" ...And because I like to lead this better regulated and sober life."
"That is a different thing!"
Let us say here (though the reader will not have failed to perceive it) that in imagination, and even intelligence, Maria was the young Marqués de Peñalta's superior, and that in this regard, and taking into account the deep affection which he professed for her, it was nothing strange that he should yield to his mistress and her counsels in matters wherein men of greater learning and talent frequently give way to their mothers and wives. Maria, aside from her vivid imagination, stimulated and kindled by continual reading, had a special gift for persuading. Her language was always easy and picturesque, and she took especial delight in moving her friends to compassion, when she wanted to entice from them money for the poor or for church services; the rare facility with which she passed from the serious and pathetic to the humorous, and mingled with an earnest entreaty the salt of a witty saying, made her irresistible. The religious confraternities and societies of Nieva had no more active and influential member, and they relied upon her in emergencies as upon a guardian angel who would be able to rescue them from their difficulties. As may be supposed, this lofty estimation was supported, not only by the young lady's splendid moral and physical qualities, but also in no small degree by the fact that she was the daughter of the richest and most respected gentleman in town.
Let us say also that at the period when these events occurred, the clergy and the religious tendencies of our people were suffering a mild sort of persecution on the part of the government, which was then under the control of liberals most extreme in their views and notorious for their heretical ideas, and this, as was to be expected, had greatly excited the consciences of the God-fearing, and had kindled in the Northern provinces, naturally more religious and more tenacious of tradition, an obstinate and bloody civil war which threatened to overthrow the body politic, and, at the same time, our wealth and prestige. All people of greater or less piety who loved our Catholic traditions, every one who detested the persecution suffered by the Church, and yearned for the kingdom of Jesus on earth under the mediation of his ministers, waited eagerly the result of this formidable war, in which were at stake not only the more or less genuine rights of a claimant to the throne, but likewise the dearest and most august interests of religion. Those who frequented the churches and were on terms of intimacy with the clergy, took a tacit stand together against the heretics in power, receiving joyfully and quickly spreading all intelligence favorable to the royal-Catholic cause, and falling into anxiety and melancholy when bad news came. In the houses of the richest landed proprietors, in the sacristies, and in the back shops of many an absolutist merchant was read on the sly the Cuartel Real, the official journal of the Pretender, which came from time to time between pieces of cretonne or packages of macaroni. Festivals in honor of the Virgin were celebrated with great pomp as an atonement for the manifold impieties of the Congress of Deputies, and these festivals on more than one occasion ended violently by the interference of drunken Republicans. There was a great increase in attention to religious worship, especially to that of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and many pious people went on pilgrimages to the sanctuary of Lourdes, on their return telling their friends about the fine arrangement and the solid organization of the Catholic hosts in the Basque provinces. A number of young men of the best known families of Nieva had not been seen over night, concealing the real purpose of their absence. From this to open, resolute conspiracy is but a step, and in Nieva this preparatory step had already been taken. There was formed in the town a Carlist committee,[56] which held its meetings with a certain mystery and kept up close relations with the Central Committee, whose orders it obeyed, and a lively correspondence with the army of the Pretender. As in the country, though not to such a degree as in the Basque provinces, there existed sufficient elements for the service of the Catholic-monarchical cause, to bring about, provided they were well managed, if not a formal war, at least a serious agitation. The committee of Nieva, instigated by that of the capital, decided, after much vacillation and no few discussions, to raise a company within the territory. The preparations were very extensive; they began early in the winter, and did not terminate until the beginning of the spring. There were reports emanating from Bayonne, there came orders and plans of action, there were numberless secret meetings, a few women were enlisted, muskets were surreptitiously abstracted from the factory by a few Carlist workmen, a quantity of white caps and spatterdashes[57] were made; finally, one night there went out to camp some thirty young men, for the most part students and seminarists, at whose head marched the president of the committee, Don César Pardo, whom we had the honor of meeting at the end of the third chapter of this narration. Those who had sworn to go forth that night were more than three hundred, but only that handful of braves were on hand, and Don César, giving proofs of what he was, that is, a bold, heroic caballero, did not hesitate to take command of them, hoping by his example to carry along the timid. They made their way to the mountain by the valley of Cañedo; but on the next day a dozen policemen,[58] who immediately started in pursuit of them, took them by surprise just as they were dining in camp, and brought them back to the city, bound, without being able to make the least resistance. The people, hearing of the incident, hastened in great numbers to await them on the highway, and saw them filing toward the jail, melancholy but dignified and stern, showing in their haughty eyes that if they had not been victims of a surprise, much blood would have been shed.
