It is unnecessary to say that my father appeared as much charmed with Pepita, and she as attentive and affectionate toward him, as always; though her affection seemed, perhaps, of a character more filial than he could have wished. The fact is, that my father, notwithstanding the reputation he has of being in general but little respectful or reverent toward women, treats this one woman with such respect and consideration that not even Amadis, in the most devoted period of his wooing, showed greater toward Oriana. Not a single word that might shock the ear, no indelicate or inopportune compliment, no coa.r.s.e jest, of the kind the Andalusians permit themselves so frequently to employ, does he ever indulge in. Hardly does he dare say to Pepita, "What beautiful eyes you have!" and, indeed, should he say so, he would only speak the truth, for Pepita's eyes are large, green as those of Circe, expressive, and well shaped. And what enhances their beauty is that she seems unaware of all this, for there is not to be detected in her the slightest wish to please or attract any one by the sweetness of her glances. One would say she thought eyes were only made to see with, and for no other purpose; the contrary of what I suppose to be the opinion, according to what I have heard, of the greater number of young and pretty women, who use their eyes as a weapon of offense, or as a sort of electric battery, by means of which to subdue hearts and captivate them. Not like those, indeed, are Pepita's eyes, wherein dwell a peace and a serenity as of heaven. And yet it can not be said that there is anything of coldness in their glance. Her eyes are full of charity and sweetness. They rest with tenderness on a ray of light, on a flower, on the commonest object in nature; but with greater tenderness still, with signs of a softer feeling, more human and benign, do they rest on her fellow-man, without his daring to imagine in that tranquil and serene glance, however young or handsome or conceited he may be, anything more than charity and love toward a fellow-man, or, at most, a friendly preference.

I sometimes wonder if all this can be studied, and if Pepita be, in truth, an accomplished actress; but the acting would be so perfect, and so purposeless the play, that it seems to me, after all, impossible that this should be the case. Nature herself it is, then, who serves as teacher and as type for that glance and for those eyes. First, Pepita loved her mother; then circ.u.mstances led her to love Don Gumersindo through duty, as the companion of her existence; and then, doubtless, all pa.s.sion that any earthly object could inspire was extinguished in her breast, and she loved G.o.d, and loved material objects for the love of G.o.d; and so arrived at last at a peaceful and even enviable condition of spirit, in which, if there be anything to censure, it is perhaps a certain vanity of which she is herself unconscious. It is very convenient to love in this mild fashion, without allowing ourselves to be disturbed by our feelings, to have no pa.s.sion to combat, to make of our love and affection for others an addition to, and, as it were, the complement of self-love.

I ask myself at times if, when I censure this state of mind in Pepita, it be not myself I censure. How do I know what pa.s.ses in the soul of this woman that I should censure her? Perhaps, in thinking I behold her soul, it is my own soul that I behold. I never had nor have I now any pa.s.sion to conquer. All my virtuous inclinations, all my instincts, good or bad, tend, thanks to your wise teachings, without obstacle or impediment, to the furtherance of the one purpose. In the fulfillment of this purpose, I should find not only my n.o.ble and disinterested desires, but my selfish ones also, satisfied--my love of glory, my desire for knowledge, my curiosity to see distant lands, my longing for name and fame. All these are centered in the completing of the career upon which I have entered. I fancy at times that, in this respect, I am more worthy of censure than Pepita, supposing her even to be worthy of censure at all.

For, as regards myself, I have been invested with the lesser orders; I have cast out from my soul the vanities of the world; I have received the tonsure; I have consecrated myself to the service of the altar. Yet I have a future full of ambition before me, and I dwell with pleasure on the thought that this future is within my reach. I please myself in thinking that the conditions I possess for it are real and efficacious; though I call humility to my aid, at times, to save me from an overweening self-confidence.

To what, on the other hand, does this woman aspire, and what are her hopes? I censure her for the care she takes of her hands, for regarding her beauty, perhaps, with complacency; I almost censure her for her neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with which I regard the neatness and purity of Pepita? Is this displeasure, perchance, because she is to be my step-mother? But, perhaps, she does not wish to be my step-mother! Perhaps she does not love my father! It is true, indeed, that women are incomprehensible. It may be that in her secret heart she already feels inclined to return my father's affection, and marry him, though, in accordance with the saying that "what is worth much, costs much," she chooses first to torment him with her affected coldness, to reduce him to unquestioning submission, to put his constancy to the proof, and then means to end by quietly saying Yes.

We shall see.

