From this day forth the serenity and sweetness which we have said was
characteristic of Maximina's face began to gain a more concentrated,
more delicate aspect, like the mystic expression of saints assured of
heaven. She did not speak of the occurrence with her husband again, and
when he alluded to it, she dropped her smiling eyes, and her face
flushed a little.
But Miguel understood perfectly that she was thinking of nothing else;
that the bliss of coming maternity filled her whole nature, her life,
and her being. He also was delighted, not so much at the new trust with
which nature was going to honor him, as at the spectacle of his wife's
happiness, and in secretly watching in her eyes, and in all her
movements, the adorable mystery that was taking place in her soul.
When they walked along the street, he noticed that she cast quick and
anxious glances at the linen shops, where baby-caps and children's
wardrobes were on exhibition. And divining that she would enjoy
stopping, he would make some excuse for asking the price of shirts or
handkerchiefs, and let her amuse herself looking at infant wardrobes.
"Do you know," she would say afterwards, "do you know how much baby
shirts cost a dozen?"
"No," he would answer, laughing.
"I do, though!"
One day, as he was passing by the chamber door into the library, he
caught sight of her looking into the wardrobe mirror; and he was
surprised, because no woman was ever freer from vanity and coquetry than
she; but his surprise was changed into amusement when he saw that she
was looking at her profile to see whether her form had changed. But lest
he should embarrass her he went out on his tiptoes.
Another day, as they were walking in the neighborhood of the Retiro,
they happened to see a white hearse in which was a child's coffin.
Maximina looked at it with an expression of deep pain, and watched it
until it disappeared from sight; then, with a gentle sigh, she
exclaimed;--
"Oh, how sorry it makes me feel for children that die!"
Miguel smiled and made no reply, reading her thoughts.
While time glided away in this sweet and delightful manner for our young
couple, Marroquin, the hairy Marroquin, was trying to accomplish his own
ends; the nation was over a volcano, and the former professor of the
Colegio de la Merced, secretly, and in company with our friend, Merelo y
Garcia, was not behindhand in stirring the flames of civil discord.
Not a night passed without both of them uttering bloody prognostications
for the future in the Cafe de Levante; the number of times that
institutions had been crumbled into dust on the marble tables was beyond
belief; the waiters, from listening to democratic discourses, served the
customers badly; more then once the secret police had visited the
establishment, so said the disturbers of the public peace; but there had
been no arrests, and this made Marroquin desperate. He enjoyed, beyond
measure, speaking so as to be heard of all who came to the table, at the
same time fastening his gaze on some peaceable customer, and making
tremendous boasts, so as to rouse his curiosity.
"Don Servando," he would shout to a gentlemen sitting some distance from
him, "do you expect to go out for a walk to-morrow?"
"Certainly, as always, Senor Marroquin."
"You had better not take your wife and children."
"Man alive! why not?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing! That is all I have to say."
But the revolutionary professor enjoyed most one evening when he
succeeded in bringing to the cafe; his old friend and colleague Don
Leandro.
Don Leandro's name was still on the faculty of the Colegio de la Merced,
which was no longer under the direction of the ex-captain of artillery,
but of the chaplain Don Juan Vigil. Don Leandro was the only one of the
old professors left, and this was because he was unhappy and patiently
endured the caprices of the chaplain, who now more than ever took
delight in tormenting him, and lavishing upon him the tremendous gifts
of sarcasm wherewith he was endowed by nature.
Marroquin met him one Sunday in the street, and after a hearty greeting,
as his custom was, he began to say harsh things of the cure, which was
also a habit of his. This flattered the worthy Don Leandro immensely,
though he affected not to listen to him, for he detested backbiting, and
was greatly afraid of hell, though not so much of purgatory.
So that Marroquin, in spite of his depraved ideas, served as a powerful
temptation for his friend to go into El Levante and have a glass of
water, for example. Don Leandro, no matter what opprobriums the
heretical professor heaped upon his born enemy, acquiesced with a smile;
and even, from time to time, he himself would let slip some spiteful
word, promising before the tribunal of his conscience to confess it
immediately.
But the trouble was, Don Leandro's confessor was the very same chaplain,
who, like his glorious predecessor, Gregory VII., aspired to possess the
key to the consciences of his subjects, and would not hear to any
alumnus or dependent of the college confiding his load of sins to any
other bosom than his.
This, according to all logic, caused poor Don Leandro great tribulation,
who, as he went often to confession, found himself obliged to tell the
chaplain all the evil thoughts that he had about him; but the torment
that the latter inflicted was much greater and more cruel. Oftentimes,
while Don Leandro was unbosoming himself, the confessor heaved deep
sighs and made the confessional creak as though his chair pinched him.
He was tempted to dismiss him from the college, but he felt that such a
thing would be an attack on the sacred character of the confessional,
since Don Leandro did his duty conscientiously, and to turn him off
required that he should make use of his knowledge acquired in the
tribunal of penance.
Afterwards it occurred to him to send him to some one else to make his
confession; but the demon of curiosity had firm possession of him, and,
though every day he promised himself to give him notice, he never
reached the point of doing so, and continued to hear his own deeds
criticised without the power to defend himself.
"_Barajoles!_ what a penance God has put upon me," he would say
afterwards, as he strode up and down his room. "How I should like to
give this idiot a couple of raps!"
Don Leandro, when he entered El Levante, had no idea that he was going
to meet so many gentlemen, and still less that there were among them a
number of impious revolutionists, enemies of "all religious restraint."
Accordingly, when he began to hear them speak of the government in the
terms which they were wont to use, he flushed deeply and began to cast
surreptitious glances in all directions, and especially at Marroquin.
"See here, Senor Marroquin!" he said in an undertone, "let us talk about
something else."