secretly rejoiced, though for no other reason than the fear of not being
able to sustain the conversation, and of saying a great many foolish
things, on account of the little experience I have had in conversing
with women.
After our walk my father's servants spread before us on the fresh grass,
in the most charming spot beside the brook, a rural and abundant
collation.
The conversation was very animated, and Pepita sustained her part in it
with much discretion and intelligence. My cousin Currito returned to his
jests about my manner of riding and the meekness of my mule. He called
me a theologian, and said that, seated on mule-back, I looked as if I
were dispensing blessings. This time, however, being now firmly resolved
to learn to ride, I answered his jests with sarcastic indifference. I
was silent, nevertheless, with respect to the promise I had just made
Pepita. The latter, doubtless thinking as I did--although we had come to
no understanding in the matter--that silence for the present was
necessary to insure the complete success of the surprise that I would
create afterward by my knowledge of horsemanship, said nothing of our
conversation. Thus it happened, naturally and in the simplest manner,
that a secret existed between us; and it produced in my mind a singular
effect.
Nothing else worth telling occurred during the day.
In the afternoon we returned to the village in the same manner in which
we had left it. Yet, seated on my easy-going mule and at the side of my
aunt Casilda, I did not experience the same fatigue or sadness as
before.
During the whole journey I listened without weariness to my aunt's
stories, amusing myself at times in conjuring up idle fancies. Nothing
of what passes in my soul shall be concealed from you. I confess, then,
that the figure of Pepita was, as it were, the center, or rather the
nucleus and focus of these idle fancies.--
The noonday vision in which she had appeared to me in the shadiest and
most sequestered part of the grove, brought to my memory all the
visions, holy and unholy, of wondrous beings, of a condition superior to
ours, that I had read of in sacred authors and in the profane classics.
Pepita appeared to the eyes and on the stage of my fancy in foe, leafy
seclusion of the grove not as she rode before us on horseback but in an
ideal and ethereal fashion, as to Æneas his mother, as Minerva to
Callimachus, as the sylph who, afterward became the mother of Libusa to
the Bohemian Kroco, as Diana to the son of Aristæus, as the angels in
the valley of Mamre to the patriarch, as the hippocentaur to St. Anthony
in the solitude of the wilderness.
That the vision of Pepita should assume in my mind something of a
supernatural character, seems to me no more to be wondered at than any
of these. For an instant, seeing the consistency of the illusion, I
thought myself tempted by evil spirits; but I reflected that in the few
moments, during which I had been alone with Pepita near the brook of the
Solana, nothing had occurred that was not natural and commonplace; that
it was afterward, as I rode along quietly on my mule, that some demon,
hovering invisible around me, had suggested these extravagant fancies.
That night I told my father of my desire to learn to ride. I did not
wish to conceal from him that it was Pepita who had suggested this
desire. My father was greatly rejoiced; he embraced me, he kissed me, he
said that now not you only would be my teacher, but that he also would
have the pleasure of teaching me something. He ended by assuring me that
in two or three weeks he would make of me the best horseman of all
Andalusia; able to go to Gibraltar for contraband goods and come back
laden with tobacco and cotton, after eluding the vigilance of the
custom-house officers; fit, in a word, to astonish the riders who show
off their horsemanship in the fairs of Seville and Mairena, and worthy
to press the flanks of Babrecá, Bucephalus, or even of the horses of the
sun themselves, if they should by chance descend to earth, and I could
catch them by the bridle.
I don't know what you will think of this notion of my learning to ride,
but I take it for granted you will see nothing wrong in it.
If you could but see how happy my father is, and how he delights in
teaching me! Since the day after the excursion I told you of, I take two
lessons daily. There are days on which the lesson is continuous, for we
spend from morning till night on horseback. During the first week the
lessons took place in the court-yard of the house, which is unpaved, and
which served us as a riding-school.
We now ride out into the country, but manage so that no one shall see
us. My father does not want me to show myself on horseback in public
until I am able to astonish every one by my fine appearance in the
saddle, as he says. If the vanity natural to a father does not deceive
him, this, it seems, will be very soon, for I have a wonderful aptitude
for riding.
