We have now to learn whose was the breath that kindled the nuptial-torch
on the present occasion.
Señor Joaquin, then called plain Joaquin, had left his native place in
the vigor of early manhood, strong as a bull and untiring in labor as a
domesticated ox. Finding a place in Madrid as porter to a nobleman who
had an ancestral estate in Leon, he became the broker, man of business,
and confidential agent of all the people of repute of his native
province. He looked up lodgings for them, found them a safe warehouse
for their goods and was, in short, the Providence of Astorga. His
undoubted honesty, his punctuality and zeal won for him so good a
reputation that commissions poured in upon him in a constant and steady
stream, and reals, dollars, and doubloons fell like a shower of hail
into his pocket in such abundance, that fifteen years after his arrival
in the capital Joaquin was able to unite himself in the indissoluble
bonds of matrimony with a countrywoman of his own, a maid in the service
of the nobleman’s wife, and the mistress, for a long time past, of the
thoughts of the porter; and, after the marriage, to set up a grocery,
over the door of which was inscribed in golden letters the legend: “The
Leonese. Imported Provisions.” From a broker he then became the business
manager of his compatriots in Madrid; he bought goods for them wholesale
and sold them at retail, and everyone in Madrid who wished to obtain
aromatic chocolate, ground by hand, or biscuits of feathery lightness,
such as only the women of Astorga possess the secret of making, found
themselves obliged to have recourse to him. It became the fashion to
breakfast on the Carácas chocolate and the biscuits of the Leonese. The
magnate, his former master, set the example, giving him his custom, and
the people of rank followed, their appetites awakened by the
old-fashioned present of a dainty worthy of the table of Carlos IV or of
Godoy. And it was worth while to see how Señor Joaquin, the commercial
horizon ever widening before him, gradually came to monopolize all the
national culinary specialties--tender peas from Fuentesauco, rich
sausages from Candelario, hams from Calderas, sweetmeats from
Estremadura, olives from the olive-groves of Seville, honeyed dates from
Almeria, and golden oranges that store up in their rind the sunshine of
Valencia. In this manner and by this unremitting industry Joaquin
accumulated a considerable sum of money, if not with honor, at least
with honesty. But, successful as he had been in acquiring money, he was
more successful still in investing it after he had acquired it, in lands
and houses in Leon, for which purpose he made frequent journeys to his
native city. After eight years of childless marriage he became the
father of a healthy and handsome girl, an event which rejoiced him as
greatly as the birth of an heiress to his crown might rejoice a king;
but the vigorous Leonese mother was unable to support the crisis of her
late maternity, and after clinging feebly to life for a few months after
the birth of the child, let go her hold upon it altogether, much against
her will. In losing his wife Señor Joaquin lost his right hand, and from
that time forward ceased to be distinguished by the air of satisfaction
with which he had been wont to preside at the counter, displaying his
gigantic proportions as he reached to the highest shelf to take down the
boxes of raisins, for which purpose he had but to raise himself slightly
on the tips of his broad feet and stretch out his powerful arm. He would
pass whole hours in a state of abstraction, his gaze fixed mechanically
on the bunches of grapes hanging from the ceiling, or on the bags of
coffee piled up in the darkest corner of the shop, on which the deceased
was in the habit of seating herself at her knitting. Finally, he fell
into so deep a melancholy that even his honest and lawful gains,
acquired in the exercise of his business, became a matter of
indifference to him, and the physicians prescribing for him the
salubrious air of his native place and a change in his regimen and
manner of life, he disposed of the grocery, and with magnanimity not
unworthy of an ancient sage, retired to his native village, satisfied
with the wealth he had already acquired and unambitious of greater
gains.
He took with him the little Lucía, now the only treasure dear to his
heart, who with her infantile graces had already begun to enliven the
shop, carrying on a fierce and constant warfare against the figs of
Fraga and the almonds of Alcoy, less white than the little teeth that
bit them.
The young girl grew up like a vigorous sapling planted in fertile soil;
it almost seemed as if the life she had been the cause of her mother’s
losing was concentrated in the person of the child. She passed through
the crises of infancy and girlhood without any of those nameless
sufferings that blanch the cheeks and quench the light in the eyes of
the young. There was a perfect equilibrium in her rich organism between
the nerves and the blood, and the result was a temperament such as is
now seldom to be met with in our degenerate society.
Mind and body in Lucía kept pace with each other in their development,
like two traveling companions who, arm in arm, ascend the hills and
help each other over the rugged places on their journey, and it was a
curious fact that, while the materialist physician, Velez de Rada, who
attended Señor Joaquin, took delight in watching Lucía and noting how
exuberantly the vital current flowed through the members of this young
Cybele, the learned Jesuit, Father Urtazu, was also her devoted admirer,
finding her conscience as clear and diaphanous as the crystals of his
microscope, neither of them being conscious that what they both admired
in the young girl was, perhaps, one and the same thing seen from a
different point of view, namely, perfect health.
