If the reader, before quitting us perhaps forever, will follow us, we
will revisit Villamar, after the lapse of four years, that is to say in
the summer of 1848, this pretty and tranquil village placed on the
border of the sea; and we will narrate to him the grave events, public
and private, which have happened during all that time.
We commence by recounting the vicissitudes of the unlucky inscription
which gave so much trouble to the alcalde, and which was almost effaced
by one of those showers of Andalusia, more calculated to submerge the
earth than to fructify it.
The alcalde, fearing that his patriotism, like that of the inscription,
might be effaced, would revive a noble sentiment, and he believed he
would attain his object in giving to the street known as the _Calle
Real_, the name of _Calle de los Hijos de Padilla_.
This change brought about the following _émeute_:
One of the inhabitants of this street, named Cristobal Padilla, had
died, and his children continued to inhabit the house of their father;
but the Lopez, the Perez, and the Sanchez were living in the same
street, and they protested against the preference accorded to Padilla.
The alcalde hastened to explain to them that the _Sons of Padilla_
formed, in former times, an association of freemen, and that it was
named in honor of them. They answered, that they were also as much
_freemen_ as the Padillas, and that, if the alcalde persisted in his
idea, they would appeal for justice to the government. The alcalde sent
them all to the devil. Then, after a second _émeute_, an _émeute_ of
women this time, led by Rosa Mistica, equally on account of the change
of name, he wrote under the signature of _El Patrioto Modelo_, to a
leading journal of the capital, an article, in which, after having
praised his own civic rule and his courage, he spoke of the harvest of
melons and calabashes.
To return to our narrative: The tower of the fort San Cristobal was in
ruins, and with it the hopes of Don Modesto, who had always nourished
the idea of one day seeing his fort placed on a scale with that of
Gibraltar, Brest, Cadiz, Cherbourg, Malta, and Sebastopol.
But nothing so much astonished our friends at Villamar as the change
brought about in the shop of the barber Ramon Perez. Ramon, some time
after the death of his father, which happened a month or two after the
departure of the Gaviota, could not resist the desire to proceed to
Madrid, to follow the ingrate, who had sacrificed him for a stranger.
He went, and was absent two weeks.
These two weeks passed, he returned, and with him brought--
1st, An exhaustless supply of lies and bragging.
2d, An infinite variety of songs and Italian scraps, horrible to listen
to.
3d, An assumption of the _fashionable_, impudent airs, and a
free-and-easy manner capable of provoking the unfortunate inhabitants of
Villamar, whose ears and jaws, more unfortunate still, retained for a
long time the traces of these dangerous acquisitions.
4th, The most absurd tendencies to copy the king of barbers, _Figaro_,
whom, unfortunately, he had seen represented at the theatre of Seville.
Ramon Perez had also brought from his journey one thing which he
revealed to nobody: a magnificent _kick_, which was bestowed upon him
one evening, under the windows of Marisalada.
Thanks to one circumstance, which we learned later, the barber had come
into possession of a considerable sum of money. Then his _souvenirs_ of
Figaro and of Seville rose up in his mind more intensely. He embellished
his shop with Asiatic luxury, associated with disorder the most
ridiculous. He hung against the walls three engravings: a Telemachus,
large as a drum-major; a Mentor, with a full beard; and a lank Calypso.
He believed and affirmed that they were St. Peter and the Magdalen. The
wags said that every thing was remodelled at Ramon’s except his razors;
but Perez said that the device of the age was, “Appear, rather than be.”
He had a sign painted of such huge dimensions that he was obliged to
construct two pillars to sustain it.
Now that the reader knows what had passed at Villamar, let us follow
with him the thread of actualities.
One day, Ramon sang, accompanying himself on the guitar. It was not a
song of the country, but a melancholy romance entitled _Atala_. It was a
frightful thing to hear the trills, the cadences, the flourishes of all
sorts, which he resorted to, to render the music unnatural. Don Modesto,
moved by a sentiment of gratitude towards the man who shaved him for
nothing, alone listened to Ramon’s singing, when suddenly the door of
the back shop was opened wide, and there was seen going out a woman,
with an infant in her arms, and another who followed her weeping. This
woman, pale, meagre, and of coarse manners, was dressed in a robe of
light muslin, and an old barege shawl, and her long hair escaped from
her comb, descending in disorder to her feet. Her feet were dressed in
satin shoes, worn down at the heels. And she wore in her ears large gold
ear-rings.
