The address of this letter, my brother, will show you that the head of
your house is out of reach of danger. If the massacre of our ancestors
in the Court of Lions made Spaniards and Christians of us against our
will, it left us a legacy of Arab cunning; and it may be that I owe my
safety to the blood of the Abencerrages still flowing in my veins.
Fear made Ferdinand's acting so good, that Valdez actually believed in
his protestations. But for me the poor Admiral would have been done
for. Nothing, it seems, will teach the Liberals what a king is. This
particular Bourbon has been long known to me; and the more His Majesty
assured me of his protection, the stronger grew my suspicions. A true
Spaniard has no need to repeat a promise. A flow of words is a sure sign
of duplicity.
Valdez took ship on an English vessel. For myself, no sooner did I see
the cause of my beloved Spain wrecked in Andalusia, than I wrote to the
steward of my Sardinian estate to make arrangements for my escape. Some
hardy coral fishers were despatched to wait for me at a point on the
coast; and when Ferdinand urged the French to secure my person, I was
already in my barony of Macumer, amidst brigands who defy all law and
all avengers.
The last Hispano-Moorish family of Granada has found once more the
shelter of an African desert, and even a Saracen horse, in an estate
which comes to it from Saracens. How the eyes of these brigands--who but
yesterday had dreaded my authority--sparkled with savage joy and
pride when they found they were protecting against the King of Spain's
vendetta the Duc de Soria, their master and a Henarez--the first who had
come to visit them since the time when the island belonged to the Moors.
More than a score of rifles were ready to point at Ferdinand of Bourbon,
son of a race which was still unknown when the Abencerrages arrived as
conquerors on the banks of the Loire.
My idea had been to live on the income of these huge estates, which,
unfortunately, we have so greatly neglected; but my stay there convinced
me that this was impossible, and that Queverdo's reports were only too
correct. The poor man had twenty-two lives at my disposal, and not
a single _real_; prairies of twenty thousand acres, and not a house;
virgin forests, and not a stick of furniture! A million piastres and
a resident master for half a century would be necessary to make these
magnificent lands pay. I must see to this.
The conquered have time during their flight to ponder their own case and
that of their vanquished party. At the spectacle of my noble country, a
corpse for monks to prey on, my eyes filled with tears; I read in it the
presage of Spain's gloomy future.
At Marseilles I heard of Riego's end. Painfully did it come home to
me that my life also would henceforth be a martyrdom, but a martyrdom
protracted and unnoticed. Is existence worthy the name, when a man can
no longer die for his country or live for a woman? To love, to conquer,
this twofold form of the same thought, is the law graven on our sabres,
emblazoned on the vaulted roofs of our palaces, ceaselessly whispered
by the water, which rises and falls in our marble fountains. But in vain
does it nerve my heart; the sabre is broken, the palace in ashes, the
living spring sucked up by the barren sand.
Here, then, is my last will and testament.
Don Fernand, you will understand now why I put a check upon your ardor
and ordered you to remain faithful to the _rey netto_. As your brother
and friend, I implore you to obey me; as your master, I command. You
will go to the King and will ask from him the grant of my dignities and
property, my office and titles. He will perhaps hesitate, and may treat
you to some regal scowls; but you must tell him that you are loved by
Marie Heredia, and that Marie can marry none but a Duc de Soria. This
will make the King radiant. It is the immense fortune of the Heredia
family which alone has stood between him and the accomplishment of my
ruin. Your proposal will seem to him, therefore, to deprive me of a last
resource, and he will gladly hand over to you my spoils.
You will then marry Marie. The secret of the mutual love against which
you fought was no secret to me, and I have prepared the old Count to see
you take my place. Marie and I were merely doing what was expected of us
in our position and carrying out the wishes of our fathers; everything
else is in your favor. You are beautiful as a child of love, and are
possessed of Marie's heart. I am an ill-favored Spanish grandee, for
whom she feels an aversion to which she will not confess. Some slight
reluctance there may be on the part of the noble Spanish girl on account
of my misfortunes, but this you will soon overcome.
Duc de Soria, your predecessor would neither cost you a regret nor rob
you of a maravedi. My mother's diamonds, which will suffice to make me
independent, I will keep, because the gap caused by them in the family
estate can be filled by Marie's jewels. You can send them, therefore, by
my nurse, old Urraca, the only one of my servants whom I wish to retain.
No one can prepare my chocolate as she does.
During our brief revolution, my life of unremitting toil was reduced to
the barest necessaries, and these my salary was sufficient to provide.
You will therefore find the income of the last two years in the hands of
your steward. This sum is mine; but a Duc de Soria cannot marry without
a large expenditure of money, therefore we will divide it. You will not
refuse this wedding-present from your brigand brother. Besides, I mean
to have it so.
The barony of Macumer, not being Spanish territory, remains to me. Thus
I have still a country and a name, should I wish to take up a position
in the world again.
