthusiasm; expressed, indeed, everything but love.
Cecilia read it all, but she could not see it without feeling the old
pain and bitterness. Her gentle spirit was occasionally momentarily
disturbed, and she seemed at times cold, irritable, and enigmatical, to
the great surprise and sorrow of Gonzalo, who tried to cheer her up, and
that with success. For the sad thought had had the same effect upon her
mind as the fall of a stone on the peaceful waters of a lake, but, like
the lake, her mind soon regained its purity and tranquillity.
One day, on suddenly entering the room of her brother-in-law, she found
him examining a revolver.
When he saw her he turned red, and tried to hide it in the table drawer,
which was open.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing; looking for some papers in this drawer, I came across this
revolver, which I did not know I had, and so I am looking at it."
Cecilia did not believe what he said, and the anxiety caused her by the
incident made her keep a stricter watch on him.
Two months went by. Although the young man still persisted in his
isolated, gloomy sort of life, there were a few faint signs of
improvement. Once or twice he went out on horseback, and he talked to
his father-in-law of going to Italy, as he had never been there.
The fresh impulse given to his depressed being was due to a pleasant
thought, as pleasant as it was deceptive, and which he carefully kept
from everybody.
Nevertheless, one night, on taking an affectionate leave of his
sister-in-law, when retiring to rest, after much circumlocution and
turning crimson, he asked after Ventura.
"What news is there of her?"
Cecilia gave him a chilly answer in as few words as possible.
Poor Gonzalo! If he had known that the treacherous wife, after whom he
was asking, far from repenting, was furious against her family, covering
them all with opprobrium, and threatening to go off with the first man
at hand as soon as she came out of retreat, and shocking the Superior of
the Convent with her language and pride.
From that day Gonzalo lost his aversion of referring to his wife,
asking sometimes after her, and liking to mention her in conversation,
but Cecilia still maintained the cold tone of her replies, quickly
changing the subject.
What Don Rosendo had feared from the letters from Ocana at last
happened.
The Superior of the Convent informed him one day that Ventura had
escaped from the retreat, and, according to all reports, it was with the
Duke of Tornos.
"The great humanitarian" (as he was termed by "The Light," on a certain
occasion) received the news with stoical fortitude. In fact, what did
any purely individual sorrow signify in comparison with universal sorrow
in the slow and sure march of humanity to its destiny? He had recently
read a celebrated pamphlet called, "The March of the World," from the
pen of a French writer, and, with his brain refreshed and illuminated
with its grand historical synthesis, he found strength to bear the blow.
Nevertheless, he tried to keep the news from his son-in-law, as he had
not the same confidence in the loftiness of his spirit and the width of
his views. It was therefore kept secret for some days, but suddenly it
became current news in the town, without any one knowing who started it.
Gonzalo, who always went early in the morning to the Club, read it in a
paragraph in "The Youth of Sarrio," which was as infamous as it was
hypocritical.
"It is said in the town," it ran, "that a lady, the heroine of a certain
romantic drama, enacted not long ago, has fled with her lover from the
asylum in which her family had secluded her. We shall be sorry if this
report be true, as it will affect certain persons who are well known and
much esteemed in Sarriensan society."
Gonzalo felt that his heart was broken--the last ray of hope was gone.
He let the paper fall, and with a nervous smile, and in a strange, sharp
voice, said to old Feliciano Gomez, who was the only person present:
"Do you know that my brute of a wife has gone off with her lover?"
Don Feliciano looked at him in surprise, for, although little versed in
smiles, he was taken aback at seeing the young man smile like that, and
he replied sadly:
"Yes, Gonzalin; yes, I knew that it wasn't all over so soon--But,
really, after what happened, this final blow ought not to cause you
surprise. Once the rein is broken you can always imagine what will be
the end."
"And what for me. What--?" exclaimed the unhappy man, with the same
smile, which expressed the ill-restrained excitement of body. "Let her
go--Very well! let her go with God's blessing. I have nothing against
it--Ah! if the law only permitted me to marry! A month would not elapse
without my doing so--And why not? we will see, and why can I not do so?
Anyhow, if I can't marry for good, I can take up with somebody. I will
carry on with some pretty girl, eh, Don Feliciano? And the devil take
the rest!--for if she be bad by profession, my wife is so from choice."
While making these ugly remarks, he walked up and down the room, threw
off his hat, shrugged his shoulders, and gesticulated wildly.
Finally he roared with laughter.
