After the young marquis had thoroughly vented his ill feeling without result, he began to get off of his high horse and try the effect of skilful reasoning, and then he changed to entreaties, but without any better results. He employed all the device of genius and all the tender and expressive words dictated by his honorable heart, in order to convince her that neither of them was fortunately under the necessity of mourning for their sins like two criminals; since if they were not better than the average of humanity, they were at least as good; and as for their skill and judgment in governing themselves and their children in matrimony, he believed that they were no less fitted than the rest, and that in the end they would come out as well as other people. All was useless. The young woman met argument with argument, and her lover's prayers, sprinkled with endearments, with a firm and obstinate silence. Ricardo, in a state of tribulation which Father Rivadeneira does not take account of as a matter of merit in his treatise, went straight to Don Mariano, whom he loved like a father, to tell him the state of things, and ask his aid and advice. The latter was highly surprised and disturbed when he read his daughter's letter. He read it over many times as though he could not get the key of it, and at each new reading he found it more obscure and inexplicable. Finally he handed it back with a gesture of dismay, signifying that his daughter must have lost her wits, for he could not understand any such nonsense.

In point of fact, Don Mariano was a sincere believer, fulfilling scrupulously the moral precepts of religion, but he looked upon the things which relate to worship with some coolness, if not with scorn. He had never doubted the religious truths learned in his childhood, but he had never made much account of masses and sermons, and he never went to church more than was strictly necessary. He could make a distinction, when these subjects were up for discussion, between religion and the priest, professing for these latter a decided Voltairian hostility, which came from inheritance, according to Doña Gertrudis, since his grandfather, the Mexican, had kept up friendly relations and a voluminous correspondence with a member of the French Convention. He had an insuperable faith in modern progress, and he made use of the inventions constantly realized by human industry, in order to combat and crush the fragile arguments of his constant enemies, the partisans of tradition, among whom not the least obstinate and vexatious was his wife. If, for example, a telegram from any relation or friend was received in the house, Don Mariano, after reading it, would hold it out to his wife with a triumphal smile, saying,—

"Here, this miserable modern invention brings us word that your brother has reached Paris safely."

He delighted in making humorous conjectures on the fright that would seize our forefathers if they were suddenly put in a railroad car, or were told that they could communicate whenever they pleased with a friend residing in Havana. Whenever he found in the papers a notice of any wonderful invention, the audacious man hastened to read it to his wife, and he kept the paper so as to read it also to the many conservatives who frequented his house. If the invention was not costly, he had the machine sent him, although it was not of the slightest use to him; and so he kept the house stored with curious manufactures, almost all of them covered with dust, and out of order by want of use,—ice-making machines, churns, cider-mills, organs, etc., parlor telegraphs, stereopticons, pans for cooking meat with a piece of paper, life-preservers, canes with chairs and guns, waterproof umbrellas with tent arrangement, and an endless array of strange articles. When the machine did not work, Don Mariano was disgusted and felt humiliated, and fearing lest the glory of modern science should be diminished in consequence, he did not speak of the apparatus before his señora; or if he were obliged to do so, he escaped the difficulty on a tangent, as he used to say, by always attributing the unfortunate result to his own stupidity, and not the quality of the machine. This eager love which he professed for the incredible advances of the present age, and the struggle which he waged both in his house and out of it with the friends of tradition, occasionally impelled him to employ forbidden weapons, as for example to exaggerate the power of modern industry, giving fictitious accounts of the beginning of stupendous new enterprises which had never as yet entered into the mind of man. One day he startled his friends by assuring them that it was seriously intended to establish a floating bridge between Europe and America, over which one could travel by rail to the New World; another time he astonished them by declaring that a telescope was in construction, which would bring the moon within half a league of the earth, so that we could discover whether that satellite had inhabitants. Again, he filled them with wonder by informing them that in the United States a whole cathedral had been moved at once from one town to another by means of hydraulic pressure. In regard to mechanical advances, Don Mariano had more imagination than Shakespeare. National politics engaged his attention little in comparison with the incessant and sublime progress realized by humanity, and he detested the exaggerations which in his view tended to hinder it. His affiliations were with the liberal conservative party.

With these peculiarities, it is easy to imagine the effect made upon him by his daughter's letter. He looked upon it as one of those many extravagant hobbies which she had passed through in her life, and he solemnly promised Ricardo to make her desist from such folly. But after he had called her to his room and spent about two hours closeted with her, he began to suspect that the thing was not so easy as it appeared at first sight. Neither by turning her austere plan into ridicule by his jests, nor by showing that he was annoyed, nor by descending to entreaties, was our worthy caballero able to accomplish anything. Maria met these attacks like her lover's, with a humble but resolute attitude impossible to overcome. No other way was left them but to resign themselves, and this they both did perforce with the secret hope that the girl would very soon change of her own accord when once her caprice was satisfied. Accordingly the wedding was indefinitely postponed, and poor Ricardo began to play his part as Duke of Thuringen almost as ill as a Spanish actor. From that time forth his interviews with Maria became less frequent and familiar. The girl seemed to shun him and to avoid opportunities of talking confidentially with him as she used. Ricardo eagerly sought them, sometimes employing them in bitter expostulations, at others in softly whispering a thousand passionate phrases. She always appeared sweet and affectionate, but endeavored to turn the conversation to serious subjects. Ricardo still caressed her whenever he had an opportunity, but he no longer obtained from her the usual reciprocation in spite of the incredible efforts which he made to obtain it. And not only he did not obtain this grace, but little by little the girl came to avoid his familiarities by always talking with him in the presence of others. One day when he found her alone in the dining-room, he said to himself with inward delight, "She is mine." And creeping up behind her carefully, he gave her a ringing kiss on her neck. Maria sprang suddenly from her chair and said, with a certain sweetness not free from severity,—

"Ricardo, don't do that again!"

"Why not?"

"Because I don't like it."

"How long since?"

"I never did; don't be foolish." She said these words with asperity, and another unpleasant stage in Ricardo's love was signalized. Almost absolutely ceased those happy moments of fond raptures, sweet and delicious as the pleasures of the angels in which the poesy of spirit and matter is indistinguishable, the prospect of which kindles and stirs the deepest roots of our being, and their remembrance throws over all our lives, even for the most prosaic of men, a vague and poetical melancholy helping us to endure the rebuffs of existence and to contemplate without envy the felicity of others. The most that the young marquis obtained grudgingly from his sweetheart was the permission to give her a brotherly kiss on the forehead from time to time. And there is no need of telling my experienced readers, for they must be able to imagine it, that with this enforced fast the young man's love far from growing less, increased and became violent beyond all power of words.