"It is easy to see that you are my son!" my father exclaims with joy, as
he watches my progress.
My father is so good that I hope you will pardon him the profane
language and irreverent jests in which he indulges at times. I grieve
for this at the bottom of my soul, but I endure it with patience. These
constant and long-continued lessons have reduced me to a pitiable
condition with blisters. My father enjoins me to write to you that they
are caused by my flagellations.
As he declares that within a few weeks I shall be an accomplished
horseman, and he does not desire to be superannuated as a master, he
proposes to teach me other accomplishments of a somewhat irregular
character, and sufficiently unsuited to a future priest. At times he
proposes to train me in throwing the bull in order that he may take me
afterward to Seville, where, with lance in hand, on the plains of
Tablada, I shall make the braggarts and the bullies stare. Then he
recalls his own youthful days, when he belonged to the body-guard, and
declares that he will look up his foils, gloves, and masks, and teach me
to fence. And, finally, as my father flatters himself that he can wield
the Sevillian knife better than any one else, he has offered to teach me
even this accomplishment also.
You can already imagine the answer I make to all this nonsense. My
father replies that, in the good old times, not only the priests but
even the bishops themselves rode about the country on horseback, putting
infidels to the sword. I rejoin that this might happen in the dark ages,
but that in our days the ministers of the Most High should know how to
wield no other weapons than those of persuasion. "And what if persuasion
be not enough?" rejoins my father. "Do you think it would be amiss to
re-enforce argument with a few good blows of a cudgel?" The complete
missionary, according to my father's opinion, should know how, on
occasion, to have recourse to these heroic measures, and, as my father
has read a great many tales and romances, he cites various examples in
support of his opinion. He cites in the first place St. James, who, on
his white horse, without ceasing to be an apostle, puts the Moors to the
sword more frequently than he convinces or preaches to them; he cites a
certain Señor de la Vega who, being sent on an embassy to Boabdil by
Ferdinand and Isabella, became entangled in a theological discussion
with the Moors in the court-yard of the Lions, and, being at the end of
his arguments, drew his sword and fell upon them with fury in order to
complete their conversion; and he finally cites the Biscayan hidalgo,
Don Inigo de Loyola, who, in a controversy he had with a Moor, regarding
the purity of the Holy Virgin, growing weary at last of the impious and
horrible blasphemies with which the aforesaid Moor contradicted him,
fell upon him, sword in hand, and, if he had not taken to his heels,
would have enforced conviction upon his soul in a terrible fashion. In
regard to the incident relating to St. Ignatius, I answer my father that
this was before the saint became a priest; and in regard to the other
examples, I answer that historians are not agreed in the matter.
In short, I defend myself as best I can against my father's jests, and I
content myself with being a good horseman, without learning other
accomplishments unsuited to the clergy; although my father assures me
that not a few of the Spanish clergy understand and practice them with
frequency in Spain, even in our own day, with a view to contributing to
the triumph of the faith, and to the preservation or the restoration of
the unity of the Church.
I am grieved to the soul by this levity of my father's, and that he
should speak with irreverence and jestingly about the most serious
things; but a respectful son is not called upon to go further than I do
in repressing his somewhat Voltairean freedom of speech. I say
_Voltairean,_ because I am not able to describe it by any other word. At
heart my father is a good Catholic, and this thought consoles me.
Tuesday was the Feast of the Cross, and the village presented a very
animated appearance. In each street were six or seven May-crosses,
covered with flowers, but none of them was so beautiful as that placed
by Pepita at the door of her house. It was adorned by a perfect cascade
of flowers.
In the evening we went to an entertainment at the house of Pepita. The
cross which had stood at the door was now placed in a large saloon on
the ground-floor, in which there is a piano, and Pepita presented us
with a simple and poetic spectacle, one that I had seen when a child,
but had since forgotten.
