Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

“ He who wishes to know is never happy."
She continued talking. Truth perhaps was a good thing in other phases of existence, but it was fatal to love. It was too strong, too crude. Love was like certain women, beautiful as goddesses under a discreet and artificial light, but horrible as monsters under the burning splendors of the sun.
"Believe me; put away these bugbears of the past. Is not the present enough for you?... Are you not happy?"
And, trying to convince him that he was, she redoubled her exertions, chaining Ulysses in bonds which were sweet yet weighed heavily upon him. ”

“ The crests of foam were turning a dirty yellow from the mud stirred up. Spray, rain, bits of seaweed, lashed the faces and hands of the sailors cruelly. They were all now soaked to the skin.
As the vessel rose to the crests, the keel half out of water aft, the Rector could see other boats from the Cabañal in the distance, vanishing in the mists of the horizon. They were all running with poles virtually bare, scudding before the wind for shelter, though it would be much more dangerous making port than to hold to the open sea. And the claws of remorse sank deep into Pascualo's heart. ”

“ What matters it to you whether you serve Carthage or any other republic, since you are a Greek? If my own people should abandon me I would fight for any country. We are men of war; we fight for glory, power, and riches; the needs of our people only serve to justify our victory and our despoiling of the enemy. I hate the merchants of Carthage, pacific and stuck to their shops, as much as I hate the proud Romans. Come, Actæon, since we have met, follow me! Fortune goes with me."
"No, Hannibal; here shall I remain. Seeing your African soldiers I should remember the mob that crucified Lysias." ”

“ He avoided speaking of his artistic interests in her presence; he discovered terrible defects in the fair ladies who sought him as a portrait painter; he praised Josephina's spiritual beauty; he painted pictures of her, putting her features on the canvas, but beautifying them with, subtle skill.
She smiled, with that eternal condescension that a woman has for the most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her.
"It's you," said Renovales, "your face, your charm, your air of distinction. I really don't think I have made you as beautiful as you are." ”

“ At the bull-fighter's thrust the sword struck bone, and, delayed in the movement of stepping aside on account of this difficulty, Gallardo had been caught by one of the horns and now hung upon it by the middle of his body. The brave youth, so strong and wiry, found himself tossed about on the end of the horn like a miserable manikin until the powerful beast, with a shake of his head, flung him some yards away, where he fell heavily on the sand with arms and legs extended, like a frog dressed in silk and gold. ”

“ When no one inside the Cathedral or out of it can speak of anybody else? She is the niece of Don Sebastian, who lives with him in the palace. It is she who rules everything, and Don Sebastian, who is so terrible with everyone else, becomes like an angel when he sees her. He rages and screams and bites the days when he is ill, but if Doña Visita appears, he controls himself at once; he suffers in silence, moans like a child, and it is sufficient for her to say a soft word, or give him a caress for His Eminence to slobber with delight. He loves her dearly. ”

“ In this way the impossible situation would settle itself—either the oblivion of death or glory.
"No, no!" interrupted Marguerite in an anguished tone. "You, no! One is enough.... How horrible! You, too, wounded, mutilated forever, perhaps dead!... No, you must live. I want you to live, even though you might belong to another.... Let me know that you exist, let me see you sometimes, even though you may have forgotten me, even though you may pass me with indifference, as if you did not know me." ”

“ The life of even Juan Gallardo is taken into his hands every time he steps into the ring to face the wild bulls; at first comes a minor accident, then a loss of prestige, and at last the fatal day upon which he is carried out of the arena, dead. He dies a victim of his own glory, a sacrifice upon the altar of national blood-lust. That Doña Sol who lures him from his wife and home is, in her capricious, fascinating, baffling way, almost a symbol of the fickle bull-fight audience, now hymning the praises of a favorite, now sneering him off the scene of his former triumphs. ”

“ Well, Spring is almost here! Look at those rose-bushes! Look at those orange-trees! Bursting with life! Oh, Rafael, I'm afraid of Springtime. Spring has always been a season of disaster for me."
And she was lost in thought for a moment. Doña Pepa and the Italian maid had gone into the house. The good old woman could never keep away from the kitchen long.
Leonora had dropped her embroidery upon the bench and was looking upward, her head thrown back, the muscles of her arching neck tense and drawn. She seemed wrapt in ecstacy, as if visions of the past were filing by in front of her. ”

