piece of vanity. It is so distinguished, so aristocratic to possess a
beautiful hand! I even think, at times, that there is something
symbolic in it. The hand is the instrument by which we execute our
works, the sign of our nobility, the means by which the intellect gives
form and shape to its artistic conceptions, by which it gives reality to
the mandates of its will, by which it exercises the dominion that God
conceded to man over all other creatures. The rough, strong, sinewy,
horny hand, it may be, of a laborer, a workman, testifies nobly to this
dominion, but on its rudest and least intellectual side. The hands of
Pepita, on the contrary, transparent almost, like alabaster, but
rosy-hued, and in which one can almost see the pure and subtle blood
circulate that gives to the veins their faint, bluish tinge--these
hands, I say, with their tapering fingers, and unrivaled purity of
outline, seem the symbol of the magic power, the mysterious dominion,
that the human spirit holds and exercises, without the intervention of
material force, over all those visible things that are the creation of
God by a direct act of his will, and which man, as the instrument of
God, improves and completes. It would be impossible to suppose that any
one with hands like Pepita's should have an impure thought, a gross
desire, an unworthy purpose at variance with the purity of the hands
that would be called upon to put them into effect.
It is unnecessary to say that my father appeared as much charmed with
Pepita, and she as attentive and affectionate toward him, as always;
though her affection seemed, perhaps, of a character more filial than he
could have wished. The fact is, that my father, notwithstanding the
reputation he has of being in general but little respectful or reverent
toward women, treats this one woman with such respect and consideration
that not even Amadis, in the most devoted period of his wooing, showed
greater toward Oriana. Not a single word that might shock the ear, no
indelicate or inopportune compliment, no coarse jest, of the kind the
Andalusians permit themselves so frequently to employ, does he ever
indulge in. Hardly does he dare say to Pepita, "What beautiful eyes you
have!" and, indeed, should he say so, he would only speak the truth, for
Pepita's eyes are large, green as those of Circe, expressive, and well
shaped. And what enhances their beauty is that she seems unaware of all
this, for there is not to be detected in her the slightest wish to
please or attract any one by the sweetness of her glances. One would say
she thought eyes were only made to see with, and for no other purpose;
the contrary of what I suppose to be the opinion, according to what I
have heard, of the greater number of young and pretty women, who use
their eyes as a weapon of offense, or as a sort of electric battery, by
means of which to subdue hearts and captivate them. Not like those,
indeed, are Pepita's eyes, wherein dwell a peace and a serenity as of
heaven. And yet it can not be said that there is anything of coldness in
their glance. Her eyes are full of charity and sweetness. They rest with
tenderness on a ray of light, on a flower, on the commonest object in
nature; but with greater tenderness still, with signs of a softer
feeling, more human and benign, do they rest on her fellow-man, without
his daring to imagine in that tranquil and serene glance, however young
or handsome or conceited he may be, anything more than charity and love
toward a fellow-man, or, at most, a friendly preference.
I sometimes wonder if all this can be studied, and if Pepita be, in
truth, an accomplished actress; but the acting would be so perfect, and
so purposeless the play, that it seems to me, after all, impossible that
this should be the case. Nature herself it is, then, who serves as
teacher and as type for that glance and for those eyes. First, Pepita
loved her mother; then circumstances led her to love Don Gumersindo
through duty, as the companion of her existence; and then, doubtless,
all passion that any earthly object could inspire was extinguished in
her breast, and she loved God, and loved material objects for the love
of God; and so arrived at last at a peaceful and even enviable
condition of spirit, in which, if there be anything to censure, it is
perhaps a certain vanity of which she is herself unconscious. It is very
convenient to love in this mild fashion, without allowing ourselves to
be disturbed by our feelings, to have no passion to combat, to make of
our love and affection for others an addition to, and, as it were, the
complement of self-love.
