-Viii- · IV

I remember,” said Carlos with emotion. “And fortunate I was to find someone to give me lodging in return for the small service of keeping their accounts. Then I had the good luck to fall in with that retired colonel who taught me elementary mathematics.”

“Very well; there is not a rag of your past that you two do not bring out into the street today,” remarked Sofía.

“My brother asked me for bread,” added Teodoro, “and I would answer: ‘Bread, did you say? Here is mathematics for you!...’ One day my master gave me tickets for the Cruz theatre; I took my brother and we enjoyed ourselves hugely; but Carlos caught pneumonia.... A terrible, immense obstacle! It was like receiving a bullet at the opening of the action.... But no, who loses heart? Forward... he must be cured. A professor in the faculty, who had taken a great fancy to me, undertook to treat him.”

“It was a miracle of God that I recovered in that filthy hovel, a storehouse of old rags, old iron, and old leather.”

“God was with us... it was plain to see.... He had taken our side.... Oh, I knew well enough to whom I was cleaving!” continued Teodoro with that nervous, rapid, fiery eloquence that was as much a part of him as his black mane and lion’s head. “That my brother might have medicine, I had to go without clothes. Pharmacology and wardrobe cannot go together. Prescription after prescription, the sick lad consumed my cloak, then my frock coat... my breeches were converted into pills.... But my masters did not abandon me... I had clothes once more, and my brother was able to go out. The doctor said to me: ‘Let him go to the country to convalesce....’ I reflected... ‘The country, did you say? Let him go to the School of Mines.’ My brother was a great mathematician. I taught him chemistry... he soon took a liking to stones, and before entering the school, he used to go out to the fields of San Isidro to collect pebbles.... I pressed forward on my voyage through waves and tempests.... Every day I was more of a doctor. A famous surgeon took me as his assistant; I ceased to be a servant.... I began to serve science... my master fell ill; I nursed him like a Sister of Charity.... He died, leaving me a bequest... an amusing thing! It consisted of a walking stick, a machine for making cigarettes, a hunting horn, and four thousand reales in cash. A fortune!... My brother had books, I had clothes; and when I was dressed like a gentleman, patients began to come. It seemed that mankind fell ill only to give me work.... Onward, always onward!... Years passed, years and years... at last I saw from afar the harbor of refuge after great storms.... My brother and I rowed along without much labor... we were no longer sad.... God smiled within us. Bravo for the Golfíns!... God had lent them a hand. I began to study the eyes, and in a short time mastered cataract; but I wanted more.... I earned some money, but my brother spent a good deal.... At last Carlos graduated from the school... Long live brave men!... Having seen him settled at Riotinto with a good salary, I sailed for America. I had been a sort of Columbus, the Columbus of labor; and a sort of Hernán Cortés; I had discovered within myself a New World, and having discovered it, I had conquered it.”

“Praise yourself, trumpet!” said Sofía with a laugh.

“If there are heroes in the world, you are one of them,” affirmed Carlos, showing great admiration for his brother.

“Prepare yourself now, Sir Demigod,” said Sofía, “to crown all your exploits by performing a miracle, for a miracle it will be to give sight to one born blind.... Look, there is Don Francisco coming out to meet us.”

Advancing along the crest of the hill that bounds the mines on the western side, they had reached Aldeacorba and the house of the master of Penáguilas, who, slipping on his coat in all haste, came forward to meet his friends. Evening was falling.

-XI-

The Patriarch of Aldeacorba

“They are milking her now,” he said before greeting them. “I suppose everyone will take some milk. How is your courage, Doña Sofía?... And yours, Don Teodoro?... You have taken up a pretty burden! What is the matter with María Canela?... A hurt foot? Since when have we indulged in such pampering?”

They all entered the courtyard of the house. The deep lowing of the cows that had just entered the stable could be heard, and this sound, mingled with the pleasant rustic scent of the hay that the farm hands were pitching into the loft, sweetly refreshed their senses and spirits.

The doctor seated Nela upon a stone bench; and she, paralyzed with respect, dared not make a movement, but gazed at her benefactor with wonder.

“Where is Pablo?” asked the engineer.

“He has just gone down to the orchard,” replied Señor de Penáguilas, offering a rustic chair to Sofía. “Look here, Nela, run down and keep him company.”

“No, I do not want her to walk yet,” objected Teodoro, checking her. “Besides, she is going to drink milk with us.”

“Do you not wish to see my son this afternoon?” asked Señor de Penáguilas.

“Yesterday’s examination is enough for me,” replied Golfín. “The operation can be performed.”

“With success?”

“Ah, with success!... that cannot be said beforehand. What a great joy it would be to me to give sight to one who so well deserves it! Your son possesses an intellect of the first order, a superior imagination, an exquisite goodness. His total ignorance of the visible world makes those magnificent qualities stand out the more... they present themselves to us alone, admirably simple, with all the candor and charm of the grand creations of Nature untouched by the art of man. In him all is idealism—a grandiose idealism, enormously beautiful. He is like a colossal deposit, like marble in the quarry.... He knows nothing of reality... he lives the inner life, the life of pure illusion.... Oh, if we could give him sight!... Sometimes I say to myself: ‘What if in giving him sight we turn him from an angel into a man?...’ Here we have a problem and a doubt.... But let us make him a man; that is the duty of science; let us bring him from the world of illusions into the realm of reality; and then, with his powerful intellect, he will be truly intelligent and wise; then his ideas will be accurate, and he will have the precious gift of valuing all things at their true worth.”

The glasses of milk were brought out—white, foaming, warm, overflowing the rims in bubbling surges. Penáguilas offered the first to Sofía, and the gentlemen took possession of the other two. Teodoro Golfín gave his to Nela, who, overwhelmed with bashfulness, hesitated to take it.

