Fernán Caballero

“ Long live Spain! Long live the Queen! Long live the army! Long live the Moors!" "What is that you are saying, man? Long live the Moors?" "Yes, so that we may kill them again!"
Such is the enthusiasm of the Spanish people when it is unanimous, legitimate, and genuine; they go to their churches, take out in procession the Immaculate Virgin, cheer their queen, their prelates, their authorities, their country, applaud their army, which gives them power and greatness, its commander and the generals who lead it, and those who bring back from the war glorious wounds ”

“ My heart is an invalid, to whom I desire to accord a sweet and tranquil existence; I would not expose it to new wounds.”
“Old!” exclaimed Maria, “what nonsense! you have scarcely attained to thirty years. Come—you reason like the leg of a table, Don Frederico.”
“What could I desire more,” replied Stein, “than to taste with an innocent young girl the sweet and holy felicity of domestic life, which is the only true, the only perfect, the only real, because it is that which God has taught us. But, good Maria, she cannot love me.” ”

“ She professed for the world a kind of worship; she adored music, and looked with contempt on all that was Spanish.
“What, then, is the matter with me?”
“A deception,” murmured Eloise.
“A deception! I have them by hundreds; but the fact cannot be disputed,” said Raphael, “that you are most beautiful with this coiffure, and that your toilet is in perfect taste.”
“It pleases you?” cried the elegant Eloise, smirking.
“It is not extraordinary,” continued Raphael, “that this Englishman, whom you see here opposite to you, is dying for Spain and for the Spaniards.” ”

“ The 7th of February dawned—a day memorable for ever in the annals of Spain. Day had scarcely broken when the sonorous and soul-stirring bells of the Cathedral of Seville, diffusing, authorizing, and solemnizing joy, announced to the sleeping people the great and auspicious event of the taking of Tetuan. It would be impossible to give an idea of the impression caused by those sounds, for who can describe the apogee of the most unanimous, ardent, and national enthusiasm? But let a few facts speak for themselves. ”

“ I have faith in no woman, not even my mother.”
“I have fear? I?” said Maria, “I have fear?”
“But do you believe myself so blind,” interrupted Pepe, “as not to see what is passing? Do I not know, from a good source, that you put on a good face before the duke, because you have got it in your head to obtain for your imbecile husband the position of surgeon to the queen.”
“’Tis a lie!” cried Maria.
“Maria, Pepe Vera does not mistake bladders for lanterns. Know that I understand as well the ruses of the rude bull of the mountains as those of the less ferocious bull of the plains.” ”

“ Don't you know that to kill a man who had surrendered would be a vile deed and would be to make one's self a butcher of men? Don't you know that to kill a man who asks quarter would be the deed of a miscreant and a coward, and would disgrace the name of Christian and dishonor the name of Spaniard? In honorable combat I killed them, Maria, when with arms in their hands they tried to kill me and my companions. I know well that the glory is not in killing but in conquering the enemy, and I would n't want at the hour of my death to have to remember killing any man by treachery. ”

“ These men precipitate themselves into the future blindly, at the discovery of what they call a position; and it is for that they sacrifice all: sad, tormented existences, for which life has no aurora.”
“Raphael, you talk like a philosopher,” said the duke, smiling; “do you know that if Socrates existed in our time, you would more likely be his disciple than my aid-de-camp?”
“I would not change my place of aid-de-camp for an apostleship, my general,” replied Arias. “But the truth is, that were there not so many ignorant disciples, there would not be so many bad masters.” ”

“ She believed that she loved both sons equally; she feared for both with the same anguish; with the same fervor she prayed to God and to the Virgin that both might escape the draft; but when they returned from the drawing and she learned that the soldier's lot had fallen on her own son, the cry which this intelligence drew from her mother's heart—"Child of my soul, I knew that it must fall upon you!"—showed that a mother's love can be equalled by no other.
Michael saw Maria's grief with a breaking heart, a grief which not all his own efforts nor those of her husband could diminish or soothe. ”

“ Will you not let society share in your brilliant qualities? I repeat, this cannot be, this must not be.”
“We are so happy here, duke,” replied Stein, “that if I make the least change in my situation I would believe myself an ingrate towards my destiny.”
“Stein,” exclaimed the duke, “where is that firm and calm courage which I admired in you when we were on the voyage together on board the ‘Royal Sovereign?’ What have you done with your love of science, the desire to consecrate yourself to suffering humanity? Have you allowed yourself to be enervated by your happiness? ”

“ The events could not persuade Modesto that these serenades were not designed for Rosita. From thence but one idea entered the head of this man; it was, that if she fell into a love snare, he himself could not extricate her. The calibre of his intelligence was so straitened, and so invariably fixed, that as soon as an idea penetrated his brain it became set, and remained there for life.
“I go,” said Marisalada, throwing the leaf of aloe in such way that it fell with force against brother Gabriel, who, on his knees, and with his back turned, attached his hundred and twenty-fifth knot. ”

“ Look at that poor fellow; he isn't able to walk alone; they are supporting him," some one said close beside Maria, pointing to a young man, who with his arm in a sling, his pale forehead crowned with laurel, and carrying in his hand an ensign bearing on it the word "Tetuan," walked with a modest expression on his thin but pleasing face, leaning on the arm of a robust old man whose proud and enraptured expression seemed to say to every one, "This brave man is my son!" ”