"Look here, Gonzalin," said Don Feliciano; "you have just weathered a
storm; better weather is in store. There is always good after bad. The
things of the world have to be taken easily, my dear. What is the good
of putting one's self out, and upsetting one's digestion? Look at me.
Last month I lost a ship. Everybody came to condole with me, thinking I
must be in despair, and I said to them:
"'It is true I lost the "Juanita," but if I had lost the "Carmen,"
wouldn't it be much worse? for it might have been the one as much as the
other, as both were afloat.' You have had a great blow--but keep up.
Would it not be much worse if you were ill? You must think of that, my
boy. Health is the first thing--you eat well, drink well, and those are
the first things; the rest will all come right."
Gonzalo left the club without taking leave of the good Feliciano, who
was still speaking.
At home he told Don Rosendo of Ventura's flight, and, contrary to
everybody's expectation, he did not seem to feel it much. On the
contrary, from that day he showed signs of cheering up, and of going a
little into society, which caused some surprise in the place.
He began paying visits to his friends, going out to coffee, walking in
the streets, joking and discussing. There was no more talk of going
away. To the astonishment of the town, at one of the balls of the
Lyceum, he danced all night like a young fellow at his first dance.
Nevertheless, Cecilia was very anxious. The animation of her
brother-in-law was so strange, that it seemed more like an attack of
nerves. Above all, this strange smile seemed like a grimace that had not
left his lips since reading the paragraph in "The Youth of Sarrio," and
it sometimes made her shudder.
The natural reaction came: after the days of insane excitement, he
became a prey to a profound and gloomy depression. He remained three
days in his room, hardly touching anything that Cecilia brought him,
and, what was worse still, without being able to sleep. With open,
vacant eyes, he passed hours and hours stretched on his bed gazing into
the dark.
On the third night he struck a light, dressed himself, wrote a long
letter to his uncle, and one to Cecilia. When they were sealed, and laid
on the table so as to be easily seen, he took out a Havana and, after
lighting it at the candle, began walking up and down the room.
Before finishing the cigar he threw it away, opened the table-drawer and
drew out the revolver which he kept there. On taking it to the light, he
saw it was unloaded, which fact surprised him, because he was certain he
had loaded it about a month before. What a strange thing! Then he
recollected that Cecilia had seen it in his hand, and a smile wreathed
his lips. He then took up the cartridge box, and found it empty; the
cartridges were all gone!
He stood pensive and motionless for some time. Then, as if awakening
from a sleep, he shook his head and gave a sigh. After this, he put on
his hat, opened the door, and very cautiously descended the staircase.
On passing the door of the first floor he put his ear to it, and stood
listening for a moment with his face convulsed and his hair on end. He
thought he heard the voice of his wife calling him from within.
The hallucination having passed, he descended the stairs, opened the
outside door with the key hanging in the passage, and passed into the
street.
It was not yet dawn, but in the east there was a little line of light
that heralded the day. The morning was fresh, a sea-mist of fine rain
was falling. He walked to the harbor without any hesitation, mounted the
upper wall and looked out to sea, the horizon not being very extensive
just then owing to the fog.
A northeast wind had been blowing for the past few days, which had made
the sea very rough. Great, grand waves came rolling in from a distance,
and dashed their gigantic forms against the end of the mole, and the
foam flew straight up.
The eyes of the young man were soon directed to a launch about to enter
the harbor, as it danced like a walnut shell upon the waves. Its
entrance interested him, and he followed all its peripatetics with as
much attention as if he were concerned in it.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, when the entrance to the harbor was
effected, his thoughts resumed their course, and sighing and murmuring
"Come," he went forward and leaned against the wall. As the tide rose
higher, a larger wave than the rest drenched him with its foam. The
unexpected bath was agreeable to him, as it refreshed him physically. He
stood waiting for some time to see if another would come with equal
force, but none came, so he continued his walk.
Arriving at the end of the mole he threw himself down on the mole and
fixed his melancholy gaze on the waves coming in.
It was the same spot where, a few years previously, he had had the
conversation with his uncle about breaking off his engagement with
Cecilia and marrying Ventura.
The stern, severe words of the old man seemed now to reecho in his ears:
"God can not help the man who breaks his word. The journey is long, the
sea wide and powerful, and what is merely pretty is soon submerged in
the swell."
"How right my uncle was!" thought the young man, without turning his
eyes from the sea.
"Bah!" he muttered at the end of a few minutes, "if I had been a hundred
times in the same position I should have done the same. There are
fatalities. That woman has inoculated my blood with poison which can
only be ejected with its last drop."
