"I will go."
"No—not you," said Pablo positively, taking his cousin's hand. "Your duty, most undutiful cousin, is to take care of me. If Golfin does not come soon to take off my bandage and put on my glasses, I shall do it myself. I have not seen you since yesterday, and I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it. Is Don Teodoro come?"
"He is down stairs with your father and mine. He will come up quite soon. Have patience; you are as bad as a school-boy."
Pablo writhed with irritation.
"Light, light!" he cried. "It is a crime to keep me in the dark so long. I cannot live like this—I shall die. I want what is the bread of life to me; I want the use of my eyes. I have not seen you to-day, cousin, and I am wild to see you. I am hungry, thirsty to see you. Oh! thank God for real knowledge! Thank God for having created you, sweetest of women, a combination of every beauty.—And yet, if after having created beauty, God had not given us hearts to feel it, how imperfect his work would have been! Light! light!..."
Teodoro came up and opened the gates of the outer world to him, filling his soul with joy, and he passed a quiet day talking of a variety of subjects. Not till the evening did his thoughts revert to that point in his past life, which seemed to be diminishing and fading in the distance, like vessels which on a clear day are lost on the horizon. It was in the tone of a man who recalls some long past circumstance, that Pablo asked: "Has not Nela made her appearance?"
Florentina replied that she had not, and they talked of other things.
In the course of the night, at a very late hour, Pablo heard the noise of voices in the house. He fancied he heard those of Teodoro Golfin, of Florentina, and of his father. But after that he slept quietly, though haunted in his dreams by the images of all he had seen and the phantoms of all he imagined. His dreams, which began tranquilly and smilingly, afterwards became agitated and painful, for in some deep recess of his soul, as though it were a vast cavern suddenly lighted up, rose a medley array of the beautiful and the hideous forms of the outside world—of passions awakened and memories buried—convulsing his whole soul. The following day, as Golfin had promised, he left his room to move about the house.