“Go to the deuce, to the deuce!” exclaimed Perico, faithful to his rule of always speaking his mind freely. “Can’t you wait a fortnight to oblige me? What are you going to do in Spain? To bury yourself in Leon, and vegetate there, vegetate there. Here you are in the honeymoon, the honeymoon. Not a word, not a word. I will leave my sister with you. I know she will be well taken care of, well taken care of. Good-by; I must catch the train. I will bring you back a deer’s head for a cane-rack.
Perico was already at the door. Miranda called to him from the window; but the young man turned round smiling, and waving him an adieu, hurried on in the direction of the station. And so it was that in this struggle between two selfish natures, the most daring, if not the bravest or the noblest, conquered.
Miranda was in a diabolical humor when Duhamel came to afford him some slight consolation, saying that the sick girl during the last few days had shown signs of improvement and that she ought to avail herself of them to return to Spain in search of a milder climate, adding, in his broken French-Portuguese that, as he intended, like most of the other consulting physicians of Vichy, to return soon to Paris, they might travel together, and in this way he would be able to see how the motion of the train agreed with the patient, and to determine whether she needed to rest or whether she could bear the journey to Spain without further delay. The doctor’s advice appeared to every one to be very judicious and Lucía wrote a letter to Perico, at the dictation of Pilar, charging him to return within a fortnight, as that was the date fixed upon by Duhamel to close his office at Vichy. The new arrangement moderated in some slight degree the ill-humor of Miranda, consoled Lucía, and rejoiced the patient, who longed, above all things, to return to Madrid.
It was true; the very frailty of Pilar’s constitution, opposing less resistance to the disease, retarded the inevitable termination of her sufferings; and as the hurricane that uproots oaks only bends the reed, so was the progress of the malady which had declared itself less violent in this delicate frame than it would have been in a more vigorous one. In a portion of one of the lungs, tubercles were present, and those terrible breaches had already been made in it which doctors call cavities; but the other lung was still unaffected. It is with the lungs, however, as it is with fruit—a very brief space of time is sufficient to infect a sound one if the one beside it be decayed. At all events, the momentary improvement in Pilar was so marked as to allow of her taking a short walk every morning, leaning on Lucía’s arm; and her disinclination for food was now not so obstinate as before.
CHAPTER XII.
The aspect of Vichy, in truth, in those last days of October, was well calculated to inspire sadness. Dead leaves lay everywhere. The park, formerly so full of animation, was deserted; only a few visitors, who had come late in the season to drink the waters—and who were really ill—were to be seen promenading the asphalt pavement lately thronged with richly-dressed people and enlivened by the buzz of cheerful conversation. No one hastened now to sweep up and carry away the yellow leaves that covered the ground like a carpet, for Vichy, so clean and attractive in the season, becomes neglected-looking and filthy as soon as its fashionable summer guests have turned their backs upon it. The whole town looked as if a general removal were taking place; the adornments of the balconies of the châlets, deserted now by their tenants, had been removed, so that they might not be injured by the rains; in the streets were heaps of brick and mortar to be used in building, which no one had ventured to undertake in the summer, not wishing to mar the beauty of the place during the season. The shops for the sale of articles of luxury had, one after another, closed their shutters, and their owners, taking with them their wares, had departed for Nice, Cannes, or some other wintering place of the kind. A few shops still remained open, and their show-cases served to divert Lucía and Pilar when they went out for their leisurely walks. The chief of these was a shop for the sale of curiosities, antiques, and objects of art, situated almost in front of the famous “Nymph,” and consequently at the back of the Casino. The shop being too small to conveniently hold the mare magnum of objects which it contained, they overflowed its limits and invaded the sidewalk. It was a delightful occupation to rummage among its recesses, and to pry into its corners, making at every instant some new and curious discovery. The proprietors of the shop, having little business at this season, made no objection to their doing so. They were a married couple: the husband a Bohemian from the Rastro, with sleepy eyes, a well worn coat and a torn necktie worthy of a place among the antiques of his shop; the wife fair, thin, willowy, and agile as a garret cat, gliding among the precious objects heaped up to the ceiling. Lucía and Pilar found great amusement in examining the heterogeneous assemblage. In the center of the shop, a superb table of Sèvres porcelain and gilt-bronze proudly displayed its splendor. On the central medallion was represented in enamel, on a blue background of the shade peculiar to pâte tendre, the broad, good-natured, but rather sad countenance of Louis XVI; around this was a circle of smaller medallions, representing the graceful heads of the ladies of the court of the guillotined king—some with powdered hair, piled high on the head, and surmounted by a large basket of flowers; others with hoods of black lace fastened under the chin; all with immodestly décolleté gowns, all smiling and richly dressed, with the freshest of complexions and the rosiest of lips. If Lucía and Pilar had been learned in history, how many reflections would have been suggested to them by the sight of all these ivory necks adorned with diamond necklaces or tight velvet bands, destined, doubtless, like that of the king who presided with melancholy air over the beautiful bevy, to bow to the executioner’s knife.
