“Oh, no, indeed!” murmured Lucía, whose glowing and animated face looked like a newly opened rose. “I would not be a nun for a kingdom. I have no vocation for that kind of life.”
“It is settled”; said Señor Joaquin to himself; “the pot begins to boil; the girl must be married.” And he added aloud: “If that is the case, then, child, I think you should not scorn Señor de Miranda. He is a perfect gentleman, and for politics—what an understanding he has! He is not displeasing to you?”
“I have said already that he is not,” replied Lucía, in more tranquil tones.
That same afternoon the Leonese himself took this satisfactory answer to Miranda.
Colmenar wrote to Señor Joaquin a letter that was not without its effect. And before many days had elapsed Miranda said to his future father-in-law, in a pleased and confidential tone:
“Our friend Colmenar will be padrino; he delegates his duties to you, and sends this for the bride.”
And he took from its satin-lined case a pearl-handled fan, covered with Brussels lace, light as the sea-foam, that a breath sufficed to put in motion.
To describe Señor Joaquin’s gratification and pride would be a task beyond the power of speech. It seemed to him as if the personality of the famous political leader had suddenly, and by some occult means, become merged in his own; he fancied himself metamorphosed, become one with his idol, and he was almost beside himself with joy; and any doubts that might still have lingered in his mind, with regard to the approaching nuptials, vanished. Unwilling to be behind Colmenar in generosity, in addition to settling a liberal allowance on Lucía, he presented her with a large sum of money for the expenses of the wedding journey, whose route, traced by Miranda, included Paris, and certain beneficial mineral springs prescribed for him some time before by Rada, as a sovereign remedy in bilious disorders. The idea of the journey appeared somewhat strange to Señor Joaquin. When he married, the only excursion he made was from the porter’s lodge to the grocery. But since his daughter was making her entrance into a higher social sphere, it was necessary to conform to the usages of her new rank, however singular they might appear. Miranda had declared this to be so and Señor Joaquin had agreed with him; mediocre natures are always ready to yield to the authority of those who care to take the trouble to manage them.
Any one with the slightest knowledge of provincial towns can easily picture to himself how much comment and criticism, open and concealed, were aroused in Leon by the marriage of the distinguished Miranda with the low-born heiress of the ex-grocer. It was criticised without measure or judgment. Some censured the vanity of the old man who, tired at the end of his days of his humble station, desired to bestow upon his daughter the style and rank of a marchioness (there were not a few for whom Miranda served as the traditional type of the marquis). Others criticised the bridegroom as a hungry Madridlenian, who had come to Leon with a superabundance of airs and an empty purse, in order to free himself from his embarrassments by means of Señor Joaquin’s dollars. Others again described satirically the appearance the country girl, Lucía, would make when she should wear for the first time a hat and a train and carry a parasol. But these criticisms were disarmed of their sting by the proud satisfaction of Señor Joaquin, the childish frivolity of the bride, and the courteous and well-bred reserve of the bridegroom. Lucía, true to her purpose of not thinking of the marriage itself, busied her thoughts with the nuptial accessories and described to her friends with satisfaction the proposed journey, repeating the euphonious names of cities that seemed to her enchanted regions,—Paris, Lyons, Marseilles,—where the girl fancied the sky must be of a different color, and the sunshine of a different nature, from the sunshine and the sky of her native village. Miranda, by means of a loan he had negotiated, purposing to repay it afterward with his generous father-in-law’s money, ordered from the capital exquisite presents—a set of diamonds and a box filled with elegant articles of wearing apparel, the work of a celebrated man-milliner. Lucía, who after all was a woman, and to whom all these splendors were new, more than once, like Faust’s Marguerite, pleased herself by trying on the precious baubles before the looking-glass, shaking her head to make the diamonds in the earrings, and in the flowers scattered among her dark tresses, flash back the light more brightly. In this way women amuse themselves when they are young and sometimes long after they have ceased to be young. But Lucía was not to preserve her youth forever.