The vacation was drawing to a close, when we had an unexpected visitor. The irrepressible Serafín made his appearance without any signs of bitterness or ill-will, lazy and good-natured as a little dog, and took up his abode at Ullosa. I could not recollect that I had ever given him any invitation, and my mother was sure that she had not. We made the best of the situation, and from the first day my mother devoted him to trimming out the vines on the arbors, picking fruit, and feeding the chickens—tasks which he performed with the greatest pleasure. When we talked by ourselves, instead of displaying the slightest resentment, he embraced me warmly.
“Don’t you know?” he asked, affectionately; “as soon as you left, I untied myself. If they had caught me in such a fix, tied up, a nice time we should have had! What a joke! It was not right to watch them; but it was jolly fun. The wine was to blame for it all. The married couple went off to Pontevedra that very afternoon. Now they are showing themselves off there. The Saint complimented them by a grand dinner at Naranjal; they served up fried brains of taxpayers and pickled client’s leg. They had nougat for desert—as your uncle’s house is already rented for the post-office. Hey? He, he, he! Señor Aldao has obtained some cross or other, and is now called ‘Your Excellency.’ And you don’t know the best of it. Haven’t you heard about the irrision,—I mean procession,—in honor of the Virgin? I was amazed that fire from heaven did not fall upon it, as was said—Pluit super Sodomam et Gomorrham sulphur et ignem a domino de cœlo. If you could have seen that masquerade! There was Don Vicente carrying the standard; Pimentel, very stuck up, with his white cravat; your uncle carrying a lighted taper, with a face which looked like mortal sin; behind him all the political hangers-on, grasping tapers—they who never thought they would do such a thing! Then came the fellows with leggins, the secretaries to the Common Council, with white ruffles round their knees; all the mayors, and all the judges, and all the registrars, and all the supernumeraries. Oh, why didn’t you go to Pontevedra that day? We wont have another such in twenty years to come. Even the newspaper men and the masons carried tapers. I assure you it is true. And afterward El Teucrense called the procession a festival. What is a festival? Like a saturnalia, I presume.”
Afterward, lowering his voice, he added:
“There was a bishop there also, gaping away, and not out of devotion to the Virgin, either, but for the sake of the great saint with the fat offices. But don’t feel shocked at that. Nestorius was bishop of Constantinople. And who promoted the schism of that big hog of a king of England but another pig of a heretical bishop, who was called Crémor or Cremer! Don’t talk to me about bishops. The Church will have to be reformed by the Pope and us clergy alone—no, I mean the clergy’s apprentices and a few laymen with grievances—no matter what the Encyclical, cum multa, says.”
I assured him that I did not know what that Encyclical said, and then asked him, as though by chance, after Candidiña.
“A nice girl she is! He, he, he! She is there all alone with the old man, now. She’ll drive him distracted.”
He also spoke of Father Moreno, and I learned that the Moorish friar intended to spend a few days at Ullosa as soon as he had finished taking his sea-baths.
In fact, the Father arrived a few days later, covered with dust from his long ride in the diligence. My mother, who was very fond of him, received him quite coldly at first; she could not forgive him for having officiated at the marriage. But I overwhelmed him with polite attentions. I should have liked to be able to say to Aben Jusuf:
“My delirium has passed away. The sentimental fever has abated. If you only knew, Father, how well I feel now. Just like a person who uses an anæsthetic to cure his neuralgia, and does cure it. My neuralgia, or lover’s toothache, no longer exists. It seems impossible that I am the same one who almost broke his neck falling off a tree, lowered his dignity by playing the spy on a certain wedding night, wanted to throw himself into the sea, and begged a novitiate’s habit of you. Here you see a well-behaved young man, a student of engineering, and the son of Benigna Unceta, who, as you know, is a very practical lady. I am now sound and whole.”
If not exactly this, it was something very similar that I said to him in the course of a ramble over the mountains. I recollect that he seemed well pleased, and answered as follows: