Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE CONFESSION.1

BY JUAN VALERA.

(From "Pepita Ximenez": translated by Mary J. Serrano.)

[JUAN VALERA: A Spanish novelist and poet; was born at Cabra, province of Cordova, October 18, 1824. His works include: "Poems" (1858), "Critical Studies" (1864-1884), "Pepita Ximenez " (1874), "The Illusions of Doctor Faustino" (1876), "The Comendador Mendoza " (1877), "Doña Luz" (1878), "New Studies" (1884), "Songs, Romances, and Poems" (1885), "Stories, Dialogues, and Fantasies” (1887), and “ A Good Reputation” (1895).]

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Pepita was in an apartment on an upper floor, contiguous to her bedroom and dressing room, where no one ever entered without being summoned, save Antoñona.

The furniture of this apartment was simple, but comfortable and in good taste. The curtains and the covering of the easy-chairs, the sofas, and the armchairs were of a flowered cotton fabric. On a mahogany table were writing materials and papers, and in a bookcase, also of mahogany, were many books of devotion and history. The walls were adorned with pictures engravings on religious subjects, but with this particularity in their selection, unheard of, extraordinary, almost incredible in an Andalusian village, that, instead of being bad French lithographs, they were engravings in the best style of Spanish art, as the "Spasimodi Sicilia" of Rafael; the "St. Ildefonso and the Virgin," the "Conception," the "St. Bernard," and the two "Lunettes " of Murillo.

On an antique oak table, supported by fluted columns, was a small writing desk, or escritoire, inlaid with shell, motherof-pearl, ivory, and brass, and containing a great many little drawers, in which Pepita kept bills and other papers. On this table were also two porcelain vases filled with flowers; and, finally, hanging against the walls, were several flowerpots of Seville Carthusian ware, containing ivy, geranium, and other plants, and three gilded cages, in which were canaries and larks.

This apartment was the retreat of Pepita, where no one entered during the daytime except the doctor and the reverend vicar, and, in the evening, only the overseer to settle ac

1 By permission of D. Appleton & Co., New York, and Mr. Wm. Heinemann. (Price 38. 6d.)

counts. This apartment was called the library, and served the purpose of one.

Pepita was seated, half reclining, on a sofa, before which stood a small table with some books upon it.

She had just risen, and was attired in a light summer wrapper. Her blond hair, not yet arranged, looked even more beautiful in its disorder. Her countenance, somewhat pale, and, although it still preserved its fresh and youthful aspect, showing dark circles under the eyes, looked more beautiful than ever under the influence of the malady that robbed it of color.

Pepita showed signs of impatience; she was waiting for

some one.

At last the person she was awaiting, who proved to be the reverend vicar, arrived, and entered without announcement.

After the usual salutations, the reverend vicar settled himself comfortably in an easy-chair, and the conversation thus began:

"I am very glad, my child, that you sent for me; but, even without your doing so, I was just coming to see you. How pale you are! What is it that ails you? Have you something of importance to tell me?"

Pepita began her answer to this series of affectionate inquiries with a deep sigh; she then said: "Do you not divine my malady?

the cause of my suffering?"

[ocr errors]

Have you not discovered

The vicar made a gesture of denial, and looked at Pepita with something like terror in his gaze; for he knew nothing of all that had taken place, and was struck by the vehemence with which she spoke.

Pepita continued:

"I ought not to have sent for you, father. I should have gone to the church myself instead, to speak with you in the confessional, and there confess my sins. But, unhappily, far from repenting of them, my heart has hardened itself in wickedness. I have neither the courage nor the desire to speak to the confessor, but only to the friend."

"What are you saying about sins and hardness of heart? Have you taken leave of your senses? What sins can you have committed, you who are so good?"

"No, father, I am not good. I have been deceiving you; I have been deceiving myself; I have tried to deceive God.

[ocr errors]

"Come, come, calm yourself; speak with moderation and common sense, and don't talk foolishly."

"And how shall I avoid talking foolishly when the spirit of evil possesses me?"

66

Holy Virgin! Don't talk nonsense, child; the demons most to be feared that take possession of the soul are three, and none of them, I am certain, can have dared to enter into yours. One is Leviathan, or the spirit of Pride; the other is Mammon, or the spirit of Avarice; and the other is Asmodeus, or the spirit of Unholy Love."

"Well, I am the victim of all three; all three hold dominion over me."

"This is dreadful! Calm yourself, I repeat. The real trouble with you is that you are out of your head."

"Would to God it were so! The contrary, unhappily for me, is the case. I am avaricious, because I possess riches, and do not perform the works of charity I ought to perform; I am proud, because I scorn the addresses of my many suitors, not through virtue, not through modesty, but because I thought them unworthy of my love. God has punished me; God has permitted the third enemy you have named to take possession of me."

