Stein had inhabited his peaceful retreat during three years. He had
adopted the customs of the country in which he had found himself; he
lived, day after day, or, in other terms, according to the counsels of
his good hostess Maria, who said that the morrow should not so disquiet
us as to lose the present day, and that we should occupy us with but one
thing, viz., that to-day should not make us lose to-morrow.
During those three years, the young doctor had been in correspondence
with his family. His parents had died while he was with the army of
Navarre; his sister Charlotte was married to a farmer in easy
circumstances, who had made of his wife’s two brothers cultivators--not
much instructed, but handy and assiduous at their work. Stein,
therefore, believed himself free and sole arbiter of his fate.
He devoted himself to the education of the young invalid, who owed her
life to him, and although he cultivated a soil ungrateful and sterile,
he succeeded, by patience, to ingraft on her mind the elements of a
preliminary education. But what surpassed his expectations was the
development of the musical faculties, really extraordinary, with which
nature had endowed the fisherman’s daughter. Her voice was incomparable,
and Stein, who was a good musician, could easily and surely direct her,
as one trains the branches of the vine, which are at once flexible and
vigorous, strong and elastic.
But the master had a heart soft and tender, and a craving for confidence
which turned to blindness. He was devoted to his scholar, stimulated by
the exalted love of the fisherman for his daughter, and by the
admiration of the good Maria for Marisalada. Stein and his scholar
possessed a certain powerful communicative sympathy, which could
exercise its influence upon a soul frank and open, candid and
good-humored as that of the young German. He then persuaded Pedro
Santalo that his daughter was an angel, and Maria, that she was a
prodigy. Stein was one of those men who could assist at a masked ball
without convincing himself that under these absurd masks, under these
caricatures of painted cardboard, there were other physiognomies and
other faces--the work of nature, in one word. And if impassioned
affection blinded Santalo, if extreme goodness of soul blinded Maria,
both succeeded in putting a bandage over the eyes of the good doctor.
But that which bewitched, above all, our hero, was the pure, sweet,
expressive, and eloquent voice of his scholar.
“It must be,” he said to himself, “that she who expresses in a manner so
admirable, sentiments the most sublime, must be gifted with a soul full
of elevation and tenderness.”
Like as the grain of corn, in the fruitful soil, germinates and takes
root before the stem sprouts above the ground, so this love, so calm and
true, took root in the heart of Stein: love which he felt without having
yet defined it.
Marisalada, on her part, was equally attached to Stein, not because she
was grateful to him for his attentions, but that she appreciated his
excellent qualities, and because she comprehended his great superiority
of soul and intelligence: nor yet even because she obeyed an attractive
charm which imparted love to the person who inspired it; but because
that the musician, the master who had initiated her in the art, felt,
himself, all these sentiments of gratitude and admiration. The isolation
in which she lived tended to put far away any other object that could
excite her preference.
Don Modesto was not of an age to figure in this tournament of love. Momo
was not only disqualified by his extreme ugliness, but he preserved all
his hatred for Marisalada, never ceasing to call her Gaviota, and she
had for him the greatest contempt. Certainly gallants were not wanting
in the village; to commence with the barber, who was obstinate in his
sighs after Marisalada; but no one would oppose Stein.
This tranquil state of things had continued three springs and three
winters, which had glided by like three days and three nights, when that
came to pass which we will now relate.
An intrigue (who could have predicted it?) dawned on the peaceful
village of Villamar.
The promoter and the chief (who would have thought it?) was the good
Maria. The confidant (who will not be astonished?) was Don Modesto!
Although it was an indiscretion, or, the better to express it, a
baseness to watch, listening to the conspirators hidden behind that
orange-tree, whose trunk is still solid, while the flowers are withering
and the leaves falling--image of the resignation which rests in the
heart when joy is fled, when hopes are vanished; listening to a
conversation, which, in reconcilable secrecy, held the two accomplices,
while brother Gabriel, who is a thousand miles off and all near to the
speakers, was busy in binding up the lettuces to make them white and
tender.
“It is not an idea that I have, Don Modesto,” said the instigatress, “it
is a reality. Not to see it, is to have no eyes. Don Frederico loves
Marisalada, who regards the doctor no more than a bundle of straw.”
“Good Maria, who thinks of love?” replied Don Modesto, who, all his
life, calm and tranquil, had not seemed to realize the eternal, classic,
and invariable axiom of the inseparable alliance of Mars and Cupid. “Who
thinks of love?” repeated Don Modesto, in the same tone as if he had
said--
“Who thinks of shearing a tambourine?”