The eldest daughter of the house of Elorza, a most ardent devotee of religion, enlisted body and soul in the divine mission of sanctifying her spirit and saving it from the clutches of sin. An unwearied worker in the field of evangelical virtue, ever aspiring to greater perfection, and a zealous propagator of the faith, she could not fail to share in the indignation burning in the breast of the people with whom she had most to do. To her ears came, greatly exaggerated, the rumor of the revolutionary excesses, and the blasphemies daily uttered by the newspapers at the capital, though of course she never ventured to read them. Her confessors commanded her to implore God in her prayers, that the Church might triumph and its enemies be brought to confusion and repentance; her friends and companions in the confraternities asked her to join them in special novenas for the consolation of the Virgin; not a few times they asked alms of her for some priest who was lying in misery, and at other times for the unfortunate nuns of some convent, cruelly torn from it that it might be turned into barracks. All these things, along with a fervid affection for the holy institutions thus persecuted, continually fomented in her ardent, enthusiastic soul a deep aversion for the persecutors and the impious men who governed contrary to the law of God. Sometimes, carried away by her impressionable temperament, she felt powerful impulses to follow the example of Judith, making some villain expiate such horrible deeds of sacrilege. She would have liked to hold in her power the persecutors of Jesus, to destroy them and crush them to powder. When these cruel impulses passed away, they left her always with a warm compassion for the innocent victims of the madness of impiety, and a vague desire to contribute with her blood to the reign of Jesus and Mary over all the powers of the earth. She felt that a something was born in her heart spurring her toward active life, persuading her to leave for a time the joys of contemplation for the pains of struggle, repose for labor, the enchantment of solitude for tumult; she heard, like the bride of the Sacred Song, a voice saying: "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is fitted with dew and my locks with the drops of the night." She saw clearly that her Jesus suffered for the injustices of men, and that he demanded her aid; that he asked a new proof of love by tearing her away from the comfort which she enjoyed and casting her amid the hurricanes of the world. But the beautiful young girl at the same time saw the enormous difficulties rising before her at the first step which she should make, the persecutions which would come upon her, and the certainty that those who loved her would regard her conduct as absurd. She understood her weakness, was afraid of the bitter griefs in store for her, and she replied, like the bride: "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" Long she struggled with herself to quench the voice calling her to active life, and convince herself that she could not do anything for the cause of the Lord; but it was in vain. All her specious arguments were answered victoriously by the voice, putting it before her that she ought not to question whether her aid would or would not be valuable, but simply to consider the will with which she offered it; that God was pleased oftentimes to show his power by entrusting the execution of great deeds to humble and frail creatures, as was proved by the renowned Jean d'Arc, Saint Catalina of Sienna, Saint Teresa, and other excellent virgins who accomplished mighty works in spite of the high powers of the earth.
An insignificant incident brought Maria to a decision. Her uncle Rodrigo, Marqués de Revollar, who was one of the most important magnates of the court of the Pretender, learning of her enkindled faith and the relations which she maintained with the partisans of Catholic monarchy in Nieva, wrote her from Bayonne, asking her if she were ready to serve as intermediary for the correspondence between him and Don César Pardo, president of the Carlist committee. Maria hastened to reply that she should be delighted to do so, and from that time she began frequently to receive letters from her uncle, enclosed in which came others for Don César. These were doubtless the thread by which the Carlist conspiracy of Nieva was connected with the lofty spheres whence the orders emanated. And, without her knowing how, she found herself compromised—and she was not troubled by it—in the cause of the good Christians who, as she frequently heard from the lips of Don César and others, were endeavoring to restore Jesus to his sacred throne, and to rescue him from pride and heresy. Far, as I said, from feeling fear or trouble by it, her courage increased from the danger that she ran, and this was for her a manifest sign that the favor of heaven accompanied her, and she constantly entangled herself more and more in the designs of the conspirators, being present at their meetings and serving them with zeal and enthusiasm to the best of her ability. At the time of Don César's armed expedition she it was who embroidered the standard and the flannel hearts which the defenders of the faith wore, sewed on their waistcoats. The conspirators felt toward her the greatest respect on account of her reputation for sanctity, and they professed for her deep affection for the enthusiasm with which she burned for the cause. In some of these meetings she was invited to give her opinion, and she did so with such talent and eloquence, she showed so much fire, and at the same time so much discretion in her language, that the conspirators saw in the beautiful young girl an angel sent from God to sustain their faith and cause them to hold firm in their mighty schemes.
After Don César's abortive attempt the Carlists of Nieva were quite cast down. Maria shed many tears, and besought God earnestly that He would not allow iniquity and falsehood to prevail against His holy law, and that He would have compassion on His good soldiers, now banished and persecuted. And, in fact, God had compassion, and allowed Don César and the larger part of the young men, who with him had been banished to the Canary Islands, to escape in a foreign steamship, and return incognito to their fatherland, where they hid in the houses of their faithful and valorous friends. Thereupon the partisans of tradition recovered their energy and began once more to plot, though it was vaguely and without definite object. The object did not appear for some time, until the heroic and determined Don César suggested the idea of striking an audacious blow which would suddenly give them the means of struggling advantageously with the few troops in the province. This stroke, proposed by the valiant ringleader, was nothing less than to seize the gun factory[59] of Nieva. At first all thought the project a crazy one, but gradually, by dint of thinking the idea over and over, they came to look upon it as less unreasonable, and even began quietly, and with great enthusiasm, to prepare the means for carrying it out. Such being the state of things, Maria, one afternoon, went to the house where Don César was concealed, and asked to speak with him in private. What the damsel said must have been exceedingly important and flattering, for the old ringleader, offering her his hand, and giving her a kiss upon the forehead, replied with trembling voice:—
"My daughter, you are going to be our salvation. God desires to submit the lot of many brave men to such dainty hands, and who knows if not also the triumph of His cause?"
The young woman retired to her room, where she engaged in prayer for a long time, and then she went down to her mother's apartment. Ricardo soon came in, according to his habit. After a few moments of conversation, Doña Gertrudis went off to sleep, and the two young people retired to a nook in the window to tell each other the sweet every-day secrets, which are sweeter and more delicious the more they are repeated. Maria was preoccupied; her betrothed, with the quickness of one who truly loves, instantly noticed it.
"What ails you to-day?... it seems to me that you are troubled...."