When Stein returned to the convent, all the family were assembled in the
court. Momo and Manuel arrived at the same time, each from his
direction. The last had been going his rounds of the farm in the
exercise of his functions as gamekeeper; he held his gun in one hand,
and in the other three partridges and two hares.
The children ran to Momo, who at once emptied his wallet, from which
escaped, as from a horn of abundance, a multitude of winter fruits,
which, according to Spanish custom, served to celebrate All Saints’ Eve;
viz., nuts, chestnuts, and pomegranates.
“If Marisalada brings us the fish,” said the eldest of the little girls,
“to-morrow we will have a famous feast.”
“To-morrow,” said Maria, “is All Saints; father Pedro will certainly not
go out to fish.”
“Then,” said the little one, “it will be for the next day.”
“They no longer fish on the ‘Dia de los Difuntos.’”
“And why?” demanded the child.
“Because it would be to profane a day which the church consecrates to
sanctified souls. The proof is, that the fishermen having once cast
their lines on such a day, and delighted with the weight they were
drawing in, were doomed to find only snakes instead of fish. Is it not
true, brother Gabriel?”
“I did not see it, but I am sure of it,” replied the brother.
“And is it for that you make us pray so much on the ‘day of the dead?’”
asked the little girl.
“For that same,” said the grandma; “it is a holy custom, and God is not
willing that we should ever neglect it.”
“Certainly,” added Manuel, “nothing is more just than to pray to the
Lord for the dead; and I remember a fellow of the Congregation of Souls
who begged for them in these terms, at the door of the chapel: ‘He who
places a small piece of money in this place, withdraws a soul from
purgatory.’ There came along a wag who, after having deposited his
piece: ‘Tell me, brother,’ asked he, ‘do you believe the soul is yet
clear of purgatory?’ ‘Do you doubt it?’ replied the brother. ‘In that
case,’ replied the other, ‘I take back my piece; I know this soul; she
is not such a fool as to go back when she is once out.’”
“You may be assured, Don Frederico,” said Maria, “that with every thing,
good or bad, my son finds always something appropriate to a story, a
witticism, or a _bon-mot_.”
At this moment Don Modesto entered by the court; he was as stiff and
grave as when he was presented to Stein at the end of the village. The
only change was, that he carried suspended to his stick a large stock of
fish covered over with cabbage leaves.
“The commandant! The commandant!” was the general cry.
“Do you come from your citadel, San Cristobal?” asked Manuel of Don
Modesto, after exchanging the preliminary compliments, and an invitation
to be seated on the same stone bench where Stein was seated.
“You might join my mother, who is so good a Christian, to pray to the
saints to build again the walls of the fort, contrary to that which, by
report, Joshua did at the walls of Jericho.”
“I have to ask of the Lord things more important than that,” replied the
grandma.
“Certainly,” said brother Gabriel, “Maria has more important things than
the reconstruction of the walls of a fort to ask of the Lord. It would
be better of her to implore Him to reconstruct the convent.”
Don Modesto, on hearing these words, turned with a severe gesture
towards the monk, who, at this moment, went and placed himself behind
the old mother, and dissimulated so well, that he disappeared almost
entirely to the eyes of the others present.
“After what I see,” continued the old commandant, “brother Gabriel does
not belong to the church militant. Do you not remember that the Jews,
before building their Temple, had conquered the promised land, sword in
hand? Would there have been churches and priests in the Holy Land if the
crosses had not conquered it, lance in hand?”
“But,” then said Stein, with the laudable intention to divert from this
discussion the commandant, whose bile commenced to be stirred, “why does
Maria ask for what is impossible?”
“That signifies little,” replied Manuel; “all old women act the same,
except she who asked God to tell her a good number in the drawing of a
lottery.”
“Was it sent her?” they asked.
“It had been well kept, if I had gained the prize. He who could do all
things, where the miracle?”
“That which is certain,” declared Don Modesto, “is, that I will be very
grateful to the Lord, if he will inspire the government with the happy
idea of re-establishing the fort of San Cristobal.”
“To rebuild, would you say?” observed Manuel; “take care and repent at
once, as it happened to a woman consecrated to the Lord, and who had a
daughter so ugly, so stupid, and so awkward, that she could not find
even a despairing man to espouse her. The poor woman, much embarrassed,
passed all her days on her knees at prayer, asking a husband for her
daughter. At last one presented himself: the joy of the mother was
extreme, but of short duration. The son-in-law was so bad, he so
maltreated his wife and his mother-in-law, that the latter went to the
church, and there posted before the saint this inscription:
‘Saint Christopher! with hands and feet,
Whose measure could a giant’s meet!
(And with a head of bony horns),
Is’t thou among the saints I saw?
Thou--Jewish as my son-in-law.’”
While the conversation was going on, Morrongo, the house cat, awoke from
a long sleep, bent his croup like the back of a camel, uttered a sharp
mew, opened out his mustaches, and approached, little by little, towards
Don Modesto, just so as to place himself behind the perfumed pocket
suspended to the baton. He immediately received on his velvet paws a
little stone thrown by Momo, with that singular address which children
of his age so well know how to cast. The cat skipped off in a gallop,
but lost no time in returning to his post of observation, and made
believe to sleep. Don Modesto saw him, and lost his tranquillity of
mind.