Señor Joaquin desired to give Lucía a good education, as he understood
it, and indeed did all in his power to cripple the superior nature of
his daughter, though without success. Impelled on the one hand by the
desire to bestow accomplishments on Lucía which should enhance her
merit, fearing on the other lest it should be sarcastically said in the
village that Uncle Joaquin aspired to have a young lady daughter, he
brought her up in a hybrid manner, placing her as a day pupil in a
boarding school, under the rule of a prudish directress who professed to
know everything. There Lucía was taught a smattering of French and a
little music; as for any solid instruction, it was not even thought of;
knowledge of social usages, zero; and for all feminine knowledge--a
knowledge much vaster and more complicated than the uninitiated
imagine--some sort of fancy work, as tedious and useless as it was ugly,
patterns of slippers in the worst possible taste, embroidered
shirt-bosoms, or bead purses. Happily, Father Urtazu sowed among so many
weeds a few grains of wheat, and the moral and religious instruction of
Lucía, although limited, was as correct and solid as her school studies
were futile. Father Urtazu had more of the practical moralist than of
the ascetic, and the young girl learned more from him concerning ethics
than dogma. So that although a good Christian she was not a fervent one.
The absolute tranquillity of her temperament forbade her ever being
carried away by enthusiasm; there was in the girl something of the
repose of the Olympian goddesses; neither earthly nor heavenly matters
disturbed the calm serenity of her mind. Father Urtazu used to say,
pushing out his lip with his accustomed gesture:
“We are sleeping, sleeping, but I am very sure we are not dead; and the
day on which we awaken there will be something to see; God grant that it
may be for good.”
The friends of Lucía were Rosarito, the daughter of Doña Agustina, the
landlady of the village inn; Carmen, the niece of the magistrate, and a
few other young girls of the same class, many of whom dreamed of the
gentle tranquillity, the peaceful monotony of the conventual life,
forming to themselves seductive pictures of the joys of the cloister, of
the tender emotion of the day of the profession, when, crowned with
flowers and wearing the white veil, they should offer themselves to
Christ with the exquisite sweetness of adding, “forever! forever!” Lucía
had listened to them without a single fiber of her being vibrating
responsive to this ideal. Active life called to her with deep and
powerful voice. Nor did she feel any desire, on the other hand, to
imitate others of her companions whom she saw furtively hiding
love-letters in their bosoms or hurrying, eager and blushing, to the
balcony. In her childhood, prolonged by innocence and radiant health,
there was no room for any other pleasure than to run about among the
shady walks that surrounded Leon, leaping for very joy, like a youthful
nymph sporting in some Hellenic valley.
Señor Joaquin devoutly believed that he had given his daughter all the
education that was necessary, and he even thought the waltzes and
fantasies, which she pitilessly slaughtered with her unskillful fingers
on the piano, admirably executed. However deeply he might hide it in the
secret recesses of his soul, the Leonese was not without the aspiration,
common to all men who have exercised humble occupations and earned their
bread by the sweat of their brows--he desired that his daughter should
profit by his efforts, ascending a step higher in the social scale. He
would have been well contented, for his own part, to continue the same
“Uncle Joaquin” as before; he had no pretensions to be considered a rich
man, and both in his disposition and his manners, he was extremely
simple; but if he were willing to renounce position for himself, he was
not willing to do so for his daughter. He seemed to hear a voice saying
to him, as the witches said to Banquo, “Thou shalt get kings though thou
be none.” And divided between the modest conviction of his own absolute
insignificance and the moral certainty he entertained that Lucía was
destined to occupy an elevated position in the world, he came to the not
unreasonable conclusion that marriage was to be the means whereby the
desired metamorphosis of the girl into the lady of rank was to be
accomplished. A distinguished son-in-law was from this time forth the
ceaseless aspiration of the ex-grocer.
Nor were these the only weaknesses of Señor Joaquin. He had others,
which we have no compunction in disclosing to the reader. Perhaps the
strongest and most confirmed of these was his inordinate love of coffee,
a taste acquired in the importing business, in the gloomy winter
mornings, when the hoar frost whitened the glass-door of the show-case,
when his feet seemed to be freezing in the gray atmosphere of the
solitary shop, and the lately-abandoned, perhaps still warm bed, tempted
him, with mute eloquence, back to his slumbers. Then, half-awake,
solicited to sleep by the requirements of his Herculean physique and his
sluggish circulation, Señor Joaquin would take the little apparatus,
fill the lamp with alcohol, light it, and soon from the tin spout would
flow the black and smoking stream of coffee which at once warmed his
blood, cleared his brain, and by the slight fever and waste of tissue it
produced, gave him the necessary stimulus to begin his day’s work, to
make up his accounts, and sell his provisions. After his return to Leon,
when he was free to sleep as long as he liked, Señor Joaquin did not
give up the acquired vice but rather reinforced it with new ones; he
fell into the habit of drinking the black infusion in the _café_ nearest
to his abode, accompanying it with a glass of Kummel, and by the perusal
of a political journal--always and unfailingly the same.