He stood some time again lost in thought. The sea water, which had
immersed him, and the rain, which still incessantly fell, chilled him to
the bone. The morning dawned damp and foggy. It was not like that
beautiful night when, after talking with his uncle, he had then also
been plunged in thought. Then the magnificent splendor of the heavens
spangled with stars, the crystal clearness of the water, in which the
light of the moon was reflected, and the soft breeze whispered to him of
death--yea, but it was in sweet, harmonious, friendly strains, like the
voice of a friend calling him to rest. But now it was as if he heard a
cry of desolation, a threat: "Come, come, death is very sad, but life is
the saddest of all!"
"We must make an end of this," he said, raising his head. He moved
forward and stretched out his arms.
But at the moment, fearing that the instinct of self-preservation would
certainly make him swim, he stopped.
He looked all round in search of some weight, and his eyes fell upon the
anchor of a smack, which lay below on the lower wall. He jumped down,
seized it, cut a piece of rope from a launch with his knife, lashed it
to the anchor, and, like a gymnast anxious to exhibit to the public the
prodigious power of his muscles, he scaled the steps with his burden.
Once there he tied the cord to his neck, put his foot upon the wall,
and, with the anchor in his arms, he precipitated himself into the deep.
His colossal form made a great vacuum in the waters, which closed
immediately over him. The deep sea extinguished that spark of life with
the same indifference as it had so many others.
A sailor, seeing him from a distance, ran crying:
"A man in the water!"
Three or four others from boats at hand followed, and in a few minutes
there was a crowd of twenty or thirty at the end of the landing-stage.
"Who was it? Do you know him?" was asked of him who had seen him.
"I think it was Don Gonzalo."
"The mayor?"
"Yes."
"Very likely, very likely--Oh, these women!"
The news spread rapidly through the town, and a crowd of people hastened
to the port. Two men in a boat prodded with a pole in the water's
depths, without encountering the body of the unhappy young man. At last
they came across it, and with the help of a hook they brought it to
light, just as Melchor, upset, excited, and hatless, arrived at the port
to receive the terrible blow.
"Son of my heart!" cried the poor old man when he saw his nephew's body
in the water; then utterly collapsing, he fell unconscious into the arms
of the people about him.
The corpse of the suicide was laid in the town hall awaiting the arrival
of the justice of the peace, and the spectacle made a profound
impression upon the bystanders, who numbered among them persons from the
rival parties.
After the arrival of the justice of the peace, due instructions were
given and the body was placed on a truck and carried to its home, as
Don Rosendo claimed it on hearing the news. It was a very sad procession
that passed through the town; the people crowded the windows with pale
and sad faces, for Gonzalo was a universal favorite.
Don Rosendo was overwhelmed with grief, and, not wishing to see the
corpse of his son-in-law, he shut himself in his room, but he gave
orders to have the body placed in the best drawing-room on a table
covered with velvet, and flowers and wreaths to be sent from all parts,
and preparations for a grand funeral to be made.
Cecilia, with one of those heroic efforts over body and mind which
characterized her, managed to bury her grief in the depths of her own
heart. She was seen looking livid, but tranquil, going about the house,
doing what was necessary for the reception of her brother-in-law's body.
When it arrived she herself helped to arrange it after it had been
shrouded in its winding sheet. She covered it with flowers, she lighted
the candles, and she draped the room with black. Then she arranged for a
Sister of Charity to share the watch by the corpse with herself.
At last they were left alone. They prayed for a long time on their
knees; and when the orisons were over, Cecilia asked the Sister to go to
the kitchen to order tea, as she was quite faint.
As soon as the Sister left the room, Cecilia rose quickly, drew out a
pair of scissors, cut a lock of her brother-in-law's hair and hid it in
her bosom; then she cut a tress from her own head, and, trembling with
agitation, she placed it between the crossed hands of the dead man.
Then, after gazing at him for an instant, she lowered her head and
covered the inanimate face with kisses--the first and the last that she
ever gave him.
Then the wife, the man's true and only wife, powerless to cope with such
a sorrow, fell senseless to the ground.
* * * * *
THE END
MARIQUITA THE BALD
A Tale After The Style of an Old Chronicle
BY JUAN EUGENIO HARTZENBUSCH
MARIQUITA THE BALD
It is as sorry a matter to use the words of which one ignores the
meaning as it is a blemish for a man of sense to speak of what he knows
nothing about. I say this to those of you who may have the present story
in your hands, however often you may have happened to have heard
_Mariquita the Bald_ mentioned, and I swear by my doublet that you shall
soon know who Mariquita the Bald was, as well as I know who ate the
Christmas turkey, setting aside the surmise that it certainly must have
been a mouth.