"How is this, child? What diabolical notion has entered into your mind? Have you by chance fallen in love? And, if you have, what harm is there in that? Are you not free? Get married, then, and stop talking nonsense. I am certain

it is my friend Don Pedro de Vargas who has wrought the miracle. That same Don Pedro is the very devil! I confess I am surprised, though. I did not think matters had gone quite so far as that already.'

"But it is not Don Pedro de Vargas I am in love with." "And with whom, then?"

Pepita rose from her seat, went to the door, opened it, looked to see if any one was listening outside, drew near to the reverend vicar, and, with signs of the deepest distress, in a trembling voice, and with tears in her eyes, said, almost in the ear of the good old man :

[ocr errors]

"I am hopelessly in love with his son."

"With whose son?" cried the reverend vicar, who could not yet bring himself to believe what he had heard.

"With whose son should it be? I am hopelessly, desperately in love with Don Luis."

Consternation and dolorous surprise were depicted on the countenance of the kind and simple priest. There was a moment's pause; the vicar then said :

"But this is a love without hope; a love not to be thought of. Don Luis will not love you in return."

In the midst of the tears that clouded the beautiful eyes of Pepita gleamed a joyful light; her rosy, dewy lips, contracted by sorrow, parted in a smile, disclosing to view her pearly

teeth.

"He loves me," said Pepita, with a faint and ill-concealed accent of satisfaction and triumph that rose exultant over her sorrow and her scruples of conscience.

The consternation and the astonishment of the reverend vicar here reached their highest pitch. If the saint to whom he paid his most fervent devotions had been suddenly cast down from the altar before him, and had fallen, broken into a thousand fragments, at his feet, the reverend vicar could not have felt greater consternation than he did. He still looked at Pepita with incredulity, as if doubting whether what she had said were true, or only a delusion of feminine vanity, so firmly did he believe in the holiness of Don Luis, and in his spiritualmindedness.

"He loves me," Pepita repeated, in answer to his incredulous glance.

"Women are worse than the very devil!" said the vicar. "You would set a snare for the old boy himself."

“Did I not tell you already that I was very wicked?" "Come, come! calm yourself. The mercy of God is infinite. Tell me all that has happened."

"What should have happened? That he is dear to me; that I love him; that I adore him; that he loves me, too, although he strives to conquer his love, and, in the end, may succeed in doing so; and that you, without knowing it, are very much to blame for it all!"

"Well, this caps the climax! What do you mean by saying I am very much to blame?"

"With the extreme goodness that is characteristic of you, you have done nothing but praise Don Luis to me; and I am sure that you have pronounced still greater eulogies on me to him, although very much less deserved. What is the natural consequence? Am I of bronze? Have I not the passions of youth?"

"You are more than right; I am a dolt: I have contributed, in great part, to this work of Lucifer."

The reverend vicar was so truly good, and so full of humanity, that, while pronouncing the preceding words, he showed as much confusion and remorse as if he were the culprit and Pepita the judge.

Pepita, conscious of her injustice and want of generosity in thus making the reverend vicar the accomplice, and scarcely less than the chief author, of her fault, spoke to him thus:

"Don't torment yourself, father, for God's sake, don't torment yourself! You see now how perverse I am. I commit the greatest sins, and I want to throw the responsibility of them on the best and the most virtuous of men. It is not the praises you have recited to me of Don Luis that have been my ruin, but my own eyes, and my want of circumspection. Even though you had never spoken to me of the good qualities of Don Luis, I should still have discovered them all by hearing him speak; for, after all, I am not so ignorant, nor so great a fool. And, in any case, I myself have seen the grace of his person, the natural and untaught elegance of his manners, his eyes full of fire and intelligence, his whole self, in a word, which seems to me altogether amiable and desirable. Your eulogies of him have indeed pleased my vanity, but they did not awaken my inclinations. Your praises charmed me because they coincided with my own opinion, and were like the flattering echo -deadened, indeed, and faint-of my thoughts. The most eloquent encomium you have pronounced, in my hearing, on Don Luis, was far from being equal to the encomiums that I, at each moment, at each instant, silently pronounced upon him in my own soul."

"Don't excite yourself, child," interrupted the reverend vicar. Pepita continued, with still greater exaltation:

"But what a difference between your encomiums and my thoughts! For you Don Luis was the exemplary model of the priest, the missionary, the apostle, now preaching the gospel in distant lands, now endeavoring in Spain to elevate Christianity, so degraded in our day through the impiety of some, and the want of virtue, of charity, and of knowledge of others. I, on the contrary, pictured him to myself handsome, loving, forgetting God for me, consecrating his life to me, giving me his soul, becoming my stay, my support, my sweet companion. I longed to commit a sacrilegious theft: I dreamed of stealing

« AnteriorContinuar »