Read Ebook: Marianela by P Rez Gald S Benito Bell Clara Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 879 lines and 48855 words, and 18 pages

"But why not? Ah! you have never seen a fine day and clear sky; why, child, you could fancy blessing was dropping down from it. I do not think there could be wicked people--nobody could be wicked--if they would only turn up their faces and see the great eye that looks down upon us."

"Your religion is full of superstition, my little Nela. I will teach you something better."

"Nobody has taught me anything," said Mar?a very simply. "But I myself, whoever may object, have found out in my own head a great many ideas that comfort me, and so when a good idea occurs to me, I say: 'Of course, it must be so; it cannot be otherwise.' At night, when I am alone at home, I wonder what will become of us when we die, and I think how much the Holy Virgin loves us."

"Yes, she is our loving Mother."

"And I look up at the sky and I feel her close over my head, just as when you go up to any one, you feel the warmth of their breath. She looks at us night and day through all the lovely things there are in the world--do not laugh at me."

"Those lovely things...?"

"Are her eyes, of course. Oh! you would understand it if you had eyes yourself. You have not seen a white cloud, a tree, a flower, running water, a little child, a little lamb, the sparkling dew, the moon sailing across the sky, and the stars, which are the eyes of the good men who are dead...."

"They would not want to go up there if they lie under the ground throwing out flowers."

"Only hear this all-knowing fellow! Why they stay down there only till they are purified of sin, and then they mount and fly up there. Yes, I believe it, simpleton. Why, what can the stars be if they are not the souls of those who are saved? Do not you know that stars sometimes come down? I, I myself, have seen them fall; down, down, leaving a ray of light behind them. Yes, Se?or, the stars come down when they have something to tell us here below."

"Oh, Nela!" Pablo exclaimed eagerly. "Your wild imaginings, absurd as they are, charm and captivate me, for they betray the innocence of your soul and the strength of your fancy. All your errors even are part of an earnest disposition to know the truth, and of great gifts, which would be very superior talents if they were cultivated by reason and education. You must acquire one precious accomplishment of which I am deprived--you must positively learn to read."

"To read!--And who is to teach me?"

"My father will; I will ask him to teach you. You know he never refuses me anything. What a pity it is you should live in such a wretched way; your mind is a mine of treasures. You are goodness and sweetness itself and have a lovely imagination. God has given you a large share of all the gifts that are in his store and part of himself; I know it well--I cannot see what is outside, but I can see within, and I know all the wonders of your spirit that you have shown me since you have been my guide.--It is a year and a half now, and it seems like yesterday, that we first began our walks together--and yet, no; I have known you a thousand years. How is it that there is such a close relationship between your feelings and mine? Just now, for instance, you have talked all sorts of extravagant nonsense, and I, who know the truth about the world and religion, I was stirred to enthusiasm as I listened to you. I feel as if it were a voice speaking in my own heart."

"Holy Mother!" exclaimed the girl, folding her hands. "And can he see something else that I feel?"

"What is that?"

The blind boy turned his head suddenly and eagerly, and putting out his hands to touch the child by his side, he said anxiously:

"Tell me, Nela--what are you like?"

But Nela did not answer; the question was a stab to her heart.

MORE ABSURDITIES.

Pablo had seated himself on the trunk of a tree, resting his left arm on the edge of the basin; with his right hand he pulled at the boughs which hung low enough to touch his forehead, on which now and again the sunbeams played, as the boughs stirred.

"What are you doing, Nela?" asked he, after a pause, not hearing the steps, the voice, nor even the breathing of his companion. "What are you about, and where are you?"

"Here I am," said Nela, laying her hand on his shoulder. "I was looking at the sea."

"Ah! it must be a long way off."

"It is visible between the hills of Fic?briga."

"Very large--immensely large--so wide that you might look all day, and not have done looking--is it not?"

"There is only a piece to be seen from here--like the bit you cut off with your teeth when you put a slice of bread in your mouth."

"Yes, yes--I understand. Every one says there is nothing in the world so beautiful as the sea, because it is so grandly simple.--Listen, Nela, to what I am going to say--but what are you doing?" Nela had grasped a bough of the tree with both hands, and was swinging by it lightly and gracefully.

"But though God has not given us wings he has given us thought instead, which flies faster than any bird, since it can fly up to God himself.--Tell me, child, of what good would wings be to me, if God had denied me the gift of thought?"

"But I should like to have both. And if I had wings I would pick you up in my little beak to take you out of this world, and carry you up ever so much higher than the clouds." The blind lad put out his hand to stroke Nela's hair.

"Sit down by me; are you not tired?"