I desire, therefore, to enlighten your ignorance of this subject, and
beg to inform you that the said noted Maria, Mariquita being the
diminutive of this name, was born in the District of Segovia, and in the
town of Sant Garcia, the which town is famed for the beauty of the
maidens reared within its walls, who for the most part have such gentle
and lovely faces, that may I behold such around me at the hour of my
death.
Maria's father was an honest farmer, by name Juan Lanas, a Christian old
man, and much beloved, and who had inherited no mean estate from his
forefathers, though with but little wit in his crown, a lack which was
the cause of much calamity to both the father and the daughter, for in
the times to which we have attained, God forgive me if it is not
necessary to have more of the knave than of the fool in one's
composition.
Now it came to pass that Juan Lanas, for the castigation of his sins,
must need commit himself to a lawsuit with one of his neighbors about a
vine stock which was worth about fifty maravedis; and Juan was in the
right, and the judges gave the verdict in his favor, so that he won his
case, excepting that the suit lasted no less than ten years and the
costs amounted to nothing less than fifty thousand maravedis, not to
speak of a disease of the eyes which after all was over left him blind.
When he found himself with diminished property and without his eyesight,
in sorrow and disgust he turned into money such part of his patrimony as
sufficed to rid him of the hungry herd of scriveners and lawyers, and
took his way to Toledo with his daughter, who was already entering upon
her sixteenth year, and had matured into one of the most beautiful,
graceful, and lovable damsels to be found throughout all Castile and the
kingdoms beyond. For she was white as the lily and red like the rose,
straight and tall of stature, and slender in the waist, with fair,
shapely hips; and again her foot and hand were plump and small to a
marvel, and she possessed a head of hair which reached to her knees. For
I knew the widow Sarmiento who was their housekeeper, and she told me
how she could scarcely clasp Mariquita's hair with both hands, and that
she could not comb the hair unless Maria stood up and the housekeeper
mounted on a footstool, for if Maria sat down, the long tresses swept
the ground, and therefore became all entangled.
And do not imagine, her beauty and grace being such, that she sinned
greatly in pride and levity, as is the wont of girls in this age. She
was as humble as a cloistered lay-sister, and as silent as if she were
not a woman, and patient as the sucking lamb, and industrious as the
ant, clean as the ermine, and pure as a saint of those times in which,
by the grace of the Most High, saintly women were born into the world.
But I must confide to you in friendship that our Mariquita was not a
little vain about her hair, and loved to display it, and for this
reason, now in the streets, now when on a visit, now when at mass, it is
said she used to subtly loosen her mantilla so that her tresses streamed
down her back, the while feigning forgetfulness and carelessness. She
never wore a hood, for she said it annoyed her and choked her; and every
time that her father reproached her for some deed deserving of
punishment and threatened to cut off her hair, I warrant you she
suffered three times more than after a lash from the whip, and would
then be good for three weeks successively; so much so that Juan Lanas,
perceiving her amendment, would laugh under his cloak, and when saying
his say to his gossips would tell them that his daughter, like the other
saint of Sicily, would reach heaven by her hair.
Having read so far, you must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man,
with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment,
and if he was crack-brained at Sant Garcia, he remained crack-brained at
Toledo, consuming in this resort his money upon worthless drugs and
quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and
more every day, so that if his daughter had not been so dexterous with
her fingers in making and embroidering garments of linen, wool, and
silk, I promise you that this miserable Juan would have had to go for
more than four Sundays without a clean shirt to put on or a mouthful to
eat, unless he had begged for it from door to door.
The years passed by to find Maria every day more beautiful, and her
father every day more blind and more desirous to see, until his
affliction and trouble took such forcible possession of his breast and
mind that Maria saw as clear as daylight that if her father did not
recover his sight, he would die of grief. Maria thereupon straightway
took her father and led him to the house of an Arabian physician of
great learning who dwelt at Toledo, and told the Moor to see if there
were any cure for the old man's sight. The Arabian examined and touched
Juan, and made this and that experiment with him, and everything was
concerted in that the physician swore great oaths by the heel-bone of
Mohammed that there was a complete certainty of curing Juan and making
him to see his daughter again, if only he, the physician, were paid for
the cure with five hundred maravedis all in gold.
