[CHAPTER XXXII]
IN WHICH IT IS PROVED THAT HE WHO SOWS REAPS, AND IN WHICH IT IS SEEN THAT THEY WHO GIVE RECEIVE.
The sun had not yet risen in the east when Ximena was standing at a window from which could be seen the road, which Rodrigo and his knights had taken when going on their pilgrimage to Compostela. An unusual joy animated her countenance, and her gaze did not wander from that road on which she had seen her noble and beloved husband departing, and by which she hoped to see him returning on that very day.
On that day, indeed, he was expected in Burgos, the city of his ancestors, and Ximena, who, after the receipt of such good news, had not been able to sleep during the night, arose at dawn, and placed herself at the window of her apartment, desirous that her eyes might be the first to see Rodrigo enter Burgos. It is a common opinion that a young woman does not look on a husband with the same eyes as on a lover, that for her has disappeared the golden halo which surrounded him, the inexplicable mystery which had presented him to her as a being distinct from all other beings. Ximena, however, gave a contradiction to that opinion, and every wife who has a soul like hers, who has gone to the altar impelled, not by an artificial love, but by an affection which has been insensibly identifying itself with the soul, becoming part of it, and acquiring its immortal principle. When love is essentially pure, and refined by the various trials which Ximena had passed through; when it is the thought of one's entire life; when in it is to be found the sole hope and the sole happiness of this world; when its object is so worthy of being beloved as Rodrigo was, then love never loses its enchantment, its mystery, its poetry; it becomes even more beautiful with full possession, more complete in every way. Sermonda, as the Limosin chronicles relate, went one day to her window and saw Raimundo de Castel mounted on a fiery steed, completely covered with white armour, and bearing as his device these words: "Mi corazon está libre y desea ser cautivo."[1]
Sermonda was a maiden of ardent heart, of fantastic imagination, and passionately fond of the love romances of the troubadours and minstrels, especially those of Guillermo de Cabestañ, the sweetest troubadour of Provence. She fell in love with Raimundo de Castel, for in him she saw one of those valiant and enamoured cavaliers whom the good Guillermo described in his lays of love, and married him shortly afterwards. Much time had not elapsed when her love had changed to indifference; in a short time Raimundo had lost in the eyes of Sermonda the aureole of love and poesy which had surrounded him; before long she happened to meet the gentle troubadour Guillermo de Cabestañ, and loved him madly. Raimundo found this out, killed the troubadour, caused his heart to be fried and served up to his faithless spouse. When she discovered that she had eaten the heart of her lover, she told her husband that she had never tasted more delicious food, and then threw herself from the window. This is the kind of love which degenerates, which vulgarises itself by intimate and continuous intercourse, a love which has no hold on the soul, for the love of Sermonda was that of the imagination, not that of the heart. The love of Ximena was that love which is almost born with us, which increases in us, which lives with our life; and that is the love which, instead of becoming weaker, gains strength, preserves always its primitive freshness, mystery, and poesy, and which is as immortal as the soul to which it has clung.
Who is there that has not passed a night feeling somewhat as Ximena did during that which preceded the day of the return of her husband? Who is there who has not sometimes lost a night's repose for the hope of seeing a beloved being on the following day, has not in vain endeavoured to call down sleep on his eyelids, has not counted the hours one by one, and has not several times thought that the light of the moon, feebly penetrating into the room, was the early dawn? And did not that night seem three times as long as usual, on account of her having passed it thinking on him who was expected, seeing him in thought, pondering over the first words that would be heard from his lips, guessing at the costume he would wear, calculating when they would meet each other, and even considering what effect that meeting would have on the countenance of him who was about to return home?
He who has found himself in that position, he who has experienced anything like this, will understand how long that night must have seemed to Ximena; how sweet the singing of the birds must have sounded to her ears on that morning; with what joy she had saluted the day; how excited her heart must have felt, and with what intentness her eyes must have been fixed on the road by which Rodrigo was to arrive. The hope, however, of seeing again her absent husband, her beloved one, the valiant knight, the hero returning with his brows crowned with laurels, was not the only thing which caused Ximena to feel so happy.
She had good news to communicate to Rodrigo; he was about to find in his sweet and loving wife a new title to his love, a new pledge of her affection, for the breast of Ximena enclosed the first-fruit of that love which had filled up almost the entire lives of both of them—she was about to become a mother. What new and exceeding sweet enchantments must she not have experienced from the time she had become aware of that happiness! The wife is then something more than a woman, she has something of the divine, something which separates her from weak humanity; then surrounds her brow a holy aureole, which eyes cannot see, but which the soul distinctly perceives,—a husband must then have a worthless soul and a flinty heart, not to respect her, adore her, bless her! For love has now rendered its work complete, combining matter in the same way as spirit had been combined; for the wife could say to the husband, on feeling the pains of maternity, "Behold, to thee am I indebted for these pains"; for the wife is then a being the most tortured, and the most in need of tender care; for the husband then sees in that woman a mother, a mother such as she who had carried himself in her breast, fed him with her milk, taught him to lisp his first words, to walk his first steps, and who dried his tears with her kisses.
"My husband, a being, a small part of ourselves, moves in my breast."
Should not these words sound very sweet to the ears of the husband who, for the first time, is about to receive the name of father? How sweet must they not sound when they come from the lips of an idolised woman, of a woman whose love he believes to be sufficient to abundantly compensate for all trials, all deceptions, all miseries, all sadnesses, all injustices, all physical pain, all the misfortunes of life! How pleasing, how consoling must not the hopes of paternity be! At first, beautiful children, with complexions like the lily and the rose, with golden hair like that of the angels, who, with smiles on their lips, throw their tender arms around those who have given them their being, as if they were endeavouring to pay the debt of their existence with kisses and innocent caresses; afterwards, gentle youths and maidens, whose ardent hearts are agitated by the generous instincts and noble aspirations of early life, in whom the parents look upon the pictures of themselves, with the same pleasure as the old man looks upon his portrait which, when young, he presented to the maiden of his love, and which she restored to him on the day when they went to live under the same roof. Such, in short, are the hopes which should be awakened in the heart of a husband when his wife tells him that she is about to become a mother.