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How the Virgin Mary Appeared to Nela

Thoughts that take flight when we are overcome by sleep are wont to lie in ambush, returning to take sudden possession of us when we awake. Thus it happened with Mariquilla, who, having fallen asleep with the strangest thoughts concerning the Virgin Mary, the blind lad, and her own ugliness—which she longed to see transformed into wondrous beauty—awoke with the very same when Señana’s shrill cries tore her from her baskets. From the moment she opened her eyes, Nela repeated her customary prayer to the Virgin Mary; but on that day the prayer was a string of words composed of the ordinary liturgy and certain pieces of her own invention, producing a discourse that would have been curious indeed had it been written down. Among other things, Nela said:

Last night thou didst appear to me in dreams, Lady, and didst promise me that today thou wouldst comfort me. I am awake, and it seems to me that I am looking upon thee still, and have before me thy face, fairer than all the beautiful and lovely things in the world.

As she said this, Nela rolled her eyes wildly around her.... Scrutinizing herself in the vague manner in which she was able to do so, she thought thus: “Something is happening to me.”

“What is the matter with you, Nela? What ails you, child?” said Señana, observing that the girl was gazing with astonished eyes at a fixed point in space. “Are you seeing visions, you dormouse?”

Nela made no reply, for her spirit was busy communing with itself, saying:

“What is this I feel?... It cannot be an evil spell, for what is within me is not the hideous, black form of the foul fiend, but a heavenly thing—a face, a smile, and a look that, unless I am a fool, belong to the Virgin Mary herself in person. Lady and Mother mine, can it be true that today thou wilt comfort me?... And how wilt thou comfort me? What did I ask of thee last night?”

“Hey!... child,” screamed Señana with a harsh voice, like the most grating sound that can be heard in the world. “Come and wash that dog’s face of yours.”

Nela ran. She had felt in her soul a shock such as is produced by the sudden invasion of a great hope. She looked at herself in the trembling surface of the water, and instantly felt her heart contract.

“Nothing...” she murmured, “just as ugly as ever. The same child’s figure with a woman’s soul and years.”

After washing, she was seized with the same strange sensations she had experienced before—a kind of pleasurable anguish. Marianela, despite her slight experience, had sense enough to class those sensations under the head of presentiments.

“Pablo and I,” she thought, “have talked of what is felt when some joyful or sorrowful thing is about to happen. Pablo told me too that just before earthquakes a particular feeling is experienced, and people feel a particular sensation... and animals feel a particular sensation too.... Can the earth be about to quake?”

Kneeling down, she felt the ground.

“I know not... but something is going to happen. That it is something good I cannot doubt.... The Virgin told me last night that she would comfort me today.... What is this within me?... Is that heavenly Lady walking about me? I see her not, but I feel her; she is behind me, she is before me.”

She passed by the washing machines in the direction of the inclined plane, gazing on every side with wild eyes. She saw nothing but the figures of raw clay moving in noisy confusion amid the harsh clatter of the cylindrical screens, pulverizing the water and moistening the dust. Farther on, when she found herself alone, she stopped, and putting her finger to her forehead and fixing her eyes on the ground with that vagueness which doubt imparts to that sense, asked herself this question:

“‘Am I glad or am I sad?’”

She looked up at the sky, wondering to find it just the same as on other days (and that day was one of the loveliest), and quickened her pace to reach Aldeacorba de Suso quickly. Instead of following the mining ravine to mount by the wooden steps, she turned aside from the hollow by the brook near the inclined plane, in order to climb to the meadows and then proceed straight by a level path to Aldeacorba. This way was prettier, and on that account she almost always preferred it. There were lanes bordered with graceful, fragrant flowers, amid whose abundance swarms of bees and butterflies grazed; there were great bramble bushes loaded with the black fruit so much coveted by children; there were clumps of wild cherry trees on whose trunks honeysuckles swayed; and there were also stately holm oaks, vast, broad, rounded, beautiful, and dark, which seemed to delight in contemplating their own shadow.

