Don Manuel

“ Juan Manuel would say to him: "Señor, you are fortunate above all men, because you know precisely the hour at which you die!" Then he would thrust with his dagger—and then, leaving the dead gentleman lying in the street, he would come back again into his own home. And this bad vice of Don Juan Manuel's of killing people went on, Señor, for a great many years. ”

“ The companions of Don Manuel drew back, out of respect to the sacred pageant; but he pressed forward, with his usual impetuosity, to gain a near view of the novice. He almost jostled her, in passing through the portal of the church, when, on her turning round, he beheld the countenance of a beautiful village girl, who had been the object of his ardent pursuit, but who had been spirited secretly out of his reach by her relatives. She recognized him at the same moment, and fainted; but was borne within the grate of the chapel. ”

“ He denounced me prophetically, wrapped up with an air of midnight secrecy; but, after all, he had been a friend in the act, if not in the spirit, and I contented myself by asking, with some pity for his imbecile craving after murder:
“Why? What can Manuel do to me? He at least is completely helpless.”
“Did the Señor Don Juan ever ask himself what Manuel could do to me—Tomas Castro? To me, who am poor and a vagabond, and a friend of Don Carlos, may his soul rest with God. Are all you English like princes that you should never think of anybody but yourselves?” ”

“ Don Manuel was treated with much attention; but every thing had changed since he had been there before. The friends of his youth had died, or were now all old men, and immersed in the cares of business or ambition, were vastly different from the youths he remembered, and his heart yearned to be back in Cuba, amongst the more familiar scenes and friends of his latter years.
Clara was too sad to be happy any where; and Francisca, finding pleasure in nothing but the society of Willis, liked not the flirtations and compliments of the Madrid gallants. ”

“ LEGEND OF DON JUAN MANUEL [1]
This Don Juan Manuel, Señor, was a rich and worthy gentleman who had the bad vice of killing people. Every night at eleven o'clock, when the Palace clock was striking, he went out from his magnificent house—as you know, Señor, it still is standing in the street that has been named after him—all muffled in his cloak, and under it his dagger in his hand.
Then he would meet one, in the dark street, and would ask him politely: "What is the hour of the night?" And that person, having heard the striking of the clock, would answer: "It is eleven hours of the night." ”

“ Thy father called thee so after some madcap friend of his own, of whom the less spoken the better."
"My father's friend must have been good and noble, like himself," said Juan proudly, almost defiantly.
"Young man," returned Don Manuel severely, and lifting his eyebrows as if in surprise at his audacity, "learn that a humbler tone and more courteous manners would become thee in the presence of thy superiors." Then turning haughtily away from him, he addressed himself to Carlos: "As for thee, nephew Carlos, I hear with pleasure of thy progress in learning. ”

“ Abad y la Sierra (Don Manuel) , archbishop of Selimbria in partibus infidelium, inquisitor-general after Don Augustine Rubin de Cevallos. In 1794 Charles IV. commanded him to quit his office, and to retire to Sopetran, a Benedictine monastery near Madrid. Don Manuel was possessed of great talents and profound learning; his opinions were enlightened in the highest degree. In 1793 this prelate commanded me to make him a plan for an establishment of learned qualifiers to censure books and persons. ”

“ He escaped with life, but remained a crippled invalid, apparently condemned for the rest of his days to inaction, weakness, and suffering.
His father thought a good canonry would be a decent and comfortable provision for him, and pressed him accordingly to enter the Church. But the invalided youth manifested an intense repugnance to the step; and Don Manuel hoped that the influence of Carlos would help to overcome this feeling; believing that he would gladly endeavour to persuade his cousin that no way of life was so pleasant or so easy as that which he himself was about to adopt. ”

“ Don Manuel did take warning by it. Guided by the counsels of the worthy friar, he disposed of all his temporal affairs; dedicated the greater part of his wealth to pious uses, especially to the performance of masses for souls in purgatory; and finally, entering a convent, became one of the most zealous and exemplary monks in Seville. ”