I ask myself at times if, when I censure this state of mind in Pepita,
it be not myself I censure. How do I know what passes in the soul of
this woman that I should censure her? Perhaps, in thinking I behold her
soul, it is my own soul that I behold. I never had nor have I now any
passion to conquer. All my virtuous inclinations, all my instincts, good
or bad, tend, thanks to your wise teachings, without obstacle or
impediment, to the furtherance of the one purpose. In the fulfillment of
this purpose, I should find not only my noble and disinterested desires,
but my selfish ones also, satisfied--my love of glory, my desire for
knowledge, my curiosity to see distant lands, my longing for name and
fame. All these are centered in the completing of the career upon which
I have entered. I fancy at times that, in this respect, I am more worthy
of censure than Pepita, supposing her even to be worthy of censure at
all.
For, as regards myself, I have been invested with the lesser orders; I
have cast out from my soul the vanities of the world; I have received
the tonsure; I have consecrated myself to the service of the altar. Yet
I have a future full of ambition before me, and I dwell with pleasure on
the thought that this future is within my reach. I please myself in
thinking that the conditions I possess for it are real and efficacious;
though I call humility to my aid, at times, to save me from an
overweening self-confidence.
To what, on the other hand, does this woman aspire, and what are her
hopes? I censure her for the care she takes of her hands, for regarding
her beauty, perhaps, with complacency; I almost censure her for her
neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain
indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her
attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can
not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the
body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with
which I regard the neatness and purity of Pepita? Is this displeasure,
perchance, because she is to be my step-mother? But, perhaps, she does
not wish to be my step-mother! Perhaps she does not love my father! It
is true, indeed, that women are incomprehensible. It may be that in her
secret heart she already feels inclined to return my father's
affection, and marry him, though, in accordance with the saying that
"what is worth much, costs much," she chooses first to torment him with
her affected coldness, to reduce him to unquestioning submission, to put
his constancy to the proof, and then means to end by quietly saying Yes.
We shall see.
What there is no question about is, that our garden-party was decorously
merry. We talked of flowers, of fruit, of grafts, of planting, and of
innumerable other things relating to husbandry, Pepita displaying her
knowledge of agriculture in rivalry with my father, with myself, and
with the reverend vicar, who listens with open mouth to every word she
utters, and declares that in the seventy-odd years of his life, and
during his many wanderings, in the course of which he has traversed
almost the whole of Andalusia, he has never known a woman more discreet
or more judicious in all she thinks and says than she.
On returning home from any of these excursions, I renew my entreaties to
my father to allow me to go back to you, in order that the wished-for
moment may at last arrive in which I shall see myself elevated to the
priesthood. But my father is so pleased to have me with him, he is so
happy here in the village, taking care of his plantations, exercising
the judicial and executive authority of squire, paying homage to Pepita,
and consulting her in everything as his Egeria, that he always finds,
and will find perhaps for months to come, some plausible pretext to keep
me here. Now he has to clarify the wine of I know not how many casks;
now he has to decant more wine still; now it is necessary to hoe around
the vines; now to plow the olive-groves and dig around the roots of the
olives; in fine, he keeps me here against my wishes--though I should not
say "against my wishes," for it gives me great pleasure to be with my
father, who is so good to me.
The evil is, that, with this way of life, I fear I shall grow too
material. I am conscious in my devotions of a certain aridity of spirit.
My religious fervor diminishes; common life begins to penetrate, to
infiltrate itself into my nature; when I pray, I suffer distractions; in
my solitary meditations, when the soul should raise itself up to God, I
can no longer concentrate my thought as formerly. My sensibility of
heart, on the other hand, that refuses to occupy itself with any worthy
object, that does not employ and consume itself on its legitimate ends,
wells forth and, as it were, overflows, at times, for objects and under
circumstances that have something in them of puerile, that seem to me
ridiculous, of which I am ashamed. If I awaken in the silence of the
night and hear by chance some love-lorn rustic singing, to the sound of
his badly played guitar, a verse of a _fandango_ or a _rondeña_, neither
very discreet, nor very poetical, nor very delicate, I am wont to be
affected as if I were listening to some celestial melody; a feeling of
pity, childish and insensate, comes over me at times. The other day the
children of my father's overseer stole a nest full of young sparrows,
and on seeing the little birds, not yet fledged, torn thus violently
from their tender mother, I felt a sudden pang of anguish, and I confess
I could not restrain my tears. A few days before this, a peasant had
brought in from the fields a calf that had broken its leg; he was about
to carry it to the slaughter-house, and came to ask my father what part
of it he wished for his table. My father answered, the head and the
feet, and a few pounds of the flesh. I was touched by compassion on
seeing the calf, and, but that shame prevented me, would have bought it
from the man, in the hope of curing and keeping it alive. In fine, my
dear uncle, nothing less than the confidence I have with you would make
me recount to you these signs of an extravagant and restless emotion, so
that you may judge by them how necessary it is that I should return to
my former way of life, to my studies, to my lofty speculations, and be
at last elevated to the priesthood, in order to provide with its fit and
proper aliment the fire that consumes my soul.
