Read Ebook: Leon Roch: A Romance vol. 1 (of 2) by P Rez Gald S Benito Bell Clara Translator

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Ebook has 1314 lines and 86356 words, and 27 pages

"I began to laugh: A Spanish title! Is that all you ask?--My dear Se?or Don Jos?, if you told me you longed to be handsome or to be young again--but to be a marquis! Coronets are given away now as freely as orders, and before long it will be a matter of pride not to have one. We are fast coming to a time when if a diploma of rank is sent to us we shall be ashamed to give a dollar to the porter who brings the document. Well, you shall be a marquis...."

At these words F?car went into one of his fits of laughing; it began with a shrill chuckle, and ended with a general contortion of his features and a sort of convulsive explosion, while he turned very red in the face. Even when this violent hilarity was over it was some time before he recovered his natural colour and his normal aspect of dignified gravity.

"Gentlemen," said the official, hitherto silent, but not a little annoyed, perhaps, by a consciousness of his own craving for the marquisate, "however lavishly titles may have been distributed, I am not aware that any have been bestowed on chocolate makers. We are a long way...."

"Friend On?simo," said the marquis with cool irony, "they are bestowed on all who like to take them. And if Don Pepe never took the title of Marquis de Casa-Roch it was only because his son positively refused to be as ridiculous as the rest of the world. He is a man of principle."

"Oh, certainly!" exclaimed On?simo, who was always ready to support a time-honoured institution. "But in general, these learned men who are constantly manipulating principles in scientific matters lack them utterly in social questions. There are plenty of instances here; and I believe it is the same everywhere. We have seen how they govern when the country is so unfortunate as to fall into their hands, and they govern their own homes in the same way. Learned men, take my word for it, are as great a calamity in private as in public life. I do not know one who is not a fool--a perfect and utter fool."

"You speak figuratively."

"It is the simple truth."

"No exaggeration, no exaggeration pray," said the marquis, in the tone of voice he always adopted for his favourite protest. "We make a sad misuse of words nowadays and apply them too recklessly. Envy on one hand, Ignorance on the other--What is the matter?"

The question was addressed with an expression of alarm to a servant who was hurrying towards them.

"The Se?orita has sent for you, Excellency. She is very unwell again."

"I must go, my daughter is in a terrible state to-day!" said the marquis rising. "You will ask me what is the matter with her and I can only say I do not know; I have not the remotest idea. I will go and see her."

The two friends watched him depart in silence. The marquis walked slowly, on account of his obesity, and his gait reminded one of the stately motion of some ancient ship or galleon freighted with the rich spoils of the Indies. He seemed to be carrying on board, as it were, all the weight of his immense fortune, collected during twenty years of such unfailing prosperity that the outer world could only look on and tremble and wonder.

MORE CONVERSATION, GIVING US SOME IDEA OF THE SPANISH CHARACTER.

"Do you know Leon what ails F?car's daughter?"

"She left the drawing-room early last evening; she must be ill." And having thus spoken Leon sat looking at the ground.

"But her complaint is a very strange one, as the marquis says," added On?simo. "Consider the symptoms. As you know, she collects china; last month, on her way back from Paris, she spent two days at Arcachon, and the Count de la Reole's daughters gave her three pieces of Palissy-ware. They are considered handsome; to me they are no better than common crockery. Besides these she brought from Paris eight specimens of Dresden so fine and delicate you can hardly feel their weight. Well, Pepa's whole mind seemed set on these precious works of art; she talked of nothing but her china. She took them out to look at, fifty times a day. And then--this morning she collected all this rubbish, went up to the topmost room in the hotel, opened the window and flung them into the court-yard, where they broke in a thousand pieces."

Federico looked at Leon who merely said: "Yes, so I heard."

"Yesterday evening," On?simo went on, "when we were returning from the Grotto--where, by the way, there is no more to be seen than in my bed-room--one of the large pearls dropped out of her earring. We hunted for it, and at last I found it close to a stone. I stooped to pick it up, as was natural, but she was quicker than I was; she set her foot on it and crushed it, saying: 'Of what use is it?'--Then, they say, she tore up some costly laces. But did not you see her last night in the drawing-room? I could swear she is out of her mind." Neither Leon nor Cimarra made any reply.

"I can tell you one thing," continued the intelligent official, "the man who marries the damsel will have hard work with her. What bringing up! my dear fellow what training! Her father, who knows the value of money uncommonly well himself, has never taught her the difference between a bank-note and a copper piece. She is a real treasure is the Se?orita de F?car! I had heard that she was capricious, extravagant and had the most preposterous and outrageous fancies you can imagine. Poor husband--and poor father! If she were only pretty; but she is not even that.--She will vex Don Pedro at last.--And no one listens when I thunder and declaim against these modern and foreign fashions which have spoiled all the modesty of our Spanish women--all their christian humility; their delightful ignorance, their love for a retired and domestic life, their indifference to luxury, their sobriety in dress, their neatness and economy. Only look at the hussies that are the result of modern civilisation. I quite understand the dread of matrimony which is spreading among us and which, if it is not checked, will compel the government to pass a law for betrothals and a law for marriages and create a president over bachelors."

"But, bless me!" cried Cimarra, slapping Leon on the shoulder. "Here is the man who can tell us all about Pepa's eccentricities, for he has known her ever since they were both children."

Leon answered coldly:

"Whether Pepa's attacks or eccentricities consist in breaking china or destroying her ornaments, it matters little after all. Her father is rich enough--enormously rich and richer every day."

"On the subject," said the phoenix of the bureaux, "of the immense wealth of F?car, the most characteristic thing ever said, was spoken by our friend here, who is a man of epigrams."