The pride of the collection was the ceramics. There were a number of Dresden figures, pure, soft, and delicate in coloring as the clouds painted by the dawn; rosy cupids garlanded with wreaths of sky-blue flowers; shepherdesses with a complexion of milk and roses guarding sheep adorned with crimson bows; nymphs and swans who exchanged amorous compliments in groves of a pale green, planted with roses; violinists holding the bow with affected grace, advancing the right foot, ready to take part in a minuet; flower-girls who simperingly pointed to the basket of flowers which they carried on their left arms. Side by side with these pastoral fancies, rare products of Asiatic art displayed their strange and deformed shapes, like idols of a barbarous faith; across rotund vases, adorned with yellow leaves and purple or flame-colored flowers, flew bands of unnatural-looking birds or glided monstrous reptiles; on the dark background of flat-sided vases stood out boldly fantastic scenes—green rivers flowing over ochre beds; kiosks of crimson lake, hung with golden bells; mandarins with gorgeous trains falling in straight lines, sleek, drooping mustaches, oblique eyes, and heads like pumpkins. The Majolica and Palissy plates seemed fragments taken from the bed of the sea, pieces of some sunken reef or of some oozy river-bed. There, among sea-weed and algae, glided the gleaming, slimy eel, the mussel opened its fluted shell, the silver bream flapped its tail, the snail lifted up its agate horn, the frog stared with stony eyes, and the many-clawed crab, looking like an enormous black spider, moved along with a sidewise motion. There was a dish on which Galatea reclined among the waves, her coursers, blue as the sea, pawing the air with their webbed hoofs, while Tritons, with puffed-out cheeks, blew their winding trumpets. In addition to the porcelain there were pieces of silver, antique and heavy, such as are handed down from father to son in honest provincial families; enormous salvers, broad trays, huge soup-tureens with massive artichokes for handles; there were wooden coffers inlaid with pearl and ivory; iron chests carved with the delicacy of filagree-work; china tankards of antique shape, with metal bands that recalled the beer-drinkers immortalized by Flemish art.
Pilar was enchanted especially with the agate cup-shaped jewel-cases, with the jewelry of different epochs, from the amulet of the Roman lady to the necklace of false stones and fine enamels of the time of Marie Antoinette; but what most delighted Lucía were the church ornaments, which awoke in her the religious sentiment, so well calculated to move her sincere and ardent soul. The figures of two of the apostles, solemnly pointing heavenward, stood outlined in brass on two stained glass windows, doubtless torn from the ogive of some dismantled monastery. On a triptych of brownish yellow ivory were represented Eve, with meager nude figure, offering Adam the fatal apple, and the Virgin in the mysteries of the Annunciation and of the Ascension; all incorrectly done, with that divine candor of early sacred art, in the ages of faith. Notwithstanding the rudeness of the design, the face of the Virgin, the modesty of her downcast look, the mystic ideality of her attitude charmed Lucía. If she had had money enough, she would certainly have bought a crucifix which lay unnoticed among the other curiosities of the shop. It was of ivory also, and was made in a single piece, with the exception of the arms. The expression of the dying Christ, nailed to a rich pearl cross, was painfully realistic, the nerves and muscles showing the contraction of the death agony. Three diamond nails pierced the hands and feet. Lucía said a paternoster every day before it and even kissed the knees when she thought herself unobserved.
She enjoyed looking at paintings; all the more as she could understand them, which was not the case with all of the objects of art, some of which she thought ugly and extravagant enough. It was plain that that fierce swaggerer, rushing, sword in hand, on his adversary, was going to cleave his heart in twain at a blow. What a lovely sunrise in that Daubigny! With what naturalness those sheep of Jacque—valued at a thousand francs apiece (there were twelve in the picture) were browsing! How white the feet which that Favorite Sultana of Cala y Mora was dipping in the marble basin! The head of the young girl, after Greuze, was a marvel of innocent grace. And that Quarrel in a Flemish Inn—it was enough to make one laugh to see how the earthenware flew around in fragments, and the copper saucepans rolled about, and the two plowmen of St. Oustade, misshapen and clownish-looking, distributed blows and cuffs on all sides, their ape-like ugliness heightened by the grotesqueness of their attitudes.