“Nada, nada,”[198] interrupted Antonio, “she is as sensible as ever. Alas! I could even bear to see her insane, for then I might hope that time would effect a change.”
“Is it Etica?” I asked, knowing that the Spaniards consider consumption both incurable and highly infectious.
A mournful shake of the head was his reply.
“What then, my good Antonio, is the nature of her malady?”
“Ojala[199] that it could be called a malady, Don Carlos,” ejaculated the silver cross of San Fernando; “it might not then be beyond the reach of the physician’s art. But Dios de mi vida! there is no hope for her, unless a miracle can be wrought. It is to have a consultation on that point, I am come to San Roque.”
“What,” said I, my patience thoroughly exhausted, “has she embraced Mohammedanism?”
“Not far from it, Don Carlos—she is possessed of a devil!"
“Friend Antonio,” said I, “congratulate yourself;—such discoveries are seldom made before marriage. Let me, however, persuade you, instead of consulting with priests, to allow an heretical English doctor to meet this devil face to face; his simple nostrums may perchance be found more efficacious than the exorcisms of the most pious divines. But explain to me the signs and symptoms of the presence of this imp of darkness; and pardon my making light of so serious an affair, for, rest assured, the evil one is not now permitted to torment the human frame with bodily anguish; his toils are spread for catching souls; and worldly pleasures, not personal sufferings, are the means he employs to effect his purpose.”
Antonio then entered into a detailed account of his betrothed’s ailment, as well as of the mode of treatment that had been adopted; but, ignorant, superstitious, and bigoted, as I knew the campestral Spanish faculty to be, I had yet to learn how far they could practise on the credulity of their infatuated patients.
Manuela, it appeared, had, one day during the preceding Lent, been so imprudent as to taste some chicken broth that had been prepared for her sick father; and it was supposed, that the devil, assuming the appearance of the egg of some insect, had gained admission to her throat and settled in her breast, where he had ever since been nurtured and was gradually “comiendo su vida!”[200]