"Just a little," she said, sitting down and laying her head with childlike confidence on her master's shoulder.

"You are breathing fast, Nelilla, you are very tired; it is with trying to fly.--Well, what I want to say to you is this: Talking of the sea put me in mind of a thing my father read to me last night. You know that ever since I was old enough, my father has been in the habit of reading to me every evening different books of science, or history, or art, or mere amusement. I might say that these readings make up all I know of life. The Lord, to compensate me for being blind, has given me a very good memory, and it has turned these readings to good account; for though there has been no regular method in them, I have contrived to put some order into the ideas that have penetrated to my understanding. How I have enjoyed listening and learning about the admirable laws and order of the universe, the harmonious circling of the stars, the motion of atoms, and above all, those grand principles which govern our souls and minds. I have enjoyed history too, which is a true account of all the things men have done in former times; for though, my child, they have always done the same wicked and foolish things, they have nevertheless gone on improving, some of them doing their utmost--but without ever succeeding--to attain that perfection which belongs to God alone. And finally, my father has read me some deeper and more mysterious things that cannot be understood at once, but when they are thought over and considered they occupy and charm the mind. He does not enjoy that sort of reading very much, as he does not altogether follow it, and it has tired me sometimes, while at other times it has delighted me. And there is no doubt that when you have an author who explains himself clearly, such subjects are very interesting. They deal with cause and effect, the rationale of all we think, and how we think, and teach us about the essential nature of things."

Nela did not seem to understand a single word of what her friend was saying, but she listened attentively with her mouth wide open; to inhale, if possible, the essences and causes of which her master was discoursing, opening her beak like a bird watching the movements of a fly he wants to catch.

"Well, then," he went on, "last night he was reading me some pages about Beauty. The author, in discussing Beauty, said that it was the outcome and radiance of goodness and truth, with many other ingenious comparisons so well thought out and expressed, that it was a pleasure to listen."

"No, no, goose-cap; it is a book on Beauty in the abstract, you will not understand--on ideal Beauty--and yet you must understand that there is a sort of Beauty which cannot be seen, nor touched, nor perceived by any of our senses."

"For example, like the Virgin Mary," interrupted Nela, "whom we cannot see nor touch, because her pictures are not herself, but only her likeness."

"You are quite right; it is just like that. Thinking over this, my father shut the book, and talked of one thing and another. We spoke then of beauty of form, and my father said: 'This unfortunately you can never understand.' But I said I could. I said that there could only be one type, and that would apply to all."

Nela, caring little enough for such subtleties, had taken the flowers out of her companion's hands, and was arranging their colors to her taste.

"I have a clear idea about this," the blind lad went on, vehemently, "an idea that I have been quite in love with for some months. Yes, I am sure, quite sure of it; I want no eyes to see that, and I said to my father, I have an ideal of enchanting beauty, a type which includes every possible perfection, and that type is Nela. My father began to laugh, and said 'yes.'"

Nela turned as scarlet as a poppy, and could not answer a word. During a short spasm of terror and pain, she felt as if the blind boy were looking at her.

"Yes, you are the most perfect beauty imaginable," Pablo went on, eagerly. "How could it be possible that your goodness, and innocence, and freshness and grace--your imagination, your sweet and lovely soul, which have all combined to enliven and comfort my dark and melancholy life--how, I say, could it be possible that they should not be embodied in a person as lovely? Nela, Nela," and his voice trembled with anxiety.--"Tell me--are you not beautiful--very pretty?"

Nela was silent; she instinctively put her hands up, and stuck into her hair some of the half-faded flowers she had gathered in the meadows.

"You will not say? You are modest. Indeed, if you were not, you would not be the sweet little soul that you are; the logic of Beauty would be at fault, and that cannot be. You do not answer?"

"I ..." murmured Nela timidly, not ceasing her occupation, "I do not know--they say that I was very pretty as a baby--but now...."

"You are still?"

Mar?a, in her utter confusion, could only say:

"Now--well, you know that people talk nonsense--and make stupid mistakes--sometimes those who have eyes see least."

"Yes indeed, well said! Come here and kiss me."

Nela did not instantly obey, for having succeeded in fixing a sort of garland of flowers in her hair, she now felt an eager wish to see the effect of the adornment in the clear mirror of the reservoir. For the first time in her life she felt an impulse of vanity, and leaning on her hands, she bent over the basin.

"What are you doing?" asked the blind lad.

"I am looking at myself in the water, which is just like a looking-glass," she replied, confessing her vanity with perfect simplicity.

"You need not do that. You are as lovely as the angels round the throne of God." He had fired himself with enthusiastic imaginings.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet