The Fourth Estate, vol. 1

by Armando Palacio Valdés

Gonzalo avoided the workroom, and when perchance he appeared he was so abashed and confused that the embroideresses winked at each other and smiled. Seeing him so embarrassed, and Cecilia so calm and indifferent, you would have thought that the parts played by both in the sad love affair had been reversed.

In the meantime tongues wagged on the subject in the shops, in the houses, in the streets, and at the Promenade—there was no end to it. The event caused a great sensation in the town. While preparations for Cecilia's marriage had been going on, it had been the general opinion that Gonzalo showed a deplorable want of taste, that he was throwing himself away on the poor girl, who was represented as little less than a monster of ugliness; and they all wondered why he had not chosen her sister, who was so lovely and so graceful. Directly they learned of the change their opinions suddenly veered round.

"What a scandal! What a disgraceful proceeding! What parents to consent to such infamy! Where was the shame of some people? Poor girl, so beautiful, so slender, with such lovely eyes! Well, I consider her prettier than her sister."

"So do I."

We must not miss the opportunity of saying that this eternal discontent of people with regard to the actions of their fellow-creatures, much as it upsets us, does not argue intentional unkindness, malignity, or envy, as we are apt to think when we are the object of their remarks; it is nothing but an evident tribute to the imperfection of our planetary existence and the love of the ideal that every one bears within himself without ever seeing it realized. After having thus shown ourselves both philosophical and optimistic, we will proceed with our story.

The day of the marriage arrived. It was solemnized early in the morning at Belinchon's house, in the presence of a few relations and friends; and after taking chocolate the bride and bridegroom left for Tejada.

This was an estate about four miles from the town, where Don Rosendo's genius, aided by money, had had full scope to produce great effects. When he bought the place it consisted of several fields and a wood, where cows pastured, and the notes of thrushes, linnets, and blackbirds filled the air. Don Rosendo began by doing away with this indigenous colony, and substituting a foreign one for it. The breed of cattle of the country was proscribed and replaced by one from Switzerland. The same ruthlessness was shown in robbing the trees of their native songsters, and hanging them with cages full of rare, exotic birds that croaked dolefully all the year round at sunset. The energetic reformatory spirit of Don Rosendo did not stop at the animal kingdom, for it was brought with equal relentlessness to bear upon the vegetable one, and the character of the place was thus completely transformed. By degrees the great shady chestnut trees, with their gnarled trunks; the gigantic oaks, which had renewed their scalloped foliage more than three hundred times; the walnut trees, that looked like enormous thistles; the luxuriant orchard trees, bowed to the ground with the weight of the luscious fruit, and many other trees pertaining to a good landed property in the country, all gradually succumbed to the saw and the ax.

Washingtonians, araucarias, excelsas, and many other trees of foreign extraction, chiefly of the coniferæ family, were planted in their stead, which made the place look something like a cemetery in the eyes of the vulgar.

However, when any such remark was made to Don Rosendo he merely replied that coniferæ had the advantage of foliage during the winter, and the vulgar would return that that very fact made it look like a cemetery in the winter, and in the summer too. But Don Rosendo did not deign to reply to such a silly remark, and in this he was right.

As everything that is worth much costs much, the foreigners of both kingdoms absorbed a good deal of Belinchon's income. The birds of the country had fed themselves and dressed their feathers without any extraneous assistance, but those from abroad, shut up in cages and enormous aviaries made for the purpose, required several attendants to feed them and to keep their places clean. Then homesickness caused great blanks among them which could only be filled by sending expensive orders to Paris and London. The same thing happened with the vegetable kingdom, only of every plant that succeeded by dint of great care and cultivation thirty or forty died, and the constant attention of the gardeners could not prevent this mortality.