Leon Roch. Benito Pérez Galdós
we first made your acquaintance. It was she, no doubt, who used to go with you to pick up the blossoms fallen from the orange-trees—who was frightened at the rustling made by the silk-worms when they were feeding, and for whom you used to make crowns of Marvel of Peru? Yes, you told me many funny stories of your companion as a child. You and she used to dye your cheeks with blackberries, and make paper crowns to wear; you loved to take birds’ nests, and her greatest delight was to pull off her shoes and stockings and paddle in the streams among the rushes and water-plants. One day, almost at the same instant, you fell from a tree and she was bitten by some reptile. That was Pepa de Fúcar, was it not? You see I remember very well, and could write your history quite accurately.
“The truth is that I really did not pay much attention to those baby stories; but when I saw the girl, and when they said you were in love with her.—It is ten days ago and I still feel as if I were being suffocated—as I did when I first heard it. Believe me; I felt as if the world were coming to an end, as if time were standing still—I cannot express the feeling—or had turned backward and revealed some horrible spot, some unknown desert where—another unfinished sentence! To proceed.
“I remember now some more stories of your childish amusements, which you told me not long ago. How such trifles cling to our memories! When you were a boy, and were studying that science of stones of which I can never see the use; when she—for I think that again it was Pepa de Fúcar—had left off putting her feet in the water and staining your cheeks with blackberry juice or decking herself with your paper crowns, that you played at being lovers with less innocence than before, but still—come, I will allow thus much—still with perfect innocence. She was at some school where there were a great number of lilac shrubs, and a porter who undertook to receive and deliver notes. Are you not astonished at my good memory? I even remember that porter’s name; it was Escoiquiz.
“Well—enough of ancient history. What you have just told me, what I did not know till I just now read your letter (and I repeat that I was not particularly pleased to hear it) was that two years ago you met again where the orange-trees blow and the silk-worms feed and the water flows in the brooks; that you suffered a slight illusion, so to speak, and at that time began to feel a sincere affection for her, which grew and grew until—and here I come to the story—until you knew me.—Thank you Sir, and I make you a pretty curtsy, for the string of compliments, polite hints, protestations, and loving words which here follow. This shower of praises fills a whole page. Such pages as these come before us like a face we love, and this one made me cry with joy. Thanks again, a thousand thanks. It is all charming, and what you say of me is much too kind and good. You are worth a hundred of me.—You live for me? Oh Leon! How can I do better than believe all these romantic speeches? My heart opens wide to accept them all. I am a good catholic and have been brought up to be a true believer.
“Yes, I will be so foolish—I have read that blessed page once more. Oh! it is good to be told that ‘a true, deep, and lofty devotion has blotted out that fancy and left no trace of it’—very good! ‘the illusions of childhood rarely last into mature years’ of course; ‘Your sentiments are sincere, and your intentions thoroughly honest’—yes no doubt; ‘The voice I heard, the words that made me feel as if the world had come to an end, were simply one of those wild suppositions thrown out at random, to be taken up by malice and used by her as terrible weapons’—so it is, so it is; ‘Pepa de Fúcar is as indifferent to you at this moment as any other woman living’—that is perfect, exquisite! and finally ‘I and I alone’—me and no one else.—What joy to press my hand closely to my heart while I think to myself—me, me alone, and no one in the world but me!
“A potent argument in your favour has just occurred to me; Pepa de Fúcar is immensely rich and I am almost poor. However, when one has faith no arguments are needed, and I have faith in you. Every one who knows you, says you are a model of uprightness and noble generosity—a rare thing in these days. I am as proud as I am flattered. How good God has been to me in bestowing on me a gift which, by all accounts, is so seldom found in this world!
“I cannot avoid telling you—though this letter already seems interminable—the impression that girl produced on me, even setting aside the rancour I could not help feeling at first. But now the storm is over; I can judge her coolly and impartially, and though, when I heard what you know, I thought she must be perfectly charming, I see her now in her true light. Every one talks of her shameful extravagance. It is an insult to Heaven and humanity! Papa says she spends enough in clothes in a week to support several families comfortably. She is elegant, no doubt; but sometimes very affected—as much as to say: ‘Gentlemen, I behave in this way that you may all see how rich I am.’ Mamma says, no man would ever think of marrying a girl who thinks of nothing but displaying the products of industry. Rothschilds are not to be met with at every turn, and Pepa de Fúcar is enough to frighten away her suitors. She is recklessly extravagant and wilful, full of whims, and very badly brought up, and will end by falling into the hands of some fortune-hunter. So Mamma says, and she knows the world; and I really believe she is right.
“I do not think her so pleasing even as some people do, nor as I thought her myself, when I was dying of jealousy. She is too tall and thin to be graceful. It is impossible to deny that she has a fine complexion, but one needs a microscope to see her eyes, they are so small. They say she is very amusing and agreeable, but this I know nothing about, as I never talked to her, and never wish to. I have seen her from a distance, on the sands and in the gallery of the bathing house, and her manners struck me as decidedly free and easy. I fancied she looked rather particularly at me; and I looked at her, intending to convey to her that I did not care a straw about her. I do not know whether I succeeded.
“She was here three days and I would not go out; I never cried more in my life. At last she went away; but the joy I felt in her absence is somewhat clouded by the knowledge that you and she are in the same place. All day yesterday I was wishing that there were some very, very high tower here, from which I could see what is going on at Iturburua. I would be at the top with one jump. But indeed I trust your loyalty—and if you will tell her that you love no one but me, if she has any affection for you still, and is furious when she hears it—yes, furious—do let me know; I long to have that satisfaction.
“We expect you on Monday. Papa says that if you do not come, you are not a man of your word. He is very anxious to see you to discuss some question of politics, for, by his account, there is a perfect plague of politicians here who utterly disgust him. If they would but make him a Senator!—and to tell you the truth, I almost fear for his reason if he does not attain to that bench of the blessed. He still suffers from a mania of writing letters to the papers. We have had some these last few days, and some articles as well. Mamma, of course, knows them, and they invariably begin with: “It is greatly to be regretted....”
“He came in to-day quite proud to show me your new book. He praised it highly and read the opening sentences aloud to Mamma. It was a most laughable scene; neither he, nor Mamma, nor I understood a single word of it; but, in spite of that, we had the highest opinion of the learning displayed in the book. You may fancy how much we should understand of an ‘Analysis of the Plutonic rocks in the Columbrete islands,’ and the interest I should take in quartinary deposits or in metamorphic or azoic strata. Why, I find it hard enough to spell the words, and have to copy them letter for letter. However, the mere fact that it was you who wrote this mass of mysterious learning, is enough to give it a charm in my eyes. I spent a long time poring over your pages, as though I were trying to learn Greek, and—you will not believe me, but it is quite true—I read and read, full of admiration and respect for you who had written them. Among all those monstrous names too I came on some which took my fancy in a vague fashion, such as syenite, variolite, amphibolite. They sound to me like the endearing names of fairies and cherubs who danced round you while you were studying the works of God down in the bowels of the earth.
“You see I have become poetical without intending it, a thing which is past endurance I admit, and yet this villainous letter will not get itself finished! But Mamma is calling me to go out with her; she is dreadfully bored here. She says it is the most detestable of bathing places, and that she would rather stay in Madrid than ever come here again. There is no casino, no society, no excursions to make, no shops with pretty things,