-Xix- · II

Afterwards...” murmured Golfín, pierced with compassion. “I see that I am to blame for everything.”

“Not to blame... for you have done a good deed. You are very good.... It is a blessing that his eyes have been cured.... I tell myself that it is a blessing... but after this, I ought to get out of the way... for he will see Señorita Florentina and compare her with me... and Señorita Florentina is like the angels, and I... to compare myself with her is as if a piece of broken glass were to compare itself with the sun.... What am I good for? I dreamed that I ought never to have been born. Why was I born?... God made a mistake! He gave me an ugly face, a stunted little body, and a very great heart. What good is this very great heart to me? Only for torment! Ah, if I did not hold it back, it would insist on hating bitterly; but I have no taste for hatred, I know not how to hate, and sooner than come to know what that is, I want to bury my heart so that it may torment me no more.”

“It torments you with jealousy, with the pain of seeing yourself humbled. Ah, Nela, your loneliness is great! Neither the knowledge you do not possess, nor the family you lack, nor the labor you know nothing of can save you. Tell me, what feelings has the protection of Señorita Florentina awakened in you?...”

“Fear!... Shame!” exclaimed Nela with dread, opening her little eyes wide. “To live with them, seeing them at all hours... for they will marry, my heart has told me they will marry; I have dreamed that they will marry!...”

“Yet Florentina is very good; she would love you dearly....”

“I love her too; but not at Aldeacorba,” said she of the Canela wildly and with excitement. “She has come to take from me what is mine... for it was mine, yes, sir.... Florentina is like the Virgin Mary... I would pray to her, yes, sir, I would pray to her; but I will not have her take from me what is mine... and she will take it from me, she has already taken it from me.... Where am I to go now? What am I, what am I worth? I have lost everything, everything, and I want to go to my mother.”

Nela took a few steps forward; but Golfín, like a wild beast unsheathing its claws, seized her firmly by the wrist. As he did so, he noted the wanderer’s racing pulse.

“Come here,” he said to her. “From this moment, whether you will or no, I make you my captive. You are mine, and you shall do only what I bid you. Poor creature, formed of ardent sensibility, vivid imagination, candor, and superstition, you are an admirable being born for all that is good; but spoiled by the savage state in which you have lived, by neglect and lack of instruction, for you lack even the most rudimentary! In what a precious society do we live, that forgets its duties to such a degree and allows a priceless soul to be lost in this manner!... Come here, you shall not leave my side; I take you, I catch you—that is the word—I catch you in a snare in the midst of the woods, little wild creature, and I am going to try a system of education upon you.... We shall see if I know how to cut this rough diamond.... Ah, how many things you are ignorant of! I will discover a new world in your soul; I will make you behold a thousand wondrous marvels you have never yet known, though of all of them you must have some confused idea, some vague notion. Do you not feel in your poor soul... how shall I put it to you?... the little shoot, the bud of a virtue that is the most precious and the mother of all: humility—a virtue by which we find extraordinary joy—look what a strange thing!—in seeing ourselves inferior to others? We rejoice, yes, in seeing that others are above us. Do you not feel self-denial too, by which we take pleasure in sacrificing ourselves for others and making ourselves small so that others may be great? You shall learn this; you shall learn to lay your ugliness at the feet of beauty, to contemplate with serenity and gladness the triumphs of others, to load that great heart of yours with chains, subduing it utterly, so that it may never again feel envy or resentment, so that it may love all alike, setting above all others those who have done you harm.”

“Then you will be what you ought to be by your natural condition and by the qualities you have possessed from birth. Wretched girl! You were born in the midst of a Christian society, and you are not even a Christian; your soul lives in that state of poetic naturalism—yes, that is the word, and I say it to you though you understand it not—in that state in which lived nations of whom scarcely a memory remains. Senses and passions govern you, and form is one of your dearest gods. For you eighteen centuries devoted to the uplifting of the spirit have passed in vain. And this selfish society that has permitted such neglect, what name does it deserve? It has allowed you to grow up in the solitude of a mining camp, without teaching you a letter, without letting you know the most precious conquests of the intellect, the most elementary truths that today govern the world; it has not even taken you to one of those primary schools where scarcely anything is learned; it has not even given you that most imperfect religious instruction of which it boasts. You have scarcely seen a church except to witness ceremonies that have not been explained to you; you scarcely know how to recite a prayer you do not understand; you know nothing of the world, nor of God, nor of the soul.... But you shall know all; you shall be another being; you shall cease to be Nela, I promise you, to become a young woman of worth, an upright woman.”