“ Every one was happy, all worked joyfully. The carts creaked on all the roads, bands of boys ran over the fields, or gambled on the threshing-floors, thinking of the cakes of new wheat, of the life of abundance and satisfaction which began in the farm-house upon the filling of the lofts; even the old nags seemed to look on with happy eyes, and to walk with more alacrity, as though stimulated by the odour of the mounds of straw which, like rivers of gold, would slip through their cribs during the course of the year. ”

“ Down over the gang-planks from wharf to deck moved a procession of bare feet, yellow trousers, sun-baked faces, all that miserable flock of human beings who are born, live and die, on that shore there, knowing nothing of the world that lies beyond that blue horizon. Hunger, on the starting-line, as it were, for a race with death at the signal of opulence! Men condemned to ignorance and filth and danger, that, inland, other men may sit down before glossy linen table-cloths, and feel their mouths water before a succulent lobster's claw on a creamy cod swimming in luscious sauce! ”

“ She was the aurora that shows her rosy finger-tips through the immense cleft between sky and sea, the warm hour of midday that makes the waters drowsy under its robe of restless gold, the bifurcated tongue of foam that laps the two faces of the hissing prow, the aroma-laden breeze that like a virgin's breath swells the sail, the compassionate kiss that lulls the drowned to rest, without wrath and without resistance, before sinking forever into the fathomless abyss.
Her husband—Poseidon on the Greek coast and Neptune on the Latin—on mounting his chariot, used to awaken the tempest. ”

“ Grief over Erotion's death has caused her to lose her reason. Day and night she wanders along the walls. She goes where the battle rages fiercest, and she passes among flying missiles as if she does not see them. By night I hear from afar the strange dirges which she chants to her Erotion; sometimes she appears crowned with a wreath of those flowers which grow on the walls, and she asks for the son of Mopsus, as if he were hidden among the defenders. The people believe that she is in communication with the gods, and they look upon her with awe and ask her what will be the fate of Saguntum. ”

“ Why should I lie like others, feigning a faith I do not feel? To-day I have been to the palace to tell them they may dispose of my seven duros monthly and my chaplaincy of nuns. I am going away. I wish not only to fly the Church, I wish to get out of her atmosphere; and a renegade priest could not live in Toledo. You see this masquerade? I wear it to-day for the last time; to-morrow I shall taste the first joy of my life, tearing this shroud into shreds, such small shreds that no one will be able to use them. I shall be a man. I will go far away, as far as I can. ”

“ I feel admiration for you."
"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete love."
She continued to laugh.
"Oh, my boy; Love!"
Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.
"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what you need." ”

“ Gallardo made a wry face, disturbed at this ferocious tale.
"Every one knows his trade, Señor Juan," said Plumitas, as if he divined his thoughts. "We both live by killing; you kill bulls, and I people. Only you are rich and get the applause and the fine women, while I often go hungry and if I don't take care I will end riddled like a sieve in the open plains for the crows to eat. But you don't beat me in knowing your trade, Señor Juan! You know where to strike the bull so he will fall at once. ”

“ Only Mammy Antonia could recall the past.
Jaime was twenty-three when he found himself master of the Febrer fortune, and in absolute liberty. The fortune had been diminished by the ostentation of his ancestors and burdened with encumbrances. The Febrer house was big. It was like vessels which when wrecked and lost forever enrich the coast where they are dashed to pieces. The remains and spoils, upon which his ancestors would have looked with scorn, still represented a fortune. Jaime did not wish to think. He did not wish to know. He must live; he must see the world! ”

“ Michael recalls with ironical sadness all the illusions, all the desires, he had in the past, concentrated on this nothingness. He begins to feel the need of forgetting the corpse. His eyes, looking within, see the diminutive foliage, the gaudy butterfly, and all that nature has placed on a nameless tomb. This is what a life which considered itself superior to all others has left as the only trace of its existence. Perhaps in the corolla of one of the little flowers there is something of Alicia's soul, the butterflies sip it, and continue in an intoxicated flight above the tombs. ”

“ Passion would give them back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap to branches grown numb in the winter's cold. Let her say "Yes," and on the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their slumbering past, the awakening of their souls to the future of love!
"And your wife? And your children?" Leonora asked, brutally, as if she wished to bring him back to realities, with a smarting lash from a whip.
But Rafael was now beside himself, drunk with the nearness of all that beauty, and with the waves of perfume that filled the interior of the carriage. ”

“ A light, gentle music, like the vibration of fragile and delicate crystal, spread itself over the terrace. Freya followed its rhythm with a light motion of the head. She was accustomed to this cloying music, this Serenata of Toselli,—a passionate lament that always touches the soul of the tourist in the halls of the grand hotels. She, who at other times had ridiculed this artificial and refined little music, now felt tears welling up in her eyes.
"Not to be able to love anybody!" she murmured. "To wander alone through the world!... And love is such a beautiful thing!" ”

