Leon Roch. Benito Pérez Galdós
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María captivated me by her beauty it is true; but that is not all—far from it. I smothered my passion, I studied her closely and I found behind that beauty, a mind in no respect unworthy of it. María’s goodness, her sense, her modesty, the submissiveness of her intelligence, her exquisite ignorance of life added to the seriousness of her tastes and instincts—all made me feel that she was the wife for me—I will be perfectly frank with you: her family are not at all to my liking. But what does that matter? I can separate from my relations. I only marry my wife and she is delightful—she has feeling and imagination, and that sweet credulousness which is the most ductile element in human nature. Her education has been neglected and she is as ignorant as can be; but on the other hand, she is free from all false ideas and frivolous accomplishments, and from those mischievous habits of mind which corrupt the judgment and nature of the girls of our day. Do you not think me a happy man? Do you not see that this is the very woman I want; that I shall be able to form my wife’s character, which is the most glorious task a man can have—form it to my own mind and on my own image—the highest achievement I can aspire to, and the only guarantee of a peaceful life.—Do not you think so?”
“You ask me—a hardened and selfish worldling!” said Federico ironically. “My dear fellow you are out of your mind.”
“I ask you as I might ask this bench!” retorted Leon turning his back contemptuously. “There are occasions in life when a man feels that he must speak his thoughts aloud to convince himself of their validity. It is as if I were talking to myself. You need not answer me unless you like.—I mean to mould her in my own way. I do not want a ready-made wife, but a wife to make. I want a woman with a firm basis of character—strong feelings and perfect moral rectitude. Any extensive knowledge of the world, or the absurd teaching of a girl’s school, would hinder rather than help my purpose. I should have to pull down too much and to build on the ruins; I should have to dig deep down to find a safe foundation for the edifice.”
Federico had risen during this harangue and thrown down the cards: after walking two or three times round and about Leon who had not moved; and now, laying his hand on Roch’s shoulder, he said in a low voice:
“Most worthy and wisest of men, we, the depraved and ignorant, look into the future as well as you; we too lay our plans, not indeed mathematically but perhaps with better hopes of security than you practical men. We are apt indeed to think of the ass as a practical animal. We do not condemn matrimony; on the contrary, we regard it as indispensable to the progress of society and the improvement of the condition....” He paused a few moments and then went on—“of the condition of the individual. You will understand what I mean. We, to be sure, are not learned and when we have fallen in love like a schoolboy we do not make an elaborate analysis of the qualities of the women whom we choose to be our wives. We do not aspire to form their character; we take the article ready made, as God or the devil has wrought it. This marrying to become a school-master is in the very worst taste. There is something else to be thought of in these latter days besides a woman’s character. The inequality of fortune among human beings, and the luckless fate to which some are born, the hideous disparity between a man’s fortune and the ‘material of war’ which he requires to fight against and for life—the miserable ‘Struggle for existence’ as the evolutionists have it—that is what weighs on me—the scarcity of work to be done in this accursed country, and the impossibility of making money without having money.—Do you hear what I say?—All these things and many others make it necessary to look out for something besides virtue in our future brides.”
“What?”
Cimarra shook his hands as if he were clinking coin.
“Cash,” he said, “hard cash and ready.” Cimarra talked the mongrel language of a man of fashion, mixing the style of an orator with the slang of a gambler, and quotations in foreign languages with the low blasphemies of a street boy, which shall not be recorded here.
“Life,” he went on, “is getting more difficult every day. It is all very well for rich folks like you to send moral platitudes flying about the world, and never to feel a base desire or harbour a thought that is not the quintessence of the purest ether. However, we need not exaggerate, as Fúcar is so fond of saying. I maintain that what sanctimonious fools call filthy lucre may be a potent element of morality. I, for example....”
“You! And what are you an example of pray?”
“I was going to say that I, if I found myself the possessor of a fortune, should be a model gentleman, and might even be known to posterity as the Illustrious Cimarra. For is it not a matter of course, a phrase ready coined?—Tom, Dick and Harry are Illustrious nowadays.”
“Though you may try to conceal it, I see some remains of shame in you,” said Roch. “Your laxity of morals is not as great as you try to make the world believe.”
“Everything is relative, as my friend Fontán always says in jest,” replied Federico shrugging his shoulders. “You cannot judge off-hand, in that light and easy way, of a man like me who lives with the rich and is poor himself. Get that well into your head. I talk to you with perfect frankness. My projects after all are as yet merely visions—sketches, my dear fellow. We shall see—I flatter myself I have made a good beginning. Time will show. Some day perhaps when you have quite forgotten me, lost in the bliss of pedagogic matrimony, you may hear that that reprobate Cimarra has found a wife. We all have to come to it—sooner or later. Even a poor devil like me has his schemes and his philosophy. We are all tortoises together, but some have more shell to cover them than I have.—Do not take it into your head that I am indifferent to the moral graces of my wife—nor that I propose to marry a monster. I shall have a virtuous wife, my learned friend, thoroughly respectable, take my word for it, and a fine family of children and grand-children.”
“Then you have made your choice.”
“I have.—But I must warn you that I make no great point of personal beauty. I am not like you; I have a soul above being caught by a pair of fine eyes and a mouth that time can only spoil. Beauty is only skin deep. It lasts, as the poet says ‘l’espace d’un matin.’ But she has a pleasant and attractive expression, distingué manners, a quantum of dignity, a quantum of liveliness, wit and even chic—Education? Well nothing much to speak of, but we do not intend to set up for Professors. She has a great deal of good in her with a spice of the devil too; she has wild ways occasionally, freaks of temper, habits of extravagance....”
Leon turned pale and fixed a gloomy eye on his companion.
“What do I care if she smashes a lot of rubbishy plates, or cuts a Murillo into strips, or makes mince-meat of her lace? There are some things in which no husband should interfere.”
Leon sat staring dully at the green cloth of the table on which he had propped his elbows.
“Mercy, how the time goes, man!” he exclaimed rising abruptly and throwing open the window. “It is day!”
The white dawn fell into the room and its light fell on two pale and haggard faces. The dying lamp still burnt forlorn and dingy; a long sooty flame flared up the chimney, smelling detestably.
“What a life—by way of recovering one’s health!” said Leon.
Outside, the sky was gray and rainy, a dismal background to the gloomy faces of the two men who had been up all night. Leon stood a few minutes, lost in that vague meditation which leaves no mark on the mind in moments of extreme fatigue, a state half-way between dreaming and suffering, when it is hard to be sure whether we are sleeping or only enduring. Federico gazed at his friend who stood the living image of melancholy; everything about him was black—his dress, his hair and his beard; his handsome features, and clear olive skin were marked with dark lines for want of sleep. His fine forehead, dignified though charged with painful doubts, might suggest a lowering and threatening sky where the light of day was hidden behind a shroud of clouds.
Suddenly he turned to Cimarra and said:
“Well, I wish you luck!”
“I wish I could get a little rest,” said Federico. “I am simply dying for want of sleep; but I must start at once