_April 14th._
I continue to lead the same life as usual, and am detained here still by
my father's entreaties.
The greatest pleasure I enjoy, after that of being with him, is my
intercourse and conversation with the reverend vicar, with whom I am in
the habit of taking long walks. It seems incredible that a man of his
age--for he must be near eighty--should be so strong and active, and so
good a walker. I grow tired sooner than he; and there is no rough road,
no wild place, no rugged hill-top, in the neighborhood, where we have
not been.
The reverend vicar is reconciling me, in a great degree, with the
Spanish clergy, whom I have stigmatized, at times, in speaking with you,
as but little enlightened. How much more to be admired, I often say to
myself, is this man, so full of candor and benevolence, so simple and
affectionate, than one who may have read many books, but in whose soul
the flame of charity burns less brightly than, fed by the purest and
sincerest faith, it does in his! Do not suppose from this that the
understanding of the reverend vicar is a limited one; his is a spirit
uncultured, indeed, but clear and sagacious. At times I fancy that the
good opinion I entertain of him may be due to the attention with which
he listens to me; but, if this be not the case, it seems to me that he
reasons on every subject with remarkable perspicacity, and that he knows
how to unite an ardent love of our holy religion with an appreciation of
all the good things that modern civilization has brought us. I am
charmed, above all, by the simplicity, the sobriety of sentiment, the
naturalness, in short, with which the reverend vicar performs the most
disagreeable works of charity. There is no misfortune he does not seek
to alleviate, no suffering he does not strive to console, no error he
does not endeavor to repair, no necessity which he does not hasten
solicitously to relieve.
In all this, it must be confessed, he has a powerful auxiliary in
Pepita, whose piety and compassionate disposition he is always
extolling.
This species of homage which the vicar pays to Pepita is founded upon,
and goes side by side with, the practice of a thousand good works--the
giving of alms, prayer, public worship, and the care of the poor. Pepita
not only gives alms for the poor, but also gives money for _novenas_,
sermons, and other observances of the Church. If the altars of the
parish are gay, at times, with beautiful flowers, these flowers are due
to the bounty of Pepita who has sent them from her garden. If Our Lady
of Sorrows, instead of her old worn cloak, wears to-day a resplendent
and magnificent mantle of black velvet, embroidered with silver, Pepita
it is who has paid for it.
These, and other similar acts of beneficence, the vicar is always
extolling and magnifying. Thus it is, when I am not speaking of my own
aims, of my vocation, of my studies, to hear about which gives the
reverend vicar great delight, and keeps him hanging upon my words, when
it is he who speaks and I who listen, that, after a thousand turns, he
always ends by speaking of Pepita Ximenez. And of whom, indeed, should
the reverend vicar speak to me? His intercourse with the doctor, with
the apothecary, with the rich husbandmen of the place, hardly gives
motive for three words of conversation. As the reverend vicar possesses
the very rare quality, in one bred in the country, of not being fond of
scandal, or of meddling in other people's affairs, he has no one to
speak of but Pepita, whom he visits frequently, and with whom, as may be
gathered from what he says, he is in the habit of holding the most
familiar colloquies.
I know not what books Pepita Ximenez has read, nor what education she
may have received; but, from what the reverend vicar says, it may be
deduced that she possesses a restless soul and an inquiring spirit, to
which a multiplicity of questions and problems present themselves that
she longs to elucidate and resolve, bringing them for that purpose
before the reverend vicar, whom she thus puts into a state of agreeable
perplexity.