On a certain occasion it occurred to the government to suspend the
publication of this newspaper for a period of twenty days; a little more
and Señor Joaquin would have given up his visits to the _café_ through
sheer desperation. For, Señor Joaquin being a Spaniard, it seems
needless to say that he had his political opinions like the best, and
that he was consumed by a zeal for the public welfare, as we all of us
are. Señor Joaquin was a harmless specimen of the now extinct species,
the progressionist. If we were to classify him scientifically, we should
say he belonged to the variety of the impressionist progressionist. The
only event that had ever occurred to him during his life as a political
partisan was that one day a celebrated politician, a radical at that
time, but who afterward passed over bag and baggage to the
conservatives, being a candidate for representative to the Cortes,
entered his shop and asked him for his vote. From that supreme moment
our Señor Joaquin was labeled, classified, and stamped--he was a
progressionist of Don ----’s party. It was in vain that years passed and
political changes succeeded one another and the political swallows,
always in search of milder climes, took wing for other regions; it was
in vain that evil-disposed persons said to Señor Joaquin that his chief
and natural leader, the aforesaid personage, was as much of a
progressionist as his grandmother; that there were, in fact, no longer
any progressionists on the face of the earth; that the progressionist
was as much of a fossil as the megatherium or the plesiosaurus; it was
in vain that they pointed out to him the innumerable patches sewed on
the purple mantle of the will of the nation by the not impeccable hands
of his idol himself. Señor Joaquin, even with all this testimony, was
not convinced, but, change who might, remained firm as a post in his
loyal attachment to the leader. Like those lovers who fix upon their
memories the image of the beloved such as she appeared to them in some
supreme and memorable moment, and in despite of the ravages of pitiless
time, never again behold her under any other aspect, so Señor Joaquin
could never get it into his head that his dear leader was in any respect
different from what he had been at the moment when, with flushed face,
he deigned to lean on the counter of the grocery, a loaf of sugar on the
one side and the scales on the other, and with fiery and tribunitial
eloquence ask him for his vote. From that time he was a subscriber to
the organ of the aforesaid leader. He also bought a poor lithograph,
representing the leader in the act of pronouncing an oration, and
placing it in the conventional gilt frame, hung it up in his bed-room,
between a daguerreotype of his deceased spouse and an engraving of the
blessed Santa Lucía, who displayed in a dish two eyes resembling two
boiled eggs. Señor Joaquin accustomed himself to look at political
events from the point of view of his leader, whom he called, quite
naturally, by his baptismal name. Did matters in Cuba assume a
threatening aspect? Bah! Señor Don ---- says that complete pacification
is an affair of a couple of months, at the utmost. Was it rumored that
armed men were marching through the Basque provinces? There was no need
to be frightened. Don ---- affirmed that the absolutist party was dead
and the dead do not come to life again. Was there a serious split in the
liberal majority, some supporting X, others Z? Very well, very well,
Don ---- will settle the question; he is the very man to do it. Was there
fear of a famine? Do you suppose Don ---- is sitting idly sucking his
thumb all this time? This very moment the veins (of the public treasury)
will be opened. Are the taxes too heavy? Don ---- spoke of economizing.
Are the Socialists growing troublesome? Only let them dare show
themselves with Don ---- at the head of affairs and he will soon put them
down. And in this manner, without a doubt or a suspicion ever entering
his mind, Señor Joaquin passed through the storm of the revolution and
entered on the period of the restoration, greatly delighted to see that
Don ---- floated on the top of the wave and that his merits were
appreciated, and that he held the pan by the handle to-day just as he
had done yesterday.
Cherishing this sort of adoration for the leader, the reader may imagine
what was the delight, confusion, and astonishment of Señor Joaquin at
receiving a visit one morning from a grave and well-dressed person who
had come to salute him in the name of Don ---- himself.
The visitor was called Don Aurelio Miranda, and he occupied in Leon one
of those positions, numerous in Spain, which are none the less
profitable for being honorable, and which, without entailing any great
amount of labor or responsibility, open to the holder the doors of good
society by conferring upon him a certain degree of official
importance,--a species of laical benefice in which are united the two
things that, according to the proverb, cannot be contained in one sack.
Miranda came of a bureaucratic family, in which were transmitted by
entail, as it were, important political positions, thanks to a special
gift possessed by its members, perpetuated from father to son, a certain
feline dexterity in falling always on their feet, and a certain delicate
sobriety in the matter of expressing their opinions. The race of the
Mirandas had succeeded in dyeing themselves with dull and refined
colors, which would serve equally well as a background for white
insignia or red device, so that there was no juncture of affairs in
which they were the losers, no radicalism with which they could not make
a compromise, no sea so smooth or so stormy that they could not fish
successfully in its waters. The young Aurelio was born, it might be
said, within the protecting shadow of the office walls. Before he had
grown a beard or a mustache he had a position, obtained for him by
paternal influence, aided by the influence of the other Mirandas. At
first the employment was insignificant, with a salary that barely
sufficed for the perfumes and neckties and other trifling expenses of
the boy, who was naturally extravagant. Soon richer spoils fell to his
share, and Aurelio followed in the route already marked out for him by
his ancestors. Notwithstanding all this, however, it was evident that
in him his race had degenerated somewhat. Devoted to pleasure,
ostentatious and vain, Aurelio did not possess the delicate art of
always and in everything observing the happy medium; and he was wanting
in the outward gravity, the composure of manner, which had won for past
Mirandas the reputation of being men of brains and of ripe political
experience. Conscious of his defects, Aurelio adroitly endeavored to
turn them to account, and more than one delicate white hand had written
for him perfumed notes, containing efficacious recommendations to
