Maria (GB English)

The sun had gone down as I read the last pages of the poem in an altered voice. Emma's pale head rested on my shoulder. Maria hid her face with both hands. After I had read that heart-rending farewell of Chactas over the grave of his beloved, a farewell which has so often wrung a sob from my breast: "Sleep in peace in a foreign land, young wretch! In reward for thy love, thy banishment and thy death, thou art forsaken even of Chactas himself," Mary, ceasing to hear my voice, uncovered her face, and thick tears rolled down her face. She was as beautiful as the poet's creation, and I loved her with the love he imagined. We walked slowly and silently to the house, and my soul and Maria's were not only moved by the reading, they were overwhelmed with foreboding.

Chapter XIV

After three days, on coming down from the mountain one evening, I seemed to notice a start in the countenances of the servants whom I met in the i

Forgetting all precaution, I entered the bedchamber where Maria was, and mastering the frenzy that would have made me clasp her to my heart to bring her back to life, I approached her bed in bewilderment. At the foot of it sat my father: he fixed on me one of his intense glances, and then turning it on Mary, seemed to want to remonstrate with me by showing her to me. My mother was there; but she did not raise her eyes to look for me, for, knowing my love, she pitied me as a good mother pities her child, as a good mother pities her own child in a woman loved by her child.

I stood motionless gazing at her, not daring to find out what was wrong with her. She was as if asleep: her face, covered with a deadly pallor, was half hidden by her dishevelled hair, in which the flowers I had given her in the morning had been crumpled; her contracted forehead revealed an unbearable suffering, and a light perspiration moistened her temples; tears had tried to flow from her closed eyes, which glistened on the lashes of her eyelashes.

My father, understanding all my suffering, rose to his feet to retire; but before leaving, he approached the bed, and taking Mary's pulse, said:

–It's all over. Poor child! It is exactly the same evil that her mother suffered from.

Mary's bosom rose slowly as if to form a sob, and returning to its natural state, she exhaled only a sigh. My father being gone, I placed myself at the head of the bed, and forgetting my mother and Emma, who remained silent, I took one of Maria's hands from the cushion, and bathed it in the torrent of my tears hitherto restrained. It measured all my misfortune: it was the same malady as her mother's, who had died very young, attacked by an incurable epilepsy. This idea took possession of my whole being to break it.

I felt some movement in that inert hand, to which my breath could not return the warmth. Mary was already begi

She was, after the access, in pain and deeply saddened. I returned in the evening to see her, when the etiquette established in such cases by my father permitted it. As I bade her farewell, holding my hand for a moment, she said, "See you to-morrow," and emphasised this last word as she used to do whenever our conversation was interrupted in some evening, looking forward to the next day for us to conclude it.

Chapter XV

As I went out into the corridor that led to my room, an impetuous breeze was swaying the willows in the courtyard; and as I approached the orchard, I heard it tearing through the orange groves, from which the frightened birds were darting. Faint flashes of lightning, like the instantaneous reflection of a buckler wounded by the glow of a fire, seemed to want to illuminate the gloomy bottom of the valley.

Leaning against one of the columns in the corridor, without feeling the rain lashing at my temples, I thought of Mary's illness, about which my father had spoken such terrible words; my eyes wanted to see her again, as in the silent and serene nights that might never come again!

I don't know how much time had passed, when something like the vibrating wing of a bird came to brush against my forehead. I looked towards the immediate woods to follow it: it was a black bird.

My room was cold; the roses at the window trembled as if they feared to be abandoned to the rigours of the tempestuous wind; the vase contained already withered and fainting the lilies that Mary had placed in it in the morning. At this a gust of wind suddenly blew out the lamp; and a clap of thunder let its rising rumble be heard for a long time, as if it were that of a gigantic chariot plunging from the rocky peaks of the mountain.

In the midst of that sobbing nature, my soul had a sad serenity.

The clock in the living room had just struck twelve. I heard footsteps near my door, and then my father's voice calling me. "Get up," he said as soon as I answered; "Maria is still unwell.

The access had been repeated. After a quarter of an hour I was ready to leave. My father was giving me the last indications about the symptoms of the illness, while the little black Juan Angel was quieting my impatient and frightened horse. I mounted; his shod hooves crunched on the cobbles, and a moment later I was riding down towards the plains of the valley, looking for the path in the light of some livid flashes of lightning. I was going in search of Dr. Mayn, who was then spending a season in the country three leagues from our farm.

The image of Mary as I had seen her in bed that afternoon, as she said to me, "See you tomorrow," that perhaps she would not come, was with me, and, quickening my impatience, made me measure incessantly the distance that separated me from the end of the journey; an impatience which the speed of the horse was not enough to moderate,

The plains began to disappear, fleeing in the opposite direction to my run, like immense blankets swept away by the hurricane. The forests that I thought were closest to me seemed to recede as I advanced towards them. Only the moaning of the wind among the shady fig-trees and chiminangos, only the weary wheezing of the horse and the clash of its hoofs on the sparking flints, interrupted the silence of the night.

Some huts of Santa Elena were on my right, and soon after I stopped hearing the barking of their dogs. Sleeping cows on the road began to make me slow down.

The beautiful house of the lords of M***, with its white chapel and its ceiba groves, could be seen in the distance in the first rays of the rising moon, like a castle whose towers and roofs had crumbled with the passing of time.

The Amaime was rising with the rains of the night, and its roar a