“The young people, Don Modesto, the young people; and if it were not so,
the world would come to an end. But the case is thus: we must give a
spur to these young folks; they get on too slowly. For two years our man
has loved his nightingale, as he calls her; that is evident in his
looks, and as for me, I see it clearly. You who are a considerable
personage, and whom Don Frederico loves so much, you ought to brisk up a
little this affair, giving him good advice for their good and ours.”
“Dispense with me, Maria,” replied Don Modesto. “Ramon Perez is an
obstacle; we are friends, and I would not counteract his projects. He
shaves me for my good appearances, and to thwart his interests, Maria,
would be, on my part, a bad action. He sees with much pain that
Marisalada does not love him, and he has become so thin and yellow that
he is frightful. The other day he said that if he cannot marry
Marisalada he will break his guitar, and that, no longer able to become
a monk, he will become a rebel. You see, good Maria, that in every way I
will compromise myself if I mix in this affair.”
“Señor,” said Maria, “do you take for cash in hand what lovers sing?
Ramon Perez, the poor little thing! is not capable of killing a
sparrow, and you believe he will attack Christians? But take this into
consideration: if Don Frederico marries he will remain with us always.
What a happy chance will it not be for everybody? I assure you that when
he talks of leaving us I feel all over _goose-flesh_. And the young
girl, what a magnificent position for her! For you must know that Don
Frederico gains a great deal of money. When he attended the son of the
alcalde, Don Perfecto, he gave him a hundred _reals_, which shone like a
hundred stars. What a beautiful couple they will make, my commandant!”
“I do not say nay, Maria,” replied Don Modesto; “but do not force me to
play a part in this affair, and leave me to preserve a strict
neutrality. I have not two faces, I have only that one over which the
barber passes his razor--it is my only one.”
At this moment Marisalada entered the garden. She was certainly no
longer the young girl we had known, dishevelled and badly clothed. She
came every morning to the convent, _coiffured_ with great care, and
neatly dressed. Neither affection for those who inhabited it, nor the
gratitude she owed, attracted her to this place. It was but the desire
to hear music, and to receive her lessons from Stein. Beyond this,
_ennui_ drove her from her cabin, where she had for society only her
father who did not much divert her.
“And Don Frederico?” she said on entering.
“He has not yet returned from visiting his patients,” answered Maria.
“To-day he has a dozen children to vaccinate. What an extraordinary
thing, Don Modesto! He draws the _pus_, as you call it, from the teat of
a cow: the cows have a counter-poison to oppose the small-pox! and it
must be so, since Don Frederico has said it.”
“Nothing is more true,” continued Don Modesto, “than that it was a Swiss
who discovered it. When I was at Gaëte I have seen the Swiss who
constituted the Pope’s guard, but neither of them could tell me who was
the author of the discovery.”
“If I were his Holiness,” pursued Maria, “I would reward the inventor by
a plenary indulgence. Seat yourself, my dear, I am dying with desire to
see you.”
“No! I am going.”
“Where do you wish to go?--no one loves you better than we do here.”
“What am I to do when people love me? What can I do since Don Frederico
is not here?”
“What is that? You only come here then for Don Frederico, little
ingrate?”
“Why not? why should I come? to find myself with Momo?”
“Then you love Don Frederico much?” hazarded the good old woman.
“I love him; and if it were not for him I would never put foot inside
these doors, for fear of encountering that demon Momo, whose tongue
resembles the sting of a wasp.”
“And Ramon Perez?” mischievously demanded Maria, as if she would
convince Don Modesto that his _protégé_ might give up his hopes.
Marisalada burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“If this _Raton_ (_he-mouse_) Perez--Momo had given the young barber
this _sobriquet_--happens to fall into the porridge-pot, I will not be
the ant who will sing or weep over him: less still will I be she who
will listen to his singing; for his singing attacks my nervous system,
as Don Frederico expresses it, which he assures me is now more
stretched than the strings of a guitar. You shall see how this Raton
Perez sings.”
Marisalada rapidly took a leaf of aloe, which lay on the ground among
those which served brother Gabriel as screens to protect, in their first
growth, the tomato plants against the attacks of the north wind. She
placed this leaf between her arms in the manner of a guitar, and began
to imitate with a grotesque air the gestures of Ramon Perez, with a
talent most perfect for imitation; then she sang this couplet with
strong trills:
“Young meagre Minstrel without gladness,
What have you there? why this distress, why these deep sighs?
Is it the cause of this dire sadness,
That on too high a castle you have cast your eyes?”
