The marquis drew up his effeminate head; his wrinkled cheeks were purple, and his eyes flashed as though a sudden light had blazed up in front of him; it almost seemed as if there might be a grain of dignity still lurking in the soul of this man, weak as he was, in mind as in body, a spark of honour urging him on like a dastardly soldier who, after keeping out of danger in a battle, tries in the last extremity to escape the taunts of his comrades by seeking a glorious death. But Leon’s ascendancy over the poor coward was so great that he could not find strength to speak and could only groan, while his head fell again on his breast and he listened dully to his son-in-law. He was but a dry and blasted tree, awaiting the fatal axe.
“No honour,” repeated Leon, “unless we give the word a purely conventional and fictitious sense. True honour does not consist in repeating a set of formulas to protect ourselves against weakness and meanness. It is based on noble deeds, on prudent and respectable conduct, on domestic honesty and an unbroken word. Where these do not exist who can talk of honour? Where everything is falsehood, insolvency, vice and folly how can there be honour? Since we are here in strict privacy supposing I remind you of your wife’s proceedings, of Polito’s, nay of your own?”
The marquis put out a deprecatory hand as if to implore his son-in-law to do nothing of the kind. But Leon thought it right to strike home.
“I entreat you,” said Tellería penitently, “not to go on with your list of grievances. I regret them bitterly; I do not deny that I have committed follies ... who has not? It is the way of the world. Now that I am sinking, Leon, either put out a hand to save me or leave me to perish; but do not vilify me, do not make my fate more cruel than it is. Of course I have no right to appeal so frequently to your generosity. Still, you must reflect that your circumstances and mine are widely different. I have children, and you have not.”
“But ...” Was he going to say: “‘But I may have some day?’”
The marquis sat for a few minutes looking at the two little girls playing in the middle of the room.
“Well,” said Leon. “I will make you an allowance sufficient to enable you to live decently, but this is all I can do. I have not a gold mine; nor, if I had, would it ever fill up the gulfs that you open at my feet from time to time.”
Don Agustín turned pale, and as he sat gazing at the floor he mumbled with his jaws as though he were turning over the dry husk of a fruit.
“An allowance!” he muttered. In fact the idea stuck in his throat, and though common gratitude forbid his making any overt objection his changed expression plainly showed that this eleemosynary annuity, doled out by pity, revolted his pride and embittered his blood. So complete was his moral obliquity that, while he felt no degradation to ask a loan on fictitious security, tantamount in fact to a distinct purpose of never repaying it, he was wounded to the quick by this offer of a pension which he called “throwing his bread in his teeth.” Besides, his selfish pride made him recalcitrant to any scheme which did not extricate him from his immediate dilemma. What did he care for living the decent and respectable life that Leon spoke of? What does the spendthrift care for the future? His first anxiety is to avoid scandal at a great crisis, so that, when it is past, he may go on again with a bold front and a confident stride along the same road of ruin and insolvency which was so familiar to him. However, the marquis had too much respect for propriety and too much genuine courtesy to allow him to betray his feelings; on the contrary, he expressed himself grateful for “the St. Bernard’s mess of pottage”—the pittance that his son-in-law had offered.
“An allowance,” he said trying to make the best of it, “you are most liberal; I am grateful for your foresight. But in point of fact it will not get me out of the scrape. The ship is wrecked, and your allowance is land in sight a hundred miles away.”