CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST ILLUSION.
The man whom we have seen in the retirement of his study, disturbed at intervals during many months by such scenes as we have described, did not, however, give up his whole time to scientific work. He, like others, was a wheel in the social machine, attached to it by his instincts, by his marriage, nay by science itself; and he was by no means one of those cobweb-spinning savants of whom we are told in romances that they are inseparable from their books and their alembics, and as ignorant of the outer world as they are of the true mysteries of science. Leon Roch went into the world, he dressed well, and indeed was not to be distinguished from the well-clothed multitude which constitutes the most important, though not the most picturesque portion of society. He never excused himself from the methodically dull routine of the life of the wealthy classes in the Spanish capital and he might be seen with his wife in the fashionable employment of “taking a drive”—a pleasure which consists in going at a fixed hour to a particular avenue and gently jolting to and fro in single file, one carriage behind another and close together, at a regular pace, so that the ladies who lounge in the landaus feel the hot breath of the horses just behind them, while the quadrupeds, mistaking the flowers in their bonnets for real ones, try to make a mouthful of them. He frequented the theatres, on the delightful system by which the subscribers share a seat and go in turns, and which has the advantage of providing them indiscriminately with emotion or amusement, quite irrespective of their frame of mind at the time. He invited a select number of friends to dinner on one day in the week, having asserted and won his right to choose his guests from among the best of the few distinguished men of whom Spain can boast. Nor did he select them by any rule of creed or opinion, but solely to suit his personal sympathies; as a consequence his weekly entertainments and his evening parties gathered together superior men; independent thinkers, staunch Catholics, politicians of the epicurean pattern, aristocrats of the most ancient coinage and nobles all hot and shining from the press, with men who had risen to social importance by their talents as omniscient gossips, or by the genuine charm of their conversation; there too were rising stars from the university—young men distinguished as professors, or who shone in the debating societies. Perfect harmony reigned however, for nothing is so soothing to the temper as a good dinner, the presence of elegant women, and the necessity for observing the laws of good breeding.
Though certain individuals, no doubt, detested each other cordially, the general atmosphere was one of mutual consideration, and the hours were passed in conversation always polite, tolerant, instructive and delightful—the happy product of this friction of various minds. Art, letters, manners, politics—all were discussed; there was a little grumbling, of course, a little scandal; one group would take up some serious question—of religion, for instance, a theme sure to occur where two or three men are gathered together, and one which has a perennial and unfailing interest. This absorbing subject, which is so constantly discussed, in the family circle, among students, and in the highest conclave—in the confessional, in the palace, in the hut—among friends and among foes—with words in every human tongue, and sometimes with the roar of cannon—with the jargon of party-spirit, the formulas of reason, the slang of flippancy—overtly or in secret; with ink often, and not seldom with blood—fills the air with an incessant murmur, that rolls its ceaseless tide from pole to pole without pause or lull. If our ears were but a little keener, we might hear the dull unceasing soliloquy of the ages.
Leon’s outward features were a clear olive complexion, expressive eyes, black hair and beard; his moral distinction was his inflexible rectitude and a firm determination never to deceive. His frank gaze captivated most people at first sight, but his uprightness of spirit was not so immediately discernible, since a man’s conscience does not lie on the surface. The place he held in the estimation of his acquaintance depended consequently on their view of things; to some he was an admirable character, to others a malignant being; and since his person was beyond question, handsome and attractive, there were plenty to say of him: “He is a very good fellow on the surface, but below that he is a monster of deformity.”
He was not one of those rationalistic bigots—for there is such a thing—who laugh the faith of others to scorn, and ridicule their pious fervour; on the contrary, he respected all who believed—nay he envied some. He had no spirit of propaganda and desired to convert no one to his own way of thinking; for though his studies had brought him great enjoyment, they had also given him many hours of isolation and bitterness, hence he had no mania for casting souls afloat from the blessed isles of the faith, only to see them land on the cold solitudes of scepticism.
He had begun by devoting himself to the natural sciences, finding in these the purest delight; then the study of philosophy had sorely vexed his spirit, and he finally returned to the pursuit of experimental science in which he had found terra firma and a familiar country. While natural history amused him, physiology fascinated him; he was fond too of astronomy, to which he was led by his taste for mathematics. “History,” he would say, “dwarfs us; physiology restores us to our natural measure; astronomy makes giants of us.”
There was in his spirit a certain aridity, the result of the small play his imagination had enjoyed in childhood and youth.
He was born in a room behind a shop, where he had trotted in and out by the side of his mother, a woman, coarse and rough by nature, of no breeding or education. She worked hard, but she could not read. In her vanity she had set her heart on her son being very precocious and she firmly believed that he would rise to be a general, a bishop, or a prime minister. After her death he had lived for some little time at Valencia with a maternal uncle, a potter, who had made money and whose opinions were thus formulated: “Learning is rubbish. A man who can make a brick is of more use to the human race than if he could write all the books that ever were printed.”