Thank Heaven, this finishes our business, and the house of Soria is
saved!
At the very moment when I drop into simple Baron de Macumer, the French
cannon announce the arrival of the Duc d'Angouleme. You will understand
why I break off....
October.
When I arrived here I had not ten doubloons in my pocket. He would
indeed be a poor sort of leader who, in the midst of calamities he has
not been able to avert, has found means to feather his own nest. For the
vanquished Moor there remains a horse and the desert; for the Christian
foiled of his hopes, the cloister and a few gold pieces.
But my present resignation is mere weariness. I am not yet so near the
monastery as to have abandoned all thoughts of life. Ozalga had given me
several letters of introduction to meet all emergencies, amongst these
one to a bookseller, who takes with our fellow-countrymen the place
which Galignani holds with the English in Paris. This man has found
eight pupils for me at three francs a lesson. I go to my pupils every
alternate day, so that I have four lessons a day and earn twelve francs,
which is more than I require. When Urraca comes I shall make some
Spanish exile happy by passing on to him my connection.
I lodge in the Rue Hillerin-Bertin with a poor widow, who takes
boarders. My room faces south and looks out on a little garden. It is
perfectly quiet; I have green trees to look upon, and spend the sum
of one piastre a day. I am amazed at the amount of calm, pure pleasure
which I enjoy in this life, after the fashion of Dionysius at Corinth.
From sunrise until ten o'clock I smoke and take my chocolate, sitting at
my window and contemplating two Spanish plants, a broom which rises out
of a clump of jessamine--gold on a white ground, colors which must send
a thrill through any scion of the Moors. At ten o'clock I start for my
lessons, which last till four, when I return for dinner. Afterwards I
read and smoke till I go to bed.
I can put up for a long time with a life like this, compounded of work
and meditation, of solitude and society. Be happy, therefore, Fernand;
my abdication has brought no afterthoughts; I have no regrets like
Charles V., no longing to try the game again like Napoleon. Five days
and nights have passed since I wrote my will; to my mind they might have
been five centuries. Honor, titles, wealth, are for me as though they
had never existed.
Now that the conventional barrier of respect which hedged me round has
fallen, I can open my heart to you, dear boy. Though cased in the armor
of gravity, this heart is full of tenderness and devotion, which have
found no object, and which no woman has divined, not even she who, from
her cradle, has been my destined bride. In this lies the secret of
my political enthusiasm. Spain has taken the place of a mistress and
received the homage of my heart. And now Spain, too, is gone! Beggared
of all, I can gaze upon the ruin of what once was me and speculate over
the mysteries of my being.
Why did life animate this carcass, and when will it depart? Why has that
race, pre-eminent in chivalry, breathed all its primitive virtues--its
tropical love, its fiery poetry--into this its last offshoot, if the
seed was never to burst its rugged shell, if no stem was to spring
forth, no radiant flower scatter aloft its Eastern perfumes? Of what
crime have I been guilty before my birth that I can inspire no love? Did
fate from my very infancy decree that I should be stranded, a useless
hulk, on some barren shore! I find in my soul the image of the deserts
where my fathers ranged, illumined by a scorching sun which shrivels up
all life. Proud remnant of a fallen race, vain force, love run to waste,
an old man in the prime of youth, here better than elsewhere shall I
await the last grace of death. Alas! under this murky sky no spark will
kindle these ashes again to flame. Thus my last words may be those of
Christ, _My God, Thou hast forsaken me!_ Cry of agony and terror, to the
core of which no mortal has ventured yet to penetrate!
You can realize now, Fernand, what a joy it is to me to live afresh in
you and Marie. I shall watch you henceforth with the pride of a creator
satisfied in his work. Love each other well and go on loving if you
would not give me pain; any discord between you would hurt me more than
it would yourselves.
Our mother had a presentiment that events would one day serve her
wishes. It may be that the longing of a mother constitutes a pact
between herself and God. Was she not, moreover, one of those mysterious
beings who can hold converse with Heaven and bring back thence a vision
of the future? How often have I not read in the lines of her forehead
that she was coveting for Fernand the honors and the wealth of Felipe!
When I said so to her, she would reply with tears, laying bare the
wounds of a heart, which of right was the undivided property of both her
sons, but which an irresistible passion gave to you alone.
Her spirit, therefore, will hover joyfully above your heads as you bow
them at the altar. My mother, have you not a caress for your Felipe now
that he has yielded to your favorite even the girl whom you regretfully
thrust into his arms? What I have done is pleasing to our womankind,
to the dead, and to the King; it is the will of God. Make no difficulty
then, Fernand; obey, and be silent.
_P. S._ Tell Urraca to be sure and call me nothing but M. Henarez. Don't
say a word about me to Marie. You must be the one living soul to know
the secrets of the last Christianized Moor, in whose veins runs the
blood of a great family, which took its rise in the desert and is now
about to die out in the person of a solitary exile.
Farewell.