“ At this time, in the year 1675, Governor Don Manuel de León was in great danger of dying, on account of having placed himself under medical treatment, without being actually sick, solely for the sake of improving his health—a proof that it might have cost him his life. Don Manuel was a corpulent man, and had grown so fleshy that he was almost unable to move about without aid, at which he grieved much because he could not attend to many functions which belonged to the obligations of his office. ”

“ Manuel, I am very angry with you. You are not stupid. You don’t look stupid. Please don’t say just Yes, señora again. Don’t be stupid or I’ll send for Esteban. Is anything the matter with you?”
Here Manuel cast himself upon the Spanish language and exclaimed with unnecessary vigor: “I swear by the Virgin Mary and the heart of St. Rose of Lima that all that has to do with the letter will be secret.”
“Even from Esteban,” prompted the Perichole. ”

“ I don't mind telling you that after shivering through two nights without clothes and without enough blankets, being bitten by mosquitoes and flies, and scorched daytimes by the sun, I begin to think Manuel a great hero. ”

“ Alphonso XI.’s repudiation of Constanza, whom he imprisoned at Toro, drove Don Juan Manuel into opposition, and a long period of civil war followed. On the death of his wife Constantina in 1327, Don Juan Manuel strengthened his position by marrying Doña Blanca de la Cerda; he secured the support of Juan Nuñez, alférez of Castile, by arranging a marriage between him and Maria, daughter of Don Juan el Tuerto; he won over Portugal by promising the hand of his daughter, the ex-queen Constanza, to the infante of that kingdom, and he entered into alliance with Mahomet III. of Granada. ”

“ Then Don Juan Manuel saw that he had [Pg 3] been leading a bad life: and he went to the Father to whom he confessed and confessed all the killings that he had done. Then the Father put a penance upon him: That at midnight he should go alone through the streets until he was come to the chapel of the Espiración (it faces upon the Plazuela de Santo Domingo, Señor; and, in those days, before it was a gallows) ; and that he should kneel in front of that chapel, beneath the gallows; and that, so kneeling, he should tell his rosary through. ”

“ Don Manuel is of course a constant visitor at Don Benigno's, but I do not envy him the term of courtship which precedes the marriage, nor is the ceremony itself very inviting.
In his capacity of lover, Don Manuel is bound to submit to many hardships. He may not meet his fiancée alone under any circumstances; her society must be enjoyed only in the presence of the numerous friends and relatives who visit her at all hours of the day and evening. ”

“ The moment of excitement over, a reaction takes place, the stronger, perhaps, on account of the cruel reprisals exercised by the uncivilized Indians, and still more ferocious half-castes; and while the patriots are rifling the dead bodies of the dragoons, and their chief is reading some papers he has found in the pocket of the Spanish commandant, Don Manuel bitterly deplores the act of precipitation that has blasted all the hopes of his love and ambition. ”

“ El Conde Lucanor is essentially the production of a conscious artist, deliberative and selective in his methods. Don Juan Manuel has not Boccaccio’s festive fancy nor his constructive skill; he is too persistently didactic and concerned to point a moral; but he excels in knowledge of human nature, in the faculty of ironical presentation, in tolerant wisdom and in luminous conciseness. ”

“ Don Manuel cast side glances at his daughter, not feeling perfectly satisfied with her advance in the arts and manners of the best society, since one of the most important points, in his estimation, consisted in a delicate appreciation of the shades of civility due to different people according to their rank and position, "showing to each neither more nor less than was appropriate by the rules of social distinction ”

“ Manuel, Prince Don Juan, born May 5, 1282, at Escalona, died 1349, was of the blood royal of Castile and Leon, nephew to Alfonso the Wise, cousin to Sancho IV. He first fought against the Moors when he was twelve, and the rest of his years were spent in filling great offices in the State, or in military operations on the Moorish frontier. In spite of a life full of intrigue and violence he devoted himself successfully to literature, and is the first great Spanish prose writer. ”