“ It is a chain that we must drag on for ever."
"No, señor," replied the shoemaker. "As I have read in the newspapers, work is the greatest of all the virtues, not a punishment; laziness is the mother of vice, and work is a virtue. Is it not so, Don Gabriel?"
The shoemaker looked at the master, watching for his words as a thirsty man looks for water.
"Work," said Gabriel, "is neither a punishment nor a virtue; it is a hard law to which we have to submit for self-preservation and for the welfare of the species. Without work life could not exist." ”

“ You bind yourself to a woman, you become her slave, and you seek an inglorious death in a dark corner of the world, like a mercenary in the service of a handful of merchants, merely for the sake of seeing her again. Go, madman, go! I give you your liberty—I wish to hear no more about you. I was ready to make you a hero and you answer me like a slave. Go in to Saguntum, but know that the protection of Hannibal abandons you from this moment. If you fall into my hands inside the city you will be my prisoner, never my friend! ”

“ Renovales sat up, rose to his feet as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck him.
Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold ground, stirred by worms and decay. ”

“ They no longer shouted behind the palisade. The crowd was motionless with the silence of terror. The whole troop of bull-baiters rode up on a mad gallop in a cloud of dust, the riders seeming to gain in size at every bound. Aid would come too late. The bull pawed the ground with his fore feet and lowered his head to attack the audacious little figure that stood threatening him with the lance. One little horn-stab would make an end of it! But at the same instant, a fierce bellowing distracted the bull's attention and something red passed before his vision like a flame of fire. ”

“ And, Leonora was thrilled as she heard in her memory the murmur of the orchestra accompanying the song of tenderness inspired by Spring; the rustle of the forest branches benumbed by the winter, now swaying with the new sap that had flowed into them like a torrent of vitality; and out on the brightly lighted plazoleta she could almost see Sigmund and Siglinda clasping in an eternal unseverable embrace, as she had seen them from the wings of the opera, where she would be waiting as a Valkyrie to step out and set an audience wild with her mighty "Hojotoho!" ”

“ Beauty is a bar to sentiment. The Sagrario of former times, with her dreams of being a great lady flattered by the words of youthful lovers, brightly dressed like brilliant birds, would never have thought of a vagabond aged by misery, ugly and sick. We understand each other because we are unfortunate; misery allows us to see into each other's souls; in full happiness we should never have met."
"It is true," she murmured, leaning her head on Gabriel's shoulder. "I love that misery which has allowed us to know, each other."
"You will be my companion," continued Luna, in a soft tone. ”

“ In the port a Carthaginian ship, loading with silver, is waiting for me. I go to New Carthage to place myself at the head of my troops. Days of glory are coming, an immense and sublime enterprise, like that of the giants when, heaping mountain on mountain, they scaled your Olympus. Come! You are the friend of my childhood; I knew you before Hasdrubal and Mago, those sons of Hamilcar, whom the glorious captain gave me for brothers, calling all three of us 'my lion's brood.' I know you. You are astute and brave like your father; at my side you will conquer riches. ”

“ Besides, with you I fear nothing; if it is our destiny to perish on the sea, we shall die together."
She became insinuating and enticing, passing her hands over his shoulders, pulling down his neck with a passion that was equal to an embrace. While speaking, her mouth came near to that of the sailor, the lips arched, beginning the rounding of a caressing kiss.
"Would you live so badly with Freya?... Do you no longer remember our past?... Am I now another being?"
Ulysses was remembering only too well that past, and began to recognize that this memory was becoming too vivid. ”

“ Renovales was crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took pity on him, hastened to add, in an affectionate tone:
"Why should you have to be in love with me? Do you think I shall esteem you less if I relieve you from an obligation that all men who surround me feel under? I like you, master; I need to see you; I should be very sorry if we quarreled. I like you as a friend; the best of all, the first. I like you because you are good; a great big boy; a bearded baby who doesn't know even the least bit about the world, but who is very, very talented. ”

“ When the matador drew away and stood motionless, the bull ran with halting step, bellowing, with distended nostrils, his tongue hanging between his lips and the red hilt of the sword visible in his blood-stained neck. He fell a few steps away and the audience rose to its feet en masse as though it were a single body moved by a powerful spring; the outburst of applause and the fury of the acclamations broke out in a violent storm. There was not another brave man in the world equal to Gallardo! Could that youth ever once have felt fear? ”