personages of widely differing quality and class. In like manner, he
gave himself out to be the companion and bosom friend of several
political leaders, among others of the Don ---- whom we already know. He
had never spoken ten consecutive words having any relation to politics
with any of them. He retailed to them the news of the day, the newest
scandal, the latest _double entendre_, and the most recent burlesque,
and in this way, without compromising himself with any, he was favored
and served by all. He caught hold, like an inexpert swimmer, of the men
who were more experienced swimmers than himself, and, sinking here and
floating there, he succeeded in weathering the fierce political storms
which beat upon Spain, following the time-honored example of the
Mirandas. But even political influence in time becomes exhausted, and
there came a period in which such influence as Aurelio could command,
now greatly diminished, was insufficient to keep him in the only place
to his taste--Madrid, and he was compelled to go vegetate in Leon,
between the government building and the cathedral, neither of which
edifices interested him in the least. What was especially bitter to
Aurelio was the consciousness that his decline in official life had its
origin in another and an irreparable decline,--a decline in his personal
attractions. After the age of forty he was no longer the subject of
little notes of recommendation, or, at least, these notes were not so
warm as before; in the offices of the notabilities his presence had come
to be no more regarded than if he had been a chair or a table, and he
himself was conscious that his fluency of speech was abandoning him. As
he advanced in years he grew more like his ancestors. He began to
acquire the seriousness of the Mirandas, and from an amiable rake he
became a man of weight. Perhaps certain obstinate ailments, the protest
of the liver against the unhealthy life--by turns sedentary, by turns
full of feverish excitement--so long led by Aurelio, were not without
their part in this metamorphosis. Therefore, profiting by his sojourn
in Leon and by the knowledge and singular skill of Velez de Rada, he
devoted himself to the work of repairing the breaches made in his
shattered organization; and the methodical life and the increasing
gravity of his manners and appearance, which had been prejudicial to him
in the capital, betraying the fact that he was becoming a useless and
worn-out instrument, served him as a passport with the timid Leonese
villagers, winning for him their sympathy and the reputation of being a
person of credit and responsibility.
Miranda was in the habit of making an occasional trip to Madrid by way
of diversion, and on one of these trips he had met, not long since, the
Don ---- of Señor Joaquin, whom we shall call Colmenar, through respect
for his incognito--furious, at the moment, with a Don ---- who took
pleasure in thwarting all his plans and in nullifying his appointments.
There was no means of coming to an understanding with this demon of a
man, who persisted in cutting and mowing down the flourishing field of
the Colmenarist adherents. Miranda, at the time in question, was in
imminent danger of losing his position, and the words of the leader made
him jump from his seat on the luxurious divan. “It is just as I say,”
continued Colmenar; “it is enough that I should have an interest in a
man’s retaining his place for him to get him out of it. It is to be
counted upon to a certainty. And there is no means of escaping it. He
strikes without pity.”
“As for me,” answered Miranda, “if the worst were only to leave
Leon--for, to tell the truth, that village bores me to death, although
it is not without its advantages. But if matters go any further I shall
be in a pretty fix.”
“And the most likely thing is that they will go further. Fortune is the
enemy of the old. You have changed greatly for the worse, of late. That
hair--do you remember what a splendid head of hair you had? We shall
both soon be obliged to have recourse to acorn-oil as a heroic remedy
_in extremis_.”
“To hear you speak,” exclaimed Miranda, twisting the locks on his
temples with his former martial air, “one would suppose that I was bald.
I think I manage to ward off the attacks of time very well. My ailments
have made me a little----”
“Are you ill?” interrupted Colmenar; “leaks in the roof, my boy; leaks
in the roof!”
“An affection of the liver, complicated with---- But in that antiquated
village of Leon I have stumbled upon one of the most modern of
physicians, a _savant_,” Miranda hastened to add, observing the bored
look of the leader, who feared he was going to be treated to a history
of the disease. “I assure you that Velez de Rada is a prodigy. A
confirmed materialist, it is true----”
“Like all doctors,” said Colmenar, with a shrug of the shoulders. “And
how about other matters? Have you made many conquests in Leon? Are the
Leonese girls susceptible?”
“Bah, hypocrites!” exclaimed Miranda, who, in the unreserve of
confidential intercourse permitted himself to indulge in an occasional
touch of irreverence. “The Jesuits have their heads turned with
confraternities and novenas, and they go about devouring the saints with
kisses. There is little social intercourse,--every one in his own house
and God in the house of every one. But, after all, that suits me very
well, since I require to rest and to lead a regular life.”
Colmenar listened in silence, tracing with his eyes the pattern on the
soft, thick carpet.
At last he raised his head and slapped his forehead with his open palm.
“An unprecedented idea had just occurred to me,” he said, repeating the
celebrated phrase of the Portuguese minister. “Why don’t you marry, my
dear fellow?”
“A bright idea, truly! A wife costs so little in these days. And
afterward? ‘For him who does not like soup, a double portion.’ I am
going to lose my situation, it may be, and you talk to me of marrying!”
“I do not propose, to you a wife who will lighten your purse, but one
who will make it heavy.”
And the leader laughed loud and long at his own wit. Miranda remained
pensive, thinking over the solid advantages of the plan, which he was
not long in discovering. There could be no better means of providing
against the assaults of hostile fortune and securing the doubtful
future, before the few hairs he had left should have disappeared and the
superficial polish conferred by fashion and the arts of the toilet
should have vanished. And then, Leon was a city that suggested of itself
matrimonial ideas. What was there to do but marry in a place where
dullness reigned supreme, where celibacy inspired mistrust, and where
the most innocent adventure gave rise to the most outrageous slanders?
Therefore he said aloud:
“You are right, my boy. Leon is a place that inspires one with the
desire to marry and to live like a saint.”
