IN WHICH THE READER WILL ENJOY HEARING THE PRAISES LAVISHED BY
SPANIARDS ON THEIR COUNTRY AND COUNTRY-MEN.
“It is quite clear that Leon is going to be married to the Marqués de
Tellería’s daughter,” said Cimarra. “She is no great catch, for the
marquis is more out at elbows than an actor during Lent.”
“He has nothing left but the house in the Calle (_street_) de la
Hortaleza,” added Fúcar indifferently. “It is a good property--built
at the same time as that of the Marqués de Pontejos; but before long
that will go too. They say they are all a scatterbrained family, from
the marquis down to Polito.”
“But has Tellería really nothing left but his house?” asked the man
of politics with the anxious curiosity of a creditor appraising an
estate.
“Nothing whatever,” repeated Fúcar, with the certainty of a man
perfectly informed on the subject. “The land at Piedrabuena was
sold two months ago by order of the commissioners. He gave up the
houses and factory at Nules to my brother-in-law as long ago as last
February, and he cannot have any money in the funds. I know that in
June he was borrowing money at twenty per cent. on Heaven knows what
security. In short, he is a thing of the past.”
“And it was such a great house!” said Onésimo. “I have heard my
father say that in the last century these Tellerías laid down the law
to all Extremadura. It was the second in point of wealth. For half a
century they took all the taxes and duties of Badajoz.”
Federico Cimarra planted himself in front of the other two, his legs
stretched out like a pair of compasses and twirling his stick in the
air.
“It is really incredible,” he said with a smile, “that that poor
fellow Leon should be about making such a fool of himself. I am
really very fond of him, he is a great crony of mine; but who would
venture to contradict him? What is the good of trying to argue with
those wooden-headed creatures who call themselves mathematicians? Did
you ever know a single _savant_ who had a grain of common-sense?”
“Never, never,” cried the marquis, laughing loudly, as he always did.
“And is it true, as I hear, that the girl is a perfect bigot? It will
be a funny thing to see a full-blown freethinker caught by a little
chit with _Paternosters_ and _Avemarias_.”
“I do not know whether she is a bigot, but I know that she is very
pretty,” said Cimarra smacking his lips. “She may be pardoned her
sanctimoniousness on the score of her good looks. But her character
is not formed yet--she is a mere child, and since she has been in
love she has forgotten her piety. The woman who seems to me to be
really on the high road to saintliness is her mother, who cannot
escape the law by which a dissipated youth ends in a strictly pious
old age! How she has changed! I saw her last week at Ugoibea, and she
is a wreck, a perfect wreck! María, on the contrary has grown to a
goddess. Such a head, such an air, and such style!”
“There you are right,” said Fúcar with a rather satirical smile.
“María Sudre is worth looking at. I fancy the mathematician must
have lost his bearings and had his head turned by her bright eyes.
I should not like such a girl for a wife. Very handsome no doubt,
excitable, romantic, reticent--very different from what she seems--in
short I do not like her--I do not like her.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed the official slapping his knee emphatically.
“The idea of speaking ill of María Sudre. I know her well, she is a
miracle of goodness--much the best of the family.”
“Bless me!” said the marquis with a roar of laughter. “The family is
the most perfect family of fools I know; not excepting Gustavo whom
they think such a prodigy.”
“No, no; the girl is a good girl, a very good girl.” Onésimo
insisted. “I cannot say so much for Leon. He is one of your
new-fangled _savants_, a product of the University, the Atheneum
and the School of Mines, and I have no confidence in them whatever.
A great deal of German science that the devil only can understand;
obscure theories and preposterous words; an affectation of despising
the whole Spanish nation as a pack of ignoramuses; a great deal
of pride, and above all that infusion of scepticism which annoys
me above everything. I am not one of those who profess themselves
catholics while they admit theories that contradict the faith--I am
catholic, catholic!” And he slapped his breast defiantly.
“My dear Sir, be as catholic as you please,” said Fúcar, laughing
less boisterously than usual, nay with a certain solemnity. “We are
all catholics.--But let us avoid exaggeration. Exaggeration, Sir, is
the bane of the country. Let us put religious beliefs out of court,
not but that they are to be respected, deeply respected. What I say
is that Leon is a man of mark, a man of very great merit. He is the
best specimen the School of Mines has turned out at all since it
was founded. His enormous talents find no difficulties in any branch
of study; he is as good a botanist as he is a geologist. As I hear,
he is familiar with all the latest discoveries in Natural History,
besides being a capital astronomer.”
“Oh yes!” exclaimed Cimarra, with the patronising pomposity that
ignorance assumes when it is driven to do justice to learning. “Leon
Roch is a first-rate fellow. He is one of the few good men we have
produced in Spain. We are great friends; we were at school together.
In point of fact he did not distinguish himself at school, but since
then....”
“He does not suit me; I cannot get on with him....” said Onésimo,
with the accent of a man who refuses to swallow a bitter pill.
“But my dear Onésimo,” said the marquis solemnly, “there is no need
of exaggeration. Exaggeration is the bane of the country. Because we
are catholics we condemn every man who cultivates natural science
without doing penance for it as a sin; and they go astray; I admit
that they go a little astray; or very far astray perhaps, from the
ways of Catholicism.--But, after all, what does that matter to me.
The world will go its way. The chief thing is not to exaggerate.
It seems to me that Leon’s chief fault--and I have known him from
childhood, for he and my daughter played together as children, at
Valencia--well his chief fault is his readiness to sacrifice himself,
his youth, his wealth, and his prospects to a connection with a
reckless and ruined family, who will simply devour him beyond all
rescue.”