Nela walked slowly on, uneasy at what was passing within her and at the delicious anguish that possessed her. Her fertile imagination succeeded at last in finding the fittest formula to express that obsession; and recalling having heard it said: So-and-so has the devil in his body, she said: “I have the angels in my body.... Virgin Mary, thou art with me today. What I feel is the laughter of thy angels playing within me. Thou art not far off; I see thee and I see thee not, just as when we see with our eyes closed.”

Nela closed her eyes and opened them again. Having passed close to a wood, she turned the corner of the lane to reach a spot where stretched a great hedge of brambles—the thickest, handsomest, and tallest in all that country. There were to be seen also luxuriant ferns, honeysuckles, Virginia creepers, and other climbing plants, supporting one another where there were no large tree trunks. Nela felt the branches rustle on her right; she looked... Heavens above! There within a frame of greenery stood the Virgin Mary Immaculate, with her own face, her own eyes, which as they looked gathered into themselves all the loveliness of heaven. Nela stood dumb, petrified, with a feeling that was at once reverence and dread. She could not advance a step, nor cry out, nor move, nor breathe, nor turn her eyes from that marvelous apparition.

She had appeared among the foliage, displaying fully her head and bust. She was indeed the true image of that chosen Maiden of Nazareth whose moral perfection the artists of eighteen centuries, from Saint Luke down to our own day, have sought to express through pictorial form. Humanity has beheld this sacred person with various eyes: now with those of Albrecht Dürer, now with those of Raphael Sanzio, or with those of Van Dyck or Bartolomé Murillo. She who appeared to Nela was of the Raphaelesque type, which is the most eminent of all, considering that the perfection of human beauty approaches nearer than any other artistic resource to the expression of the divine. The oval of her face was less narrow than that of the Sevillian type, offering the graceful roundness of the Italian. Her eyes, of admirable proportions, were serenity itself united to grace and harmony, with a gaze as far removed from coldness as from the excessive flash of Andalusian eyes. Her eyebrows were the delicate handiwork of the finest pencil, tracing a subtle, enchanting arch. Upon her brow neither the frown of anger nor the shadow of sadness could be conceived; and her lips, somewhat full, showed when she smiled the loveliest teeth that ever bit an apple of Paradise. Unwittingly we have hit upon our mother Eve, though she who gave victory to the serpent is so far removed from her who crushed its head; but the contemplation of the various forms of human beauty leads to these and other even more deplorable paradoxes. To complete the imperfect portrait of that divine vision which left poor Nela bewildered and as if dead, we must add that her complexion was of that toasted rose color, or rather glowing brunette, which forms a delicious blush upon the faces of those sacred images before which devout and impious ages alike fall into ecstasy.

When the first moment of astonishment had passed, what Nela noticed first, to her great confusion, was that the beautiful Virgin wore a blue necktie at her throat—an ornament she had never seen on the Virgins of her dreams or on those in pictures. Immediately afterwards she observed that the shoulders and breast of the divine woman were covered with a dress which in every respect resembled those worn by women of the present day. But what most troubled and disconcerted the poor girl was to see that the gentle apparition was gathering blackberries from the brambles... and eating them.

She was beginning to form the judgments called forth by this strange conduct of the Virgin, when she heard a loud, shrill man’s voice shouting:

“Florentina! Florentina!”

“Here I am, papa; here I am, eating blackberries.”

“There you go!... And what pleasure do you find in wild blackberries?... You capricious girl!... Have I not told you that such things belong rather to idle country urchins than to a young lady brought up in good society?... Brought up in good society?”

Nela saw the speaker approaching with a solemn step. He was a man of mature years, of middle stature, somewhat stout, with a florid face that seemed to shoot forth rays of satisfaction as the sun shoots rays of light; short-legged, somewhat long of nose, and adorned with various decorative objects, among which a large watch-chain and a fine, broad-brimmed felt hat were conspicuous.

“Come, come, child,” said Señor Don Manuel Penáguilas kindly, for it was none other, “respectable people do not eat wild blackberries or skip about like that. You see? You have spoiled your dress... I say it not for the sake of the dress, for just as that one was bought for you, another can be bought... I say it because people who see you may think you have no clothes except what you have on your back.”