“The truth is, that for you,” continued Colmenar, “marriage has now
become a necessity. Aside from the fact that it is high time for you
(here he smiled maliciously) to think of marrying, unless you want to be
called an old bachelor, your health and your pocket both require it. If
I cannot succeed in keeping you in your place what are you going to do?
I suppose you have saved nothing?”
“Saved? I? _Au jour le jour_,” said Miranda, pronouncing with airy
nonchalance the transpyrenean phrase.
“Well, then, _il faut se faire une raison_,” replied Colmenar, pleased
to be able to display his learning in his turn.
“The question is to find the woman, the phoenix,” murmured Miranda,
meditatively. “Girls of a marriageable age there are in plenty, but I
have lost my reckoning here. Suggest some one you----”
“Some one here? God deliver you from the women of Madrid. They are more
to be feared than the cholera? Do you know what the requirements are of
any one of those angels? Do you know how much they spend?”
“So that----”
“The wife you require is in Leon itself.”
“In Leon! Yes, perhaps you are right, it might be easier there. But I
don’t see--. The de Argas are already engaged; Concha Vivares is rich in
expectations only; she has an aunt who intends to make her her heiress
at her death, but before that event occurs---- The de Hornillos
girl--no, she has nothing but patents of nobility, and they won’t make
the pot boil.”
“You are flying too high; young ladies are at a discount. Wait a moment
and I will show you----”
Colmenar rose, and opening one of the drawers of his desk, took from it
a strip of paper, yellow with age and covered with names, like a
proscription list. And it was in truth a list; in it were inscribed in
alphabetical order the names of the feudatories of the great Colmenarian
personality, residing in the various provinces of the Peninsula. Under
some of the names was written a capital L, which signified, “Loyal”;
others were marked V L, “Very loyal”; a few were marked, “Doubtful.”
The leader placed his forefinger on one of the names marked L.
“I offer you,” he said to Miranda, “a young girl who has a fortune of
perhaps more than two millions.”
Miranda opened wide his eyes, and stretched out his hand to take the
auspicious list.
“Two millions!” he exclaimed. “But there is no one like you for these
finds.”
“You may have seen in Leon the person whose name is inscribed here,”
continued Colmenar, indicating the line with his nail. “A robust,
fine-looking old man, strong and vigorous still, Joaquin Gonzalez, the
Leonese?”
“The Leonese! There is no one I know better. He has come to the
government office of Leon several times, on business. Of course I know
him. And now I remember that he has a daughter, but I have never taken
any particular notice of her. She is very seldom seen.”
“They live very modestly. In ten years the fortune will double itself.
He is a great man for business, the Leonese. A poor creature, a
simpleton, in everything else; in politics he sees no further than his
nose, but he has succeeded in making a fortune. This girl is his only
child, and he adores her.”
“And don’t you think it likely that the girl may have formed some
attachment already?”
“Bah, she is too young! The moment you present yourself--with your good
address and your experience in such affairs----”
“Probably she is a ninny, and ugly into the bargain.”
“Her father was a magnificent-looking fellow in his youth, and her
mother a handsome brunette,--why should the girl be ugly? No one is
ugly at fifteen. She will need polishing, it is true; but between you
and a dressmaker that is a question of a month. Women are much more
readily civilized and polished than men. The desire to please teaches
them more than a hundred masters could do.”
“And what would all my friends say of me--especially in Leon--if they
saw me marry the daughter of the Leonese?”
“Bah! bah! that is simply a question of making a change. After you are
married, petition privately to be transferred to some other position.
The old man will remain there, taking care of the property, and you and
the girl will go live where nobody will know whether her father was an
archduke or the executioner. After the marriage, you and your bride can
take a little trip to the continent and in this way you will escape
gossip during the first few months. And be quick about it before you
begin to grow rotund, and your hair---- Ah, how time passes! It is sad
to think how old we are getting.”
Miranda gazed at the point of his elegant tan-colored boot in silence,
thoughtfully scratching his forehead.
“Find me an excuse to visit the house,” he said at last, with
resolution. “They are unaccustomed to society, and it will be necessary
to have one. I shall not be required to parade the girl through the
streets, I suppose.”
“You will make them a visit in my name. The old man will give you a
warmer welcome than if you were the king himself!”
So saying, the leader seated himself at the table, which was littered
with newspapers, letters, and books, and taking a sheet of stamped paper
ran his hand over the white page, filling it with the rapid, almost
unintelligible caligraphy of a man overwhelmed with business. He then
folded the paper, slipped it into an envelope, and, without closing it,
handed it to his friend.
When Miranda rose to take his leave he approached Colmenar, and speaking
in a low voice, almost in a whisper, he murmured:
“Are you quite sure--quite certain about the--the two mill----”
“It is so likely I should be mistaken! All you have to do is to make
inquiries in Leon. In conscience, you owe me a commission,” and the
politician laughed and tapped Miranda on the cheek as if he were a
child.
