“BEHOLD A MAN FULL OF LEPROSY!”
Our merchant in Havana was a leper. Poor Don Anastasio had had the
disease in increasing loathsomeness for fifteen years before we
knew him--a native, I believe, of Central America, a man of wealth,
cultivation, and refinement, and one of the clearest-headed, best
business men in Havana--best in every sense; for, with great tact
and shrewdness, he combined perfect honesty and integrity, rare
virtues in those business circles. Leprosy was the inheritance of Don
Anastasio; until he was thirty years of age no symptoms of the poison
had manifested themselves. And his portrait, taken in early life, that
hung in his office, represented a very handsome man. Our dear friend
was confident that the disease was stimulated into activity from large
doses of quinine prescribed to save his life while suffering from a
congestive chill, and he often regretted that he had not risked the
consequences of refusing the medicine.
In the incipiency of the disease he placed himself in a hospital
in France, in the hands of specialists. From there he visited noted
springs in the Pyrenees, bending his whole energies and invoking the
best medical skill to eradicate, if possible, the fearful malady that
was beginning to consume his body. The disease steadily pursued its
course, its steps were never arrested. The patient’s condition was
never alleviated; there were no days when he felt that he was better,
no hours when he had even a flickering hope that he might remain as he
was, much less recover. No solace came to him that he looked better
to-day, even if it was to look worse to-morrow. He never looked better.
Neither medicine, springs, nor treatment ever brought relief. When we
first saw him the poison had been creeping through his frame so long
that he was a pitiful sight to look upon. How much more pitiable he
became no tongue can tell. In his office, which opened into a small
parlor on one side, and into a couple of bedrooms on the other, Don
Anastasio lived day in and day out, season after season, year after
year, with his faithful friend and partner, who attended to all the
out-door business of the firm. Don Anastasio very rarely ventured
outside the walls of his abode. He could only walk a few steps, and
every movement was painful. It followed, therefore, that all our
business transactions with him were conducted in his office. There the
poor sufferer, in loose clothing and thickly wadded dressing-gown,
confined to his chair, was always to be found, with a clear brain and
an honest heart, ready with keenness and intelligence, counsel and
advice, to help us in our perplexities, and show us the way.
His hands in mittens, his head covered with a thick cap, his feet
muffled in loose slippers, not a hair on his head, eyelashes, eyebrows,
and beard all gone; tips of his fingers gone, so that, even with a
three-sided pen-staff strapped to his hand, it was with the utmost
difficulty that he could sign his name.
The kindly old man gradually crumbled away. His face became swollen,
livid, and mottled by turns. The cartilage of his nose vanished by slow
degrees, till that feature, with seams and scars, and vivid blotches,
sunk to a level with the cheeks. His ears dropped away little by
little, as though pieces had been snipped out of their ragged edges;
his fingers perished, joint by joint, until he could no longer turn
the leaf of a book. By and by his senses began to decay, his sight
became dim, hearing dull; and when, after a twelve months’ absence from
Havana, I saw Don Anastasio for the last time, he had already become so
blind that he could only distinguish light from darkness, and so deaf
that the familiar voice of his partner and life-long friend was the
only one that reached him; his voice was so low and grating, so hollow
and unlike anything human, that no one but the same devoted companion
could catch and interpret its meaning.
Touch went with the earliest ravages, for leprosy is a skin-disease.
Even when Don Anastasio had fingers to hold a cigar, the odor of
burning flesh was the first indication that its lighted end had touched
his hand.
I frequently cast inquiring eyes upon the portrait of the vigorous,
dark-eyed young fellow with bright smile, ruddy glow, and clustering
curls, that hung upon the wall before me, with a painful effort to
trace any resemblance in it to the pinched and shriveled wreck of
humanity that sat muffled in quilted garments at my side. The little,
flickering spark of life remaining, while still illuminating his grand
intellect and imperishable soul, had not sufficient power to impart
warmth to his decaying body. While others were all aglow with the heat
and moisture of a tropical day, he sat shivering in his cushioned
chair, with skin dry and unresponsive as parchment.
Don Anastasio had been more than business agent to us; more than buyer
and seller for the plantation. He had been our unwavering, steadfast
friend, an adviser whose advice was always the best, a counselor whose
counsels were always the wisest. Through more than twenty years of
living death Don Anastasio maintained his position among the prominent
merchants of Cuba, daily transacted business that required the utmost
foresight and caution, and was intrusted with negotiations of the most
delicate and confidential nature. When scarcely enough of his body
remained to serve as a casket for his generous soul, he retained his
mental faculties unimpaired, was as kind in his thoughts and sound in
his judgment as ever, and to the end “nobly bore the grand old name of
gentleman.”