It cannot be affirmed that Nela understood the foregoing discourse, delivered by Golfín with such vehemence and fire that he forgot for a moment the person to whom he was speaking. But the wanderer felt a strange fascination, and that man’s ideas penetrated softly into her soul, finding an easy lodgment there. The powerful and fatal dominion that the superior intellect exercises over the inferior seemed to be working upon the untutored girl. Sad and silent, she rested her head upon Teodoro’s shoulder.

“Let us go up yonder,” he said suddenly.

Nela trembled all over. Golfín noticed the perspiration on her forehead, the icy coldness of her hands, the rapid beating of her pulse; but far from yielding in his purpose on account of this physical ailment, he confirmed himself in it all the more, repeating:

“Come, come; it is cold here.”

He took Nela by the hand. The influence he exercised over her was by this time so great that the girl rose after him and they took a few steps together. Then Nela stopped and fell upon her knees.

“Oh, sir,” she cried in terror, “do not take me there!”

She was pale and distracted, showing signs of dreadful physical and moral agitation. Golfín pulled her by the arm. The fainting body of the wanderer did not rise from the ground by its own strength. It was necessary to lift her like a dead body.

“A few days ago,” said Golfín, “on this very spot I carried you on my shoulders because you could not walk. Tonight it shall be the same.”

And he lifted her in his arms. The burning breath of the child-woman scorched his face. She hung limp, flushed and withered, like a plant just torn from the soil, leaving its roots behind. On reaching the house of Aldeacorba, Golfín felt his burden grow less heavy. Nela raised her head and lifted her hands in a gesture of despair; but she was silent.

He went in. Everything was quiet. A maid came forward to meet him, and at Teodoro’s request led him noiselessly to Señorita Florentina’s room.

She was alone, lighted by a dying lamp, kneeling upon the floor with her arms resting on the seat of a chair, in an attitude of devout and collected prayer. She was startled on seeing a man enter her room at so late an hour; and to her fleeting alarm succeeded wonder on observing the burden Golfín bore upon his sturdy shoulders.

Surprise did not permit the young lady of Penáguilas to speak when Teodoro, depositing his burden carefully upon a sofa, said to her:

“Here I bring her to you... what do you think? Am I a good butterfly hunter?”

-XX-

The New World

Let us turn back a few days.

When Teodoro Golfín for the first time lifted the bandage from Pablo Penáguilas’s eyes, the youth uttered a cry of terror. All his movements were those of recoil. He held out his hands as if to find a support and draw back the better. The illuminated space was to him like an immense abyss into which he fancied he was about to fall. The instinct of self-preservation compelled him to close his eyes. Encouraged by Teodoro, by his father, and the others of the household, who felt the deepest anxiety, he looked again; but his fear did not diminish. Images entered his brain, so to speak, violently and tumultuously, with a sort of abrupt charge, in such a way that he fancied he was dashing against objects. The distant mountains seemed to him to be within reach of his hand, and the objects and persons surrounding him he saw as though they were falling rapidly upon his eyes.

Teodoro Golfín observed these phenomena with the liveliest curiosity, for this was the second case of cure of congenital blindness he had ever witnessed. The others dared not display joy, so completely did the troubled inauguration of optical functions in the fortunate patient bewilder and astound them. Pablo experienced a delirious joy. His nerves and imagination were terribly excited, wherefore Teodoro judged it prudent to compel him to rest. With a smile he said to him:

“For the present you have seen enough. One does not pass from blindness to light, one does not enter the sovereign domain of the sun, as one enters a theatre. This is a birth in which there is also much pain.”

Later the youth showed so vehement a desire to exercise his precious new faculty once more that Teodoro consented to open to him a chink of the visible world.

“My soul,” said Pablo, explaining his first impression, “is flooded with beauty, with a beauty I knew not before. What were those things that entered into me, filling me with terror? The idea of size, which I conceived only in an imperfect manner, presented itself to me clearly and terribly, as though I were being hurled from the highest peaks into the deepest chasms. All this is beautiful and grand, though it makes me shudder. I want to have those sublime sensations repeated. That expanse of beauty I contemplated has left me overwhelmed: it was a thing serene and majestically inclined toward me, as if to receive me. I saw the whole universe rushing toward me, and I was seized with fear.... The sky was a great watchful void—I express it poorly—it was the aspect of something extraordinarily endowed with expression. All that combination of sky and mountains observed me and rushed toward me... but all was cold and stern in its great majesty. Show me something gentle and loving... Nela, where is Nela?”

As he said this, Golfín, exposing his eyes once more to the light and aiding them with skillfully adjusted glasses, placed him in communication with visible beauty.

“O my God!... Is this that I see Nela?” exclaimed Pablo with enthusiastic admiration.

“It is your cousin Florentina.”

“Ah!” said the youth, full of confusion. “It is my cousin.... I had no conception of such beauty.... Blessed be the sense that permits one to enjoy this divine light! Cousin, you are like delicious music; what I see seems to me the clearest expression of harmony.... And where is Nela?”

“You will have time enough to see her,” said Don Francisco, full of joy. “Be quiet now.”

“Florentina, Florentina!” repeated the youth wildly. “What is there in that face of yours that seems the very idea of God made flesh? You are in the midst of something that must be the sun. From your face shoot forth rays, as it were... at last I can have an idea of what the angels are like... and your body, your hands, your hair vibrate, displaying to me the loveliest ideas... what is this?”

“He is beginning to perceive colors,” murmured Golfín. “Perhaps he sees objects surrounded by the colors of the rainbow. He does not yet possess the power of adapting himself to distances.”

“I see you within my own eyes,” added Pablo. “You blend with all that I think, and your visible presence is to me like a memory. A memory of what? I have seen nothing until now.... Can I have lived before this life? I know not; but I had tidings of those eyes of yours. And you, father, where are you? Ah, now I see you! It is you... my love for you is represented to me with your form.... And my uncle?... You two are very much alike.... Where is the blessed Golfín?”

“Here... in the presence of his patient,” said Teodoro, coming forward. “Here I am, uglier than sin.... As you have not yet seen lions or Newfoundland dogs, you can have no idea of my beauty.... They say I resemble those noble animals.”

“All are worthy people,” said Pablo with great simplicity; “but my cousin has an immense advantage over all of them.... And Nela? For heaven’s sake, do they not bring Nela?”

They told him that his guide had not appeared at the house, and that they could not busy themselves looking for her, which caused him great distress. They endeavored to calm him; and as an attack of fever was to be feared, put him to bed, urging him to sleep. On the following day his prostration was great, but his energetic constitution triumphed over everything. He asked to be shown a glass of water, and on seeing it said:

“It seems as if I were drinking the water merely by looking at it.”

In the same manner he expressed himself regarding other objects, which produced a vivid impression upon his fancy. Golfín, after endeavoring to remedy spherical aberration by means of lenses, which he tried one after another, began to practice him in distinguishing and combining colors; but the youth’s vigorous intellect always tended to distinguish ugliness from beauty. He distinguished these two ideas absolutely, without being influenced either by utility or even by goodness. A butterfly that flew into his room by mistake seemed to him charming. An inkstand seemed horrible to him, although his uncle demonstrated to him with ingenious arguments that it served to hold ink for writing... ink for writing. Between a print of the Crucifixion and one of Galatea sailing upon a shell with an escort of tritons and nymphs, he preferred the latter, which produced an unpleasant effect upon Florentina, who promised to teach him to set sacred things a hundred cubits above profane ones. He observed faces with the keenest attention, and the marvelous correspondence of facial expression with speech astonished him exceedingly. On seeing the maids and other women of Aldeacorba, he displayed the liveliest disgust, because they were either ugly or insignificant; the truth being that his cousin’s beauty turned all other women into frights. Notwithstanding this, he wished to see them all. His curiosity was an intense fever that could by no means be stilled. His grief at not seeing Nela grew constantly greater; but meanwhile he begged Florentina not to leave him for a moment.