Under this exalted patronage Miranda presented himself in the peaceful
abode of the Colmenarist feudatory, and was received as befitted a guest
who came thus recommended. Naturally he resolved not to make himself
known at once as a suitor for the hand of Lucía. Besides being a want of
delicacy this would also be a want of tact, and then Miranda proposed to
himself, before taking any decided step, to study carefully the ground
on which he was treading. He found that what the leader had told him
with regard to the money was the truth, and even less than the truth. He
saw a house, old-fashioned in style, rude and plebeian in its usages,
but in which honesty presided, and a solid and secure capital, daily
augmented through the judicious management of Señor Joaquin and his
simple and economical mode of living. It is true that the worthy Leonese
seemed to Miranda a tiresome companion, vulgar in his manners, weak in
character, and mediocre in intellect,--stupid even, at times; but he was
obliged to put up with him, and he even adapted himself so skillfully to
the ideas of the old man that the latter was soon unable to sip his
coffee or to read _El Progreso Nacional_, the organ of Colmenar, without
the sauce of the witty commentaries that Miranda made on every article,
every paragraph, every item of news it contained. Miranda knew by heart
the obverse side, the inner aspect of politics, and he explained
amusingly the sly allusions, the artful reservations, the covert satire,
that abound in every important newspaper, and that are a constant
enigma for the simple-minded provincial subscriber. So that, since he
had become intimate with Miranda, Señor Joaquin enjoyed the profound
pleasure of being initiated into the mysteries, and he looked with
disdain upon his Leonese co-religionists, who had not yet been admitted
into the sanctuary of secret politics. In addition to these pleasures
which he owed to Miranda’s friendship, the good old man swelled with
pride--we already know how little of a philosopher he was--when he was
seen walking side by side with a gentleman of so distinguished an
appearance, the intimate friend of the governor, and the familiar
companion of the highest people of the capital.
Lucía regarded the visit of the courteous and affable Miranda without
displeasure, and noted with childish curiosity the neatness of his
person, his well-polished shoes, his snowy linen, his scarf-pin, the
curious trinkets attached to his watch-chain, for every
woman--consciously or unconsciously--takes pleasure in these external
adornments. Besides, Miranda possessed the art--and practiced it--of
what we may call winning affection by diverting; he brought the young
girl every day some new trifle, some novelty,--now a chromo, now a
photograph, now rare flowers, now illustrated periodicals, now a novel
by Fernan Caballero, or Alarcon,--and the pretty gifts that flowed
through the doors of the antiquated house, messages as it were, from
modern civilization, were so many voices praising the generous giver.
The latter succeeded in bringing his conversation to the level of
Lucía’s understanding, and showed himself very well informed regarding
feminine, or rather infantile matters, and the young girl would
sometimes even consult him with regard to the style in which she should
wear her hair and the make of her gowns, and Miranda would very
seriously make her raise or lower, by two centimeters, the waist of her
gown or her chignon. Incidents like these served to vary a little the
monotony of the life of the Leonese maiden, lending a charm to her
intercourse with her undeclared lover.
At first it was matter of no little surprise in Leon that the
fashionable Miranda should choose for his companion Señor Joaquin, a man
on whose square shoulders the peasant’s jacket seemed unalterably
riveted and fastened; but gossip was not long in arriving at a rational
explanation of the phenomenon, and Lucía’s companions soon began to
tease her unmercifully about Señor de Miranda’s passion, his attentions,
his presents, and his devotion. She listened to them with a tranquil
smile, never blushing, never losing a moment’s sleep on account of it
all; nor did her heart beat a second faster when she heard Miranda’s
ring at the bell, followed by the noise made by his resplendent boots as
he entered the room. As no tender speech of Miranda’s came to confirm
the words of her companions, Lucía continued tranquil and careless as
ever. But Miranda, resolved now to bring his enterprise to a
termination, and thinking that he had spent time enough in paving the
way, one day, after sipping his coffee and reading _El Progreso
Nacional_ in the company of Señor Joaquin, asked the latter in plain
terms for his daughter’s hand.
The Leonese was struck dumb with amazement and knew not what to say or
do. His dream--Lucía’s entrance, so ardently desired, into the circles
of polite society--was about to be realized. But we must be just to
Señor Joaquin. He did not fail to perceive clearly, in this supreme
moment, certain unfavorable points in the proposed marriage. He saw the
difference in the ages of the prospective bride and bridegroom; he knew
nothing of Miranda’s pecuniary position, while his daughter’s
magnificent dowry was a matter of certainty; in short, he had a vague
intuition of the base self-interest on which the demand was founded.
The suitor showed himself a skillful strategist, forestalling suspicion,
in a manner, and anticipating the thoughts of the Leonese.
“I myself,” he said, “have no fortune. I have my profession--it is
true”; (Miranda, like most other Spaniards, had studied law and obtained
his degree in early manhood) “and if I should some day lose my position
I have energy enough, and more than enough, to work hard and open an
office in Madrid, where I could have a fine practice. I desire ease and
comfort for my wife, but for her alone; as for my own wants, what I have
is sufficient to supply them. The difference in fortune deterred me for
a long time from asking Lucía’s hand, but the sentiment with which so
much beauty and innocence has inspired me was too powerful to resist;
notwithstanding this, however, if Colmenar had not assured me that you
were generous-minded and disinterested, I should never have summoned
resolution----”
“Señor Colmenar has far too high an opinion of me,” responded the
flattered Leonese; “but those things require consideration. Go take a
little trip----”
“In a fortnight I will come back for your answer,” responded Miranda,
discreetly, taking his hat to go.
