“Don’t fear, señora. I will only speak of his platonic loves.”
“Of what loves? Are there, by accident, different sorts of loves?”
“Platonic love,” replied Raphael, “is that which is satisfied with a look, a sigh, or a letter.”
“This you say beforehand,” replied the marchioness; “but you know that the corps d’armée came afterwards. Turn down the leaf then on this chapter.”
“Marchioness, have no fear. My history will be such that, after having read it, all the world will see the portrait of my uncle, holding the sword in one hand, and in the other the holy palm. His first love was for a pretty daughter of Osuna, where his regiment was in garrison. The day when he least thought of it the order arrived to depart. My uncle said he would return, and she began to sing, ‘Marlboro’ goes to the war.’ She would sing it yet, if a big cultivator had not offered her his big hand and his big farm. However, at the first she was inconsolable; she wept like the clouds of autumn, and ceased not to cry day and night; ‘Santa-Maria!’ so much so that a servant who slept in the adjoining chamber, believing that her mistress said the litanies, never neglected to respond devoutly—ora pro nobis. My uncle received orders to go to America; he returned to Spain to take part in the war of independence, and had very little time to think of love. It resulted in his loving only the beauties he could make march to the beating of the drum; his character was soured to a point which obtained for him the surname of General Verjuice. The sobriquet remains.”
“What risks you run, my nephew!”
“Aunt, I risk nothing. I only repeat what others have said. Little by little his sixtieth year arrived, bringing with it the ordinary cortège of rheumatisms and catarrhs, ornamented with all the appearances of an approaching chronic state. My aunt and all his friends advised him to retire from the army, and to marry and live tranquilly. You see that my noble relation felt himself led near to homœopathy.”
“This new system,” demanded the marchioness, “which orders stimulants to refresh? Do not believe in them, doctor, and never give that kind of remedy.”
“Then, as I said,” continued Raphael, “there was here a young lady of a mature age, who would not marry to please her father, and her father would not allow her to marry according to her taste. The father, who is very haughty, saw that his child, called Donna Panaracia Cabeza de Vaca (head of a cow)—”
“Well! that noble part of the animal—”