A sad termination for such a welcome beginning, for the two unhappy
creatures, Juan and Maria, had neither maravedi nor cuarto in their
money box! So they went thence all downcast, and Maria never ceased
praying to his Holiness Saint John, and to the patron saint of our
country, his Holiness Saint James, to repair to their assistance in this
sad predicament.
"In what way," conjectured she--"in what way can I raise five hundred
maravedis to be quits with the worthy Moor who will give back his sight
to my poor old father? Ah! I have it. I am a pretty maid, and suitors
innumerable, commoners and nobles, pay their addresses and compliments
to me. But all are trifling youths who only care for love-making and
who seek light o' loves rather than spouses according to the law of the
Lord Jesus Christ. I remember, notwithstanding, that opposite our house
lives the sword-cutler, Master Palomo, who is always looking at me and
never speaks to me, and the Virgin assist me, he appears a man of very
good condition for a husband; but what maiden, unless she were
cross-eyed or hunchbacked, could like a man with such a flat nose, with
that skin the color of a ripe date, with those eyes like a dead calf's,
and with those huge hands, which are more like the paws of a wild beast
than the belongings of a person who with them should softly caress the
woman whom Destiny bestows upon him for a companion? 'Tis said that he
is no drunkard, nor cudgeler, nor dallier with women, nor a liar, and
that he is besides possessed of much property and very rich. Pity 'tis
that one who is so ugly and stiff-necked should unite such parts."
Thus turning the matter over and over in her mind, Maria together with
Juan reached their home, where was awaiting them an esquire in a long
mourning robe, who told Maria that the aunt of the Mayor of the city had
died in an honest estate and in the flower of her age, for she had not
yet completed her seventy years, and that the obsequies of this
sexagenarian damsel were to be performed the following day, on which
occasion her coffin would be carried to the church by maidens, and he
was come to ask Maria if she would please to be one of the bearers of
the dead woman, for which she would receive a white robe, and to eat,
and a ducat, and thanks into the bargain.
Maria, since she was a well-brought-up maid, replied that if it seemed
well to her father it would also seem well to her.
Juan accepted, and Maria was rejoiced to be able to make a display of
her hair, for it is well known that the maidens who bear another to the
grave walk with disheveled locks. And when on the morrow the tiring
women of the Mayoress arrayed Maria in a robe white as the driven snow
and fine as the skin of an onion; and when they girt her slender waist
with a sash of crimson silk, the ends of which hung down to the broad
hem of the skirt; and when they crowned her smooth and white forehead
with a wreath of white flowers, I warrant you that, what with the robe
and the sash and the wreath, and the beautiful streaming hair and her
lovely countenance and gracious mien, she seemed no female formed of
flesh and blood, but a superhuman creature or blessed resident of those
shining circles in which dwell the celestial hierarchies. The Mayor and
the other mourners stepped forth to see her, and all unceasingly praised
God, who was pleased to perform such miracles for the consolation and
solace of those living in this world.
There in a corner of the hall, motionless like a heap of broken stones,
stood one of the mutes with the hood of his long cloak covering his
head, so that nothing could be seen but his eyes, the which he kept
fixed on the fair damsel. The latter modestly lowered her eyes to the
ground with her head a little bent and her cheeks red from bashfulness,
although it pleased her no little to hear the praises of her beauty. At
this moment a screen was pushed aside, and there began to appear a huge
bulk of petticoats, which was nothing less than the person of the
Mayoress, for she was with child and drawing near to her time. And when
she saw Maria, she started, opened her eyes a hand's breadth wide, bit
her lips, and called hurriedly for her husband. They stepped aside for a
good while, and then hied them thence, and when they returned the mutes
and maidens had all gone.
While they are burying the defunct lady I must tell you, curious
readers, that the Mayor and Mayoress had been married for many years
without having any children, and they longed for them like the
countryman for rain in the month of May, and at last her hour of bliss
came to the Mayoress, to the great content of her husband.
Now, it was whispered that the said lady had always been somewhat
capricious; judge for yourselves what she would be now in the time of
her pregnancy! And as she was already on the way to fifty, she was more
than mediocrely bald and hairless, and on these very same days had
commissioned a woman barber, who lived in the odor of witchcraft, to
prepare for her some false hair, but it was not to be that of a dead
woman, for the Mayoress said very sensibly that if the hair belonged to
a dead woman who rejoiced in supreme glory, or was suffering for her
sins in purgatory, it would be profanation to wear any pledge of hers,
and if she were in hell, it was a terrible thing to wear on one's person
relics of one of the damned. And when the Mayoress saw the abundant
locks of Maria, she coveted them for herself, and it was for this reason
that she called to the Mayor to speak to her in private and besought him
eagerly to persuade Maria to allow herself to be shorn upon the return
from the burial.