He passed the fortnight in a Satanic frame of mind, for it was
undoubtedly ridiculous for a man of his pretensions and his rank to have
asked in marriage the daughter of a grocer and to be obliged to wait in
the ante-chamber of the shop, so to say, until they should deign to open
the door to admit him. Meanwhile Señor Joaquin, reading his newspaper
and sipping his coffee alone, missed him greatly, and the idea of the
marriage began to take root in his mind. Every day he thought the friend
of Colmenar more and more desirable for a son-in-law. Notwithstanding
this, however, he did what people usually do who desire to follow their
inclinations without bearing the responsibility of their actions--he
took counsel with some friends in regard to the matter, hoping to
shelter himself under their approbation. In this expectation he was
disappointed. Father Urtazu, who was the first person that he consulted,
exclaimed, with his Navarrese frankness:
“For the old cat the tender mouse! The sweet-tongued, smooth-faced Don
knows very well what he is about. But don’t you see, unhappy man, that
the old fop might be Lucía’s father? Heaven knows what adventures he has
had in the course of his life! Holy Virgin! who can tell what stories he
may not have hidden away in the pockets of his coat!”
“But what would you do if you were in my case, Father Urtazu?”
“I? Take a year to think of it instead of a fortnight, and another year
after that, for whatever might chance to turn up.”
“By the Constitution! You have not observed the merits of Señor Aurelio,
father.”
“The merits--the merits--pretty merits, indeed! Pish, pish! Unless it be
a merit to go dressed like a dandy, displaying a couple of inches of his
shirt cuffs, and giving himself the airs of a young man, when he is
older-looking than I, for, though it be true that my hair is gray, at
least the tree has not dropped its leaves!”
And Father Urtazu pulled with energy the stout iron-gray locks that grew
on his temples, bristly as brambles.
“What does the child herself say about it?” he asked, suddenly.
“I have not yet spoken to her----”
“But that is the first thing to be done, unhappy man! Ah, how true is it
that the mind, becomes dull with age. What are you waiting for?”
Velez de Rada was even yet more decided and uncompromising.
“Marry your daughter to Miranda!” he cried, raising his eyebrows with an
angry and indignant gesture. “Are you mad? The finest specimen of the
race that I have met with here for the past ten years. A girl who has
red globules enough in her blood to supply all the anæmic mannikins that
promenade the streets of Madrid! Such a figure! Such a poise! Such
proportions! And to Miranda who----” (here professional discretion
sealed the lips of the physician, and silence reigned in the room).
“Señor Rada,”--Señor Joaquin, who was a little hard of hearing, began
timidly.
“Do you know what is the duty of a father who has a daughter like
Lucía?” the physician resumed. “To look, like Diogenes, for a man who,
in constitution and exuberance of vitality, is her equal, and unite
them. Do you consider that, with the indifference that prevails in this
matter of marriage, with the sacrilegious unions we are accustomed to
see between impoverished, sickly, and tainted natures and healthy
natures, it is possible that at no distant date--in three or four
generations more, perhaps--the utter deterioration of the peoples of
Europe will be an assured fact? Or do you think that we can with
impunity transmit to our descendants poison and pus in place of blood?”
Señor Joaquin left the doctor’s office a little frightened, but more
confounded, consoling himself with the thought, however, that the
misfortunes predicted for his race would not happen for a century to
come, at the soonest. The last disappointment that awaited him in his
matrimonial consultations came from a sister of his, a very old woman
who, in her youthful days, had been a laundress, but who was now
supported by her brother. The poor woman, whose deceased husband had led
her a dog’s life, exclaimed, in her husky voice, raising her withered
hands to heaven, and shaking her trembling head:
“Miranda? Miranda? Some rascal, I suppose; some villain. May a
thunderbolt strike----”
The Leonese waited to hear no more, and regarded his consultation as at
an end.
The most important part of the question--Lucía’s opinion--was still
wanting. Her father was racking his brains to find a diplomatic means of
discovering it, when the young girl herself provided him with the
desired opportunity.
“Papa,” she asked one day, with the utmost innocence, “can Señor Miranda
be ill? He has not been here for several days.”
Señor Joaquin seized the opportunity and laid before her Miranda’s
proposal. Lucía listened attentively, with surprise depicted in her
lustrous eyes.
“See there!” she said, at last. “Rosarito and Carmela were right, then,
when they declared that Señor Miranda came here on my account. But who
would have imagined it?”
“Come, child, what answer shall I give the gentleman?” asked the
Leonese, with anxiety.
“Papa, how should I know? I never suspected that he wanted to marry me.”
“But, on your part, do you like Señor Miranda?”
“Like him? That I do. Though he is not so very young, he is still
handsome,” answered Lucía, with the utmost naturalness.
“And his disposition, his manners?”
“He is very polite, very amiable.”
“Is the idea disagreeable to you that he should live here always--with
us?”
“Not at all. On the contrary, he amuses me greatly when he comes.”
“Then, by the Constitution! you are in love with Señor Miranda?”
“See there! I don’t think that, though I have never thought much about
those things, or what it may be like to fall in love; but I imagine it
must be more exciting like, and that it comes to one more of a
sudden--with more violence.”
“But these violent attachments, what need is there of them to be a good
wife?”
“None, I suppose. To be a good wife, Father Urtazu says, the most
needful thing is the grace of God--and patience, a great deal of
patience.”
Her father tapped her on the cheek with his broad palm.