From the upper part of the cross hung down seven bands or broad ribbons,
two white, two green, and three red, the symbolic colors of the
theological virtues. Eight children of five or six years old,
representing the seven sacraments, and holding the seven ribbons that
hung from the cross, performed with great skill a species of
contra-dance. The sacrament of baptism was represented by a child
wearing the white robe of a catechumen; ordination, by another child as
a priest; confirmation, by a little bishop; extreme unction, by a
pilgrim with staff and scrip, the latter filled with shells; marriage,
by a bride and bridegroom, and penance, by a Nazarene with cross and
crown of thorns.
The dance was a series of reverences, steps, evolutions, and
genuflections, rather than a dance, performed to the sound of very
tolerable music, something like a march, which the organist played, not
without skill, on the piano.
The little dancers, children of the servants or retainers of Pepita,
after playing their parts, went away to bed amid compliments and
caresses.
The entertainment, in the course of which we were served with
refreshments, continued till twelve; the refreshments were sirup served
in little cups, and afterward chocolate with sponge-cake, and meringues
and water.
Since the return of spring, Pepita's seclusion and retirement are being
gradually abandoned, at which my father is greatly rejoiced. In future,
Pepita will receive every night, and my father desires that I shall be
one of the guests.
Pepita has left off mourning, and now appears more lovely and attractive
than ever, in the lighter fabrics appropriate to the season, which is
almost summer. She still dresses, however, with extreme simplicity.
I cherish the hope that my father will not now detain me here beyond the
end of this month at farthest. In June we shall both join you in the
city, and you shall then see how, far from Pepita, to whom I am
indifferent, and who will remember me neither kindly nor unkindly, I
shall have the pleasure of embracing you, and attaining at last to the
happiness of being ordained.
_May 7th._
Pepita, as I mentioned to you before, receives every evening, from nine
to twelve.
Four or five married ladies of the village, and as many more unmarried
ones, including Aunt Casilda, are frequent visitors; as well as six or
seven young men, who play at forfeits with the girls. Three or four
engagements are the natural result.
The sedate portion of the company are the same as usual. These are, as
one may say, the high functionaries of the village--my father, who is
the squire, the apothecary, the doctor, and the reverend vicar.
I am at a loss to know in which division to place myself. If I join the
young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and
flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the _rôle_ of a
looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I
know are the _burro ciego_, the _burro con vista_, and a little _tute_
or _brisca cruzada_.
The best course for me to pursue would be to absent myself from the
house altogether, but my father will not hear of this. By doing so,
according to him, I should make myself ridiculous.
My father shows many signs of wonder when he sees my ignorance in
certain things. That I should not know how to play even ombre fills him
with astonishment.
"Your uncle has brought you up quite out of the world," he says to me,
"cramming you with theology, and leaving you in the dark about
everything else you ought to know. For the very reason that you are to
be a priest, and can neither dance nor make love in society, it is
necessary that you should know how to play ombre. Otherwise how are you
going to spend your time, unhappy boy?"
To these and other arguments of a like land I have been obliged to
yield, and my father is teaching me at home to play ombre, so that, as
soon as I have learned it, I may play it at Pepita's. He wanted also, as
I already told you, to teach me to fence, and afterward to smoke and
shoot and throw the bar; but I have consented to nothing of all this.
"What a difference," my father exclaims, "between your youth and mine!"
And then he adds, laughing:
"In substance it is the same thing. I, too, had my canonical hours, in
the quarters of the life-guard: a cigar was the censer; a pack of cards,
the hymn-book; and there were never wanting other devotions and
exercises of a more or less spiritual character."
Although you had warned me of this levity of disposition of my father,
and on account of it I have spent with you twelve years of my life--from
the age of ten to that of twenty-two--yet the sayings of his, altogether
too free at times, perturb and mortify me. But what is to be done?
Although I can not reprove him for making use of them, I do not, on the
other hand, applaud or laugh at them. The strangest part of it is that
my father is altogether another person when he is in the house of
Pepita. Not even by chance does a single phrase, a single jest of the
kind he is so prodigal of at other times escape from him then. At
Pepita's my father is politeness itself. He seems, too, to become every
day more attached to her, and to cherish greater hopes of success.