"I? I never said anything, not a word about Don Pedro," declared Federico with becoming modesty.

"But that might be said of so many men," remarked Leon.

"Of so very many," Cimarra hastened to add. "If F?car has amassed a fortune at the expense of the public treasury--as they say he has?--then I say: so far as the augmentation of his fortune in dealing with public moneys is concerned, he is by no means the only man to whom the remark as to National bankruptcy applies."

On?simo winced; but recovering himself at once he added:

"That is talking for talking's sake," replied Cimarra. "In spite of all this I appreciate and esteem the marquis highly; he is a most worthy man. And which of us has not, at some time or other, trodden on a neighbour's corns?"

"I know quite well that this is all merely in joke. In this country everything must be sacrificed to a witticism. It is the way with us Spaniards. We flay a man alive, and then give him our hand. I am criticising no one in saying so--we are all alike."

At this moment the marquis himself entered the summer-house.

"And Pepa?" asked Leon.

"She is very happy now. She passes from sadness to merriment with a rapidity that amazes me. She was crying all the morning; she says she is thinking of her mother, that she cannot get her mother out of her mind--I do not understand her. Now she wants to leave this place, at once, without waiting for me to take the baths. I did not want to come--I detest the horrible, inconvenient hotels in this country. As for my daughter's freaks and follies! No sooner were we in France than she took it into her head to come to Iturburua. I could not help myself--Iturburua, to Iturburua Papa--What could I do? I am getting accustomed to this vagabond life, but to tell the truth it vexes me now just as much to go away as it did to come--to go without having taken six baths even. For I do not believe there are any waters to compare with these in the world.--And then where are we to go? I have not the remotest idea, for my daughter's vagaries make all reasonable plans impossible. I am hardly allowed time enough to secure a saloon carriage; Pepa is in as great a hurry to be off as she was to come. I am to be ready at once, to-day, early to-morrow at the latest--the mountains oppress her, the hotel is crushing her, the very sky seems falling on her, and she hates all the visitors, and it is killing her--suffocating her...."

While Don Pedro was thus pouring out his paternal troubles, his three friends sat silent; only On?simo now and again murmured a few commonplaces about nervous irritation, the result, as he stated, of some strange influences to which the fairer half of humanity are exposed. The marquis took Cimarra's arm saying:

"Come, my dear fellow, do me the favour of amusing Pepa for a short time. At present she is very well content, but she will be bored to the last degree in a short time. You know she always laughs at your amusing notions; she said to me just now: 'If only Cimarra would come and whisper a few spiteful things about the neighbours....' For we all know you have a special gift that way. Come my dear fellow; she is alone.--Good-bye gentlemen; I am carrying off this rascal, for he is more wanted elsewhere than here."

Don Joaqu?n and Leon Roch were left together.

"What do you think of Pepa?" asked On?simo.

"That she has been very badly brought up."

"Just so--very badly brought up.--And now I think of it, tell me: Is it true that you are going to be married?"

"Yes--my hour is come," said Leon with a smile.

"To Mar?a Sudre?"

"To Mar?a Sudre."

"A very sweet girl--and what a Christian education! Honestly my good fellow, it is more than a heretic like you deserves." He tapped Leon kindly on the shoulder and the men parted.

ILLUSTRATING ANOTHER TRAIT OF SPANISH CHARACTER.

In the next room the clink of the counters as they changed hands at the card-tables made a noise like that of false teeth gnashing and chattering. The coughing and throat clearing increased as the older people followed the young ones out of the dancing room, and the little tumult of youthful chatter mingled with the sad sighing undertone of premature decrepitude which seems to afflict the flower of the younger generation spread along the wide corridor, mounted the stairs, and died away by degrees in the different rooms of the many-celled phalanstery. An ingenious fancy might have likened it to a vast organ in which, after every sound had been roused to symphony, each note, deep or shrill, sank back into its own pipe again.

"What a country this is!" exclaimed the great merchant, his face still beaming with a smile at the last epigram he had read. "Do you know, Cimarra, what strikes me? Every one here speaks ill of political men, of the ministers, of the employ?s, of Madrid--but I begin to think that Madrid and the ministers and all the ruck of politicians--as they call them, are the pick of the nation. The representatives are bad enough, but the electors are worse."

"Then everything is bad together," said Federico, with the cold philosophy which is the sarcasm of a worn-out heart and an atrophied intellect, united to dwell in a sickly frame. "Equally bad--and nothing to choose from."

"And at the bottom of all the mischief is laziness."

"Laziness! That is as much as to say the national idiosyncracy--the very Spirit of Spain. Yes I say: Laziness, thy name is Spain. We have a great deal of smartness--so I hear; I do not perceive it anywhere. We are all alike; we hide I believe...."

"Oh! if only we had a government that would give a spur to industry and labour...."

Cimarra put on a very grave face; it was his way of making fun of his neighbours.

"Labour!--Why we scarcely know how to weave homespun cloth; hemp-shoes are fast disappearing; our home-made water-jars are growing quite scarce and even our brooms are brought from England.--Still, we can fall back upon Agriculture; that is the favourite theory with all these fools. There is not an idiot in the country who will not talk to you of agriculture. I should like them to tell me what agriculture you can have without irrigation, how you can have irrigation without rivers, or rivers without forests, or forests without men to plant them and look after them--and how are you going to get men when there are no crops? It is a vicious circle from which there is no issue--no escape! My dear Marquis, it is a matter of race I tell you.--It is one of the few things which are of the nature of primary truth: the fatality of inheritance. We have nothing to rely upon but communism supported by the Lottery--that is our future. The State must take the national wealth into its own hands and distribute it by means of raffles.

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