“You have not said, Señor Commandant, how Marisalada is?”
“Ill, very ill, she grows weaker every day. I am much afflicted to see
her poor father, who has had so much to suffer. This morning his
daughter had a high fever; her cough did not quit her for an instant.”
“What do you say, Señor Commandant?” cried Maria.
“Don Frederico, you who have made such wonderful cures, you who have
extracted a stone from brother Gabriel and restored the sight of Momo,
can you not do something for this poor creature?”
“With great pleasure,” replied Stein; “I will do all in my power to
relieve her.”
“And God will repay you. To-morrow morning we will go and see her.
To-day you are too much fatigued from your walk.”
“I am not jealous of his kind,” said Momo, grumbling. “The proudest
girl--”
“That is not so,” exclaimed the old woman; “she is a little wild, a
little ferocious; one can see she has been educated alone, and allowed
to have her own way by a father more gentle than a dove, although a
little rough in manner, like all good sailors. But Momo cannot bear
Marisalada, since one day when she called him Romo (flat-nosed), as
indeed he is.”
At this moment a noise was heard; it was the commandant pursuing at a
quick pace the thief Morrongo, who had deceived the vigilance of his
master and ran off with the stock fish.
“My commandant,” cried out Manuel to him, laughing, “the sardine which
the cat carries will not come to the dish except late or never, but I
have here a partridge in exchange.”
Don Modesto seized the partridge, thanked him, took leave of the
company, and went away, inveighing against cats.
During all this scene, Dolores had given the breast to her nursing
infant; she tried to hush him to sleep, cradling him in her arms and
singing to him:
“There high on Calvary, in their fresh retreats,
Woods of olives, wood of perfume meets;
A nightingale--four larks--whose breath,
Would warble forth a Saviour’s death.”
For those who suppress the circulation of poetry of the people, as the
child crushes with its hand the feeblest butterfly, it would be
difficult to say why larks and nightingales warble the death of Christ;
why the swallow plucked out the thorns of his crown; why the rosemary is
an object of veneration, in the belief that the Virgin dried the
swaddling-clothes of the infant Jesus on a bush of this plant? Why, or
rather how do they know that the willow is a tree of bad augury, since
Judas hung himself on a branch of this tree? Why does no misfortune ever
happen in a house if it has been perfumed with rosemary during Christmas
eve? Why in the flower which is called the _passion-flower_ are found
all the instruments of the passion of Christ? In truth, there are no
answers to these questions. The people do not possess them, nor demand
them. These beliefs have accumulated like the vague sounds of distant
music, without research into their origin, without analyzing their
authenticity.
“But, Don Frederico,” said Maria, while Stein was occupied with
reflections on the proceedings, “you have not told us how you find our
village.”
“I have seen nothing,” replied Stein, “save only the chapel of our Lord
of Good-Help.”
“Miraculous chapel, Don Frederico. Hold,” pursued the old woman, after
some instants of silence, “the only motive why I am not as much pleased
here as in the village is, that I cannot follow out my devotions. Yes,
Manuel, thy father, who had not been a soldier, thought like me. My poor
husband!--he is in heaven--my poor husband was brother of Rosaire of the
dawn; Rosaire who went out after midnight to pray for souls. Fatigued
with a long day’s work he slept profoundly; and precisely at midnight a
brother rang a bell, came to the door, and chanted:
‘Here is then the faithful bell!
It is not she the warnings tell;
Of thy parents ’tis the voice!
The cross’s foot then make thy choice;
Raise thee, my son, so full of zeal,
And prayerful in the chapel kneel.
On thy knees in the holy place,
For parents supplicate God’s grace.’
When thy father heard this chant, he felt no longer fatigue nor need of
sleep. In the twinkling of an eye he got up and followed the other
brother. It seems to me I yet hear him singing in the distance:
‘The Virgin raised the Sovereign crown,
And meekly laid the sceptre down;
Presenting them to Christ was seen,
Exclaiming--I no more am Queen.
If not held back thy wrath from o’er the human race,
Then is thy crown divine with too just rigor placed.’
Jesus answered her:
‘My mother!
Without thy grace so pure, and thy sweet hallowed prayer,
The thunderbolt had hurled the sinner to despair.’”
The children, who love so much to imitate what they see as at all great
or remarkable, undertook to sing in a beautiful tone the couplets of the
aurora:
“Hark! how the trumpet’s shrill-blast clarion sounds!
The voice of the Angel through Heaven resounds:
Jerusalem! within thy walls,
An infant’s foot triumphant falls;
What was the people’s homage in that hour?
What grand equipments decked the kingly bower?
The all-powerful whom Heaven had sent,
Rode on an ass which men had lent.”
“Don Frederico,” said Maria, after a moment’s silence, “in the world
which God has made, is it true that there have been men without faith?”
Stein was mute.
“Can you not cure the blindness of their intelligence, as you have cured
the eyes of Momo?” replied, with sadness, the good old woman, who
remained altogether pensive.