My father continues greatly pleased with me as his pupil in
horsemanship. He declares that in four or five days I shall have
mastered the art, and that I shall then mount Lucero, a black horse bred
from an Arab horse and a mare of the race of Guadalcazar, full of fire
and spirit, and trained to all manner of curvetings.
"Whoever succeeds in getting on the back of Lucero," my father says to
me, "may venture to compete in horsemanship with the centaurs
themselves; and that you shall do very soon."
Although I spend the whole day out of doors on horseback, in the
club-house, or at Pepita's, I yet steal a few hours from slumber,
sometimes voluntarily, sometimes because I can not sleep, to meditate on
my situation and to examine my conscience. The image of Pepita is always
present to my mind. "Can this be love?" I ask myself.
The moral obligation I am under, the vow I have made to consecrate
myself to the service of the altar, although not confirmed, is
nevertheless, in my eyes, full and binding. If anything opposed to the
fulfillment of this vow has entered into my soul, it must be combated.
I note, too, and do not accuse me of arrogance because I mention this to
you, that the empire of my will, which you have taught me to exercise,
is complete over my senses. While Moses on the top of Mount Sinai
conversed with God, the people on the plain below adored, rebellious,
the golden calf. Notwithstanding my youth, my spirit has no fears of
incurring a like rebelliousness. I might converse with God in full
security, if the enemy did not come to attack me in the sanctuary
itself. But the image of Pepita presents itself to my soul. It is a
spirit that makes war against my spirit. It is the idea of her beauty in
all its spiritual purity, that stands before the sanctuary of the souls
where God resides, and prevents me from reaching him.
I do not shut my eyes to the truth, however; I can see clearly; I can
reason; I do not deceive myself. Above and beyond this spiritual
inclination that draws me to Pepita, is the love of the Infinite and of
the Eternal. Although I represent Pepita to myself as an idea, as a
poem, it is still the idea, the poetry of something finite, limited,
concrete; while the love of God and the conception of God embrace
everything. But, notwithstanding all my efforts, I am unable to give
form in my mind to this supreme conception--this object of the highest
love--in order that it may combat the image, the memory of the frail and
ephemeral reality that continually besets me. Fervently do I implore
Heaven to awaken within me the power of the imagination, that it may
create a likeness, a symbol of this conception, that shall be
all-embracing, and absorb and efface the image of Pepita. This highest
conception, on which I desire to center my love, is vague, shadowy,
indescribable, like the blackness of darkness; while Pepita's image
presents itself to me in clearly defined outlines, bright, palpable,
luminous with the subdued light that may be borne by the eyes of the
spirit, not bright with the intense light that for the eyes of the
spirit is as darkness.
Every other consideration, every other object is of no avail to destroy
her image. Between the crucifix and me it places itself; between the
most sacred image of the Virgin and me it places itself; on the page of
the spiritual book I am reading it also comes to place itself.
Yet I do not believe that my soul is invaded by what in the world is
called love. And even if this were the case, I should do battle against
this love, and conquer in the end.
The daily sight of Pepita, the hearing her praises sounded continually,
even by the reverend vicar, preoccupy me; they turn my spirit toward
profane things, and withdraw it from its proper meditations. But, no--I
do not yet love Pepita; I will go away from here and forget her.
While I remain here, I shall do battle with valor. I shall wrestle with
the Lord in order to prevail with him by love and submission. My cries
shall reach him like burning arrows, and shall cast down the buckler
wherewith he defends himself from the eyes of my soul. I shall fight
like Israel in the silence of the night; and the Lord shall wound me in
the thigh, and shall humble me in the conflict in order that, being
vanquished, I may become the victor.
_May 12th._
Before I had any intention of doing so, my dear uncle, my father
persuaded me to ride Lucero. Yesterday, at six in the morning, I mounted
the beautiful wild creature, as my father calls Lucero, and we set out
for the country.
