DIGRESSION, WHICH BEARS LITTLE ON THE STORY.
After leaving the inn, Tito began to observe such a change in himself,
and in his whole nature, that had it not been for the support of an arm
as strong as that of Death, he would undoubtedly have fallen lifeless
to the ground. He felt that which no other man has ever experienced—the
double motion of the Earth around the Sun, and that about its own axis!
But with all this he did not feel the beating of his own heart. Any one
who could have examined the young shoemaker’s countenance, illumined by
the Moon’s bright light, would have seen at a glance that its melancholy
beauty, which had always made him noticeable, was enhanced to an
extraordinary degree. His eyes, of a velvety blackness, now reflected
that mysterious peace that reigned in those of the personification
of Death. His long silky locks, black as the raven’s wing, adorned a
physiognomy as pale as alabaster, at once radiant and opaque, as though
within there burned a funeral light which glimmered softly through its
pores. His countenance, his bearing, his manner, all had changed, causing
him to assume a peculiarly statuesque and spiritual air, entirely foreign
to our human nature, and rendering him superior to the coldest woman, the
proudest potentates, the bravest warriors.
The two friends walked toward the mountains, sometimes following the
road and sometimes leaving it; and whenever they passed through towns or
villages, the slow, sad tolling of bells warned the boy that Death lost
no opportunities; that his power was felt on every side; and not only did
he feel it on his own heart as a mountain of ice, but he also knew that
it was scattering desolation and mourning over the face of the entire
earth.
Death disclosed many strange and wonderful things to him. The enemy of
history, he took pleasure in uttering sarcasms regarding his pretended
usefulness; and to demonstrate it, he presented facts as they happened,
and not as monuments and chronicles recount them.
The mysteries of the past were unfolded before Tito’s bewildered
imagination, revealing many important truths concerning the fate of
empires, and humanity in general. The great mystery of the origin of life
was unveiled to him, and the astounding grandeur of the end to which we
mis-named mortals are approaching, causing him finally to comprehend the
genius of that high philosophy the laws of which govern the evolution of
cosmic matter. Its multitudinous manifestations in those ephemerous and
transitory forms called minerals, plants, animals, stars, constellations,
nebulæ and worlds, together with physiology, geology, chemistry, botany,
were all made clear to the ex-shoemaker’s astonished understanding,
giving him a thorough conception of the mysterious causes of life,
movement, reproduction, passion, sentiment, idea, conscience, thought,
memory, will, desire. God alone remained veiled, in the depths of those
seas of knowledge. God alone was stranger to life and death; independent
of the laws of the universe; the one Supreme Being; alone in substance,
independent, free, and all-powerful in action!
Death did not attempt to envelop the Creator in his infinite shadow. He
alone _was_! His eternity, His immutability, His impenetrability, dazzled
Tito, who bowed his head, adored and believed, remaining plunged in more
profound ignorance than before descending into the abyss of death.