“By the Constitution! you talk like a book. So, then, according to that,
I am going to give Señor Miranda pleasing news!”
“Oh, father, the matter needs thinking over. Do me the favor to think
over it for me, you; what do I know about marrying, or----”
“See here, you are now a big girl. You are too much of a simpleton.”
“No,” said Lucía, fixing her clear eyes on the old man’s face, “it is
not that I am simple, it is that I do not wish to understand--do you
hear? For if I begin to think about those things I shall end by losing
my appetite, and my sleep, and my light-heartedness. To-night, of a
certainty, I shall not close my eyes, and afterward Señor de Rada will
say in Latin that I am ill in mind and that I am going to be ill in
body. I wish to think of nothing but my amusements and my lessons. Of
that other matter, no; for, if I did, my fancy would wander on and on,
and I should pass whole hours with my hands crossed before me, sitting
motionless as a post. The truth is that when my thoughts run that way I
fancy there is not a man in all the world to equal the lover I picture
to myself; who, for that matter, is not in this world,--don’t imagine
it,--but far away in distant palaces and gardens. But I don’t know how
to explain myself. Can you understand what I mean?”
“Have they been putting the notion into your head of becoming a nun like
Agueda, the daughter of the directress of the seminary?” cried Señor
Joaquin, angrily.
“Oh, no, indeed!” murmured Lucía, whose glowing and animated face looked
like a newly opened rose. “I would not be a nun for a kingdom. I have no
vocation for that kind of life.”
“It is settled”; said Señor Joaquin to himself; “the pot begins to boil;
the girl must be married.” And he added aloud: “If that is the case,
then, child, I think you should not scorn Señor de Miranda. He is a
perfect gentleman, and for politics--what an understanding he has! He is
not displeasing to you?”
“I have said already that he is not,” replied Lucía, in more tranquil
tones.
That same afternoon the Leonese himself took this satisfactory answer to
Miranda.
Colmenar wrote to Señor Joaquin a letter that was not without its
effect. And before many days had elapsed Miranda said to his future
father-in-law, in a pleased and confidential tone:
“Our friend Colmenar will be _padrino_; he delegates his duties to you,
and sends this for the bride.”
And he took from its satin-lined case a pearl-handled fan, covered with
Brussels lace, light as the sea-foam, that a breath sufficed to put in
motion.
To describe Señor Joaquin’s gratification and pride would be a task
beyond the power of speech. It seemed to him as if the personality of
the famous political leader had suddenly, and by some occult means,
become merged in his own; he fancied himself metamorphosed, become one
with his idol, and he was almost beside himself with joy; and any doubts
that might still have lingered in his mind, with regard to the
approaching nuptials, vanished. Unwilling to be behind Colmenar in
generosity, in addition to settling a liberal allowance on Lucía, he
presented her with a large sum of money for the expenses of the wedding
journey, whose route, traced by Miranda, included Paris, and certain
beneficial mineral springs prescribed for him some time before by Rada,
as a sovereign remedy in bilious disorders. The idea of the journey
appeared somewhat strange to Señor Joaquin. When he married, the only
excursion he made was from the porter’s lodge to the grocery. But since
his daughter was making her entrance into a higher social sphere, it was
necessary to conform to the usages of her new rank, however singular
they might appear. Miranda had declared this to be so and Señor Joaquin
had agreed with him; mediocre natures are always ready to yield to the
authority of those who care to take the trouble to manage them.
Any one with the slightest knowledge of provincial towns can easily
picture to himself how much comment and criticism, open and concealed,
were aroused in Leon by the marriage of the distinguished Miranda with
the low-born heiress of the ex-grocer. It was criticised without measure
or judgment. Some censured the vanity of the old man who, tired at the
end of his days of his humble station, desired to bestow upon his
daughter the style and rank of a marchioness (there were not a few for
whom Miranda served as the traditional type of the marquis). Others
criticised the bridegroom as a hungry Madridlenian, who had come to Leon
with a superabundance of airs and an empty purse, in order to free
himself from his embarrassments by means of Señor Joaquin’s dollars.
Others again described satirically the appearance the country girl,
Lucía, would make when she should wear for the first time a hat and a
train and carry a parasol. But these criticisms were disarmed of their
sting by the proud satisfaction of Señor Joaquin, the childish frivolity
of the bride, and the courteous and well-bred reserve of the bridegroom.
Lucía, true to her purpose of not thinking of the marriage itself,
busied her thoughts with the nuptial accessories and described to her
friends with satisfaction the proposed journey, repeating the euphonious
names of cities that seemed to her enchanted regions,--Paris, Lyons,
Marseilles,--where the girl fancied the sky must be of a different
color, and the sunshine of a different nature, from the sunshine and the
sky of her native village. Miranda, by means of a loan he had
negotiated, purposing to repay it afterward with his generous
father-in-law’s money, ordered from the capital exquisite presents--a
set of diamonds and a box filled with elegant articles of wearing
apparel, the work of a celebrated man-milliner. Lucía, who after all was
a woman, and to whom all these splendors were new, more than once, like
Faust’s Marguerite, pleased herself by trying on the precious baubles
before the looking-glass, shaking her head to make the diamonds in the
earrings, and in the flowers scattered among her dark tresses, flash
back the light more brightly. In this way women amuse themselves when
they are young and sometimes long after they have ceased to be young.
But Lucía was not to preserve her youth forever.