"I warn you," said the Mayor, "that you are desirous of entering upon a
very knotty bargain, for the disheveled girl idolizes her hair in such
wise that she would sooner lose a finger than suffer one of her tresses
to be cut off."
"I warn you," replied the Mayoress, "that if on this very day the head
of this young girl is not shorn smooth beneath my hand as a melon, the
child to which I am about to give birth will have a head of hair on its
face, and if it happens to be a female, look you, a pretty daughter is
in store for you!"
"But bethink yourself that Maria will ask, who knows, a good few crowns
for this shaving."
"Bethink yourself, that if not, your heir or heiress, begotten after so
many years' marriage, will come amiss; and bear in mind, by the way,
that we are not so young as to hope to replace this by another."
Upon this she turned her back to the Mayor, and went to her apartment
crying out: "I want the hair, I must have the hair, and if I do not get
the hair, by my halidom I shall never become a mother."
In the meantime the funeral had taken place without any novelty to
mention, excepting that if in the streets any loose fellow in the crowd
essayed to annoy the fair Maria, the hooded mute, of whom we made
mention before, quickly drew from beneath his cloak a strap, with which
he gave a lash to the insolent rogue without addressing one word to him,
and then walked straight on as if nothing had happened. When all the
mourners returned, the Mayor seized hold of Maria's hand and said to
her:
"And now, fair maid, let us withdraw for a little while into this other
apartment," and thus talking while in motion he brought her into his
wife's private tiring-room, and sat himself down in a chair and bent his
head and stroked his beard with the mien of one who is studying what
beginning to give to his speech. Maria, a little foolish and confused,
remained standing in front of the Mayor, and she also humbly lowered
before him her eyes, black as the sloe; and to occupy herself with
something, gently fingered the ends of the sash which girded her waist
and hung down over her skirt, not knowing what to expect from the grave
mien and long silence of the Mayor, who, raising his eyes and looking up
at Maria, when he beheld her in so modest a posture, devised thence a
motive with which to begin, saying:
"Forsooth, Maria, so modest and pious is thy bearing, that it is easy to
see thou art preparing thyself to become a black wimpled nun. And if it
be so, as I presume it to be, I now offer of my own accord to dispose of
thy entry into the cloisters without any dowry, on condition that thou
dost give me something that thou hast on thy head, and which then will
not be necessary for thee."
"Nay, beshrew me, Sir Mayor," replied Maria, "for I durst not think that
the Lord calls upon me to take that step, for then my poor father would
remain in the world without the staff of his old age."
"Then, now, I desire to give thee some wise counsel, maid Maria. Thou
dost gain thy bread with great fatigue, thou shouldst make use of thy
time as much as is possible. Now one of thy neighbors hath told me, that
in the dressing of thy hair, thou doth waste every day more than an
hour. It would be better far if thou didst spend this hour on thy work
rather than in the dressing and braiding which thou dost to thy hair."
"That is true, Sir Mayor," replied Maria, turning as red as a carnation,
"but, look you, it is not my fault if I have a wealth of tresses, the
combing and plaiting of which necessitates so long a time every
morning."
"I tell thee it is thy fault," retorted the Mayor, "for if thou didst
cut off this mane, thou would save thyself all this combing and
plaiting, and thus would have more time for work, and so gain more
money, and would also give no occasion to people to call thee vain. They
even say that the Devil will some day carry thee off by thy hair. Nay,
do not be distressed, for I already perceive the tears gathering in thy
eyes, for thou hast them indeed very ready at hand; I admonish thee for
thine own good without any self-interest. Cut thy hair off, shear
thyself, shave thyself, good Maria, and to allay the bitterness of the
shearing, I will give fifty maravedis, always on condition that thou
dost hand me over the hair."
When Maria at first heard this offer of so small a sum for this her
hair, it seemed to her a jest of the Mayor's, and she smiled right
sweetly while she dried her tears, repeating:
"You will give me fifty maravedis if I shave myself?"
Now it appeared to the Mayor (who, it is said, was not gifted with all
the prudence of Ulysses) that that smile signified that the maid was not
satisfied with so small a price, and he added:
"If thou will not be content with fifty maravedis, I will give thee a
hundred."