“ This formidable coalition compelled Alphonso XI. to sue for terms, which he accepted in 1328 without any serious intention of complying with them; but he was compelled to release Doña Constanza. War speedily broke out anew, and lasted till 1331 when Alphonso XI. invited Juan Manuel and Juan Nuñez to a banquet at Villahumbrales with the intention, it was believed, of assassinating them; the plot failed, and Don Juan Manuel joined forces with Peter IV. of Aragon. ”

“ One evening Manuel was stopped on the street by a small boy who announced to him that the Perichole wished him to call upon her at once. Manuel turned in his path and went to the theatre. Straight, sombre and impersonal, he entered the actress’s room and stood waiting. Camila had a service to ask of Manuel and she thought a few preliminary blandishments were necessary, but she scarcely paused in combing a blond wig that was dressed upon the table before her.
“You write letters for people, don’t you? I want you to write a letter for me, please. ”

“ On the same day, Don Juan Manuel arranged the camp to suit his own pleasure. He appointed Don Juan de Morales Valenzuela sargento-mayor, after removing Don Nicolás Sarmiento; he made his own son, Don Juan Manuel, captain of his guard, and changed many of the infantry captains. It seems that the two auditors Coloma and Mansilla feared some violence; and for greater harmony retired, together with the fiscal Don Diego de Corbera and the secretary of the chamber, Tomás de Palenzuela Zurbarán to the college of the Society of Jesus, and convened the Audiencia in the library of the said college. ”

“ Manuel was slow to see anything singular in men. But this served to focus his mind on the strangest companion with whom he had ever traveled.
Señor was exceedingly strong and implacably tireless; a perfect fiend for action. He minded not the toil, nor the flies, nor the mosquitoes, nor the heat; nothing concerned him except standing still. Señor never lagged, never shirked his part of the labor, never stole the bigger share of food, which was more than remarkable in the partner of a rubber hunter. ”

“ It seemed to him that all the stuff cast aside in scorn by the capital,—the ordure and broken tubs, the old flower-pots and toothless combs, buttons and sardine tins,—all the rubbish thrown aside and spurned by the city, was dignified and purified by contact with the soil.
Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little house like Señor Custodio's, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the almost happy men in this world.
CHAPTER VII Señor Custodio's Ideas—La Justa, El Carnicerín, and El Conejo. ”

“ Manuel thought of Señor, of his magnificent strength, of the lion in him as he sprang to meet the Cashibos, of the gaudy butterfly darts imbedded in his back, of the glory and pathos of his death. What his life might have been! A strung cord snapped in Manuel’s breast; his heart broke. Bitter salt tears flowed for Señor, for himself, for all miserable wretches for all time. In that revealing moment he caught a glimpse of the infinite. He saw the helplessness of man, the unintelligible fatality of chance, motive, [243] power, charm, love—all that made up the complexity of life. ”

“ This dark depression attracted Manuel somehow or other, with its rubbish heaps, its gloomy hovels, its comical, dismantled merry-go-round, its swings, and its ground that held so many surprises, for a rough, ordinary pot burgeoned from its depths as easily as a lady's elegant perfume phial; the rubber bulb of a prosaic syringe grew side by side with the satin, scented sheet of a love letter.
This rough, humble life, sustained by the detritus of a refined, vicious existence; this almost savage career in the suburbs of a metropolis, filled Manuel with enthusiasm. ”

“ I was filled with sorrow when I heard that Manuel was condemned to death, aware that he deserved a better fate. I visited him in jail, the day after he had [Pg 95] received his sentence. He was loaded with fetters, and occupied a small cell by himself, through which he paced as quickly as the weight of his irons would permit; though he had a subdued look, the expression of his countenance was neither abject nor sorrowful.
“Ah, is it you, sir?” cried he, advancing towards me, as I entered; “you are the person I most wished to see. How kind it is in you to visit a poor negro! ”