"Novice as you are, you have no means of knowing what you are doing. I am sorry for you. You are deluding yourself. In the present state of society, in order to attain eminence in anything, you must sweat blood like Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. If it is lyric poetry that is in question, God help you! If you write comedies or farces, you have an enviable fate before you—to flatter the actors, to have your manuscript lie neglected in the corner of a drawer, to have half an act cut out at a stroke; and then the dread of the first night, and of what comes after it—which may be the worst of all. If you become a journalist, you will not have ten minutes in the day to yourself, you will make the reputation of others, and you will never see even so much as the shadow of your own. If you write books—but who reads in Spain? And if you throw yourself into politics—ah, then indeed!"
Segundo, his eyes cast down, his gaze wandering over the pine knots in the boarded floor, listened without opening his lips to those convincing accents that seemed to tear away one by one the rose-leaves of his illusions, with the same strident sound with which the nail of the speaker flicked away the ash of his cigar. At last he raised his contracted face and looking at the statesman said, not without a touch of sarcasm in his voice:
"As for politics, Señor Don Victoriano, it seems to me that you ought not to speak ill of that. It has treated you well; you have no cause of complaint against it. For you politics has not been a stepmother."
Don Victoriano's countenance changed, showing plainly the ravages disease had made in his organism; and rising to his feet a second time, he threw away his cigar and, walking up and down the room with hasty steps, he burst forth passionately, in words that rushed from his lips in a sudden flood, in an impetuous and unequal stream, like the stream of blood gushing from a severed artery:
"Don't touch that point. Be silent about that, boy. How do you, how does anybody know what those things are until he has thrown himself headlong into them and is caught fast and cannot escape! If I were to tell you—but it is impossible to tell one's whole life, day by day, to describe a battle which has lasted for years, without rest or respite. To struggle in order to make one's self known, to go on struggling to keep one's self from being forgotten, to pass from law to politics, from a wheel set with knives to a bed of live coals, to fight in Congress without faith, without conviction, because one must fight to keep the place one has won; and with all this not to have a free hour, not a tranquil moment, not have time for anything. One achieves fortune when one no longer has the inclination to enjoy it; one marries and has a family and—one has hardly liberty to accompany one's wife to the theater. Don't talk to me. A hell, a hell upon earth is what politics is. Would you believe" (and here he uttered a round oath) "that when my little girl was beginning to walk, I proposed to myself one day to have the pleasure of taking her out walking—a caprice, a whim. Well, I was going downstairs with the child in my arms, very contented, when lo, I found myself face to face with the Marquis of Cameros, a candidate for representative from Galicia, who had come to ask me for fifteen or twenty letters—written in my own hand so that they might prove more efficacious. And I was such a fool, man, I was such a fool, that instead of throwing the Marquis down the stairs, as I ought to have done, I walked back my two flights, gave the child to her nurse, and shut myself up in my office to prepare the election. And it was the same thing always; tell me, then, have I reason or not to abominate such folly, such humbug? Ah, what pains we are at to make ourselves miserable!"
There could be no doubt of it; in the voice of the statesman there was the sound of repressed tears; in his throat smothered curses and blasphemies struggled for utterance. Segundo, to do something, threw open the window leading to the balcony. The sun was low in the heavens; the heat had grown less intense.
"And worst of all—the consequences!" continued Don Victoriano, pausing in his walk. "You strive and struggle without pausing to reflect what will be the effect upon your health. You fight, like the knights of old, with visor down. But as you are not made of iron, but only of flesh and blood, when you least expect it, you find yourself sick, sick, wounded, without knowing where. You do not lose blood, but you lose the sap of life, like a lemon that is squeezed." And the ex-Minister laughed bitterly. "And you want to stop, to rest, to get back health at any cost, and you find that it is too late; you have not a drop of moisture left in your body. Well, keep on until there is an end to you. Much your labors and your triumphs have profited you! You have drawn down on yourself a doom from which there is no escape!"
He spoke with gesticulations, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets in an outburst of confidence, expressing himself with as little reserve as if he had been alone. And in reality he was talking to himself. His words were a monologue, the spoken utterance of the gloomy thoughts which Don Victoriano, thanks to heroic efforts, had hitherto been able to conceal in his own breast. The strange malady from which he suffered gave rise to horrible nightmares; he dreamed that he was turning into a loaf of sugar and that his intellect, his blood, his life, were flowing away from him, through a deep, deep channel, converted into syrup. In his waking moments his mind refused to accept, as one refused to accept a humiliation, so strange a malady. Sanchez del Abrojo must be mistaken; his was some functional, transitory disorder, an ordinary ailment, the result of his sedentary life, and Tropiezo's old-fashioned remedies would perhaps after all prove more efficacious than those of science. And if they did not? The statesman felt a cold chill run through him that made his hair stand on end and constricted his heart. To die when he was scarcely past forty, with his mental powers unimpaired, with so many things begun, so many accomplished! And no doubt this consuming thirst, this insatiable voracity, this debilitating sensation of melting away, of fusion, of dissolving, were all fatal symptoms.
Suddenly Don Victoriano remembered the presence of Segundo, which he had almost forgotten. And laying both hands on his shoulders a second time, and fixing on the poet's eyes, his dry eyes, scorched by repressed tears, he cried:
"Do you wish to hear the truth, and to receive good advice? Have you ambitions, aspirations, hopes? Well, I have had disappointments, and I desire to do you a service by recounting them to you now. Don't be a fool; stay here all your life; help your father, take up his practice when he lays it down, and marry that blooming daughter of Agonde. Never leave this land of fruits, of vines, whose climate is so delightful. What would I not give now never to have left it! No, my boy, remain quietly here; end a long life here surrounded by a numerous progeny. Have you observed how healthy your father is? It is a pleasure to see him, with his teeth so sound and perfect. I have not a single tooth that is not decayed; they say that it is one of the symptoms of my malady. Why, if your mother were living now you would be having little brothers and sisters."