Nela, who was beginning to see clearly, observed the young lady’s dress. It was good and rich; but her figure expressed to perfection the transition, by no means slow, from the country girl to the wealthy young lady. Her whole attire, from her shoes to her comb, was that of a village lady on the feast of the patron saint. Yet so great and supreme were Florentina’s natural charms that no circumstance subject to conventional rules of elegance could obscure them. It could not be denied, however, that her charming person cried aloud for a rustic petticoat, hair in loose tresses adorned with poppies, a close bodice, and a string of corals—in short, for what modesty and natural vanity would have devised of themselves without any courtly inventions.

As the young lady stepped back from the thicket, Don Manuel chanced to see Nela just as she had completely recovered from her illusion, and calling to her, cried:

“Oh!... Are you there?... Look, Florentina, this is Nela... you remember I told you about her. She is the one who keeps your little cousin company... your little cousin. And how goes it in these parts?...”

“Very well, Señor Don Manuel. And how are you?” replied Mariquilla, without taking her eyes from Florentina.

“As sound as a roach, you see. This is my daughter. What do you think of her?”

Florentina was chasing a butterfly.

“My child, where are you going? What is that?” said the father, visibly annoyed. “Do you think it looks well to run like that after an insect, like a vagabond child?... Great propriety, my daughter! Young ladies reared in good society do not do that... do not do that....”

Don Manuel had a habit of repeating the last phrase of his remarks or speeches.

“Do not be angry, papa,” replied the girl, returning after her fruitless chase to take shelter beneath the brim of her father’s hat. “You know I am very fond of the country, and that I go wild when I see trees, flowers, and meadows. For in that dreary region of Campó where we live there is nothing of this....”

“Oh! Speak no ill of Santa Irene de Campó, an enlightened town, where today one finds many comforts and a distinguished society. The advances of civilization have reached there too... of civilization. Walking sensibly by my side, you can admire Nature; I admire it too, without cutting capers like a tumbler. People educated in select society are recognized merely by their gait and their manner of contemplating all objects. This crying out at every instant: ‘Ah! Oh!... How pretty!... Look here, papa!’ pointing to a fern, an oak, a stone, a thorn bush, or a jet of water, is not in very good taste.... People will think you were brought up in a wilderness.... So walk beside me.... Nela will tell us the way back to the house, for truth to tell, I do not know where we are.”

“Bearing to the left behind that old house,” said Nela, “you get there very quickly.... But here comes Señor Don Francisco.”

Indeed, Don Francisco appeared, shouting:

“The chocolate is getting cold!...”

“What would you have, my dear fellow?... My daughter was so eager to frisk about the fields that she would not wait, and here you have us skipping from bush to bush like young goats... from bush to bush like young goats.”

“Home, home! Come along too, Nela, and have some chocolate,” said Penáguilas, resting his hand upon the wanderer’s head. “What do you think of my niece?... She is a beauty, is she not?... Florentina, after you have had your chocolate, Nela will take you both for a walk—Pablo and you—and you will see all the beauties of the countryside: the mines, the woods, the river....”

Florentina cast an affectionate glance at the wretched creature, who at her side seemed fashioned by Nature expressly to make the perfection and masterly beauty of some of her works stand out the more.

When they reached the house, the table awaited them with cups in which the thick Guayaquil beverage was still steaming, and a small pile of slices of bread. Fresh butter also stood in readiness, placed between fern leaves, nor were cakes and sweetmeats lacking. The glasses of clear, cold water reflected in their convex crystal these gastronomic treasures, magnifying them.

“Let us take a little nourishment,” said Don Francisco, seating himself.

“Nela,” said Pablo, “you must have some chocolate too.”

Scarcely had he spoken when Florentina offered Marianela a large cup, with everything else that was upon the table. The girl hesitated to accept the invitation; but with such kindness and charming simplicity did the young lady of Penáguilas press her, that there was nothing more to be said. Don Manuel glanced askance at his daughter, as though not entirely satisfied with her progress in the art of polite breeding; for one of the principal parts of this consisted, according to him, in a delicate appreciation of the degrees of urbanity to be shown to different persons according to their station, giving to none either more or less than was due to them under the social code; whereby everyone was kept in their place and one’s own dignity was exalted, maintaining itself in the golden mean of courtesy, which consists in not carrying one’s head too high before the rich, nor stooping too low before the poor... nor stooping too low before the poor....