This man, educated in country fashion, a priest whose breviary is, as
one may say, his library, possesses an understanding open to the light
of truth, but is wanting in original power, and thus the problems and
questions Pepita presents to him open before him new horizons and new
paths, nebulous and vague indeed, and which he did not even imagine to
exist, which he is not able to follow with exactitude, but whose
vagueness, novelty, and mystery enchant him.
The vicar is not ignorant of the danger of all this, and that he and
Pepita expose themselves to fall, without knowing it, into some heresy;
but he tranquillizes his conscience with the thought that, although very
far from being a great theologian, he has his catechism at his fingers'
ends, he has confidence in God that he will illuminate his spirit, and
he hopes not to be led into error, and takes it for granted that Pepita
will follow his counsels, and never deviate from the right path.
Thus do both form to themselves a thousand poetical conceptions, full of
charm, although vague, of all the mysteries of our religion and the
articles of our faith. Great is the devotion they profess to the most
holy Virgin, and I am astonished to see how they are able to blend the
popular idea or conception of the Virgin with some of the sublimest
theological thoughts.
From what the vicar relates, I can perceive that Pepita Ximenez's soul,
in the midst of its apparent calmness and serenity, is transfixed by the
sharp arrow of suffering; there is in it a love of purity in
contradiction with her past life. Pepita loved Don Gumersindo as her
companion, as her benefactor, as the man to whom she owed everything;
but she is tortured, she is humiliated by the recollection that Don
Gumersindo was her husband.
In her devotion to the Virgin there may be detected a feeling of painful
humiliation, of suffering, of sadness, produced by the recollection of
her ignoble and childless marriage.
Even in her adoration of the _Infant Jesus_, in the beautiful carved
image she has in her house, there is something of maternal love that
lacks an object on which to expend its tenderness, of maternal love that
seeks this object in a being not born of sin and impurity.
The vicar says that Pepita worships the _Infant Jesus_ as her God, but
that she also loves him with the maternal tenderness she would feel for
a son, if she had one, and whom she had no cause to regard with any
other feeling than affection. The vicar sees that Pepita, in her prayers
to the Holy Virgin, and in her care of her beautiful image of the Child
Jesus, has in her thoughts the ideal Mother and the ideal Son, both
alike immaculate.
I confess that I know not what to think of all these singularities. I
know so little of women! What the vicar tells me of Pepita surprises me;
and yet, though on the whole I believe her to be good, rather than the
contrary, she inspires me at times with a certain fear on my father's
account. Notwithstanding his fifty-five years, I believe that he is in
love; and Pepita, although virtuous through conviction, may, without
premeditating or intending it, be an instrument of the spirit of evil,
may practice a species of coquetry, involuntary and instinctive, more
irresistible, efficacious, and fatal, than that which proceeds from
premeditation, calculation, and reasoning.
Who knows, I say to myself at times, notwithstanding her prayers, her
secluded and devout life, her alms and her gifts to the churches, on all
which is based the affection that the vicar entertains for her, if there
be not also an earthly spell, if there be not something of diabolical
magic in the arts she practices, and with which she deludes and beguiles
this simple vicar, so that he thinks and speaks only of her on all
occasions?
The very influence that Pepita exercises over a man so incredulous as my
father, a man whose nature is so vigorous and so little sentimental,
has in it, in truth, something extraordinary.
Nor do the good works of Pepita suffice to explain the respect and
affection with which she inspires these country-people in general. On
the rare occasions on which she leaves her house, the little children
run to meet her and kiss her hand; the young girls smile, and salute her
with affection; and the men take off their hats, as she passes, and
incline themselves before her with the most spontaneous reverence and
the most natural good-feeling.
Pepita Ximenez, whom many of the villagers have known since she was
born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with
her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don
Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon
as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant
land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her fellow-townspeople
with affectionate esteem, and something like loving admiration.
I see that I am inadvertently falling into the same fault that I censure
in the reverend vicar, and that I speak to you of nothing but Pepita.