“ And with supplicating eyes, as if entreating forgiveness, she gazed out into the majestic moonlight, where the silence seemed to be stirring with the palpitation of a new life. She could divine that something was dying within her, that her will lay prostrate on the ground, without strength to defend itself.
Rafael, too, was overwhelmed. He held her clasped against his breast, one of her hands in his. She was weak, languid, will-less, incapable of resistance; yet he did not feel the brutal passion of the previous meeting; he did not dare to move. A sense of infinite tenderness came over him. ”

“ Do you not love me when you see me made ugly and hardened by war? Tell me that, and I will become a woman again, I will bedeck myself with jewels, I will abandon my Amazons and surround myself with Greek slaves, I will cover myself with ointments which will change my skin back to its pristine freshness, and I will follow you on your marches lying on a litter with curtains of purple."
"No!" Hannibal made haste to reply, with enthusiasm. "I love you as you are. The beloved of Hannibal can only be an Amazon like yourself, who have made many warriors fall beneath your charger." ”

“ He remained indifferent to those hands, those lips, to the warmth of that body which rubbed against him without awakening the least desire. And he had loved that woman! For her he had committed the terrible, irreparable crime which would make him drag the chain of remorse forever! What surprises life has in store!
The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes, in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash. ”

“ Ulysses admired the odd forms of their winding passageways. They were like the palaces of the Orient, dark and forbidding on the outside, glistening within like a lake of pearl. Some received their terrestrial names because of the special form of their shell—the rabbit, the helmet, triton's horn, the cask, the Mediterranean parasol.
They were grazing with bucolic tranquillity on the maritime pasture lands, contemplated from afar by the mussels, the oysters, and other bi-valves, attached to the rocks by a hard and horny hank of silk that enwrapped their enclosures. ”

“ And with the vehemence of other days, as if they were still among the orange-trees of the old Blue House, the deputy gave way to his eight years of longing.
He told her of the image he nourished in his sadness. Love! The Love that passes but once in a lifetime, crowned with flowers, and followed by a retinue of kisses and laughter. And whosoever follows him in obedience, finds happiness at the end of the joyous pathway; but whosoever, through pride or selfishness, lags by the wayside, comes to lament his folly and to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of tedium and sorrow! ”

“ Her kindly glance was somewhat melancholy. It was the sweet sadness of mature people who find the present monotonous, the future circumscribed, and taking refuge in memories of the past, envy the young who enjoy the reality of what they can taste only in memory.
"Happy you!... You love each other so much!... Life is worth living only because of love."
And Freya, as though irresistibly affected by these counsels, threw one arm around the doctor's globular, corseted figure, while convulsively clasping Ulysses' right hand. ”

“ In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he used as models the people around him. ”

“ Leonora knew every nook in the world. She would have none of Nice and the other cities of the Blue Coast, pretty places, coquettish, bepowdered and rouged like women fresh from their dressing tables! Besides there would be too many people there. Venice was better. They would thread the narrow, solitary silent canals there, stretched out in a gondola, kissing each other between smiles, pitying the poor unfortunate mortals crossing the bridges over them, unaware of how great a love was gliding beneath their feet!
But no, Venice is a sad place after all: when it rains, it rains and rains! ”

“ Leonora seemed quite absorbed in her thoughts. Her brows were knitted and her lips pressed tightly together, as if she were suffering the sting of painful recollections.
"Suicide!" she said at last. "Doesn't that seem a silly thing to do, Rafael? Kill yourself for a woman? Just as if we women were obliged to love every man who thinks he's in love with us!... How stupid men are! We have to be their servants, love them willy-nilly. And if we don't, they kill themselves just to spite us." ”

“ I should like to be as rich as Sónnica, a woman who they say began like any one of us, and is now mistress of many of these ships, and has gardens as wonderful as Olympus, troops of slaves, potteries, and half the domain of the commonwealth as her own property. I should like to be rich if only for to-night, to regale you on the best there is in the city; to give you a banquet like one of Sónnica's, which last till dawn, and where, crowned with roses, you should drink the Samian wine from a golden cup. ”

“ Once again he bent to the oars, heading out toward midstream over the moonlit water, as if to vouchsafe the groves on either bank an equal pleasure in the romantic escapade.
It had been one of her caprices—a desire repeated during his visits to the Blue House on some afternoons, in the presence of doña Pepa and the maid, and on every night, as he passed through the opening in the hedge where Leonora's bare arms were waiting for him in the darkness.
For more than a week Rafael had been living in a sweet dream. Never had he imagined that life could be so beautiful. ”