What there is no question about is, that our garden-party was decorously merry. We talked of flowers, of fruit, of grafts, of planting, and of innumerable other things relating to husbandry, Pepita displaying her knowledge of agriculture in rivalry with my father, with myself, and with the reverend vicar, who listens with open mouth to every word she utters, and declares that in the seventy-odd years of his life, and during his many wanderings, in the course of which he has traversed almost the whole of Andalusia, he has never known a woman more discreet or more judicious in all she thinks and says than she.

On returning home from any of these excursions, I renew my entreaties to my father to allow me to go back to you, in order that the wished-for moment may at last arrive in which I shall see myself elevated to the priesthood. But my father is so pleased to have me with him, he is so happy here in the village, taking care of his plantations, exercising the judicial and executive authority of squire, paying homage to Pepita, and consulting her in everything as his Egeria, that he always finds, and will find perhaps for months to come, some plausible pretext to keep me here. Now he has to clarify the wine of I know not how many casks; now he has to decant more wine still; now it is necessary to hoe around the vines; now to plow the olive-groves and dig around the roots of the olives; in fine, he keeps me here against my wishes--though I should not say "against my wishes," for it gives me great pleasure to be with my father, who is so good to me.

The evil is, that, with this way of life, I fear I shall grow too material. I am conscious in my devotions of a certain aridity of spirit.

My religious fervor diminishes; common life begins to penetrate, to infiltrate itself into my nature; when I pray, I suffer distractions; in my solitary meditations, when the soul should raise itself up to G.o.d, I can no longer concentrate my thought as formerly. My sensibility of heart, on the other hand, that refuses to occupy itself with any worthy object, that does not employ and consume itself on its legitimate ends, wells forth and, as it were, overflows, at times, for objects and under circ.u.mstances that have something in them of puerile, that seem to me ridiculous, of which I am ashamed. If I awaken in the silence of the night and hear by chance some love-lorn rustic singing, to the sound of his badly played guitar, a verse of a _fandango_ or a _rondena_, neither very discreet, nor very poetical, nor very delicate, I am wont to be affected as if I were listening to some celestial melody; a feeling of pity, childish and insensate, comes over me at times. The other day the children of my father's overseer stole a nest full of young sparrows, and on seeing the little birds, not yet fledged, torn thus violently from their tender mother, I felt a sudden pang of anguish, and I confess I could not restrain my tears. A few days before this, a peasant had brought in from the fields a calf that had broken its leg; he was about to carry it to the slaughter-house, and came to ask my father what part of it he wished for his table. My father answered, the head and the feet, and a few pounds of the flesh. I was touched by compa.s.sion on seeing the calf, and, but that shame prevented me, would have bought it from the man, in the hope of curing and keeping it alive. In fine, my dear uncle, nothing less than the confidence I have with you would make me recount to you these signs of an extravagant and restless emotion, so that you may judge by them how necessary it is that I should return to my former way of life, to my studies, to my lofty speculations, and be at last elevated to the priesthood, in order to provide with its fit and proper aliment the fire that consumes my soul.

_April 14th._

I continue to lead the same life as usual, and am detained here still by my father's entreaties.

The greatest pleasure I enjoy, after that of being with him, is my intercourse and conversation with the reverend vicar, with whom I am in the habit of taking long walks. It seems incredible that a man of his age--for he must be near eighty--should be so strong and active, and so good a walker. I grow tired sooner than he; and there is no rough road, no wild place, no rugged hill-top, in the neighborhood, where we have not been.

The reverend vicar is reconciling me, in a great degree, with the Spanish clergy, whom I have stigmatized, at times, in speaking with you, as but little enlightened. How much more to be admired, I often say to myself, is this man, so full of candor and benevolence, so simple and affectionate, than one who may have read many books, but in whose soul the flame of charity burns less brightly than, fed by the purest and sincerest faith, it does in his! Do not suppose from this that the understanding of the reverend vicar is a limited one; his is a spirit uncultured, indeed, but clear and sagacious. At times I fancy that the good opinion I entertain of him may be due to the attention with which he listens to me; but, if this be not the case, it seems to me that he reasons on every subject with remarkable perspicacity, and that he knows how to unite an ardent love of our holy religion with an appreciation of all the good things that modern civilization has brought us. I am charmed, above all, by the simplicity, the sobriety of sentiment, the naturalness, in short, with which the reverend vicar performs the most disagreeable works of charity. There is no misfortune he does not seek to alleviate, no suffering he does not strive to console, no error he does not endeavor to repair, no necessity which he does not hasten solicitously to relieve.

In all this, it must be confessed, he has a powerful auxiliary in Pepita, whose piety and compa.s.sionate disposition he is always extolling.

