“A potent argument in your favour has just occurred to me; Pepa de Fúcar is immensely rich and I am almost poor. However, when one has faith no arguments are needed, and I have faith in you. Every one who knows you, says you are a model of uprightness and noble generosity—a rare thing in these days. I am as proud as I am flattered. How good God has been to me in bestowing on me a gift which, by all accounts, is so seldom found in this world!
“I cannot avoid telling you—though this letter already seems interminable—the impression that girl produced on me, even setting aside the rancour I could not help feeling at first. But now the storm is over; I can judge her coolly and impartially, and though, when I heard what you know, I thought she must be perfectly charming, I see her now in her true light. Every one talks of her shameful extravagance. It is an insult to Heaven and humanity! Papa says she spends enough in clothes in a week to support several families comfortably. She is elegant, no doubt; but sometimes very affected—as much as to say: ‘Gentlemen, I behave in this way that you may all see how rich I am.’ Mamma says, no man would ever think of marrying a girl who thinks of nothing but displaying the products of industry. Rothschilds are not to be met with at every turn, and Pepa de Fúcar is enough to frighten away her suitors. She is recklessly extravagant and wilful, full of whims, and very badly brought up, and will end by falling into the hands of some fortune-hunter. So Mamma says, and she knows the world; and I really believe she is right.
“I do not think her so pleasing even as some people do, nor as I thought her myself, when I was dying of jealousy. She is too tall and thin to be graceful. It is impossible to deny that she has a fine complexion, but one needs a microscope to see her eyes, they are so small. They say she is very amusing and agreeable, but this I know nothing about, as I never talked to her, and never wish to. I have seen her from a distance, on the sands and in the gallery of the bathing house, and her manners struck me as decidedly free and easy. I fancied she looked rather particularly at me; and I looked at her, intending to convey to her that I did not care a straw about her. I do not know whether I succeeded.
“She was here three days and I would not go out; I never cried more in my life. At last she went away; but the joy I felt in her absence is somewhat clouded by the knowledge that you and she are in the same place. All day yesterday I was wishing that there were some very, very high tower here, from which I could see what is going on at Iturburua. I would be at the top with one jump. But indeed I trust your loyalty—and if you will tell her that you love no one but me, if she has any affection for you still, and is furious when she hears it—yes, furious—do let me know; I long to have that satisfaction.
“We expect you on Monday. Papa says that if you do not come, you are not a man of your word. He is very anxious to see you to discuss some question of politics, for, by his account, there is a perfect plague of politicians here who utterly disgust him. If they would but make him a Senator!—and to tell you the truth, I almost fear for his reason if he does not attain to that bench of the blessed. He still suffers from a mania of writing letters to the papers. We have had some these last few days, and some articles as well. Mamma, of course, knows them, and they invariably begin with: “It is greatly to be regretted....”
“He came in to-day quite proud to show me your new book. He praised it highly and read the opening sentences aloud to Mamma. It was a most laughable scene; neither he, nor Mamma, nor I understood a single word of it; but, in spite of that, we had the highest opinion of the learning displayed in the book. You may fancy how much we should understand of an ‘Analysis of the Plutonic rocks in the Columbrete islands,’ and the interest I should take in quartinary deposits or in metamorphic or azoic strata. Why, I find it hard enough to spell the words, and have to copy them letter for letter. However, the mere fact that it was you who wrote this mass of mysterious learning, is enough to give it a charm in my eyes. I spent a long time poring over your pages, as though I were trying to learn Greek, and—you will not believe me, but it is quite true—I read and read, full of admiration and respect for you who had written them. Among all those monstrous names too I came on some which took my fancy in a vague fashion, such as syenite, variolite, amphibolite. They sound to me like the endearing names of fairies and cherubs who danced round you while you were studying the works of God down in the bowels of the earth.
“You see I have become poetical without intending it, a thing which is past endurance I admit, and yet this villainous letter will not get itself finished! But Mamma is calling me to go out with her; she is dreadfully bored here. She says it is the most detestable of bathing places, and that she would rather stay in Madrid than ever come here again. There is no casino, no society, no excursions to make, no shops with pretty things, no company worth looking at—in fact there is no second Biarritz in the world.
“Leopoldo, too, is bored to death. He says it is a population of savages, and he cannot understand how any decent person can like to bathe among the Caffirs—so he calls the poor Castilians who swarm on the sands. Gustavo is gone to France, to visit that good angelic creature Luis Gonzaga, who is very ailing. Poor little brother! A few days since he sent an Italian priest to call on us, Don Paoletti by name, a charming man who talked delightfully. But I want to tell you everything and really cannot. My paper is coming to an end, and Mamma is calling me again. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. Do not fail us on Monday, and we will talk of that—you know what. At night, when I say my prayers, I pray for you. Now do not put on that disagreeable face. There is a dark corner in your soul which I do not at all like. Well, I will say no more for fear of assuming the airs of a preacher, and for fear too of anticipating a great work—that sentence too may remain unfinished. Give my love to Syenite, Pegmatite and Amphibolite, the only fair beings of whom I am not jealous, and good-bye. I love you with all my heart; nay I am simpleton enough to believe all you tell me, and I expect you on Monday. So till Monday, farewell. Beware of failing me. If you do, you will see what you will see!
María.”