There was a pause during which the priest murmured a prayer.
“Father,” said María letting her hand fall on the bed to rouse him from the mystic trance into which he seemed to have fallen: “It strikes me that I ought to tell my husband that I forgive him.”
“It is unnecessary, but you can do so.”
“Who knows but that a few words spoken in such a solemn moment may not have an awakening effect on his perishing soul.”
“Yes, indeed; it is an idea worthy of your lovely character.—We will tell him.”
“At such a moment,” added María recurring to the ideas which Paoletti regarded as beneath her, and talking with nervous eagerness, “he cannot contradict me. Ah! he is so ready with his answers when I accuse him that he sometimes confounds me. Once....”
She paused a minute and then went on. “Once he came to me very melancholy and weary. It was a very wet night—and the poor fellow, having lent his carriage to a friend who was ill, was wet to the skin. The same day a friend had died, to whom he was very much attached, a well-known atheist, who, as you know, had constantly shared my poor Leon’s studies and opinions. Yes—he was very sad.—I pitied him as I saw him come in, but I was at my prayers, and I could not interrupt them. He changed his clothes, but he shivered just as much in his dry things as in his wet ones; he was trembling with fever. I ordered the servants to prepare some warm tea for him, and then went on with my prayers, beseeching God that He would touch his heart—but He never heard me!—Suddenly Leon came and sat down by me on a low stool almost at my feet, and took my hand and kissed it; his lips were burning: ‘I want to love and to be loved,’ he said. ‘Living like this, we are like two thistles growing each by itself in a field.’ It was all I could do not to listen to him. I was obliged to put down my prayer-book, but I went on praying without it, and kept my eyes fixed and my mind concentrated on holy things, so as to keep out all other thoughts. That very day you and I had talked together for a long time about the tactics employed by an infidel mind to entrap the godly. I fortified myself by recalling your words and let the electric current of affection that came from me to him pass by. I remained a perfect statue; I knew that I ought to be angry, so I was, and I flung his atheism in his teeth. He shivered with his chill and said: ‘Well, as my home is empty for me, I will go to some asylum.’ What things he said! ‘I want to love and to be loved,’—he said that again and again. He would laugh and pay me compliments like a boy; then he would talk about the house, and the children we never had.—But I was firm and as cold as ice, for if I had shown him the least tenderness, how elated he would have been, and I utterly humiliated!—And I should have felt that my humiliation was the abasement of the Christian Faith and Church. My plan was traced out for me—and how wisely! I rose from my knees: ‘Be converted and then I will listen to you,’ I said, and I left him alone.—How well I remember that night. I remember that as I went into my own room, I was quite grieved to see him so cold, and I took a cloak down from the door. I had begun my prayers again in my room when I heard him say: ‘Curses on those who made you what you are!’”
“But my beloved daughter,” said Paoletti, “you are agitating yourself unduly with these reminiscences.”
“I think I can see him now!” she went on with an ecstatic fire in her eye. “He was so pale, and his eyes were full of a desolate melancholy—he looked like a hungry child that puts out its arms to seek its mother’s breast and finds a stone.—I fancy I can still feel the rough touch of his beard on the back of my hand, and the weight of his weary head on my knees. I did not let it rest there, but I looked at him, asking myself why God had allowed materialism and disbelief to find a place in such a handsome head. And there is something fascinating in his black eyes—the grasp of his hand is so firm and manly—he has a combination of gravity and brightness—strength that does not detract from the beauty....”
“Friend of my soul,” interrupted Paoletti, “I conclude that when you dwell at length on his perfections, it is only to wonder how the Omnipotent in his supreme wisdom could join them to a blind soul, spiritually dead.”