Don Sebastian and his wife had lived together for fifteen years, with
the entirest happiness to themselves and the greatest admiration of
their neighbours. People said that such an example of conjugal felicity
was not often seen in those degenerate days, for even then they prated
of the golden age of their grandfathers, lamenting their own
decadence.... As behoved good Castilians, burdened with such a line of
noble ancestors, the fortunate couple conducted themselves with all
imaginable gravity. No strange eye was permitted to witness a caress
between the lord and his lady, or to hear an expression of endearment;
but everyone could see the devotion of Don Sebastian, the look of
adoration which filled his eyes when he gazed upon his wife. And people
said that Dona Sodina was worthy of all his affection. They said that
her virtue was only matched by her piety, and her piety was patent to
the whole world, for every day she went to the cathedral at Xiormonez
and remained long immersed in her devotions. Her charity was exemplary,
and no beggar ever applied to her in vain.
But even if Don Sebastian and his wife had not possessed these conjugal
virtues, they would have been in Xiormonez persons of note, since not
only did they belong to an old and respected family, which was rich as
well, but the gentleman's brother was archbishop of the See, who, when
he graced the cathedral city with his presence, paid the greatest
attention to Don Sebastian and Dona Sodina. Everyone said that the
Archbishop Pablo would shortly become a cardinal, for he was a great
favourite with the king, and with the latter His Holiness the Pope was
then on terms of quite unusual friendship.
And in those days, when the priesthood was more noticeable for its
gallantry than for its good works, it was refreshing to find so
high-placed a dignitary of the Church a pattern of Christian virtues,
who, notwithstanding his gorgeous habit of life, his retinue, his
palaces, recalled, by his freedom from at least two of the seven deadly
sins, the simplicity of the apostles, which the common people have often
supposed the perfect state of the minister of God.
Don Sebastian had been affianced to Dona Sodina when he was a boy of
ten, and before she could properly pronounce the viperish sibilants of
her native tongue. When the lady attained her sixteenth year, the pair
were solemnly espoused, and the young priest Pablo, the bridegroom's
brother, assisted at the ceremony. In these days the union would have
been instanced as a triumphant example of the success of the _mariage de
convenance_, but at that time such arrangements were so usual that it
never occurred to anyone to argue for or against them. Yet it was not
customary for a young man of two-and-twenty to fall madly in love with
the bride whom he saw for the first time a day or two before his
marriage, and it was still less customary for the bride to give back an
equal affection. For fifteen years the couple lived in harmony and
contentment, with nothing to trouble the even tenor of their lives; and
if there was a cloud in their sky, it was that a kindly Providence had
vouchsafed no fruit to the union, notwithstanding the prayers and
candles which Dona Sodina was known to have offered at the shrine of
more than one saint in Spain who had made that kind of miracle
particularly his own.
But even felicitous marriages cannot last for ever, since if the love
does not die the lovers do. And so it came to pass that Dona Sodina,
having eaten excessively of pickled shrimps, which the abbess of a
highly respected convent had assured her were of great efficacy in the
begetting of children, took a fever of the stomach, as the chronicle
inelegantly puts it, and after a week of suffering was called to the
other world, from which, as from the pickled shrimps, she had always
expected much. There let us hope her virtues have been rewarded, and she
rests in peace and happiness.