condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

“ The poet stood fronting the precipice, Nieves with her back toward it, kept from falling over its edge only by the arm of her savior. A movement forward, a stronger pressure of his lips to hers, would be sufficient to make them both lose their balance and precipitate them into the abyss. It would be a beautiful ending—worthy of the ambitious soul of a poet. Thinking of it Segundo found it alluring and desirable, and yet the instinct of self-preservation, an animal impulse, but one more powerful than the romantic idea, placed between the thought and the action an insuperable barrier. ”

“ The hour has come for wielding the knife. And through the long nights of Vilamorta resound at the most unexpected moments desperate grunts—first grunts of fury, that express the impotent rage of the victim at finding himself bound to the bench, and reveal in the degenerate domestic pig the descendant of the wild mountain boar; then of pain, when the knife penetrates the flesh, an almost human cry when its blade pierces the heart, and at last a series of despairing groans which grow fainter and fainter as life and strength escape with the warm stream of blood. ”

“ The ground, parched by the heat, was rugged and uneven. The houses seemed to cling to the mountain-side, threatening to lose their hold at every moment and topple over into the river, and the indispensable pot of carnations, whose flowers peeped through the rails of the wooden balconies, reminded one of the flower with which a gypsy carelessly adorns her hair. Sometimes Segundo's way led through a pine grove, and he inhaled the balsamic odor of the resin and rode over a carpet of dry leaves which deadened the sound of his horse's hoofs ”

“ Nieves stopped from time to time to take breath, and was at last fain to avail herself of the support of the plump arm of Carmen Agonde.
"Caramba, this is like practicing gymnastics! Whoever escapes being killed when we are going back will be very lucky."
"Lean well on me, lean well on me," said the sturdy country girl. "Many a limb has been broken here already, no doubt. This ascent is terrible!"
They reached the summit at last. The prospect was beautiful, with that species of beauty that borders on sublimity. The pine wood seemed to hang over an abyss. ”

“ The schoolmistress divined a love story whose heroine could be no one but Nieves Mendez. But what she could not understand, what she could not explain, was how Señora de Comba, now a widow, and free to reward Segundo's love, did not do so immediately. The verses breathed profound despondency, ardent passion, and intense bitterness. Now Leocadia understood Segundo's sadness, his dejection, his mental anguish. How much he must suffer in secret! Poets, by their nature, must suffer more and crueler tortures than the rest of humanity. ”

“ The dancers pursued their task earnestly, diligently, as if they were contending for a prize to be awarded to the one who should first get out of breath, moving, not with their own motion only, but impelled by the jostling, pushing, and crowding of those around them. And Nieves, accustomed to the elegant and measured dancing of the soirées, wondered at the courage and resolution displayed by the dancers of Vilamorta. ”

“ Nieves, come here, Nieves; see, how foolish Carmen Agonde is; she says she likes the arch-priest, that barrel, better than Don Eugeniño, the parish priest of Naya, because it makes her laugh, she says, to see him perspiring and to look at the rolls of fat in the back of his neck. And say, Nieves, what trick shall we play to-night on Don Eugeniño? And on Ramon Limioso, who has been daring us all day? ”

“ Suddenly Don Victoriano remembered the presence of Segundo, which he had almost forgotten. And laying both hands on his shoulders a second time, and fixing on the poet's eyes, his dry eyes, scorched by repressed tears, he cried:
"Do you wish to hear the truth, and to receive good advice? Have you ambitions, aspirations, hopes? Well, I have had disappointments, and I desire to do you a service by recounting them to you now. Don't be a fool; stay here all your life; help your father, take up his practice when he lays it down, and marry that blooming daughter of Agonde. ”

“ Hitherto the poor schoolmistress had not known the accompaniment of love, jealousy, whose barbed sting pierces the soul, whose consuming fire dries up the blood, whose chill freezes the heart, whose restless anguish makes the nerves quiver. Segundo scarcely noticed the young girls of Vilamorta; as for the peasant girls, they did not exist for him, he did not even regard them as women; so that Leocadia had attributed the poet's hours of coldness to the bad offices of the muses. ”

“ Segundo could have wished that his fingers were pincers to pierce through the fabric of her gown, through the steel whalebones, through her inner garments, through the flesh and through the very ribs and fasten themselves in her heart, and seize it red-hot and bleeding and crush, tear, annihilate it! Why could he not feel the throbbings of that heart? Leocadia's heart, or even Victorina's, bounded like a bird's when he touched it. And Segundo, enraged, pressed his hand with greater [pg 164] force, undeterred by the fear of hurting Nieves, desiring, on the contrary, to strangle her. ”

“ Segundo hesitated, restrained by a feeling of shyness, as if he had been going to narrate a dream or to descant on the delights of love. He followed with his eyes for a few moments the blue smoke curling upward and finally, the semi-obscurity of the room, secluded as a confessional, dissipated his reserve.
"I wish to follow the profession of literature," he returned.
The statesman stopped rocking himself and took his cigar from his mouth.
"But my boy, literature is not a profession!" he said. "There is no such thing as the profession of literature! ”

