"Ah! little puss. I see which way the wind blows. Do you know that at this very moment my brother is talking seriously to his son? Family affairs! Well, and something very good is to come of it all—look, Don Teodoro, at my daughter's face; it is as red as roses in May. Now, I am off to hear what my brother has to say—what my brother has to say." And the worthy man departed.
Golfin went back to Nela.
"Did she sleep last night?" he asked.
"Very little. I heard her sobbing and crying all night. But to-night she shall have a good bed, for which I have sent to Villamojada, and I will put her in the little room next to mine."
"Poor little Nela!" said the doctor. "You cannot imagine what an interest I feel in this hapless creature. Some people would laugh at it, but we, at any rate, are not made of stone. What little we have done to improve the condition of this poor child, ought to be done for a large proportion of the human race. There are many thousands of beings in the world in the same plight as Nela. Who knows them? where are they? They are lost in the desert of society—for society has its deserts—in the dark places of life, in the solitudes of field labor, in mines, in factories. We pass them without even seeing them—we give them alms, perhaps, but without knowing them.—How are we to be cognizant of so base a class of humanity! At first Nela attracted me because I thought that hers was an exceptional nature; but, as I have thought more, I have felt that hers is after all only one of the commonest cases. It is an instance of the condition to which a highly-organized moral nature must be reduced, a nature apt for good, apt for learning, apt for virtue, but which can never develop its powers in the neglect and isolation to which it is condemned. They live blind in spirit, just as Pablo Penáguilas lived blind in body, though he possessed the latent faculty of sight."
Florentina was listening with eager sympathy and intelligence to the surgeon's speech.
"Look at her," he went on: "There she lies; she has a beautiful fancy, acute feelings, and can love with devotion and tenderness. She is gifted with a remarkable aptitude for every grace of mind, while, at the same time, she is full of the grossest superstitions; her religious ideas are vague, monstrous, and heterodox, and her moral sense needs guidance as much as her natural intelligence. She has had no education but what she has been able to give herself; like a tree that gets no nourishment but that of its own withered and fallen leaves, she owes absolutely nothing to any one else. In all her life she has never been taught a single lesson, never heard a word of loving counsel, nor a precept of pious dogma; she is guided entirely by ill-understood examples which she adapts to her own instincts and desires. Her criticisms are all her own, and as she is full of imagination and feeling, and the strongest native impulse of her soul is to worship something, she has worshipped Nature, after the fashion of primitive races. All her ideals are naturalistic—and if you do not quite understand what I mean, dear Florentina, I must explain myself more exactly another time.
"She has a really artistic passion for form and beauty. Her whole nature and her affections all centre round this idea. The gifts and graces of the mind are to her an unknown realm of beauty, a hardly-discovered land, of which she knows only so much as some traveller might of a new country on whose shores he had been shipwrecked. The great news of the gospel—the greatest achievement of the spirit of humanity—has hardly even sounded in her ears; she has the same faint suspicion of it that Asiatic nations may have of European culture—and if you do not quite understand me, dear Florentina, I must explain myself more exactly another time.
"But she is very capable of making rapid progress in a short time, and of rising to a higher level, nay to our own. Show her a little light and she will fly across the centuries—she has wandered from the track, and cannot see far, but give her light and she will find her way again. No one yet has ever put the torch in her hand, for Pablo Penáguilas, in his own ignorance of all external truth, contributed largely but unconsciously to increase her errors. Such a fantastic and extravagant idealist was not the best master for a nature like hers. We must set truth before the poor child, who is like a being raised from the dead of a remote past; we will teach her to know the graces of the mind; we will bring her down to our own century; we will give her soul a strength which as yet it has not, and put a noble Christian conscience in the place of her savage naturalism and wild superstitions. We have an admirable field to work in, a virgin soil on which to sow the seed of centuries of growth. We may make time fly fast over her head, showing her the truth it has revealed, and so create a new being—for indeed, dear Florentina, it is the same thing as creating a new being—and if you do not quite understand me, I must explain myself more exactly another time."
Florentina, though she made no pretensions to learning, thought that she did understand what Golfin had meant by his quaint and original harangue. She herself was about to add some remarks on the subject; but at that moment Nela woke. Her eyes timidly wandered round the room, and then rested alternately on the two faces that looked down at her.