"No, Pepita; before I saw you, I had felt in imagination what might be the magic power, the fascination of a woman, beautiful of soul and graceful in person. There is no duchess or marchioness in Madrid, no empress in all the world, no queen or princess on the face of the globe, to be compared to the ideals and fantastic creations with whom I have lived. These were inhabitants of the castles and boudoirs, marvels of luxury and taste, that I pleased myself in boyhood by erecting in my fancy, and that I afterward gave as dwelling-places to my Lauras, Beatrices, Juliets, Marguerites, and Leonoras; to my Cynthias, Glyceras, and Lesbias. Them I crowned in my imagination with coronets and Oriental diadems; I clothed them in mantles of purple and gold, and surrounded them with regal pomp like Esther and Vashti; I endowed them, like Rebekah and the Shulamite, with the bucolic simplicity of the patriarchal age; I bestowed on them the sweet humility and the devotion of Ruth; I listened to them discoursing like Aspasia, or Hypatia, mistresses of eloquence; I enthroned them in luxurious drawing-rooms, and cast over them the splendor of noble blood and illustrious lineage, as if they had been the proudest and noblest of patrician maidens of ancient Rome; I beheld them graceful, coquettish, gay, full of aristocratic ease and manner, like the ladies of the time of Louis XIV, in Versailles; and I adorned them, now with the modest stola, that inspired veneration and respect; now with diaphanous tunics and peplums, through whose airy folds were revealed all the plastic perfections of their graceful forms; now with the transparent coa, of the beautiful courtesans of Athens and Corinth, showing the white and roseate hues of the finely molded forms that glowed beneath their vaporous covering. But what are the joys of the senses, what the glory and magnificence of the world, to a soul that burns with and consumes itself in Divine love, as I believed mine, perhaps with too much arrogance, to burn and consume itself? As volcanic fires, when they burst into flame, send flying into air, shattered in a thousand fragments, the solid rocks, the mountain-side itself, that obstruct their passage, so, or with even greater force, did my spirit cast from itself the whole weight of the universe and of created beauty that lay upon it and imprisoned it, preventing it from soaring up to God, as the center of its aspirations. No; I have rejected no delight, no sweetness, no glory, through ignorance. I knew them all, and valued them all at more than their worth, when I rejected them all for a greater delight, a greater sweetness, a greater glory. The profane love of woman presented itself to my fancy, clothed, not only with all its own charms, but with the sovereign and almost irresistible charms of the most dangerous of all temptations—of that which the moralists call virginal temptation—when the mind, not yet undeceived by experience and by sin, pictures to itself in the transports of love a supreme and ineffable delight immeasurably superior to all reality. Ever since I reached manhood—that is to say, for many years past, for my youth was short—I have scorned those delights and that beauty that were but the shadow and the reflex of the archetypal beauty of which I was enamored, of the supreme delight for which I longed. I have sought to die to myself, in order to live in the beloved object, to free, not only my senses, but even my soul itself, from every earthly affection, from illusions and imaginings, in order to be able to say with truth that it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. It may be, nay, it must be, that in this I sinned through arrogance and self-confidence, and that God has therefore wished to chastise me; and you came across my path, and tempted me, and led me astray. Now you upbraid me, you deride me, you accuse me of levity and of yielding easily to temptation; but in upbraiding me and deriding me you insult yourself, for you thus imply that any other woman might have had equal power over me. I do not wish, when I ought to be humble, to fall into the sin of pride, by trying to justify my fault. If God, in chastisement of my pride, has let me fall from his grace, it is possible that any temptation, however slight, might have made me waver and fall. Yet I confess that I do not think so. It may be that I err in my judgment that this is but the consequence of my undisciplined pride, but, I repeat, I do not think so. I can not succeed in persuading myself that the cause of my fall had in it anything either mean or base. Above all the dreams of my youthful imagination, the reality, such as I beheld it in you, enthroned itself. Above all the nymphs, queens, and goddesses of my fancy, you towered. Above the ruins of my ideal creations, overthrown and shattered by Divine love, there arose in my soul the faithful image, the exact reproduction of the living beauty that adorns, that is the essence of that body and of that soul. There may be even something mysterious, something supernatural in this; for I loved you from the moment I first saw you—almost before I saw you. Long before I was conscious of loving you, I loved you. It would seem as if there were some fatality in this—that it was decreed, that it was a predestination."