But this is natural. Here no one speaks of anything else. One would
suppose the whole place to be full of the spirit, of the thought, of
the image, of this singular woman, in regard to whom I have not been
able to determine if she be an angel or an accomplished coquette, full
of _instinctive astuteness_, although the words may seem to involve a
contradiction. For I am fully convicted in my own mind that this woman
does not play the coquette, nor seek to gain the good-will of others, in
order to gratify her vanity.
Pepita's soul is full of candor and sincerity. One has only to see her,
to be convinced of this. Her dignified and graceful bearing, her slender
figure, the smoothness and clearness of her forehead head, the soft and
pure light of her eyes, all blend into a fitting harmony, in which there
is not a single discordant note.
How deeply I regret having come to this place, and having remained here
so long! I had passed my life in your house, and in the seminary; I had
seen and known no one but my companions and my teachers; I knew nothing
of the world but through speculation and through theory; and suddenly I
find myself thrown into the midst of this world, though it be only that
of a village; and distracted from my studies, meditations, and prayers
by a thousand profane objects.
_April 20th._
Your last letters, dearest uncle, have been a welcome consolation to my
soul. Benevolent, as always, you admonish and enlighten me with prudent
and useful reflections.
It is true, my impetuosity is worthy of reprobation. I wish to attain my
aims, without making use of the means requisite to their attainment; I
wish to reach the journey's end, without first treading, step by step,
the rough and thorny path.
I complain of an aridity of spirit in prayer, of inability to fix my
thoughts, of a proneness to dissipate my tenderness on childish objects;
I desire to elevate myself to and be absorbed in God, to attain at once
to the contemplation of essential being, and yet I disdain mental prayer
and rational and discursive meditation. How, without attaining to its
purity, how, without beholding its light, can I hope to enjoy the
delights of divine love?
I am by nature arrogant, and I shall therefore endeavor to humiliate
myself in my own eyes, in order that God may not suffer the spirit of
evil, in punishment of my pride and presumption, to cover me with
humiliation.
I do not believe that it would be easy for me to fall into a lapse from
virtue so shameful and unexpected as the one you fear. I do not confide
in myself; I confide in the mercy of God and in his grace; and I trust
they will not fail me.
Nevertheless, you are altogether right in advising me to abstain from
forming ties of friendship with Pepita Ximenez; I am far enough from
being bound to her by any tie.
I am not ignorant that, when those holy men and saints, who should serve
us as models and examples, were bound in close intimacy and affection
with women, it was in their old age, or when they were already proved
and disciplined by penitence, or when there existed a noticeable
disproportion in years between them and the pious women they elected to
be their friends; as is related of St. Jerome and St. Paulina, and of
St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. And even thus, even with a purely
spiritual affection, I know it is possible to sin through excess. For
God only should occupy the soul as Lord and Spouse, and any other being
who dwells in it should do so but as the friend, the servant, the
creation of the Spouse, and as one in whom the Spouse delights.
Do not think, however, that I vaunt myself on being invincible, that I
despise danger, and defy and seek it. He who loves danger shall perish
therein. And if the prophet-king, though so agreeable in the sight of
God and so favored of him, and Solomon, notwithstanding his supernatural
and God-given wisdom, were troubled and fell into sin because God turned
his face away from them, what have not I to fear, miserable sinner that
I am, so young, so inexperienced in the wiles of the devil, and so
wavering and unpracticed in the combats of virtue!
Filled with a salutary fear of God, and imbued with a fitting distrust
of my own weakness, I shall not be forgetful of your counsels and your
prudent admonitions; and I shall pray, meantime, with fervor, and
meditate on holy things, in order to abhor the things of the world, in
so far as they deserve abhorrence; but of this I may assure you: that,
however deeply I penetrate into the depths of my conscience, however
carefully I search its inmost recesses, I have thus far discovered
nothing to make me share your fears.
If my former letters are full of encomiums on the virtue of Pepita, it
is the fault of my father and of the reverend vicar, and not mine; for,
at first, far from being friendly to this woman, I was unjustly
prejudiced against her.