This species of homage which the vicar pays to Pepita is founded upon, and goes side by side with, the practice of a thousand good works--the giving of alms, prayer, public worship, and the care of the poor. Pepita not only gives alms for the poor, but also gives money for _novenas_, sermons, and other observances of the Church. If the altars of the parish are gay, at times, with beautiful flowers, these flowers are due to the bounty of Pepita who has sent them from her garden. If Our Lady of Sorrows, instead of her old worn cloak, wears to-day a resplendent and magnificent mantle of black velvet, embroidered with silver, Pepita it is who has paid for it.

These, and other similar acts of beneficence, the vicar is always extolling and magnifying. Thus it is, when I am not speaking of my own aims, of my vocation, of my studies, to hear about which gives the reverend vicar great delight, and keeps him hanging upon my words, when it is he who speaks and I who listen, that, after a thousand turns, he always ends by speaking of Pepita Ximenez. And of whom, indeed, should the reverend vicar speak to me? His intercourse with the doctor, with the apothecary, with the rich husbandmen of the place, hardly gives motive for three words of conversation. As the reverend vicar possesses the very rare quality, in one bred in the country, of not being fond of scandal, or of meddling in other people's affairs, he has no one to speak of but Pepita, whom he visits frequently, and with whom, as may be gathered from what he says, he is in the habit of holding the most familiar colloquies.

I know not what books Pepita Ximenez has read, nor what education she may have received; but, from what the reverend vicar says, it may be deduced that she possesses a restless soul and an inquiring spirit, to which a multiplicity of questions and problems present themselves that she longs to elucidate and resolve, bringing them for that purpose before the reverend vicar, whom she thus puts into a state of agreeable perplexity.

This man, educated in country fashion, a priest whose breviary is, as one may say, his library, possesses an understanding open to the light of truth, but is wanting in original power, and thus the problems and questions Pepita presents to him open before him new horizons and new paths, nebulous and vague indeed, and which he did not even imagine to exist, which he is not able to follow with exact.i.tude, but whose vagueness, novelty, and mystery enchant him.

The vicar is not ignorant of the danger of all this, and that he and Pepita expose themselves to fall, without knowing it, into some heresy; but he tranquillizes his conscience with the thought that, although very far from being a great theologian, he has his catechism at his fingers'

ends, he has confidence in G.o.d that he will illuminate his spirit, and he hopes not to be led into error, and takes it for granted that Pepita will follow his counsels, and never deviate from the right path.

Thus do both form to themselves a thousand poetical conceptions, full of charm, although vague, of all the mysteries of our religion and the articles of our faith. Great is the devotion they profess to the most holy Virgin, and I am astonished to see how they are able to blend the popular idea or conception of the Virgin with some of the sublimest theological thoughts.

From what the vicar relates, I can perceive that Pepita Ximenez's soul, in the midst of its apparent calmness and serenity, is transfixed by the sharp arrow of suffering; there is in it a love of purity in contradiction with her past life. Pepita loved Don Gumersindo as her companion, as her benefactor, as the man to whom she owed everything; but she is tortured, she is humiliated by the recollection that Don Gumersindo was her husband.

In her devotion to the Virgin there may be detected a feeling of painful humiliation, of suffering, of sadness, produced by the recollection of her ign.o.ble and childless marriage.

Even in her adoration of the _Infant Jesus_, in the beautiful carved image she has in her house, there is something of maternal love that lacks an object on which to expend its tenderness, of maternal love that seeks this object in a being not born of sin and impurity.

The vicar says that Pepita worships the _Infant Jesus_ as her G.o.d, but that she also loves him with the maternal tenderness she would feel for a son, if she had one, and whom she had no cause to regard with any other feeling than affection. The vicar sees that Pepita, in her prayers to the Holy Virgin, and in her care of her beautiful image of the Child Jesus, has in her thoughts the ideal Mother and the ideal Son, both alike immaculate.

I confess that I know not what to think of all these singularities. I know so little of women! What the vicar tells me of Pepita surprises me; and yet, though on the whole I believe her to be good, rather than the contrary, she inspires me at times with a certain fear on my father's account. Notwithstanding his fifty-five years, I believe that he is in love; and Pepita, although virtuous through conviction, may, without premeditating or intending it, be an instrument of the spirit of evil, may practice a species of coquetry, involuntary and instinctive, more irresistible, efficacious, and fatal, than that which proceeds from premeditation, calculation, and reasoning.

