This cause might be easily guessed. Don Cornelio loved Doña Angela. He loved her with all his strength—we will not say with a true and sincere love, for it was not love at all that he felt for her: another sentiment, less noble, but perhaps more lively, had craftily entered the gentleman's heart by the side of love.
This sentiment was avarice. We previously stated that Don Cornelio was under the influence of a fixed idea. This idea had led the Spaniard to America. The hidalgo wished to make his fortune by a marriage with a lady young, rich, and fair, but, before all, rich. A fixed idea is more than a passion, more than a monomania: it is the first stage of madness. Many times had Don Cornelio been deceived in his attempts on rich American women, whom he sought to dazzle, not by his luxury (for he was poor as Job, of lamentable memory), but by his personal advantages; that is to say, his beauty and wit. His meeting with Doña Angela decided his fate. Persuaded that the young lady loved him, he began to love her, for his part, with the frenzy of the drowning man, for whom such a love was the only chance of salvation.
When he perceived his error it was too late. We will do him the justice of conceding that the poor gentleman had struggled valiantly to tear from his heart this insensate passion. Unfortunately all his efforts were futile, and, as ever happens under such circumstances, forgetting all he owed to Don Louis, who had saved him not only from misery, but also from death, he felt for the count an intense hatred, the more tenacious because it was dumb and concentrated; and, by a natural feeling, he turned one half of that hatred on Doña Angela, although the young lady and the count had only been the instruments, throughout the affair, of that fatality which was so bitter against him.
Thus, with extreme patience and unexampled hypocrisy, Don Cornelio prepared his vengeance against these two beings, who had never done him aught but kindness, and watched with the perfidy of a wild beast the opportunity to destroy them. This opportunity would not be difficult to find in a country where treachery is the order of the day, and forms the basis of all combinations and transactions, of whatever nature they may be.
Don Cornelio had entered into relations with the enemies of the count, and surrendered to them the secrets the latter allowed to let slip in his presence. He had so arranged as to make his two foes fall into a trap from which they could not escape, and in wreathing round them a net from which extrication would be impossible. And now that we have explained Don Cornelio's feelings to the reader we will proceed with our narrative.
The Spaniard had succeeded in drawing over to his side Doña Angela's waiting maid. Thus Violanta betrayed her mistress to the profit of Don Cornelio, by whom she believed herself beloved, and who, had led her to fancy that he would marry her some day. From the camarista, who had remained on the listen, the Spaniard learned all that was said in the jacal between Father Seraphin, the count, and the young lady: the order he afterwards received to go to La Magdalena and purchase the gowns dissipated all his doubts, and he resolved to act without loss of time.
It was by his advice that the Mexicans were to attempt to attack the camp that very night: hence he knew where to find them. Taking advantage, therefore, of a moment when everybody was too busy with his own affairs to think about what others were doing, he glided silently out of the camp, like a man taking a morning's walk, gained a clump of trees behind which a horse was hidden, and rode off at full speed across country, after taking a scrutinising glance around to assure himself that he was not watched.
He galloped thus for several hours, not seeming to follow any regular road, dashing straight on, and paying no attention to obstacles, or not checking the speed of his horse. Still, gradually his thoughts, at first gloomy and sad, assumed a different direction: he attached the bridle to his saddle-bow, and for the first time for many a day his fingers began straying mechanically over the resonant strings of his jarana, which he always wore in a sling, and brought with him; then, yielding unconsciously to the influence of the surrounding scenery, he began singing in a loud voice that couplet of the romance which bore a certain degree of reference to his present position:—
"Amada enemiga mia,
De España segunda Elena,
O ¡si yo naciera ciego!
O ¡tú sin beldad nacieras!
Maldito sea el punto y hora
Que al mundo me dio mi estrella:
Pechos que me dieron leche
Mejor sepulcro me dieran
Pagará——"[1]
"Deuce take the owl singing at this hour!" a rough voice said, harshly interrupting the virtuoso. "Who ever heard such an infernal row?"