MORE SERVICES AND REWARDS.
The month of June, 1724, was drawing to a close. Tito had been a
shoemaker two years; but it must not be imagined that he was resigned
to his fate. He was obliged to work night and day to gain a living, and
regretted hourly the consequent injury to his hands. When he lacked
customers, he spent his time reading, never by any chance throughout the
entire week, crossing the threshold of his secluded retreat. There he
lived alone, taciturn, hypochondriacal, without other diversion than that
of hearing his old friend praise the beauty of Crispina Lopez, or the
generosity of the Count of Rionuevo.
On Sundays, however, his life completely changed. He would then dress
in his old costume of page (carefully laid away during the rest of the
week), and go to the steps of the cathedral of San Millán, close by the
palace of Monteclaro, where in former days his loved Elena attended
mass.
[Illustration]
He persevered in this for two years without seeing her. Instead, he
met students and pages whom he had known as a child, who now kept him
posted in regard to all affairs of the higher circles which he no
longer frequented. From them he learned that Elena was still in France.
Of course none of them suspected that at home Tito was a cobbler.
All believed him to be the beneficiary of a legacy from the Count of
Rionuevo, who had manifested too much affection for him in life, for them
to suppose that he had neglected to provide for his future.
So time passed, and one feast day, on the date mentioned at the beginning
of the chapter, he was waiting at the door of the cathedral. He saw two
elegantly dressed ladies arrive with a grand retinue of servants, who
passed so close to him, that in one of them he was able to recognize his
bitter enemy, the Countess of Rionuevo. He was about to conceal himself
in the crowd of spectators, when her companion raised her veil, and—oh
happiness!—he recognized his beloved Elena, the sweet cause of his bitter
sorrows. The poor boy approached her, uttering a frantic cry of joy.
Elena, recognizing him at once, exclaimed with the same tenderness as of
old:
“Tito!”
But the Countess, grasping her arm, turned toward Tito, and said in a low
voice, “I told you that I was satisfied with my present shoemaker. Leave
me in peace!”
Tito, turning deathly white, fell senseless to the stone floor, as Elena
and the Countess entered the church.
Two or three students who had witnessed the scene, laughed uproariously,
without thoroughly understanding it.
He was carried home, there to suffer another blow; his old friend, who
constituted his entire family, had died of old age during his absence.
He was seized with an attack of brain fever which brought him to the
very jaws of death. When he returned to consciousness, he found that
a neighbor, poorer even than himself, had taken entire charge of him
during his long illness; but had been obliged to sell his furniture, his
tools, his books, his home, and even his holiday attire, to pay for his
medicines and physician.
At the end of two months, covered with rags, hungry, weakened by illness,
penniless, and without family or friends, without even that old friend
who had loved him as a mother, and, worse than all, without the hope of
ever approaching his dreamed of and blessed Elena, Tito abandoned his
home (already the property of another shoemaker), and took by chance the
first road, without knowing where he was going, what to do, to whom to
apply, how to work or how to live.
It was raining: one of those gloomy afternoons, when even the sad ringing
of bells seems to give warning of the approach of death; when the sky is
covered with clouds and the earth with mud; when the damp and piercing
air smothers all hope in the human breast; when the poor are hungry, the
orphans cold, and the unhappy envious of those already dead.
Night fell, and Tito, who still had some fever, crouched down in the
corner of a dark doorway, giving way to bitter tears.... The idea of
death then presented itself to his fevered imagination, not as a horror
or fearful possibility, but pleasantly, as something welcome and longed
for.
The unfortunate boy folded his arms across his breast, as if to guard
that sweet image which brought him so much rest, consolation and
happiness; and in making this movement, his hand touched some hard object
in the pocket of his miserable coat.
The reaction was quick; the idea of life, and of its preservation,
was now uppermost in his brain; he grasped with all his strength that
unexpected succor which came to him on the very brink of the grave.
Hope breathed in his ear a thousand seductive promises, which induced
him to wonder if that hard thing he touched could be money, an enormous
precious stone, or a talisman; something, in fact, which might bring him
life, fortune, happiness and fame (all of which to him meant the love of
Elena de Monteclaro); and putting his hand in his pocket he whispered to
death:—“Wait!”
But ah! that hard thing was nothing but a vial of vitriol with which he
had mixed blacking, the last that remained to him of his shoemaker’s
outfit, which by some inexplicable accident had found its way to his
pocket.
Consequently when he believed that he had discovered a means of
salvation, the unhappy boy found in his hand a poison, and one of the
most deadly.
“There is no hope!” said he, raising the vial to his lips. But a hand,
cold as ice, was placed upon his shoulder, and a voice, sweet, tender and
divine, murmured these words:
“Friend! Wait!”