A year passed. One morning, after a long silence on the part of Bazilio, she received a letter dated in Bahia, which began thus: “After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that we should regard our feeling for each other as a piece of childish folly.” On reading these words she fainted. Bazilio breathed profound distress through two pages full of explanations. He was still poor, he said, and would have many struggles to pass through before he would be able to earn enough for them both. The climate was execrable, and he did not wish to sacrifice the health of his dear angel. He called her “My dove,” and ended by signing his name in full in the midst of complicated flourishes.
For many months afterwards Luiza was very sad. It was winter; and seated at the window, working at her embroidery, she told herself continually that her illusions were forever dead. She thought of entering a convent, as her melancholy gaze followed the dripping umbrellas of the passers-by, or as she sang at night, accompanying herself on the piano, “Soares de Passos,”—
“Gone forever are the days
Blest that by thy side I passed,”
or the final aria of “Traviata,” or a sorrowful fado of Vimioso that she had just learned. Meantime her mother’s cold had grown worse, and this brought with it fears and nightly vigils beside the patient’s couch. During the convalescence they went to Bellas.
When they returned home in the winter she had gained flesh, her cheeks were rosy, and she ate with a good appetite. One day she chanced to come across a likeness of Bazilio, in a writing-desk,—a likeness which her cousin had sent her shortly after his arrival in Brazil, and which represented him with white trousers and a Panama hat. She looked at it and shrugged her shoulders. “To think that I should ever have allowed my peace to be disturbed by that good-for-nothing!” she said. “What a fool I was!”
Three years from this time she became acquainted with Jorge. At first she did not find him attractive; she did not like men with beards. Afterwards she noticed that Jorge’s beard was fine and silky; and she began to find a certain charm and sweetness in his glance. Without being in love with him, she felt when with him a languor and abandonment, as if she could be content to rest forever on his bosom, careless of what the future might bring. What joy when he said to her, “Let us get married”! He had caught her hand in his; that warm pressure penetrated to her inmost soul and pervaded her whole being. She answered yes, and then remained silent, unable to add another word, but with her heart beating violently under the bodice of her merino gown.
She was now engaged. What tranquil happiness for her mother!
They were married at eight o’clock in the morning one foggy day. It was necessary to light candles in order to put on her wreath and veil. That day remained in her memory, vague and indistinct, like some half-forgotten dream, in which stood out in clearly-defined outlines the discolored and swollen face of the priest and the horrible visage of a wretched-looking old woman trembling with the palsy, who held out her hand with mingled greed and hatred, fastened herself on each of the guests in turn, and pouring forth a volley of coarse speeches, when Jorge, much moved, distributed at the door of the church some pieces of money among the beggars. Her satin slippers were too tight for her; she felt a void in her stomach, and they were obliged to make her a cup of very strong tea on her return home. And afterwards, what fatigue when she unpacked her trunks in the evening in her new home!
But Jorge was now her husband, and a husband young, affectionate, and always cheerful. She told herself, therefore, that she would adore him. She was possessed by an insatiable curiosity in regard to everything pertaining to him,—to his business, his weapons, his papers. She observed other husbands attentively, and she grew proud of her own. Jorge surrounded her with all the delicate attentions of a lover; but in all that related to his honor or to his profession he was exacting to a degree that bordered on excess. At times he would make use of expressions that caused her to turn pale; he was jealous in the extreme, and one of her friends once observed to her, “That man is capable of striking you.” She had but little doubt of it, and this increased her love for him. He was her all,—her strength, her fortune, her religion; her maw, in a word. She thought of what she would have been, married to her Cousin Bazilio. What misery! What would have been her fate? She grew bewildered in the contemplation of the hypothetic modes of existence that unfolded themselves before her mind like scenes in a drama. She pictured herself in Brazil, reclining under the shade of the cocoanut-trees, in a hammock, attended by little negroes, and watching idly the flight of the paroquets, and those large spiders and horrible cockroaches that so greatly terrified her when she chanced to see one near her.