“ Nothing pleases me which is out of the regular order; above all, in that which we other women regard.
“She who does not do what we all do, I would flee from, if I were a man, as one flees from an infuriated bull. In a word—my hand on my heart—you act wrong. But you are yet but a child,” she added, with her habitual goodness, “there is much for you yet to learn. Time is a great teacher.”
Marisalada arose and departed.
“Yes,” thought she, covering her head with her handkerchief, “he loves me, I have known it for a long time—but—I love him as old Maria loves brother Gabriel, as the aged love. ”

“ As Bornos is almost entirely surrounded by orchards and orange groves, planted on the slopes of the tableland on which the village is seated, and which at this hour are irrigated by the clear and abundant waters of its springs, every breeze brought with it the perfume of the leaves and the melodious strains of the birds singing their evening hymn to the sun, filling the air with coolness, as if kind Mother Nature made of her trees a fan to cool the brow of her favorite child, man. ”

“ THE gratitude which the fisherman felt for him who had saved Marisalada, was complete when he saw him so attached to his daughter: an impassioned friendship which could only be compared to the admiration excited in him by the brilliant qualities of Stein.
From thence they were devoted to each other: the brusque mariner and the man of science sympathized, because men of kindred natures and gifted with good sentiments feel, when they come in contact, such an attraction, that, scorning the distance which separates their positions, they meet as brothers. ”

“ HARDLY had the duke closed the door of the saloon, when Pepe Vera came out of the alcove, laughing.
“Will you keep quiet?” said Maria, occupied in lighting the fire with the precious production of the duke.
“No, my dear, I cannot; I would stifle if I did not laugh. I am no longer jealous, my Mariquita, no more than the sultan in his seraglio. Poor woman! if you had not me to love you ardently, what could you do with a husband, who proves to you his love by his prescriptions—with a bashful lover, who courts you in reciting to you his verses? ”

“ I respect and I esteem my uncle more than I do anybody in the world; and I know that his military virtues, pushed often to extremes, have drawn upon him the surname of Don Quixote of the army. But nothing in all this can prevent me from writing his history. Listen, then, illustrious doctor, to the history of my uncle—abridged. Santiago León Santa-Maria was from his birth destined for the noble career of arms, because he saw the light of day, or, to be more exact, the shades of night, when the drums, beating the retreat, passed before his paternal mansion. ”

“ What a triumph! What a beautiful and magnificent thing!”
“Will you tell me, my niece,” replied the general, “what importance it could have, and what effect produced by this new arrival having a fine voice and singing well on the stage, that she has excited in you the same elevation, and even the same enthusiasm, which the recital of a great fact or of a sublime action would inspire in you.”
“Think then, uncle, what a triumph for us! What glory for Seville, to be the cradle of an artist whose renown will fill the whole world!”
“Like the Marquis de la Romana!” replied the general. ”

“ Those who sing well appear to sing by intuition. When towards evening, in the country, one hears at a distance a fine voice singing the romance with a melancholy full of originality, he feels an extraordinary emotion, which can only be compared to that produced in Germany by the sounds of the postilion’s cornet, so deliciously repeated by the echoes in the magnificent forests, and on the splendid lakes. The words of the romance refer generally to some history of the Moors, or recount either pious legends or the sad exploits of brigands. ”

“ Rosemary has its sweetest perfume and its brightest blossoms on Fridays, the day of the Passion, because the Virgin hung on a rosemary-bush the clothes of the infant Christ. Everybody loves the swallows, because they plucked out the thorns of our Saviour’s crown on the cross; while the owl, who dared to look impassively on the Crucifixion, has been sick and afflicted ever since, and can utter nothing but Cruz! Cruz! The rose of Jericho was once white, but a drop of the blood of the wounded Saviour fell on it, and it has been red ever since. ”

“ Her look has truly the attraction of love.”
“It is you who are the lover of strangers,” said Rita. “Why have you placed the major near Eloise? Listen to the nonsense he is telling her. I warn you, my cousin, that each day you take the aspect and the attractions of a dictionary.”
“There it is, raillery, and raillery again,” cried Raphael, striking with his fist the arm of the chair. “You stray from the question, I speak to you of my love for yourself, Rita, of my love which will endure eternally. Know it well, my cousin, a man never loves seriously but one woman in his lifetime. ”

“ The matadores and their substitutes commanded all these combatants, and wore the most luxurious costumes.
“Pepe Vera! here is Pepe Vera!” cried all the spectators. “The scholar of Montés! Brave boy! What a jovial fellow! how well he is made! what elegance and vivacity in all his person! how firm his look! what a calm eye!”
“Do you know,” said a young man seated near to Stein, “what is the lesson Montés gives to his scholars? he pushes them, their arms crossed, close to the bull, and says to them, ‘Do not fear the bull—brave the bull!’ ”
Pepe Vera descended into the arena. ”

“ They had arrived at the beach, and Stein begged Mariquita to sit beside him on a rock. On the part of both there was a long silence. Stein was profoundly agitated. The young girl with stoical indifference had taken a stick, and traced figures on the sand.
“How nature speaks in the heart of a man!” at last exclaimed Stein. “What sympathy reigns in all that God has created! A pure life is like a serene day; a life of unloosed passions resembles a tempestuous day. ”