“Hush! hush! Ramon,” she cried in a coarse voice, “do not stun my ears.
I would rather prefer to hear the croaking of all the ravens on the
coast, and the mewing of all the cats in the village, than to hear this
mutilation of serious music. I have already told you to sing only the
songs of the country. Your voice is sufficiently flexible, and it is
always good for that; but there is not a living soul who could support
your pretensions to the graces of an artist. I tell you this, and you
know if I am competent or not to express an opinion. You so bore me with
your stupid vocalization, that, if you continue it, I will quit this
house, never to return to it. Be silent!” she added, striking the
infant, who had begun to cry, “you _bray_ like your father.”
“Go, then, by all the saints!” replied the barber, wounded in what his
_amour propre_ cherished as most dear. “Go, run away, and never return
until I recall you: in this way you will run for a long time without
stopping.”
“Dare you speak to me thus, you beardless chin!--to me, whom the
grandees of Spain, ambassadors, and the entire court recall to their
memory.”
“If all the world saw you to-day, be sure they would not desire to
listen to you, or think of you.”
“Why have I married this booby, who, after having spent the allowance I
had from the duke, now insults me--me, the celebrated Maria Santalo, who
made such a noise in the world?”
“It will be better for you if you make no more,” said Ramon.
At these words the woman sprang upon her husband, who, filled with fear,
had not time to save himself.
In going out he ran against a new personage, whom he upset. Hardly had
Maria perceived the ludicrous _rencontre_ when her anger gave place to
the loudest laughter.
This personage was Momo, whose cheeks were bandaged with an old
handkerchief, and frightfully swollen. He had come to Ramon, who to his
quality of barber joined that of dentist, to have a tooth extracted.
“What horrible vision!” cried Maria. “You would frighten fear itself.
Have you come to exhibit yourself for money?”
“I came to have a tooth taken out, and not to be insulted. But Gaviota
you have been, Gaviota you are, and Gaviota you will be.”
“If you have come here to have extracted that which is really bad, Ramon
must commence with your heart.”
“See then, who speaks of heart! A daughter who left her father to die in
the arms of strangers, without sending even the slightest assistance!”
“And whose fault?” replied Maria. “Yours, ugly peasant, who left Madrid
without delivering your message, and spread everywhere the report of my
death, because you mistook a theatrical representation for a reality. In
consequence of which, on my arrival here all Villamar took me for a
spectre from the other world.”
“Theatrical representation! yes, you have always so said. But if Telo
had not missed you, and if your husband had not cured you, you would
long ago have been food for worms, for the repose of honest people who
know you.”
“You do not enjoy this repose; and you will not enjoy it for a long time
to come. I will live a hundred years to torment you.”
Momo, as his only reply, shrugged his shoulders with contempt, and in a
sententious voice pronounced--
“Gaviota you have been, Gaviota you are, and Gaviota you will be.”
When Don Modesto, stunned by the noise of the quarrel, heard the
laughter which succeeded the tones of violent anger, he profited by the
occasion to sneak away from the battle-field. He had scarcely escaped
from the dispute between Momo and Maria, when new terrors assailed him,
at the sight of the single eye of Rosita, an eye full of severity and of
menace. Don Modesto went, and seated himself in a corner, and, like a
bird, who sees a storm approaching, hides his head under his wing, he
bent down his head, and waited.
“It was very becoming,” said Rosita, “and very dignified, in a man of
your age, and of your importance, one of the first authorities of the
place, a man who has seen his name printed in large letters in the
Gazette, to go near these people, near these brainless fools, not to say
worse, and to commit yourself with this woman, whose marriage is but a
long scandal.”
“But, Rosita, I am not committed to the quarrel, it was she who came in
where I was.”
“If you had not been at this bad barber’s, at the house of this
everlasting singer; if you had not stopped there, with open mouth
listening to his paltry songs, you would not have been exposed to being
a witness of such a shameful scene.”
