The marquesa and María sat for hours with the invalid, trying to cheer him with trivial chat.
“I do not fear death,” he would say with perfect truth, “on the contrary, I long for it with all my soul, as a captive longs for liberty. You do not understand, for you cling to the world—you do not live that inner life, you have not broken, as I have, with every tie of earth.”
His mother listened with a sigh to these seraphic aspirations, which filled her with grief and admiration as she reflected how far she was from such heights of piety. Seclusion and the intense heat had made the poor lady melancholy and despondent.
One evening when Leon was going home he said to María:
“It is nothing but a feeling of dignity, or rather a dread of ‘what people will say,’ that has kept your mother from following the others in their miserable desertion. What a hideous world we live in! But since all the rest have fled we will stay. Your brother is very ill—he may outlive the summer, but on the other hand he may flicker out of life when we least expect it.”
The following day the physician declared that the Tellería’s house, which was in a densely-built quarter, very sunless and ill-ventilated, was quite an unfit residence for an invalid; and it was agreed that he should be removed to Leon’s house, which was in the outskirts of the city, exposed to fresh breezes and peacefully retired from all noise and bustle. The sick man made no difficulties—he never did—and was taken to his sister’s home. He was settled on the ground floor to avoid the fatigue of stairs with a bed-room next to Leon’s study; and the study itself, a large, sunny, cheerful room, to sit in. But none of these advantages seemed to strike his attention; to him a palace and the gloomiest dungeon were alike.
The first day he suffered much from the move and the pain was so constant and so prolonged that his mother and sister were much alarmed; he, in the intervals of the paroxysms, was calm and smiling:
“Why,” he said, “are you uneasy? Why do you shed tears? I am neither alarmed nor sad, but the more I suffer the more I rejoice. I assure you that, seeing death so near at hand, I am full of contentment; though perhaps it may be that the hope of soon finding myself free from this corrupt and earthly body has given rise to some vanity in my soul, or to some other feeling displeasing in the sight of the Lord. I can only pray that if indeed I am too proud to be dying, God will chasten me and condemn me to live yet a little longer.”
He hardly ever spoke to Leon, for whenever his brother-in-law went to enquire how he was, or to sit with him for a while, he always found him engaged in his endless devotions which he would never shorten or postpone even on his worst days. They brought him everything that was choicest and most nourishing to eat, but he always picked out the worst pieces.