It stood among the verdure, the face and figure to the waist perfectly displayed. This was—yes, certainly—the very presence of the Maiden of Nazareth, whose moral loveliness every painter has endeavored to express by means of physical beauty, from St. Luke downwards through eighteen centuries. Have not men indeed seen that sacred form with the eyes of sense—with the eyes of Albert Dürer—of Rafael—of Van Eyck—of Bartolomé Murillo? It was under the Rafaelesque aspect that she now appeared to Nela, the most realistic of all, if realism can mean the nearest approach of perfect human beauty to an artistic representation of divine goodness. The oval of her face was less narrow than the Seville painter's type, and had more of the tender roundness of the Italian form. Her eyes, which were finely shaped, were gentleness itself, with a softness and sweetness as far removed from indifference, as from the lightning glow of the eyes of Andalucia; the brows that overarched them were delicately curved, and as fine as if they had been traced with a paint-brush. Her forehead was unshadowed by any cloud of weariness or sadness, and her lips, which were rather full, parted in a smile that revealed the pearliest teeth that ever bit into the apples of Paradise. And so, without in the least intending it, I have compared her to our Mother Eve—wide as the distance is between her who yielded to the Serpent and her who set her heel on his head; but the beauty of a lovely girl is enough to betray us into such unlucky blunders. To put a finishing touch to this imperfect description of the divine vision which had so utterly dismayed poor Marianela, it must be said that her complexion was of that faded rose color, or warm clear brown which gives an enchanting glow to the faces of those glorious pictures which successive generations, of believers and heretics alike, have worshipped in ecstasy.
After the first shock of surprise was over, the first thing that Nela observed, and which confused her judgment greatly, was that the fair Virgin wore a blue ribbon round her throat, a detail she had never before seen in any picture or dream of the Virgin Mary; then she perceived that her shoulders and bosom were covered by a dress in every respect similar to that worn by other ladies; but the thing which puzzled and disturbed her most was that the fair creature was picking blackberries—and eating them.
She was beginning to draw accurate inferences from this remarkable behavior, when she heard a loud man's voice calling:
"Florentina, Florentina!"
"I am here, Papa—here, eating blackberries."
"Naughty child—how can you like to eat blackberries? What next whim will you take? Have I not told you that they are only fit for the poor children that run about the country, and not for a young lady who has been properly brought up.—Do you hear? And lived in good society."
Nela saw the speaker come towards them. He was a man of advanced middle age and medium height, rotund, and with a ruddy countenance that seemed to radiate satisfaction as the sun radiates light. His legs were thin, his nose was large, and his person decorated with a variety of splendid objects, among which a thick watch-chain was conspicuous, while he wore a broad-brimmed hat of fine black felt.
"Come, come, child," said Don Manuel Penáguilas, for he it was, "respectable people do not eat blackberries nor skip and jump about like that. There, you have torn your dress—I do not care about the dress, for I can buy you another as I bought you that—I only speak because the people here who see you might think you had no dress but the one you have on."
Nela, who by this time understood the case, looked at the young lady's dress. It was good and handsome, but her face betrayed unmistakably the transition—and a rapid one—from the position of a rich peasant's daughter to that of a fine lady. Every detail of her attire, from her shoes to her comb, stamped her as the daughter of the people in holiday clothes. But the girl's natural grace and beauty were so transcendent, that no deficiency, as measured by any conventional standard of elegance, could dim them. It was not to be denied, however, that her whole individuality cried out for a short peasant's skirt, hair dressed in plaits with a bunch of poppies to adorn it with affected simplicity, a sleeveless bodice, a coral necklace—in short, the costume which good taste and the nature of things would have suggested, without any admixture of the devices of the fine lady.