Then Maria saw some hangings of the apartment moving in front of her,
and, perceiving a bulky protuberance, she immediately divined that the
Mayoress was hiding behind there, and that the protuberance was caused
by her portly form. She now discovered the Mayor's design, and that it
was probably a caprice of his spouse, and she made a vow not to suffer
herself to be shorn unless she acquired by these means the five hundred
maravedis needful to pay the Arabian physician who would give her father
back his eyesight.
Then the Mayor raised his price from a hundred maravedis to a hundred
and fifty, and afterward to two hundred, and Maria continued her sweet
smiling, shaking of the head and gestures, and every time that the Mayor
bid higher and Maria feigned to be reluctant, she almost hoped that the
Mayor would withdraw from his proposition, for the great grief it caused
her to despoil herself of that precious ornament, notwithstanding that
by means of it she might gain her father's health. Finally the Mayor,
anxious to conclude the treaty, for he saw the stirring of the
curtains, and knew by them the anxiety and state of mind of the
listener, closed by saying:
"Go to, hussy, I will give thee five hundred maravedis; see, once and
for all, if thou canst agree to these terms."
"Be it so," replied Maria, sighing as if her soul would flee from her
flesh with these words--"be it so, so long that nobody doth know that I
remain bald."
"I will give my word for it," said the Mayoress, stepping from behind
the curtains with a pair of sharp shears in her hands and a wrapper over
her arm.
When Maria saw the scissors she turned as yellow as wax, and when they
told her to sit down on the sacrificial chair, she felt herself grow
faint and had to ask for a drink of water; and when they tied the
wrapper round her throat it is related that she would have immediately
torn it asunder if her courage had not failed her. And when at the first
movement of the shears she felt the cold iron against her skull, I tell
you it seemed to her as if they were piercing her heart with a bright
dagger.
It is possible that she did not keep her head still for a moment while
this tonsuring was taking place; she moved it in spite of herself, now
to one side, now to another, to flee from the clipping scissors, of
which the rude cuts and the creaking axis wounded her ears. Her posture
and movements, however, were of no avail to the poor shorn maiden, and
the pertinacious shearer, with the anxiety and covetousness of a
pregnant woman satisfying a caprice, seized the hair well, or ill, by
handfuls, and went on bravely clipping, and the locks fell on to the
white wrapper, slipping down thence till they reached the ground.
At last the business came to an end, and the Mayoress, who was beside
herself with joy, caressingly passed the palm of her hand again and
again over the maid's bald head from the front to the back, saying:
"By my mother's soul, I have shorn you so regularly and close to root,
that the most skilful barber could not have shorn you better. Get up and
braid the hair while my husband goes to get the money and I your
clothes, so that you can leave the house without any one perceiving it."
The Mayor and Mayoress went out of the room, and Maria, as soon as she
found herself alone, went to look at herself in a mirror that hung
there; and when she saw herself bald she lost the patience she had had
until then, and groaned with rage and struck herself, and even tried to
wrench off her ears, which appeared to her now outrageously large,
although they were not so in reality. She stamped upon her hair and
cursed herself for having ever consented to lose it, without
remembering her father, and just as if she had no father at all. But as
it is a quality of human nature to accept what can not be altered, poor
angry Maria calmed down little by little, and she picked up the hair
from the ground and bound it together and braided it into great ropes,
not without kissing it and lamenting over it many times.
The Mayor and the Mayoress returned, he with the money and she with the
every-day clothes of Maria, who undressed and folded her white robe in a
kerchief, put on her old gown, hid herself with her shawl to the eyes,
and walked, moaning, to the house of the Moor, without noticing that the
man with the hood over his head was following behind her, and that when
she, in a moment of forgetfulness, lowered her shawl through the habit
she had of displaying her tresses, her bald head could be plainly seen.
The Moor received the five hundred maravedis with that good will with
which money is always received, and told Maria to bring Juan Lanas to
his house to stay there so long as there was any risk in the cure. Maria
went to fetch the old man, and kept silence as to her shorn head so as
not to grieve him, and while Juan remained the physician's guest, Maria
dared not leave her home except after nightfall and then well enveloped;
this, however, did not hinder her being followed by the muffled-up man.
One evening the Moor told her in secret that the next morning he would
remove the bandages from Juan's eyes. Maria went to bed that night with
great rejoicing, but thought to herself that when her father saw her
(which would be with no little pleasure) he would be pleased three or
four times more if he could see her with the pretty head-dress which she
used to wear in her native town.