“But, Rosita, you forget that I must be shaved now and then, under pain
of otherwise being mistaken for a pioneer; that this good Ramon Perez
shaves me for nothing, as his father did before him; and that both
politeness and gratitude demand of me that I listen with patience when
he sings.”
“I tell you that it is an abomination to see you among such people, like
intimates.”
“Rosita, can you speak thus of Ramon, who shaves me for nothing, and of
Marisalada, whom ministers and generals have applauded, and who has been
so good as to put a cockade on my hat?”
“Yes, a cockade big as a salad! She mocks you. Ah! she is good, this
woman, who let her father die in a garret, all alone, in misery and
forgetfulness, while she sang herself hoarse on the stage.”
“But, Rosita, if she were ignorant of the gravity--”
“She knew he was ill, that should have been sufficient. While a father
suffers, a daughter should not sing. Ah! she is good, this woman, in her
conduct forcing her husband to fly to the Indies to die there of shame
and grief.”
“He died of the yellow fever.”
“Yes, she is good! And she was the only one who did not come to watch
poor old Maria in her last illness; old Maria, who had so much loved
her, and who had heaped on her a thousand kind acts. She was the only
one absent at the funeral, the only one who did not pray for her either
in the church, or at the burial-ground.”
“It was immediately after her confinement, and it would have been an
imprudence at that time.”
“What do you understand about going out soon after confinement?”
interrupted Rosita, exasperated by the ardor which Don Modesto exhibited
in defending his friends. “Have you ever had any children?”
“No, for--”
“And when brother Gabriel died, soon after old Maria, was it not this
Gaviota who dared to laugh, saying, that it was at the theatre only she
thought people died of grief and love? This woman is accursed.”
“Poor brother Gabriel!” said Don Modesto, agitated by the souvenirs
which his hostess revived. “Every Friday he came to pray for a good
death from the Lord of Good-help; after the decease of his benefactress
he came every day. It was I, who met him one Friday, in the morning, on
his knees, near the grating of the chapel, his head resting on the bars.
I approached--he was dead! Died as he had lived, without noise, and
unconscious. Poor brother Gabriel, thou hast died without having seen
the walls of your convent rebuilt--and I, I will die also without seeing
my fort rebuilt.”
THE END.
* * * * *
LITERAL TRANSLATIONS.
NOTE 1.
“Banish the importunate complaints:
If you lose me, my handsome godson,
Search where are born the women brown,
Search where the salt alone is found.”
NOTE 2.
“Who was Don Madureira?
The best singer in the world.
God, in his exalted prescience,
Said to him: Die. He expired;
But reanimated by his zeal,
He wished for a chapel,
And sang things so beautiful
That God himself admired him.
‘I give you a chapel,’
Said the great Jehovah to him:
‘The harmony of my angels
Is not equal to the melody
Of Señor Madureira.’”
NOTE 3.
“Glory to thee, beautiful Andalusian;
The sun is in thine eyes;
Of thee the aurora is jealous;
Thy love transports me to heaven.”
NOTE 4.
“I love better the clash of the glass,
At table with my friends,
Than the lying glow
Of courts and marquises.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Gaviota is the name of a sea-gull. It applies familiarly to the
female scold, imprudent, stupid, and of harsh manners, indicated by the
well-known proverb: “The sea-gull--the older she is, the louder she
screams.”
[2] Brief name for Geronimo, in Andalusia.
[3] In poetry--the _North Star_.
[4] See note 1.
[5] See note 2.
[6] See note 3.
[7] See note 4.
[8] The place where they excite the bulls before the combat.
[9] The bull who leads the troop, and which they introduce into the
arena to make the animal retire, when they would finish the combat.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
that he had never been seen of him=> that he had never been seen by him
{pg 135}
The cross of calvary=> The cross of Calvary {pg 138}
Marisalda and her friends=> Marisalada and her friends {pg 168}
affirmed the countness=> affirmed the countess {pg 170}
Come, Léon=> Come, León {pg 184}
Let them alone, Leon,=> Let them alone, León, {pg 198}
Léon=> León {pg x5}
Donde nacen las movenas=> Donde nacen las morenas {pg 200}