"Prove to me, then, that I am a vile calumniator, Don Estevan," he said, in a low and concentrated voice, as he regarded him with an expression of implacable hatred.
"Oh," Don Estevan exclaimed, "my brother!" and lolling like a drunken man, he recoiled a few paces, his face covered with a deadly pallor, his eyes suffused with blood, and immeasurably dilated. Don Mariano held him with a firm hand, to prevent him falling on the ground, and placed his face almost close to his.
"I am your accuser, Estevan," he said. "Accursed one, what have you done with my daughter?"
The other made no reply. Don Mariano regarded him for a moment with an expression impossible to describe, and disdainfully threw him off with a gesture of sovereign contempt. The wretch tottered, and stretched out his arms, trying instinctively to keep up; but his strength failed him; he fell on his knees, and buried his face in his hand, with an expression of despair and baffled rage, the hideousness of which no pencil could render.
The spectators remained calm and stoical. They had not uttered a word or made a sign; but a secret terror had seized upon them, and they exchanged looks which, if the accused had seen them, would have revealed to him the fate which in their minds they reserved for him.
Don Mariano gave his two servants a signal to follow him, and, with one on either side, he took his place in the centre of the clearing, in front of the improvised tribunal, and began speaking in a powerful, clear, and accented voice. "Listen to me, Caballeros, and when I have told you all I have to say about the man you see there crushed and confounded, before I had even uttered a word, you will judge him according to your conscience, without hatred or anger. That man is my brother. When young, for a reason it is unnecessary to explain here, my father wished to drive him from his presence. I interceded for him, and though I did not obtain his entire pardon, still he was tolerated beneath the paternal roof. Days passed, years slipped away; the boy became a man; my father, at his death, gave me his whole fortune, to the prejudice of his other son, whom he had cursed. I tore up the will, summoned that man to my side, and restored him, a beggar and a wretch, that share of the wealth and comfort of which his father, in my opinion, had not the right to deprive him."
Don Mariano stopped, and turned to his servants. The two men stretched out their right hands together, took off their hats, and said, in one voice, as if replying to their master's dumb questioning,—"We affirm that all this is strictly true."
"Hence this man owed me everything—fortune, position, future; for, owing to my influence, I succeeded in having him elected a senator. Let us now see how he rewarded me for so many kindnesses, and the extent of his gratitude. He had succeeded in making me forget what I regarded as errors of youth, and persuade myself that he was entirely reformed: his conduct was ostensibly irreproachable; under certain circumstances, he had even displayed a rigour of principle, for which I was obliged to reprove him; in a word, he had succeeded in making me his dupe. Married, and father of two children, he brought them up with a strictness which, in my eyes, was a proof of his reformation; and he carefully repeated to me often—'I do not wish my children to become what I have been.' Owing to one of those numberless pronunciamientos which undermine and dismember our fine country, I was an object of suspicion to the new government, through some dark machination, and compelled to fly at once to save my threatened life, I knew not to whom to confide my wife and daughter, who, in spite of their desire, could not follow me. My brother offered to watch over them. A secret presentiment, a voice from heaven, which I did wrong to despise, warned my heart not to put faith in this man, nor accept his proposition. Time pressed; I must depart; the soldiers sent to arrest me were thundering at the door of my house; I confided what was dearest to me in the world to that coward there, and fled. During the two years my absence lasted, I wrote letter after letter to my brother, and received no reply. I was suffering from mortal alarm, and was almost resolved, at all risks, to return to Mexico, when, thanks to certain friends who were indefatigable in my behalf, my name was erased from the list of postscripts, and I was permitted to return to my country. Scarcely two hours after receiving the news, I set out. I arrived at Veracruz four days later. Without taking time to rest, I mounted a horse, and galloped off, only leaving my wearied steed to take another, along the seventy leagues of road separating the capital from the port, and dismounted at my brother's door. He was away, but a letter from him informed me that, compelled by urgent business to proceed to New Orleans, he would return in a month, and begged me to await him. But not a word about my wife and daughter; not a syllable about the fortune I had entrusted to him. My alarm was changed into terror, and I presaged a misfortune. I left my brother's house, half mad, remounted the almost foundered horse that had brought me there, and proceeded as rapidly as possible to my own house. Windows and doors were closed; the house I had left so gay and animated was silent and gloomy as a tomb. I stood for a moment, not daring to rap at the door. At length I made up my mind, preferring the reality, however horrible it might be, to the uncertainty which drove me mad."
At this point in his story Don Mariano stopped. His voice was broken by the internal emotion he experienced, and which it was impossible for him to master any longer.
There was a solemn silence. Don Estevan had not changed his position. Since the beginning of his brother's narrative, he appeared to be plunged in profound grief, and crushed by remorse.