Amidst such caviling she donned the next day her best petticoat and
ribands to hie to the Arabian's house; and while she was sitting down to
shoe herself she of a sudden felt something like a hood closing over her
head, and, turning round, she saw behind her the muffled-up man of
before, who, throwing aside his cloak, discovered himself to be the
sword-cutler, Master Palomo, who, without speaking, presented Maria with
a little Venetian mirror, in which she looked and saw herself with her
own hair and garb in such wise that she wondered for a good time if it
were not a dream that the Mayoress had shorn her. The fact was, that
Master Palomo was a friend of the old woman barber, and had seen in her
house Maria's tresses on the very same afternoon of the morning in which
he saw Maria was bald, and, keeping silence upon the matter, had
wheedled the old woman into keeping Maria's hair for him, and dressing
for the Mayoress some other hair of the same hue which the crone had
from a dead woman--a bargain by which the crafty old dame acquired many
a bright crown.
The story relates that as soon as Maria regained her much-lamented and
sighed-for hair by the hands of the gallant sword-cutler, the Master
appeared to her much less ugly than before, and I do not know if it
tells that from that moment she began to look on him with more favorable
eyes, but in sooth it is a fact that upon his asking her to accept his
escort to the Moor's house, she gave her assent, and the two set out
hand in hand, the maiden holding her head up free from mufflers. As they
both entered the physician's apartment her father threw himself into
Maria's arms, crying:
"Glory to God, I see thee now, my beloved daughter. How tall and
beautiful thou art grown! Verily, it is worth while to become blind for
five years to see one's daughter matured thus! Now that I see daylight
again, it is only right that I should no longer be a burden to thee. I
shall work for myself, for as for thee it is already time for thee to
marry."
"For this very purpose am I come," broke in at this opportune moment the
silent sword-cutler; "I, as you will have already recognized by my
voice, am your neighbor, Master Palomo. I love Maria, and ask you for
her hand."
"Lackaday, Master, but your exterior is not very prepossessing.
Howbeit, if Maria doth accept you, I am content."
"I," replied Maria, wholly abashed, and smoothing the false hair (which
then weighed upon her head and heart like a burden of five
hundred-weight)--"I, so may God enlighten me, for I dare not venture to
reply."
Palomo took her right hand without saying anything, and as he did so
Maria looked at the Master's wrists, and observed the wristbands of his
shirt, neatly embroidered, and with some suspicion and beating of her
heart said to him:
"If you wish to please me, good neighbor, tell me by what seamstress is
this work."
"It is the work," replied the Master, jocularly--"the work of a pretty
maiden who for five years has toiled for my person, albeit she hath not
known it till now."
"Now I perceive," said Maria, "how that all the women who have come to
give me linen to sew and embroider were sent by you, and that is why
they paid me more than is customary."
The Master did not reply, but he smiled and held out his arms to Maria.
Maria threw herself into them, embracing him very caressingly; and Juan
himself said to the two:
"In good sooth, you are made one for the other."
"By my troth, my beloved one," continued the sword-cutler after a while,
"if my countenance had only been more pleasing, I should not have been
silent toward you for so many long days, nor would I have been content
with gazing at you from afar. I should have spoken to you, you would
have made me the confidant of your troubles, and I would have given you
the five hundred maravedis for the cure of your good father." And
whispering softly into her ear, he added, "And then you would not have
passed that evil moment under the hands of the Mayoress. But if you fear
that she may break the promise she made to you to keep silence as to
your cropped head, let us, if it please you, set out for Seville, where
nobody knows you, and thus--"
"No more," exclaimed Maria, resolutely throwing on the ground the hair,
which Juan picked up all astonished. "Send the hair to the Mayoress,
since it was for this and not for that of the dead woman that she paid
so dearly. For I, to cure myself of my vanity, now make a vow, with your
good permission, to go shorn all my life; such artificial adornments are
little befitting to the wives of honest burghers."
"But rely upon it," replied the Master-cutler, "that as soon as it is
known that you have no hair, the girls of the city, envious of your
beauty, will give you the nickname of _Mariquita the Bald_!"
"They may do so," replied Maria, "and that they may see that I do not
care a fig for this or any other nickname, I swear to you that from this
day forth I will not suffer anybody to call me by another name than
_Mariquita the Bald_."
This was the event that rendered so famous throughout all Castile the
beautiful daughter of good Juan Lanas, who in effect married Master
Palomo, and became one of the most honorable and prolific women of the
most illustrious city of Toledo.