“ The poet seized his hat and hurried out of the room. He must flee where these grunts could not penetrate, where those smells should not surround him. He walked along the hall, closing his eyes in order not to see, by the light of the candle which one of the children was holding, Aunt Gáspara with her skeleton-like arm, bare to the elbow, stirring a red and frothing liquid in a large earthern pan. When they saw Segundo leaving the house the sisters burst into shouts of laughter, and called to him, offering him grotesque delicacies, ignoble spoils of the dying. ”

“ Segundo seized the bundle of newspapers and, after looking at them for a moment fixedly and with a gloomy brow, tore them into pieces, large at first, then small, then smaller still, which he threw out of the window to hover for a moment in the air like butterflies or like the silvery petals of the flower of illusion, and then fall into the nearest pool. Segundo smiled bitterly. "There goes fame," he said to himself. ”

“ The latter, screaming with terror, escaped from the drunkards to fall, perhaps, on the horns of some ox or to receive a blow from the snout of some mule that bathed their foreheads and temples in its frothy saliva. But most terrifying of all was it to see infants carried high above their mothers' heads, braving, like frail skiffs, the dangers of this stormy sea.
Nieves remained for half an hour or so looking out of the window, and then, sight and hearing both weary, she withdrew. In the afternoon she watched the scene again for a while. ”

“ For I should greatly like to hear it sing this afternoon."
"If a breeze rises. With the air as still as it is now, the pines will be almost motionless and almost silent. And I say almost, for they are never quite silent. The friction of their tops is sufficient to cause a peculiar vibration, to produce a murmur——"
"And does that happen," asked Nieves jestingly, "only with the pines here or is it the same with all pines?"
"I cannot say," answered Segundo, looking at her fixedly. "Perhaps the only pine grove that will ever sing for me will be that of Las Vides." ”

“ As the tinkling of the donkeys' bells grew fainter in the distance Segundo felt an inexplicable sensation of loneliness and abandonment steal over him, as if he had just parted forever from persons who were dear to him or who played an important part in his life. "A pretty fool I am!" said the poet to himself. "What have I to do with these people or they with me? Nieves has invited me to spend a few days at Las Vides, en famille. When Nieves returns to Madrid this winter she will speak of me as 'That lawyer's son, that we met at Vilamorta.' Who am I? What position should I occupy in her house? ”

“ March had arrived, that uncertain month of sunshine and showers which heralds in the spring with affluence of violets and primroses, when the cold begins to lessen, and in the pale blue sky white [pg 271] clouds float like streamers, when Segundo received that most precious of all objects, that object the sight of which makes the heart palpitate with joy and longing, mingled with an undefinable fear resembling, somewhat, the feeling with which the new-made father regards his first-born—his first printed book. ”

“ As he cared but little for games and as Nieves did not take any very active part in them either, they would often have found themselves thrown for society upon each other had it not been for Victorina, who, from the moment Segundo appeared, never left her mother's side, and Elvira Molende who, from the very instant of his arrival, clung to the poet like the ivy to the wall, directing on him a battery of sighs and glances, and treating him to sentimental confidences and rhapsodies sweet enough to surfeit a confectioner's boy. ”

“ Leocadia did not dare to go herself, fearing to yield to the entreaties and melt before the prayers of the child, but where palpitated those fibers of her heart which still bled, and which Flores wrung with torture by her account of the sufferings of Minguitos, who declined visibly in health, and who always complained that they made sport of him in the shop and cast up his deformity to him.
Unsolvable mysteries of the human heart! ”

“ That boy García—don't be alarmed, child, there is no need for that—that boy looks at you sometimes in a very curious way, as if he were making love to you. No, I am not doubting you. You are and you have always been an irreproachable wife—I am not accusing you, nor do I attach any importance to such folly. But, although you may not believe it, the young men here are very daring; they are shyer in appearance than those of the capital, but they are bolder in reality. ”

“ She rejected the suitors and continued living alone with Minguitos and Flores, her old servant, who now enjoyed in the house all the privileges of a grandmother.
The iniquitous wrong suffered by her in early youth had produced in Leocadia, absorbed as she was in her bitter recollections, a profound horror of marriage and an insatiable thirst for the romantic, the ideal, which is as a refreshing dew to the imagination and which satisfies the emotions. She had the superficial knowledge of a village schoolmistress—rudimentary, but sufficient to introduce exotic tastes into Vilamorta ”

“ You do not lose blood, but you lose the sap of life, like a lemon that is squeezed." And the ex-Minister laughed bitterly. "And you want to stop, to rest, to get back health at any cost, and you find that it is too late; you have not a drop of moisture left in your body. Well, keep on until there is an end to you. Much your labors and your triumphs have profited you! You have drawn down on yourself a doom from which there is no escape!" ”