Spinoza. Auerbach Berthold
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will be colorless and broken. My father knows how much I love you, I have concealed nothing from him; Heaven grant that your love is equal to mine! I wish for nothing more. But I also know how to obey." Don Antonio sat silently in his arm-chair, wrapped in his dressing-gown, his hands clasped between his knees, and his shoulders bowed.
"What purifying fires of adversity has your mutual love stood yet?" he murmured in a strange voice, without moving in the least from his cowering position.
"It was born in adversity," I answered, "but we should soon forget that both freely and willingly."
"What would you have?" he cried, and rose trembling from his seat. "Because by chance you aided in my deliverance do you seek to rob me doubly and trebly of life, since you would rob me of my child's love and obedience. I have given you all, you proud Spaniards; you have sapped my trunk, drop by drop, of strength and power; I am but a dried stick; but as sure as the blood of the old Valors runs in my veins, my child, my life you shall not rob me of, as long as this hand has strength to bury this dagger in her weak maiden's heart. Go! old fool that I am, I was deluded into thinking you better than others. Go! you are as covetous and mischievous as all the rest."
His voice sounded like a war-cry, his foaming lips trembled with rage; he sank back powerless into his chair. Manuela hastened to him, stretched her bare arms towards him, and prayed him to be quiet.
"O God, where shall I turn to!" she cried. "I saw my mistake, offered Don Antonio my hand, and prayed him to forget the words he had just spoken as readily as I, too, would forget them, that we might part in peace. He pressed my hand convulsively.
"You irritated me too much," he said, "Don Antonio de Valor was never ungrateful, and never permitted such an accusation to be made to his face. My child is mine, as much my own as my right hand; shall I cut it off, and give it you with thanks? I am angry no more, certainly not; be patient, it is but a short span of life that I have yet to pass, and I shall not make the time longer."
He sat up, and concentrated all his powers of sight to read the effect of his words on our countenances; he must have found something satisfactory, for he continued in a gentler voice:
"I intended so well by you that in the spring who knows whether I may not come to Guadalaxara, to try, with your learned father's aid, to sharpen the sight of my bodily and spiritual eyes."
"Oh, that would be glorious!" said Manuela joyfully; "I will take such care of you, that you will be quite young again. How far will you come to meet us, Don Alfonso?"
The conversation now took a gayer tone.
"I never thought it would all end so well; it is lucky my father's old sword is rusted in its sheath on the wall, or perhaps our room would have been a bloody battle-field," said Manuela, her gayety blooming yet brighter through grief and tears.
Don Antonio did not speak again; but, amid memories of the past and plans for the future, I felt that the moment of separation had arrived, for I must tear myself away from such joyous associations. I put out my hand to take leave of Don Antonio.
"Depart in peace," he said; "at peace with yourself and with us; remember me to your worthy father."
"And shall we soon see each other again?" I asked; he pressed my hand and nodded assent. Manuela stood by motionless; our eyes met, as if each would impress the image of the other once more on the memory; the grief of parting agitated both alike, and each sought to repress it.
"Manuela, farewell!" I said, approaching my beloved.
"Farewell," she answered in a firm voice; "I am certain that you will never forget me; and, if it is fated that we should at one time belong to each other, we shall find each other again; if it is otherwise decreed, what is the use of complaint and opposition? Obedience is our duty. Be happy therefore with another, who, however, will not love you more than I have done; but all the powers of earth and heaven shall not prevent me from loving you till death and after. Farewell!"
I embraced her father again passionately; I believe I should have pressed the Grand Inquisitor himself to my heart. I know nothing more of how I tore myself away, but at the house-door the Duenna stopped me, and strange to say, every word of her address remains in my memory; I seem even to hear her voice—
It often annoys us, but it is wisely ordained, that near a nightingale there is always a cuckoo or some other every-day bird, or a frog croaks in the marsh.
"The world is always the same," the old woman began, as she kissed the hem of my mantle. "Laura, who means better than any one else in the world, is forgotten by every one. You must not think I have run after you to be thanked, for I do not know myself what for. But you are so proud that you hardly say 'Good-day' to Laura, and yet I have stood a good deal for you; I at least deserved that your Honor should say 'Good-by' to me. I should have been offended if I were not so long used to the ingratitude of the world. Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with me! poor sinner that I am, I could wish in my heart that they would bring me the last sacrament, and give me a house of six boards. Our dear good Don Alfonso goes away, and we shall have Ash Wednesday the whole year round. As St. Jago is good to me, you may believe me, if I were not so fond of Manuela I would not stay twenty-four hours with the old cripple, who makes a face like Judas every day in the year; and that good child, what she suffers from him no one knows. Oh! it would be well enough for you, if only I need not suffer from it. If it is all settled among ourselves, no one will tell a whisper of it abroad; you see what it is not to have old experienced persons who have been much about in the world for advisers. In my last situation I brought a pair together, whom the old ones were much more against than is our old grumbler upstairs; but they were not so proud that for mere billing and cooing they have looked their best friend under their very noses. It is true they rewarded me at last with ingratitude—but that is nothing. 'If you give to-day, you are forgotten to-morrow,' so says the proverb; and a proverb is a true speech. If you had but given me a wink, I would have contrived it better. You may be good and brave enough, but—don't be offended, your Honor; I mean well, as sure as I am a sinner—you are not clever. For six long weeks you have sneaked round it like a cat after hot meat. Why, the very next day, the very next hour, you brought the old man home, you should have wooed my sweet little dove. Put it to yourself, could he have refused you? 'Press the lemon dry before it is rotten,' says the proverb; but 'in six weeks—St. James! what cannot be forgotten in six weeks! I don't wonder he wipes his mouth, and dismisses you with a mere Gratias! There is no one prouder than a knight of the hills, but I always thought he was half a heathen—I would not stay in the house if it were not for the good child, who is as dear to me as if she were my own babe. I tell you I have seen many lovers; I myself, stare as you will, was once young and charming, and had good reason to show myself. I was very fond of my first husband—very fond indeed; but I never thought to see any one in love as Manuela is, my whole life long. What does the old man care? For him she might wait till her hair was gray and her soft flesh wrinkled; his life is tough enough, he will not die yet awhile; he will give her to no one else. God be merciful to me, I believe he would marry her himself, if it were not against nature. Oh! it makes my heart jump in my breast when I think how pleasant everything might have been; it would have been so different, and old Laura might then have had the pleasure of rocking a rosy young Manuelita or Alfonsito in her arms. But it is all talking to the winds now, and I keep you here for nothing. Don't take it amiss, your Honor; make haste to come back soon, then let Laura act, and you will see how well things will turn out."
I listened to the old woman, half unwillingly, as if compelled. Now I offered her some doubloons as a farewell; she said she would not take them; she did not know what they were for; she had not earned them. After some protest she took them, and with a roguish expression of gratitude said: "You should have seen sooner the truth of the proverb: 'Presents move rocks.' Have you no more commissions for Manuela?"
I knew of none; she kissed my hand, and went away grumbling and muttering at the heathenish bald-head. After an hour passed in visiting Geronimo I had left Seville. I saw clearly that here was a turning-point in my career that would influence my whole life.
But what are the intentions and decisions of men? A puff of wind, a shadow, disturbs them, and they are no more.
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