[CHAPTER XX.]
A NEW WORLD.
We must now go back a few days.
When Teodoro Golfin first removed the bandage for a few moments from Pablo Penáguilas' eyes, the boy uttered a cry of terror. Every impulse made him shrink from all he saw; he put out his hands as though by pushing away one object he could get away farther from the rest. Luminous space was to him like a vast void into which he felt as if he must fall; and the instinct of self-preservation made him close his eyes to feel himself safe. However, his father, the surgeon, and the rest of them, persuaded him to try once more, for all were equally anxious; he looked again, but his terror was no less. The images of all he saw, rushed into his brain with such sudden violence and confusion—with a sort of storm and assault, as it were—that he felt as if they were falling upon him bodily. The distant mountains seemed to lie within reach, and the persons and objects that were near him seemed, literally, to strike his eyes.
Golfin noted these phenomena with the most eager interest; this was the second case of cure of congenital blindness which he had had the opportunity of studying. The others hardly dared to be glad; they were so bewildered and alarmed by the agitating effects produced on the patient by the first exercise of the function of sight. To Pablo himself it was a series of delightful experiments. His nerves and his imagination were so seriously excited the surgeon thought it prudent to compel him to rest.
"Now," he said, smiling, "you have seen enough for to-day. You cannot step out of darkness into light, into the wide domain of the sun, as you would walk into a theatre. This is a new birth, with pain as well as joy in it."
Presently the young fellow was so eager to try his newly-found power once more, that Golfin consented to open a crack, as it were, upon the outer world.
"My whole mind," said Pablo, trying to explain his first impressions, "seems bathed in beauty—a beauty I had never dreamed of before. What were the things which rushed in upon me and filled me with terror? It was the sense of size, of space, which I had never before conceived of but in a very imperfect manner, and which dawned upon me clear and terrible; as if I were being dragged up to the highest mountains and down to the deepest abyss. It is all grand and beautiful, but it makes me tremble. But I want to feel it all once more. All the glory and loveliness that I gazed at has made me feel bewildered and humbled; it was like some serene and majestic presence bending down to meet me. The whole universe seemed to be rushing towards me and I was startled and terror stricken—the sky looked like a vast space, watching, listening—I cannot put it into words.—It was vacancy, but strangely full of expression. All that landscape of sky and mountains looked at me, came down upon me—but it was all so cold, and grand, and stern. Let me see something delicate, something gentle and lovable—Nela! Where is Nela?"
Golfin once more relieved him of the bandage, and giving him a pair of suitable spectacles, he left him free to look about him.
"Oh! is that Nela! Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Pablo enchanted.
"This is your cousin Florentina."