"Maybe," said the blind boy, "that I may not find much to say that day."
Nela meanwhile was absolutely speechless.
When they had reached the crater of La Terrible, Florentina was greatly struck by the grand spectacle of the limestone rocks, left on the ground after the ore had been extracted. She compared them to huge masses of sugar loaves piled one on another; then, after looking a second time, she said they were like gigantic dogs and cats turned to stone at the critical moment of a furious fight.
"Let us sit down on this slope," she said, "and we shall see the trains go by with the mineral, and besides we can see these stones which are very curious. That large rock in the middle has a wide mouth—do you see, Nela?—and out of the mouth sticks a toothpick; it is a tree that has grown all alone there. It looks as if it were laughing at us, for it has eyes too; and there, farther on, is one with a hump, another smoking a pipe, and two pulling each other's hair; there is one yawning, another asleep and drunk, and another head downwards supporting a cathedral on his feet; then there is one playing the guitar, with a dog's head and coffee-pot on it like a cap."
"What you are saying," observed the blind man, "proves to me how differently things are seen by different eyes, and that the precious gift of sight sometimes travesties them strangely, changing their natural form into something whimsical and unreal; for, after all, what you see before you are neither cats nor men, toothpicks, cathedrals, nor coffee-pots, but merely limestone rocks and masses of calcareous stone stained with oxide of iron. And it is your eye that burlesques so simple a fact."
"You are right, cousin; and for that very reason I say it is our imagination that sees, and not our eyes. Nevertheless our sight is useful—to inform us, for instance, of certain things which poor people have not got and which we who are rich can give them." And as she spoke she touched Nela's dress.
"Why does not this dear little Nela wear better clothes?" she went on. "I have a number of frocks and I will give her one—and a new one too, into the bargain." Marianela, covered with blushes and confusion, did not raise her eyes.
"That is a thing I can never understand: why some have so much and others so little. I get quite angry with Papa when I hear him abusing those who wish that everything should be divided so that all should have an equal share. What do they call those people, Pablo?"