Prefacio · I

Be easy, reader: this is no grave prologue glued to a book of entertainment, no leaden ballast for something as airy as a butterfly’s wing: you will find here only a few remarks, otherwise unnecessary were I not subject to different laws from other authors, and had not what in them is an indifferent action, or a graceful deed worthy of applause, been counted in me a crime.

You will not be ignorant that by this date I have written a great number of tales, but perhaps it may surprise you if I say they exceed four hundred, and at full speed are nearing five hundred now. Not a few, before being gathered into a volume, have been translated into various tongues in distant lands, despite the neglect of an authoress who, not from indifference or disdain, but for lack of time, is wont not to answer the kind letters of her courteous translators.

Of these four hundred and odd tales there are three or four of which gossip was heard; to speak more truly, the gossip was not of them, but of me, denying me the ownership of the subject. None of those included in the present volume has been disputed, so far as I know, in that regard; but I hasten, reader, to warn you that three of those I offer you here are not mine in subject, and five or six are likewise not the property of my invention, but narrations of authentic and real occurrences—what Fernán Caballero called actual happenings. I dressed and arranged them after my own fashion, sometimes for pleasure and fancy, at other times, especially when dealing with recent events, out of respect for the private lives of others.

When the tale entitled The Mermaid appeared in El Imparcial, I stated in a note that its subject was taken from a pretty and brief apologue by Leopoldo Trenor, The White Cat. Afterwards someone assured me that the apologue, in its turn, was based on a German poem. I have been unable to verify the assertion, and it stands rectified in advance, should it prove inaccurate and should Señor Trenor, instead of doing as I did, have conceived the original idea of the apologue.

Laura’s Tresses is a free gloss upon an exemplum related by the Franciscan Father Juan Laguna in his Rare Cases of Vices and Virtues for the Warning of Sinners. My Suicide and Dreamed Tale are thoughts suggested to me in conversation by the illustrious and venerable Campoamor; and though he, like an opulent giver, would never claim those two little pearls, I take pleasure in thanking him for the gift and begging his pardon for the setting.

And since we speak of pearls, let us come to The Pink Pearl. Truly it astonishes me, discerning reader, that my vigilant customs-officers and revenue guards did not cry smuggling! when I inserted that tale in El Liberal. I denounce myself, since they fall asleep. A few months after The Pink Pearl appeared in El Liberal, I saw in the same journal a tale by another hand, signed by Léon de Tinseau and entitled The Black Pearl, which, besides the similarity of title, offered coincidences of subject. In both tales, the loss of a pearl reveals the fault of a woman. Having read Tinseau’s tale, I had hopes that it might be subsequent in date to mine, and wrote to Miguel Moya begging him to tell me where he had found it. Learning that it was in a book bearing the title Mon oncle Alcide, I ordered it from France, and saw that it had been printed three or four years before. Therefore, literally, I am the one who has turned to account an idea of Tinseau’s. Those who give no credit to my assertion that I did not even suspect the existence of The Black Pearl when I wrote The Pink Pearl, are free to affirm in their turn that the latter is daughter to the former. Without false modesty, I must add that The Pink Pearl has the finer lustre.

With equal sincerity I declare that if Tinseau’s tale had turned out to have been written after mine, I would not on that account have believed with closed eyes that it was an imitation or copy. A certain celebrated Spanish writer could testify that I do not suffer from the obsession of taking fortuitous coincidences for attacks upon my property; a French writer could bear witness to the same. Similar ideas occur to contemporary writers subject to similar influences, as no one who knows literary history will doubt. I will not insist, having promised not to weary you, reader, at least wittingly.

I suppose that the fact that several of my tales are founded upon real occurrences requires no apology. Fashions come and go; twenty years ago, I might perhaps have incurred the censure of the doctors of the critical church, not for basing certain tales on reality, but for inventing from head to foot the immense majority of those I write. Both procedures, in my judgment, are equally lawful, as it is to recast subjects already treated, or to seek them in tradition and the popular wisdom of folklore. There is no wider or freer genre than the short story; there is not, among the most renowned, any story-writer of any fertility who does not work all quarries and veins, beginning with that of his own fancy and proceeding through the varied mines offered him by ancient and modern literatures, written and oral. From jokes that ran from mouth to mouth a book was recently fashioned by illustrious writers, and in the Preface heading it, a famous pen laid down the principle that for the story-writer it suffices to possess ownership of the form in which he clothes the most hackneyed and trite tale. The principle was already sanctioned by practice, and no new example was needed to legitimatise what from time immemorial had been done.

On the other hand, perhaps never as now has invention superabounded among story-writers. In former times it was customary to seize upon a collection of oriental apologues or fables—Persian or Chinese, Arabic or Indian—and, without further ceremony, translating and adapting them into pure vernacular, an author graduated as storyteller and moralist. The original literary short story is relatively new in Western literatures: it proceeds from the transformation of epic-lyric poetry, and has precedents not only in fabliaux and exempla from devotional books (even today an inexhaustible mine for the storyteller) but in certain narrative poems; for example, the Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise and the German ballads. I notice a particular analogy between the conception of a short story and that of lyric poetry: both are swift as a spark, and very intense—for to that brevity compels them, an indispensable condition of the story. An original story not conceived suddenly never matures. There are days—forgive, reader, these intimate confidences—when not even a wretched subject occurs to me, and hours when by dozens possible themes present themselves to my imagination, while I feel an impatience to commit them to paper. Walking or reading; at the theatre or upon the railway; by the crackle of the hearth in winter and the soft murmur of the sea in summer, story ideas leap forth with their lines and colours, like stanzas in the lyric poet’s mind, who usually conceives thought and metric form at once. Of the ideas that crowd upon me, I do not use half; I reject countless ones, not only deeming them unworthy to live, but because some seem daring, perilous, and capable of horrifying you, O reader not always indulgent! If this happens with ideas of my own harvest, in still greater degree it occurs with those suggested by old books, and above all, those founded upon facts of real life. However vigorous we suppose a writer’s fancy, it never reaches the limits of possible reality. All we could invent falls far short of truth. We call unusual things improbable; but there is no strange, monstrous, hair-raising, or singular occurrence that we do not know through reality. Those of my craft know it well: one can never embody in literature all observed truth, on pain of being branded extravagant, wild, and a barbarian devoid of taste; and yet the greatest daring of the pen, though forged of iron and dipped in sulphuric acid, is mild compared to what tremendous reality writes in characters of fire.