Who knows, I say to myself at times, notwithstanding her prayers, her secluded and devout life, her alms and her gifts to the churches, on all which is based the affection that the vicar entertains for her, if there be not also an earthly spell, if there be not something of diabolical magic in the arts she practices, and with which she deludes and beguiles this simple vicar, so that he thinks and speaks only of her on all occasions?

The very influence that Pepita exercises over a man so incredulous as my father, a man whose nature is so vigorous and so little sentimental, has in it, in truth, something extraordinary.

Nor do the good works of Pepita suffice to explain the respect and affection with which she inspires these country-people in general. On the rare occasions on which she leaves her house, the little children run to meet her and kiss her hand; the young girls smile, and salute her with affection; and the men take off their hats, as she pa.s.ses, and incline themselves before her with the most spontaneous reverence and the most natural good-feeling.

Pepita Ximenez, whom many of the villagers have known since she was born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her fellow-townspeople with affectionate esteem, and something like loving admiration.

I see that I am inadvertently falling into the same fault that I censure in the reverend vicar, and that I speak to you of nothing but Pepita.

But this is natural. Here no one speaks of anything else. One would suppose the whole place to be full of the spirit, of the thought, of the image, of this singular woman, in regard to whom I have not been able to determine if she be an angel or an accomplished coquette, full of _instinctive astuteness_, although the words may seem to involve a contradiction. For I am fully convicted in my own mind that this woman does not play the coquette, nor seek to gain the good-will of others, in order to gratify her vanity.

Pepita's soul is full of candor and sincerity. One has only to see her, to be convinced of this. Her dignified and graceful bearing, her slender figure, the smoothness and clearness of her forehead head, the soft and pure light of her eyes, all blend into a fitting harmony, in which there is not a single discordant note.

How deeply I regret having come to this place, and having remained here so long! I had pa.s.sed my life in your house, and in the seminary; I had seen and known no one but my companions and my teachers; I knew nothing of the world but through speculation and through theory; and suddenly I find myself thrown into the midst of this world, though it be only that of a village; and distracted from my studies, meditations, and prayers by a thousand profane objects.

_April 20th._

Your last letters, dearest uncle, have been a welcome consolation to my soul. Benevolent, as always, you admonish and enlighten me with prudent and useful reflections.

It is true, my impetuosity is worthy of reprobation. I wish to attain my aims, without making use of the means requisite to their attainment; I wish to reach the journey's end, without first treading, step by step, the rough and th.o.r.n.y path.

I complain of an aridity of spirit in prayer, of inability to fix my thoughts, of a p.r.o.neness to dissipate my tenderness on childish objects; I desire to elevate myself to and be absorbed in G.o.d, to attain at once to the contemplation of essential being, and yet I disdain mental prayer and rational and discursive meditation. How, without attaining to its purity, how, without beholding its light, can I hope to enjoy the delights of divine love?

I am by nature arrogant, and I shall therefore endeavor to humiliate myself in my own eyes, in order that G.o.d may not suffer the spirit of evil, in punishment of my pride and presumption, to cover me with humiliation.

I do not believe that it would be easy for me to fall into a lapse from virtue so shameful and unexpected as the one you fear. I do not confide in myself; I confide in the mercy of G.o.d and in his grace; and I trust they will not fail me.

Nevertheless, you are altogether right in advising me to abstain from forming ties of friendship with Pepita Ximenez; I am far enough from being bound to her by any tie.

I am not ignorant that, when those holy men and saints, who should serve us as models and examples, were bound in close intimacy and affection with women, it was in their old age, or when they were already proved and disciplined by penitence, or when there existed a noticeable disproportion in years between them and the pious women they elected to be their friends; as is related of St. Jerome and St. Paulina, and of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. And even thus, even with a purely spiritual affection, I know it is possible to sin through excess. For G.o.d only should occupy the soul as Lord and Spouse, and any other being who dwells in it should do so but as the friend, the servant, the creation of the Spouse, and as one in whom the Spouse delights.

Do not think, however, that I vaunt myself on being invincible, that I despise danger, and defy and seek it. He who loves danger shall perish therein. And if the prophet-king, though so agreeable in the sight of G.o.d and so favored of him, and Solomon, notwithstanding his supernatural and G.o.d-given wisdom, were troubled and fell into sin because G.o.d turned his face away from them, what have not I to fear, miserable sinner that I am, so young, so inexperienced in the wiles of the devil, and so wavering and unpracticed in the combats of virtue!

Filled with a salutary fear of G.o.d, and imbued with a fitting distrust of my own weakness, I shall not be forgetful of your counsels and your prudent admonitions; and I shall pray, meantime, with fervor, and meditate on holy things, in order to abhor the things of the world, in so far as they deserve abhorrence; but of this I may a.s.sure you: that, however deeply I penetrate into the depths of my conscience, however carefully I search its inmost recesses, I have thus far discovered nothing to make me share your fears.

