“Is she dying?”
“That was what I was telling you, and you did not listen,” said Don Pedro, who was also suffering from a wound. “It is only our duty to show our unfortunate guest how deeply we sympathise in his misfortune. We must do something worthy of our house and name. Do not you think it will be well to perform a religious ceremony that may give due expression to our desire to see María out of danger? We will do it on a scale of magnificence. The chapel here stood me in eighty thousand dollars—though it might have cost less if the artists I employed had been men of less talent and pretensions.—Well then, to-morrow I will have a solemn penitential service, which all the servants and people shall attend, with you at their head. I give you full authority to spend as much as you think proper in tapers. The worthy priest from Polvoranca shall celebrate mass, and if you would like to have some more priests, send to all that are within reach.”
Having thus spoken, he sighed deeply and left her. Was it that, having a heavy burthen on his own soul, he yearned to petition the favour and mercy of Heaven on his own behalf? But we do not know what were the troubles which had so suddenly transformed the marquis’ radiant smiles into a sour grimace of annoyance. The loan, after crossing the troubled waters of the Spanish bourse with a fair wind, would this very day reach the haven of realization; and it was quite certain that Fúcar, Soligny and a few other birds of the same feather in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, would haul in a handful of gold for interest, brokerage and commission. What then...?
The chapel of Suertebella was a handsome edifice, at one angle of the mansion; high-roofed, thick-walled, and shining as if it had been varnished. The interior was of stucco, full of imitations of coloured marbles and porphyry, with a great deal of gilding on bosses and mouldings, which produced the effect of a lavish display of livery-buttons and gold cord on the pediments and spandrils. The style of architecture can only be described as Græco-Chino-Roman—Gothic gargoyles combined with ornament of the new classical style which originated at Munich, and which our architects have adopted for the porticoes of our houses, the pantheons of our cemeteries, the entrances of our town-halls, and the dining-rooms of our millionaires. The pseudojasper, gold, and brilliant colours dazzled the eye till they all seemed to be swimming round and round the dome like fishes in a glass bowl. The roof was supported by highly respectable angels who, in the sculptor’s studio, had played the part of seductive nymphs; and the paintings in the dome represented the cardinal Virtues, who had been predestined to figure as Muses. Everything blazed with the glaring splendour which is now fashionable in our private rooms, and which in them is not out of place. There was not a Christian attribute or allegory that had not been evolved from the palette or the sculptor’s mould by the artists employed to decorate this chapel. We shall presently become acquainted with a ribald jester who, it was said, was one day giving a farcical, not to say a sacrilegious explanation of the figures that adorned it: This female figure with bandaged eyes and a chalice in her hand, represented Spain whom the financiers of state had blindfolded that she might not see the bitterness of her cup of ruin; that one, leaning on an anchor, with her eyes disconsolately turned up to Heaven, was Commerce in despair; and the matron caressing a whole tribe of children was Beneficence, a pleasing emblem of the interest taken by the Fúcars in property and labour, and of the tender solicitude with which they lent them a helping hand to the work-house. The four Fathers of the Church, all represented as writing very gravely with “The Eagle’s Quill,” personified the Press, always ready to sing the praises of wealthy capitalists, who, before acting on their own account, take advantage of its ready pen. The vessel sinking in the waves of Tiberias was the State, whose orators and leaders suffer so much buffeting, while the Multiplication of the Loaves was obviously prefigurative of the distribution and reception of certain articles supplied under contract; finally, the stolid Sibyls, sitting with their hands before them in utter absence of mind, represented government administration. And the irreverent commentator went on to give new readings of the texts that were inscribed on the fillets and architraves for the edification of the faithful: “I am Pedro (Peter) and on this stone I will build my house. Give unto me that which is Cæsar’s, and that which is God’s.”
The chapel, the allowance being made for modern taste in ecclesiastical architecture, was a handsome one. It was on a level with the ground-floor, and there was a second door to the garden by which the congregation were admitted. The roof rose higher than that of the house, displaying its bell-tower somewhat ostentatiously. It was dedicated to San Luis Gonzaga—whose image—a really fine piece of sculpture—stood on the high altar beneath a large representation of Calvary.
The pious ceremony took place, as Don Pedro had arranged. The sun had scarcely risen when wax tapers innumerable were lighted on the high altar and in the side chapels, and thousands of delicious flowers, arranged in jars and vases, added their tribute of beauty and perfume. The little sanctuary was, to use a vulgar phrase, a blaze of splendour. The lights and odours inspired a sort of fervour by stimulating the senses and firing the imagination, so that sight and hearing were powerfully excited. All the servants on the estate were present, from the steward to the lowest scullion, and from the head-gardener to the tiniest stable-boy. The service was celebrated by the priest from Polvoranca, a humble protégé of the great house; an old man, somewhat ridiculous in appearance, uniting to the most elaborate ugliness certain eccentricities and manias which, though they had gone much against him in his ecclesiastical career, had made him well known in all the country side. He received from Don Pedro a small salary for officiating every Sunday for the benefit of the servants and women of the house, and hearing them confess once a year—a pious formality that the millionaire kept up, with a view to protecting himself against peculation and domestic difficulties of various kinds.
Pepa Fúcar attended the service in the gallery communicating with the interior of the house; and with her, her waiting-maid and Monina, who could not understand why she was to be so quiet and good, and was on the point of lifting up her voice with a loud shout at the most solemn part of the service. Heaven only knows what she might have said if the nurse had not held her tightly, stopping her mouth, and threatening her that God would punish her by taking away her tongue. This had the desired effect, and Monina sat patiently till the end.
Pepa Fúcar knelt on a stool and leaned over the front of the balcony. Who can guess what was in her mind during that solemn hour, or for what, in truth, her aching soul petitioned?
The service ended, every one left the chapel, but Pepa remained in her place without moving from the attitude she had taken up from the beginning. With her head bent over the cushion and her face half-hidden in her folded hands she had not breathed a word or a sigh. When, at last, she looked up and prepared to rise, she gazed fixedly at the altar without any definite expression on her face; the cushion was wet with her tears, as though a jug of water had been spilt over it. She left the chapel and went towards her rooms; she was silent and grave, her eyes were red, her lips parted as if she must suffocate if she could not draw a deep breath. At the door of her own room she met her father.
Don Pedro, though he had not been present in person at the service, had looked out on to the chapel through a little window in the wall to the left, which opened from a passage in the house, and was screened by a figure of St. Luke the Evangelist. From thence Fúcar could note that all his household were present and that none were missing; he could admire the magnificence of his private sanctuary—la cathédrale pour rire, as our ribald jester called it—which in his eyes was “a gem among basilicas” and “full of character.” Indeed, it would have been difficult to refuse that modicum of praise to the grand Christian scheme of decoration worked out by one of the chief scene-painters of the capital.