Leon Roch. Benito Pérez Galdós

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      One day he was discovered lying at the foot of a pine-tree, the solitary specimen of vegetable life within sight, that stood melancholy, senile and leafless, as though in dismal warning, like the motto on a tombstone: “we all must die.” The boy was writing “something” on a scrap of paper with a black lead pencil which he frequently moistened by putting in his mouth. It was the priest who found him, and who took possession of the manuscript, which consisted of a number of lines without rhyme or rhythm, devoid alike of grammar and spelling, which made the worthy man laugh heartily—for he knew something, if not much, of the humanities.

      “This is neither verse nor prose,” he said.

      No, it was neither verse nor prose; but it was poetry. These were stanzas on the model of verses from the Bible expressing the feelings of a contemplative nature. How the priest laughed as he read:

      “When the darkness of night falls, the flocks of Heaven are scattered over the vast blue field and watched over by the gentle angels.—

      “The Lord passed by yesterday in a chariot of thunder drawn by lightning which cast down hail and sweated rain; I trembled like a flame in the wind and my mind was tossed like a pebble carried away by a flood.

      “I am like dried flax that catches fire, and turning to smoke, rises from the ashes and ascends to Heaven.”

      One day their grandmother rose much later than usual, her face was flushed, her speech slow and strange, while her eyes glistened like two old metal buttons that have been rubbed very bright. All the servants observed to their great consternation that their mistress talked a great deal of nonsense—not that this in itself was an alarming novelty—but she repeated the same thing again and again, without any interval of better sense. When the priest felt her pulse, the good lady grasped his arm and throwing a cloak over her shoulders exclaimed with a wild laugh:

      “Let us dance, Señor Cura—come dance with me!” She dragged him round two or three times and then suddenly fell senseless.

      She only lived long enough to receive Extreme Unction.

      When their grandmother was dead and buried the twins went home to their parents, who at that time were in extremely narrow circumstances. The boy was sent to a seminary and from thence to France, while María, whose country manners distressed them greatly, was sent to a college for girls. At the end of two years she emerged from this retreat with the polish acquired in such establishments and her mother introduced her to her circle of friends; a favourable turn in their fortunes had now given the family of Tellería a chance of rising from the depths of poverty and obscurity; at length the marquesa was able to quit the apartments she so sincerely detested, and for some time the mother and daughter were to be met constantly in various fashionable circles. Their names were familiar on the lips of María’s admirers and to the pens of the fashionable chronicler; they were on view at the play and out driving; they disappeared in the Spring to reappear with revived brilliancy in the Winter season. Then at last came the longed-for day when María was married.

      This match was regarded as a great stroke of fortune for the whole Tellería family, whose nobility was not of the highest rank and whose wealth was not such as to justify any extreme fastidiousness in the selection of a son-in-law. In spite of all that may be said to the contrary, the aristocracy of the present day have no blind reverence for their pedigrees, and if we except half a dozen names which, besides their historical glory, have a spotless descent, our nobles do not hesitate to accept an alliance of which the honours are merely substantial and to bolster up their pride by the aid of a fine fortune; thus we see every day damsels of high degree giving their hands—and giving them willingly—to nobles of very recent creation; to marquisés all hot from the mint as it were; to colonial counts, to adventurous politicians, distinguished officers and even to the sons of industry. Modern society is blessed with a short memory; low or inferior birth is soon a buried part of the buried past. Personal merit in some cases, and fortune in others, effect the levelling process with irresistible force, and society progresses with giant steps towards equality. There is no country in the civilised world more nearly bereft of a real aristocracy than Spain; trade, on one hand, which marks every one plebeian, and the government, on the other, which makes every one noble, are gradually doing away with it.

      The happiness of the two young people was undisturbed for the first few months, excepting by the shadow cast over it occasionally by María’s relations. After a time however Leon began to think that his wife’s anxious and suspicious affection had lasted longer than was reasonable. This would not have been alarming but that it was allied with an iron resistance to some of her husband’s views and feelings, and it troubled him greatly to perceive that, without ceasing to be devoted to him, María showed not the slightest disposition to yield to his doctrines—not religious doctrines in any sense, for he respected his wife’s conscience. It was a puzzling disappointment; hers was not an embryonic nature, but a formed and stubborn character; not a flexible wire ready to take and keep the form given to it by a skilful manipulator, but hard set bronze which hurt his fingers and never bent under them.

      One evening, about a year after their marriage, they were together in María’s sitting-room; they had been talking long and affectionately on the conformity of ideas which alone can form the solid foundation of a happy marriage; the subject being exhausted, he had opened a book and was turning over the pages by the fire, and she had taken her beads to pray. Suddenly she rose from her knees and coming up to her husband she laid her hand on his shoulder.

      “I have an idea,” she said, fixing her mystical gaze on his face, and her eyes, with their strange greenish and tawny lights were curiously soft—perhaps because they had just been raised to God—“I have an idea that fills me with pride, Leon!”

      Leon read on for a moment, finishing a paragraph, and then he turned to his wife.

      “I will tell you what it is,” she went on. “I, a mere weak woman, utterly your inferior in many things and above all in learning, will achieve a triumph which, you with all your superiority, can never attain.”

      Leon took her hand and kissed it three times, saying: “I am no one’s superior, and your’s, least of all.”

      “But indeed you are; and it is that which adds to my satisfaction in my purpose.... You, you believe yourself so strong that your judgment can radically change my character. I ... I, with only my love that is stronger than the wisest intellect, propose to conquer your judgment and mould it after my own image and likeness. How great a battle and how grand a victory!”

      “And how will you set to work?” asked Leon smiling, as he put his arm round her.

      “I hardly know whether to begin quite gently, by degrees ... or so,” and as she said “so” she violently snatched the book out of her husband’s hands and flung it in the fire which was blazing brightly.

      “María!” cried Leon, startled and disconcerted, and he put out his hand to rescue the hapless heretic. But she clung closely to his arms so as to prevent his moving; then, kissing his forehead, she went back to her prie dieu and returned to her devotions. What was there in his book? What in her prayers?

      CHAPTER IX.

       THE MARQUESA TELLERÍA.

       Table of Contents

      The Tellería family occupied the whole of their house, so Leon Roch, willing that there should be as large an expanse as possible of the habitable globe between them, had taken СКАЧАТЬ