The wedding took place and Cæsar had to compromise about a lot of
things. It didn’t trouble him to confess and receive communion; he
considered those mere customs, and went to the church of the Plain to
conform to these practices with the old priest who was a friend of
Amparito’s.
On the other hand, it did bother Cæsar to have to suffer Father Martin
in his house, who allowed himself to talk and give advice; and he
was also irritated by the presence of certain persons who considered
themselves aristocrats and who came to call on him and point out to him
that it was now time to give up the rabble and the indigent and to rise
to their level.
If he had not had so much to think about as he did have, he would have
found this a good chance to show his aggressive humour; but all his
attention was fixed on Amparito.
The newly married pair spent the first days of their honeymoon at
Castro; then they went to Madrid, with the intention of going abroad,
and afterwards they went back to the town.
The old palace of the Dukes of Castro was witness to their idyll.
At the end of some time Cæsar felt tranquil, perhaps too tranquil.
“This, no doubt, is what is called being happy,” he used to say to
himself. And being happy gave him the impression of a limbo; he felt
as though his old personality was dying within him. He could no longer
recover his former way of life; all his disquietudes had vanished. He
felt that he was balanced, lacking those alternations of courage and
cowardice which had previously formed the characteristic thing in him.
It was the oasis after the desert; the calm that follows the storm.
Cæsar wondered if he had acquired new nerves. His instinct to be
arbitrary was on the downward track.
He could not easily determine what role his wife played in his inner
life. He felt the necessity of having her beside him, of talking to her;
but he did not understand whether this was mere selfishness, for the
sake of the soothing effect her presence produced, or was for the
satisfaction of his vanity in seeing how she gave all her thought to
him.
Spiritually he did not feel her either identified with him or strange to
him; her soul marched along as if parallel to his, but in other paths.
“All that men say about women is completely false,” Cæsar used to
think, “and what women say about themselves, equally so, because they
merely repeat what men say. Only when they are completely emancipated
will they succeed in understanding themselves. It is indubitable that we
have not the same leading ideas, or the same points of view. Probably we
have not a similar moral sense either. Neither is woman made for man,
nor man for woman. There is necessity between them, not harmony.”
Many times, watching Amparito, he told himself:
“There is some sort of machinery in her head that I do not understand.”
Noting his scrutinizing gaze, she would ask him:
“What are you thinking about me?”
He would explain his perplexities, and she would laugh.