I rode so well, I kept so firm a seat, and looked to such advantage on
the superb animal, that my father could not resist the temptation of
showing off his pupil; and, about eleven in the morning, after resting
at a grange he owns, half a league distant from here, he insisted on our
returning to the village and entering it by the most frequented street,
which we did, our horses' hoofs clattering loudly against the
paving-stones. It is needless to say that we rode by the house of
Pepita, who for some time past is to be seen occasionally in her window,
and who was then seated at the grating of a lower window, behind the
green blind.
Hardly had Pepita heard the noise we made than, lifting up her eyes and
seeing us, she rose, laid down the sewing she had in her hands, and set
herself to observe us. Lucero, who has the habit, as I learned
afterward, of prancing and curveting when he passes the house of Pepita,
began to show off, and to rear and plunge. I tried to quiet him, but, as
there was something unfamiliar to him in the ways of his present rider,
as well as in the rider himself, whom, perhaps, he regarded with
contempt, he grew more and more unmanageable, and began to neigh and
prance, and even to kick; but I remained firm and serene, showing him
that I was his master, chastising him with the spur, touching his breast
with the whip, and holding him in by the bridle. Lucero, who had almost
stood up on his hind-legs, now humbled himself so far as to bend his
knees gently and make a reverence.
The crowd of idlers who had gathered around us broke into boisterous
applause. My father called out to them:
"A good lesson that for our braggarts and blusterers!"
And, observing afterward that Currito--who has no other occupation than
to amuse himself--was among the crowd, he addressed him in these words:
"Look at that, you rascal! Look at the theologian now, and see if you
don't stare with wonder, instead of laughing at him."
And, in fact, there Currito stood stock-still with amazement, and unable
to utter a word.
My triumph was great and assured, although unsuited to my character. The
unfitness of the triumph covered me with confusion. Shame brought the
blood to my cheeks. I must have turned as red as scarlet, or redder,
when I saw that Pepita was applauding and saluting me graciously, while
she smiled and clapped her beautiful hands.
In short, I have been adjudged a man of nerve, and a horseman of the
first rank.
My father could not be prouder or more happy than he is; he declares
that he is completing my education, that in me you have sent him a book
full of wisdom, but unconnected and unbound, which he is now making a
fair copy, and putting it between covers.
On two occasions I played _hombre_ with Pepita. Learning _hombre_, if
that be a part of the binding and the correcting, is already done with.
The night after my equestrian feat Pepita received me with enthusiasm,
and--what she had never ventured nor perhaps desired to do before--she
gave me her hand.
Do not suppose that I did not call to mind what so many moralists and
ascetics recommend in like cases, but in my inmost thoughts I believed
they exaggerated the danger. Those words of the Holy Spirit, that it is
as dangerous to touch a woman as a scorpion, seem to me to have been
said in another sense. In pious books, no doubt, many phrases and
sentences of the Scriptures are, with the best intentions, interpreted
harshly. How are we to understand otherwise the saying that the beauty
of woman, this perfect work of God, is always the cause of perdition? Or
how are we to understand, in a universal and invariable sense, that
woman is more bitter than death? How are we to understand that he who
touches a woman, on whatever occasion or with whatsoever thought, shall
not be without stain?
In fine, I made answer rapidly within my mind to these and other similar
counsels, and took the hand that Pepita kindly extended to me and
pressed it in mine. Its softness made me comprehend all the better the
delicacy and beauty of the hand that until now I had known only by
sight.
According to the usages of the world, the hand, once given, should be
given always thereafter on entering a room and on taking leave. I hope
that in this ceremony, in this evidence of friendship, in this
manifestation of kindness, given and accepted in purity of heart, and
without any mixture of levity, you will see nothing either evil or
dangerous.
As my father is often obliged of an evening to see the overseer and
others of the country-people, and is seldom free until half-past ten or
eleven, I take his place beside Pepita at the ombre-table. The reverend
vicar and the notary are generally the other partners. We each stake a
penny a point, so that not more than a dollar or two changes hands in
the game.