“Is he rich?”
“Oh! very rich,” said Fúcar emphatically. “I knew his father at
Valencia--poor Don Pepe, who died three months ago after spending
fifty years in toiling like a negro. I used to deal with him when
he had a chocolate mill in the Calle de las Barcas. As a matter of
fact, Don Pepe’s chocolate was in high estimation there. I remember
at that time I used to see Leon, a scrap of a boy, with a dirty face
and ragged elbows studying arithmetic in a corner behind the counter.
At Christmas, Don Pepe sold marchpane (cakes). Indeed he dealt in
such goods till about fifteen years ago, and it is not thirty since
he transferred his business to Madrid. When he had accumulated some
capital he began to wish to increase it more rapidly. The amount
of money is incalculable that has been made in this country by
manufacturing chocolate out of canary-seed, out of pine-kernels, out
of red ochre, out of everything rather than out of cocoa. We live in
a land of bricks,[B] and we not only build our houses of them, but we
eat them! Señor Pepe worked hard; at first with his own hands, then
with those of others; finally with a steam engine. The result being
(and the marquis pushed his hat back to the roots of his hair) that
he bought land by the acre and sold it by the foot; that in ’54 he
built a house in Madrid, that he got the management of the best lands
belonging to the nation, and that by his command of public funds he
added considerably to his fortune. In short, I should think Leon Roch
must be worth eight or nine millions.”
[B] _Ladrillo_: cakes of chocolate are also called ladrillos.
“But you have left the choicest bit of the biography untold,” said
Cimarra, seating himself by his friends. “I mean the intense vanity
of the deceased worthy. In most cases these manufacturers who have
enriched themselves--though they are the bane of the whole human
race--are modest enough, and only care to end their days in peace,
living in humble discomfort, and in the same narrow circumstances as
they were used to, when they were working for their daily bread. But
poor Don Pepe was quite the contrary, and his weak point was to be
called marquis.”
“Indeed,” said Fúcar gravely, with the air of a man who felt it his
duty to suppress such levity in the young. “I can assure you Don José
Roch was a good-natured soul, kind and simple in all the relations of
life; I knew him well. He made chocolate of the flower-pots in his
wife’s balcony, or so said the spiteful gossips in the neighbourhood;
but he was a worthy old plodder for all that, and so wrapped up in
his boy that he thought of nothing else. There was in his mind but
one creature in the world: his son Leon; he was insanely devoted to
him. He regarded every man as his enemy who did not consider Leon
the handsomest, the most learned, the first and greatest of all men
on earth. All his pride and vanity were centred in being his son’s
father.--We met one evening last year at Aranceles. I wanted to
discuss a sale of cork with him--for he had a large property in
cork-woods--but he would talk of nothing but his son. It was almost
with tears in his eyes that he said to me: ‘My friend Fúcar, I want
nothing for myself; six feet of earth and a stone at the top will do
for me. My one desire is that Leon should have some title in this
country.--It is the only thing I wish for.’
“I began to laugh: A Spanish title! Is that all you ask?--My dear
Señor Don José, if you told me you longed to be handsome or to be
young again--but to be a marquis! Coronets are given away now as
freely as orders, and before long it will be a matter of pride not
to have one. We are fast coming to a time when if a diploma of rank
is sent to us we shall be ashamed to give a dollar to the porter who
brings the document. Well, you shall be a marquis....”
At these words Fúcar went into one of his fits of laughing; it began
with a shrill chuckle, and ended with a general contortion of his
features and a sort of convulsive explosion, while he turned very red
in the face. Even when this violent hilarity was over it was some
time before he recovered his natural colour and his normal aspect of
dignified gravity.
“Gentlemen,” said the official, hitherto silent, but not a little
annoyed, perhaps, by a consciousness of his own craving for the
marquisate, “however lavishly titles may have been distributed, I am
not aware that any have been bestowed on chocolate makers. We are a
long way....”
“Friend Onésimo,” said the marquis with cool irony, “they are
bestowed on all who like to take them. And if Don Pepe never took the
title of Marquis de Casa-Roch it was only because his son positively
refused to be as ridiculous as the rest of the world. He is a man of
principle.”
“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed Onésimo, who was always ready to support
a time-honoured institution. “But in general, these learned men who
are constantly manipulating principles in scientific matters lack
them utterly in social questions. There are plenty of instances here;
and I believe it is the same everywhere. We have seen how they govern
when the country is so unfortunate as to fall into their hands, and
they govern their own homes in the same way. Learned men, take my
word for it, are as great a calamity in private as in public life. I
do not know one who is not a fool--a perfect and utter fool.”
“You speak figuratively.”
“It is the simple truth.”
“We live in the land of _Vice-versa_.”
“No exaggeration, no exaggeration pray,” said the marquis, in the
tone of voice he always adopted for his favourite protest. “We make a
sad misuse of words nowadays and apply them too recklessly. Envy on
one hand, Ignorance on the other--What is the matter?”
The question was addressed with an expression of alarm to a servant
who was hurrying towards them.
“The Señorita has sent for you, Excellency. She is very unwell
again.”
“I must go, my daughter is in a terrible state to-day!” said the
marquis rising. “You will ask me what is the matter with her and I
can only say I do not know; I have not the remotest idea. I will go
and see her.”
The two friends watched him depart in silence. The marquis walked
slowly, on account of his obesity, and his gait reminded one of the
stately motion of some ancient ship or galleon freighted with the
rich spoils of the Indies. He seemed to be carrying on board, as it
were, all the weight of his immense fortune, collected during twenty
years of such unfailing prosperity that the outer world could only
look on and tremble and wonder.