“Come, child,” said Sofía, “do not be ill-mannered: take what is offered you.”

“Another glass for Don Teodoro,” said Don Francisco to the servant.

Presently the murmur of tiny jets streaming from the squeezed udder was heard again.

“And he will have a just appreciation of all things,” said Don Francisco, repeating the doctor’s phrase, which had made no small impression upon his mind. “You have spoken an admirable word, Don Teodoro. And since we are speaking of this, I wish to confide to you the anxieties I have had for some days past. I will sit down too.”

Don Francisco took a seat on a bench near at hand. Teodoro, Carlos, and Sofía had seated themselves in chairs brought from the house, and Nela remained upon the stone bench. The milk she had just drunk had left a little white mustache on her upper lip.

“Well, I was saying, Don Teodoro, that for some days past I have been uneasy at the state of excitement my son is in: I attribute it to the hope we have given him.... But there is more, there is more. You know that I am in the habit of reading various books to him. I believe I have overheated his imagination with my reading, and that an amount of ideas has developed in him beyond the capacity of the brain of a man who cannot see. I know not whether I explain myself clearly.”

“Perfectly.”

“His brooding never ends. I am astonished at hearing him and at the substance and subtlety of his discourse. I believe that his knowledge is full of a thousand errors for want of method and through ignorance of the visible world.”

“It cannot be otherwise.”

“But the strangest thing is that, carried away by his powerful imagination, which is like a Hercules bound with chains inside a dungeon, struggling to burst iron and stone....”

“Very well, very well put.”

“His imagination, I say, cannot be confined within the darkness of his senses, and it comes forth into this world of light of ours, seeking to supply by its bold creations the lack of the sense of sight. Pablo possesses an astounding spirit of inquiry; but this spirit of inquiry is a brave bird with broken wings. For some days past he has been feverish, he does not sleep, and his eagerness for knowledge borders on madness. He wants me to read new books to him at all hours, and at every pause he makes the keenest observations, with a mixture of innocence that makes me laugh. He asserts and maintains great absurdities, and just try to contradict him!... I am greatly afraid he will turn monomaniac, that his brain will become unhinged.... If you only saw how sad and moody he becomes at times!... And he seizes upon a notion, and harps upon it, and will not let it go for a week. For days past he has been dwelling upon a notion as whimsical as it is original. He has taken it into his head that Nela is pretty.”

Laughter was heard, and Nela turned crimson.

“That Nela is pretty!” exclaimed Teodoro kindly. “Why, so she is.”

“To be sure, and especially now that she has her white mustache,” said Sofía.

“Why, she is a pretty girl,” repeated Teodoro, taking her face in his hands. “Sofía, give me your handkerchief.... Come, wipe away that mustache.”

Teodoro returned the handkerchief to Sofía after cleaning Nela’s face. Don Francisco told her to go and join the blind youth, and limping, she entered the house.

“And when I contradict him,” added the master of Aldeacorba, “my son answers that the gift of sight perhaps alters in me—what an amusing absurdity!—the truth of things.”

“Do not contradict him, and suspend reading entirely for the present. For several days he must observe a regimen of absolute quiet. The brain must be treated with great consideration before attempting an operation of this nature.”

“If God wills that my son should see,” said Señor de Penáguilas with fervor, “I shall hold you for the greatest, the most beneficent of men. The darkness of his eyes is the darkness of my life: that black shadow has saddened my days, darkening the material prosperity I possess. I am rich: what good are my riches to me? Nothing that he cannot see is enjoyable to me. A month ago I received news that I had inherited a large fortune... you know already, Don Carlos, that my cousin Faustino died in Matamoros. He left no children; my brother Manuel and I inherit his property.... This is casting pearls before swine; and I say it not for my brother, who has a lovely daughter already of marriageable age; I say it for this poor wretch who cannot make his only son enjoy the honest delights of a good station in life.”

A long silence followed these words, broken only by the gentle lowing of the cows in the nearby stable.

“For him,” added the patriarch of Aldeacorba with deep sorrow, “there is no joy in labor, which is the first of all joys. Knowing nothing of the beauties of Nature, what can the charm of the countryside or the pleasures of agriculture mean to him? I know not how God could deny a human being the joy of admiring a sleek cow, a tree laden with pears, a green meadow, and seeing the fruits of the earth piled up, and paying wages to the laborers, and reading in the sky the weather that is to come. For him no life exists save a feverish brooding. His lonely life will not even have the comfort of a family; for when I die, what family will the poor blind lad have? He will not wish to marry, nor will any woman of position wed him, despite his wealth, nor would I advise him to marry. And so, when Don Teodoro gave me hope... I saw heaven opened; I saw a kind of paradise upon earth... I saw a young, cheerful, simple marriage; I saw angels, little grandchildren around me; I saw my grave adorned with the blossoms of childhood, with the tender caresses that even after my last hour will remain with me beneath the earth.... You do not understand this; you do not know that my brother Manuel, who is better than good bread, no sooner heard of my hopes than he began to make calculations upon calculations.... See what he writes to me... (he drew out several letters which he turned over for a moment without finding the one he wanted)... In short, he is overjoyed, and has said to me: ‘I will marry my Florentina to your Pablito, and here you have cousin Faustino’s half million pesos invested at compound interest...’ I fancy I can see Manolo rubbing his hands and taking great strides, as is his habit when he has a happy idea. I expect him and his daughter at any moment: they are coming to spend the fourth of October with me and to see what comes of this attempt to give sight to my son....”

Night was gently falling, and the four persons were surrounded by a peaceful shadow. The house began to smoke, announcing the welcome village supper. The patriarch, who seemed the human expression of that melancholy calm, spoke once more, saying: