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–And are you leaving first? -asked Bruno.
–No," I replied, "we are invited.
In the early hours of the next Saturday morning Bruno and Remigia were married. That night at seven o'clock my father and I mounted up to go to the dance, the music of which we were just begi
After that hand, which is what the peasants call every piece of dancing, the musicians played their most beautiful bambuco, for Julian a
My father was satisfied with my attention during the visit we made to the estates; but when I told him that I wished henceforth to share his fatigues by remaining at his side, he told me, almost with regret, that he was obliged to sacrifice his own welfare to me, by fulfilling the promise he had made me some time before, to send me to Europe to finish my medical studies, and that I should set out on my journey in four months' time at the latest. As he spoke to me thus, his countenance took on a solemn seriousness without affectation, which was noticeable in him when he took irrevocable resolutions. This happened on the evening when we were returning to the sierra. It was begi
Chapter VI
What had happened in those four days in Mary's soul?
She was about to place a lamp on one of the tables in the drawing-room, when I approached to greet her; and I had already been surprised not to see her in the midst of the family group on the steps where we had just dismounted. The trembling of her hand exposed the lamp; and I lent her assistance, less calm than I thought I was. She looked slightly pale to me, and around her eyes was a slight shadow, imperceptible to one who had seen her without looking. She turned her face towards my mother, who was speaking at the moment, thus preventing me from examining it in the light that was near us; and I noticed then that at the head of one of her plaits was a wilted carnation; and it was doubtless the one I had given her the day before I left for the Valley. The little cross of enamelled coral that I had brought for her, like those of my sisters, she wore round her neck on a cord of black hair. She was silent, sitting in the middle of the seats my mother and I occupied. As my father's resolution about my journey did not depart from my memory, I must have seemed sad to her, for she said to me in an almost low voice:
–Did the trip hurt you?
–No, Maria," I replied, "but we have been sunbathing and walking so much....
I was going to say something more to her, but the confidential accent in her voice, the new light in her eyes which I surprised me with, prevented me from doing more than look at her, till, noticing that she was embarrassed by the involuntary fixedness of my glances, and finding myself examined by one of my father's (more fearful when a certain passing smile wandered on his lips), I left the room for my room.
I closed the doors. There were the flowers she had gathered for me: I kissed them; I wanted to inhale all their scents at once, seeking in them those of Mary's dresses; I bathed them with my tears.... Ah, you who have not wept for happiness like this, weep for despair, if your adolescence has passed, because you will never love again!
First love!… noble pride in feeling loved: sweet sacrifice of all that was dear to us before in favour of the beloved woman: happiness that, bought for one day with the tears of a whole existence, we would receive as a gift from God: perfume for all the hours of the future: inextinguishable light of the past: flower kept in the soul and which it is not given to disappointments to wither: only treasure that the envy of men ca
Chapter VII
When my father made his last voyage to the West Indies, Solomon, a cousin of his whom he had loved from childhood, had just lost his wife. Very young they had come together to South America; and on one of their voyages my father fell in love with the daughter of a Spaniard, an intrepid naval captain, who, after having left the service for some years, was forced in 1819 to take up arms again in defence of the kings of Spain, and who was shot dead at Majagual on the twentieth of May, 1820.
The mother of the young woman my father loved demanded that he renounce the Jewish religion in order to give her to her as his wife. My father became a Christian at the age of twenty. His cousin became fond of the Catholic religion in those days, without, however, yielding to the urging that he should also be baptised, for he knew that what he had done for my father, giving him the wife he desired, would prevent him from being accepted by the woman he loved in Jamaica.
After some years of separation, the two friends met again. Solomon was already a widower. Sarah, his wife, had left him a child who was then three years old. My father found him morally and physically disfigured by grief, and then his new religion gave him comforts for his cousin, comforts which relatives had sought in vain to save him. He urged Solomon to give him his daughter to bring her up by our side; and he dared to propose that he would make her a Christian. Solomon agreed, saying, "It is true that my daughter alone has prevented me from undertaking a journey to India, which would improve my spirit and remedy my poverty: she also has been my only comfort after Sarah's death; but you will it, let her be your daughter. Christian women are sweet and good, and your wife must be a saintly mother. If Christianity gives in supreme misfortunes the relief you have given me, perhaps I would make my daughter unhappy by leaving her a Jewess. Do not tell our relatives, but when you reach the first coast where there is a Catholic priest, have her baptised and have the name Esther changed to Mary. This the unhappy man said, shedding many tears.