If my former letters are full of encomiums on the virtue of Pepita, it is the fault of my father and of the reverend vicar, and not mine; for, at first, far from being friendly to this woman, I was unjustly prejudiced against her.

As for the beauty and physical grace of Pepita, be a.s.sured that I have contemplated them with entire purity of thought, and, though it cost me something to say it, and may cost you a little to hear it, I confess that, if any cloud has arisen to dim the clear and serene image of Pepita in the mirror of my soul, it has been owing to your harsh suspicions, which, for an instant, have almost made me suspect myself.

But no; what thought have I ever entertained with regard to Pepita, what have I seen or praised in her that should lead any one to suppose me to have any other feeling for her than friendship, and the admiration, pure and innocent, that a work of art may inspire, the more especially if it be the work of the Supreme Artist, and nothing less than the temple wherein he dwells?

Besides, dear uncle, I shall have to live in the world, to hold intercourse with my fellow-beings, to see them, and I can not, for that reason, pluck out my eyes. You have told me many times that you wish me to devote myself to a life of action, preaching the divine law, and making it known in the world, rather than to a contemplative life in the midst of solitude and isolation. Well, then, this being so, how would you have me act, in order to avoid seeing Pepita Ximenez? Unless I made myself ridiculous by closing my own eyes in her presence, how could I fail to notice the beauty of hers; the clearness, the roseate hue, and the purity of her complexion, the evenness and pearly whiteness of her teeth, which she discloses with frequency when she smiles, the fresh carmin of her lips, the serenity and smoothness of her forehead, and a thousand other attractions with which Heaven has endowed her? It is true that for one who bears within his soul the germ of evil thoughts, the leaven of vice, any one of the impressions that Pepita produces might be the shock of the steel against the flint, kindling the spark that would set fire to and consume all around it; but, prepared for this danger, watching against it, and guarded with the shield of Christian prudence, I do not think I have anything to fear. Besides, if it be rash to seek danger, it is cowardly not to be able to face it, or to shun it when it presents itself.

Have no fear; I see in Pepita only a beautiful creation of G.o.d; and in G.o.d I love her as a sister. If I feel any predilection for her, it is because of the praises I hear spoken of her by my father, by the reverend vicar, and by almost every one here.

For my father's sake it would please me were Pepita to relinquish her inclination for a life of seclusion, and her purpose to lead it, and to marry him. But were it not for this--were I to see that my father had only a caprice and not a genuine pa.s.sion for her--then I should be glad that Pepita would remain resolute in her chaste widowhood; and when I should be far away from here, in India or j.a.pan or some other yet more dangerous mission, I might find a consolation in writing to her of my wanderings and labors; and, when I returned here in my old age, it would be a great pleasure for me to be on friendly terms with her, who would also then be aged, and to hold spiritual colloquies with her, and chats of the same sort as those the father vicar now holds with her. At present, however, as I am but a young man, I see but little of Pepita; I hardly speak to her. I prefer to be thought bashful, shy, ill-bred, and rude, rather than give the least occasion--not that I should be thought to feel for her in reality what I ought not to feel--but even for suspicion or for scandal.

As for Pepita herself, not even in the most remote degree do I share the apprehension that, as a vague suspicion, you allow me to perceive. What projects could she form with respect to a man who, in two or three months more, is to be a priest! She--who has treated so many others with disdain--why should she be attracted by me? I know myself well, and I know that, fortunately, I am not capable of inspiring a pa.s.sion. They say I am not ill-looking; but I am awkward, dull, shy, wanting in amiability; I bear the stamp of what I am, a humble student. What am I, compared with the gallant if somewhat rustic youths who have paid court to Pepita--agile hors.e.m.e.n, discreet and agreeable in conversation, Nimrods in the chase, skilled in all bodily exercises, singers of renown in all the fairs of Andalusia, and graceful and accomplished in the dance? If Pepita has scorned all these, how should she now think of me, and conceive the diabolical desire, and the more than diabolical project, of troubling the peace of my soul, of making me abandon my vocation, perhaps of plunging me into perdition? No, it is not possible.

Pepita I believe to be good, and myself--and I say it in all sincerity--insignificant; insignificant, be it understood, so far as inspiring her with love is concerned, but not too insignificant to be her friend, to merit her esteem, to be the object, one day, in a certain sense, of her preference, when I shall have succeeded in making myself worthy of this preference by a holy and laborious life.