“Yes,” said Modesto, who remembered the serenades at the door of Rosita,
“this Ramon has always had grand pretensions.”
The events could not persuade Modesto that these serenades were not
designed for Rosita. From thence but one idea entered the head of this
man; it was, that if she fell into a love snare, he himself could not
extricate her. The calibre of his intelligence was so straitened, and so
invariably fixed, that as soon as an idea penetrated his brain it became
set, and remained there for life.
“I go,” said Marisalada, throwing the leaf of aloe in such way that it
fell with force against brother Gabriel, who, on his knees, and with his
back turned, attached his hundred and twenty-fifth knot.
“Jesus!” cried out brother Gabriel, turning around frightened. Then,
without uttering another word, he again set to work to tie up his
lettuces.
“What aiming!” said Marisalada, laughing. “Don Modesto, take me for
artilleryman when you obtain cannon for your fort.”
“Such things are not gracious; they are in bad taste, which, you must
know, please me in no way,” replied Maria a little coldly. “Say to me
what you like, but as to brother Gabriel, trouble not his peace, it is
the only good left to him.”
“Do not get angry,” replied the Gaviota, “you well know that brother
Gabriel is not made of glass.” Then, said she, making a courteous
reverence, “My commandant, say to Rosa Mistica that she transfer her
school to your fort, when it has some 24-pounders, that she may be well
defended against the snares of the demon. I must go, because Don
Frederico does not come; I am disposed to believe that he is vaccinating
all the village, including Rosa Mistica, the schoolmaster, and the
alcalde.”
But the good old woman, who was accustomed to the rather free manners of
Marisalada,--which, however, did not wound,--called the young girl and
told her to sit down near her.
Don Modesto, warned by this that Maria was about to open her
batteries,--faithful to the neutrality he had promised,--took leave of
the old woman, made a turn to the right and beat a retreat, not,
however, without having received from the monk a couple of lettuces and
a bunch of turnips.
“My daughter,” said Maria, when they were alone, “what will you not be
if Don Frederico marries you? You will be with this man, who is a St.
Louis de Gonzague, who knows every thing, who is a good musician, and
who gains plenty of money; you will be the doctor’s wife, the happiest
of women. You will be dressed like a dove, nurtured like a duchess; and
you could then, above all, help your poor father, who is growing old;
and it pains our hearts that he is obliged to be on the sea despite rain
and wind, so that his child may want for nothing. Thus would Don
Frederico remain among us, like an angel of the good God, consoling and
taking care of all who suffer.”
Marisalada listened attentively to the old woman, affecting great
distraction. When Maria had ceased to speak, the young girl was silent
for an instant, and then, with an air of indifference, said--
“I do not wish to marry.”
“Listen then!” exclaimed the good woman. “It is, perchance, you wish to
be a nun?”
“Not at all,” replied the Gaviota.
“What then?” demanded Maria, really angry. “You do not wish to be either
flesh or fish! One thing only I know--woman belongs to God or to man; if
not, she does not accomplish her mission, either towards God or towards
society.”
“What would you, Maria?” replied Marisalada; “I feel that neither
marriage nor the convent is my vocation.”
“Then, little girl,” replied the old woman, “thy vocation is that of the
mule. Nothing pleases me which is out of the regular order; above all,
in that which we other women regard.
“She who does not do what we all do, I would flee from, if I were a man,
as one flees from an infuriated bull. In a word--my hand on my
heart--you act wrong. But you are yet but a child,” she added, with her
habitual goodness, “there is much for you yet to learn. Time is a great
teacher.”
Marisalada arose and departed.
“Yes,” thought she, covering her head with her handkerchief, “he loves
me, I have known it for a long time--but--I love him as old Maria loves
brother Gabriel, as the aged love. He would receive a shower under my
window without fearing to take cold. Now--if he marries me, he will
render my life happy I am sure; he will let me do as I like: he will
give me music whenever I ask him, and purchase for me every thing I may
desire. If I were his wife, I would have a neckerchief of crape, like
Quela, the daughter of old Juan Lopez; and a mantle, blonde of Almagro,
like that of the Alcaldesa.
“They would both die with rage; but it seems to me that Don Frederico,
agitated as he is when he listens to my singing, thinks as much of
marrying me as Don Modesto thinks of taking for his wife his dear
Rosa--chief of all the devils.”
During the whole of this beautiful mental dialogue, Marisalada had not
one thought, not one recollection of her father, whose well-being and
whose solace had been the chief motives adduced by Maria.