The grandma and the brother Gabriel took the best care of the invalid;
but they could not agree upon the method which should be adopted to cure
him.
Maria, without having read Brown, recommended substantial soups,
comforts, and tonics, because she conceived that Stein was debilitated
and worn out.
Brother Gabriel, without ever having heard the name of Broussais
pronounced, pleaded for refreshments and emollients, because, in his
opinion, Stein had a brain fever, the blood heated and the skin hot.
Both were right, and with this double system, which blended the soups of
the grandma with the lemonade of brother Gabriel, it happened that Stein
recovered his life and his health the same day that the good woman
killed the last fowl, and the brother divested the lemon-trees of their
last fruit.
“Brother Gabriel,” said the grandma, “to which State corps do you think
our invalid belongs? Is he military?”
“He must be military,” replied brother Gabriel, who, except in medical
or horticultural discussions, had the habit of regarding the good woman
as an oracle, and to be guided wholly by her opinion.
“If he were military,” continued the old woman, shaking her head, “he
would be armed, and he is not armed. I found only a flute in his pocket.
Then he is not military.”
“He cannot be military,” replied brother Gabriel.
“If he were a contrabandist?”
“It is possible he is a contrabandist,” said the good brother Gabriel.
“But no,” replied the old woman, “for to be a contrabandist, he should
wear stuffs or jewelry, and he has nothing of these.”
“That is true, he cannot be a contrabandist,” affirmed brother Gabriel.
“See what are the titles of his books. Perhaps by that means we can
discover what he is.”
The brother rose, took his horn spectacles, placed them on his nose, and
the package of books in his hands, and approached the window which
looked out on the grand court. His inspection of the books lasted a long
time.
“Brother Gabriel,” asked the old woman, “have you forgotten to know how
to read?”
“No--but I do not know these characters; I believe it is Hebrew.”
“Hebrew! Holy Virgin of Heaven, can he be a Jew?”
At that moment, Stein, awaking from a long lethargy, addressed him, and
said in German:
“Mein Gott, wo bin ich? My God, where am I?”
The old woman sprang with one bound to the middle of the chamber;
brother Gabriel let fall the books, and remained petrified after opening
his eyes as large as his spectacles.
“In what language have you spoken?” she demanded.
“It must be Hebrew, like these books,” answered brother Gabriel.
“Perhaps he is a Jew, as you said, good Maria.”
“God help us!” she cried. “But no, if he were a Jew, would we not have
seen it on his back when we undressed him?”
“Good Maria,” replied the brother, “the holy father said that this
belief which attributes to a Jew a tail at his back is nonsense, a piece
of bad wit, and that the Jews laugh at it.”
“Brother Gabriel,” replied the good Mama Maria, “since this holy
constitution, all is changed, all is metamorphosed. This clique, who
govern to-day in place of the king, wish that nothing should remain of
what formerly existed; it is for that they no longer permit the Jews to
wear tails on their backs, although they always before carried them, as
does the devil. If the holy father said to the contrary it is because it
is obligatory, as they are obliged to say at Mass, ‘Constitutional
king.’”
“That may be so,” said the monk.
“He is not a Jew,” pursued the old woman; “rather is he a Turk or a
Moor, who has been shipwrecked on our coast.”
“A pirate of Morocco,” replied the good brother, “it may be.”
“But then he would wear a turban and yellow slippers, like the Moor I
have seen thirty years ago, when I was in Cadiz. They called him the
Moor Seylan. How handsome he was! But for me his beauty was nothing: he
was not a Christian. After all, be he Jew or Moor let us relieve him.”
“Assist him, Jew or Christian,” repeated the brother. And they both
approached the bed.
Stein had raised himself up in a sitting position, and regarded with
astonishment all the objects by which he was surrounded.
“He does not understand what we say to him,” said the good Maria. “Let
us try, nevertheless.”
“Let us try,” added Gabriel.
In Spain, the common people believe that the best way to make
themselves understood is to speak very loud. Maria and Gabriel, with
this conviction, cried out both together: “Will you have some soup?”
said Maria. “Will you have some lemonade?” said the brother.
Stein, whose ideas became clearer little by little, asked in Spanish:
“Where am I? who are you?”
“He,” replied the old woman, “is brother Gabriel; I am grandma Maria,
and we are both at your orders.”
“Ah!” said Stein, “from whom do you take your names? The holy archangel
and the holy Virgin, guardians of the sick and consolers of the
afflicted, will recompense you for your good action.”
“He speaks Spanish!” cried Maria with emotion; “and he is a Christian!
and he knows the litanies!”
In her access of joy, she approached Stein, pressed him in her arms and
bravely kissed his forehead.
“Decidedly, who are you?” she said, after having made him take a bowl of
soup. “How, ill and dying, have you reached this depopulated village?”
“I am called Stein, and I am a surgeon. I was in the war at Navarre. I
came by Estremadura to seek a port whence I could embark for Cadiz, and
then regain Germany, my country. I lost myself in my route: I made a
thousand detours and finished by arriving here, worn out by fatigue and
ready to give up the ghost.”
“You see,” said Maria to brother Gabriel, “that his books are not in the
Hebrew language, but in the language of surgeons.”
“That’s true,” repeated brother Gabriel.
“And which party do you belong to?” asked the old woman. “Don Carlos, or
the other?”
“I serve in the troops of the Queen,” replied Stein.
Maria turned towards her companion, and with an expressive gesture, said
in a low voice:
“He is not with the good.”
“He was not with the good,” repeated brother Gabriel, in bowing his
head.
“But where am I?” again demanded Stein.
“You are,” replied the old woman, “in a convent which is no longer a
convent. It is a body without a soul. There remain but the walls, the
white cross, and brother Gabriel. The _others_ have taken away all the
rest. When there was nothing more to take, some _gentlemen_ whom they
call the public credit searched for a good man to guard the
convent--that is to say, its carcass. They heard my son spoken of, and
we came and established ourselves here, where I live with my son, the
only one who would remain. When we entered into the convent, the fathers
went away. Some retired to America or rejoined the missions in China;
some returned to their families; some demanded their subsistence or
work, or had recourse to alms. We have with us a monk, borne down by age
and grief, who, seated on the steps of the white cross, weeps sometimes
for the absent brethren, sometimes for the convent which they have
abandoned. ‘Will not your Reverence come here,’ a child but lately
attached to the services of the chapel said to him. ‘Where would you
that I go?’ he replied. ‘I will never go away from these walls, where I
was, poor and an orphan, received by the good fathers. I know nobody in
the world, and know nothing but how to take care of the garden of the
convent. Where shall I go? What shall I do? I can live only here.’ ‘Then
remain with us.’ ‘Well said, mother,’ replied my son; ‘we are seven
seated at the same table; we will be eight, and, as the proverb says,
We will eat more, and we will eat less.’”
“Thanks to this act of charity,” said Gabriel, “I remain here, I take
charge of the garden; but since they have sold the large pump, I do not
know how to water a foot of ground; the orange and lemon trees dry up
under my feet.”
“Brother Gabriel,” continued the grandma, “will not quit these walls to
which he is attached like the ivy; he also says, ‘Very well, there
remain but the walls. The barbarians! They have proved this maxim:
Destroy the nest, the birds will never come back again.’”
“Notwithstanding,” hazarded Stein, “I have heard said there are too many
convents in Spain.”
Maria fixed her black sparkling eyes on the German, and said to herself
in an undertone:
“Were our first suspicions well founded?”