I have observed the public shudder before certain true tales. In the present volume stand, as examples, The Good Old Days and Sister Apparition. Many people were terrified by Sister Apparition. I reread the story slowly and cannot explain such horror, except by the cruelty of the reality throbbing in it. The narration is set down, I think, in very modest terms, with all possible decorum; moreover, I modified the story, presenting the unhappy lady beloved of the deceiver Camargo in the exercise of the most rigorous and exemplary penance. So many years of mortification and tears did I lay upon her, that they ought to suffice to pacify the most timorous. The strict truth is that I know not the fate of the victim of that infamous jest, played by one of our greatest romantic poets. I know not whether she entered a convent, gave herself up to dissipation, or vegetated in indifference; but it seemed to me that, within the ideal conception of the tale, she must expiate her error to ennoble her misfortune. And yet, for all that, many crossed themselves, as they did on reading The Good Old Days, a tragic history of which records and memories still survive. Perhaps the public today is more nervous and impressionable than in other ages; only thus can one understand why from classical devotional books one cannot draw a tale without the assembly being perturbed and the vault of heaven unhinged. Of this we shall speak again, O reader, when I publish my Sacro-profane Tales.

EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN.

Murdered Love

It can never be said that unhappy Eve omitted any lawful means of shaking off that roguish urchin, Love, who pursued her without leaving her a moment’s rest.

She began by putting distance between them, travelling to break the spell that binds the soul to the places where Love first appears to us. Useless precaution, wasted time; for the rascal boy climbed on the back of the coach, crouched under the seats of the train, later slipped into her travelling-bag, and finally into the traveller’s pockets. At every spot where Eve halted, Love poked out his mischievous head and said with a sly, confidential smile: “I do not part from you. We go together.”

Then Eve, who did not slumber, ordered a very high tower to be built, well protected with bastions, moats, and counter-moats, defended by veteran guards, and with portcullises and solid iron-plated doors, bolted night and day. But on opening the window one evening, when she looked out overwhelmed with tedium to view the fields and enjoy the peaceful light of the rising moon, the boy slipped into the room; and though she expelled him and set double gratings with sharp spikes, willingly imprisoning herself, Eve succeeded only in having Love enter through the crevices of the wall, the roof gutters, or the keyhole.

Furious, she had the cracks stopped and the crevices caulked, deeming herself safe from insolence and excess; but she did not reckon with Love’s skill in tricks and cunning wiles. The cursed sprite dissolved into the atoms of the air, and enveloped in them entered her mouth and lungs, so that Eve spent the day inhaling him, feverish and wild, in a frenzy much resembling that caused by an atmosphere oversaturated with oxygen.

Beside herself, despairing of holding wicked Love at bay, Eve began to consider how to rid herself of him definitively, at all costs, without scruple or hesitation. Between Love and Eve the struggle was unto death, and how victory was won mattered not, if only it were achieved.

Eve knew herself well, not because she was reflective, but because she possessed a sagacious instinct; and knowing herself, she knew she was capable of cajoling the very devil with wiles and flattery, let alone Love, naturally inflammable and easily seduced. She resolved, then, to dupe Love, and rid herself of him safely and treacherously by murdering him.

She prepared her nets and hooks, baiting them with flowers and sweetest honey, and lured Love by charming winks, smiles of intoxicating tenderness, and words half grave, half coaxing, in a voice veiled with emotion, in tones more melodious than water parting over pebbles or sighing into a Moorish fountain.

And Love came flying, joyful, graceful, happy, giddy and trusting as a child, impetuous and vain as a youth, placid and serene as a stalwart man.

Eve received him in her lap; caressed him with feline softness; served him delicacies; crooned to lull him quietly to sleep; and as soon as she saw him grow calm, resting his head upon her bosom, she prepared to strangle him, gripping his throat with rage and vigour.

A feeling of pity and sorrow stayed her hand, nevertheless, for a few moments. He was so pretty, so divinely fair, that cursed Love! Upon his mother-of-pearl cheeks, paled by happiness, fell a shower of golden curls, fine as threads of light; and from his purple mouth, smiling still, between the double row of his pearly teeth, issued an even, fragrant breath. His blue eyes, half-parted and moist, retained the blissful languor of his final moments; and folded upon his body of Hellenic proportions, his rosy wings resembled plucked petals. Eve felt moved to weep...

There was no help for it; she must murder him if she would live worthy, respected, and free... And closing her eyes not to behold the lad, she pressed her hands forcefully, long, very long, shuddering at the death-rattle she heard, at the dull, mournful moan exhaled by expiring Love.