"And if it were predestined, if it be decreed," said Pepita, "why not submit to Fate, why still resist? Sacrifice your purpose to our love. Have not I sacrificed much? Am I not now sacrificing my pride, my decorum, my reserve, in supplicating you thus, in making this effort to overcome your scorn? I too believe that I loved you before I saw you. Now I love you with my whole heart, and without you there is no happiness for me. It is true indeed that in my humble intelligence you can find no rival so powerful as that which I have in yours. Neither with the understanding, nor the will, nor the affections, can I raise myself all at once up to God. Neither by nature nor by grace do I mount or desire to mount up to such exalted spheres. My soul, nevertheless, is full of religious devotion, and I know and love and adore God; but I only behold his omnipotence and admire his goodness in the works that have proceeded from his hands. Nor can I, with the imagination, weave those visions that you tell me of. Yet I too dreamed of some one nobler, more intelligent, more poetic, and more enamored, than the men who have thus far sought my hand; of a lover more distinguished and accomplished than any of my adorers of this and the neighboring villages, who should love me, and whom I should love, and to whose will I should blindly surrender mine. This some one was you. I had a presentiment of it when they told me that you had arrived at the village. When I saw you for the first time, I knew it. But, as my imagination is so sterile, the picture I had formed of you in my mind was not to be compared, even in the most remote degree, to the reality. I too have read something of romances and poetry. But from all that my memory retained of them, I was unable to form a picture that was not far inferior in merit to what I see and divine in you since I have known you. Thus it is that from the moment I saw you I was vanquished and undone. If love is, as you say, to die to self, in order to live in the beloved object, then is my love genuine and legitimate, for I have died to myself, and live only in you and for you. I have tried to cast this love away from me, deeming it ill-requited, and I have not been able to succeed in doing so. I have prayed to God with fervor to take away from me this love, or else to kill me, and God has not deigned to hear me. I have prayed to the Virgin Mary to blot your image from my soul, and my prayer has been in vain. I have made vows to my patron saint to the end that he would enable me to think of you only as he thought of his blessed spouse, and my patron saint has not succored me. Seeing all this, I have had the audacity to ask of Heaven that you would allow yourself to be vanquished, that you would cease to desire to be a priest, that there might spring up in your soul a love as profound as that which is in my heart. Don Luis, tell me frankly, has Heaven been deaf to this last prayer also? Or is it, perchance, that to subjugate a soul as weak, as wretched, and as petty as mine, a petty love is sufficient, while to master yours, protected and guarded as it is by vigorous and lofty thoughts, a more powerful love than mine is necessary, a love that I am neither worthy of inspiring, nor capable of sharing, nor even able to understand?"
"Pepita," returned Don Luis, "it is not that your soul is less than mine, but that it is free from obligations, and mine is not. The love you have inspired me with is profound, but my obligations, my vows, the purpose of my whole life so near to its realization, contend against it. Why should I not say it without fearing to offend you? If you succeed in making me love you, you do not humiliate yourself. If I succumb to your love, I humiliate and abase myself. I leave the Creator for the creature. I renounce the unwavering purpose of my life, I break the image of Christ that was in my soul; and the new man, that I had created in myself at such cost, disappears, that the old man may come to life again. Instead of my lowering myself to the earth, to the impurity of the world that I have hitherto despised, why do not you rather elevate yourself to me by virtue of that very love you entertain for me, freeing it from every earthly alloy? Why should we not love each other then without shame, and without sin, and without dishonor? God penetrates holy souls with the pure and refulgent fire of his love, and fills them with it, so that, like a metal fresh from the forge, that, without ceasing to be a metal, shines and glitters and is all fire, these souls fill themselves with joy, and are in all things God, penetrated by God in every part, through the grace of the Divine love. These souls then love and enjoy each other, as if they loved and enjoyed God, loving and enjoying him in truth, because they are God. Let us mount together in spirit this steep and mystical ladder. Let our souls ascend, side by side, to this bliss, which even in this mortal life is possible; but to do this we must separate in the body; it is essential that I should go whither I am called by my duty, my vow, and the voice of the Most High, who disposes of his servant, and has destined him to the service of his altar."
"Ah, Don Luis," replied Pepita, full of sorrow and contrition, "now indeed I see how vile is the metal I am made of, and how unworthy I am that the Divine fire should penetrate and transform me. I will confess everything, casting away even shame: I am a vile sinner; my rude and uncultured understanding can not grasp these subtleties, these distinctions, these refinements of love. My rebellious will refuses what you propose. I can not even conceive of you but as yourself. For me you are your mouth, your eyes, your dark locks that I desire to caress with my hands, your sweet voice, the pleasing sound of your words that fall upon my ears, and charm them through the senses; your whole bodily form, in a word that charms and seduces me, and through which, and only through which, I perceive the invisible spirit, vague and full of mystery. My soul, stubborn, and incapable of these mysterious raptures, will never be able to follow you to those regions whither you would take it. If you soar up to them, I shall remain alone, abandoned, plunged in the deepest affliction. I prefer to die; I deserve death; I desire it. It may be that after death my soul, loosening or breaking the vile bonds that chain it here, will be able to understand the love with which you desire we should be united. Kill me, then, in order that we may thus love each other; kill me, and then my spirit, set free, will follow you whithersoever you may go, and will journey invisible by your side, watching over your steps, contemplating you with ravishment, penetrating your most secret thoughts, beholding your soul as it is, without the intervention of the senses. But in this life it can not be. I love in you, not only the soul, but the body, and the shadow cast by the body, and the reflection of the body in the mirror and in the water, and the Christian name, and the surname, and the blood, and all that goes to make you such as you are, Don Luis de Vargas; the sound of your voice, your gesture, your gait, and I know not what else besides. I repeat that you must kill me. Kill me without compassion. No, I am not a Christian; I am a material idolater."
Here Pepita made a long pause. Don Luis knew not what to say, and was silent. Tears bathed the cheeks of Pepita, who continued, sobbing:
"I know it; you despise me, and you are right to despise me. With this just contempt you will kill me more surely than with a dagger, and without staining either your hands or your conscience with blood. Farewell! I am about to free you from my odious presence. Farewell forever!"
Having said this, Pepita rose from her seat, and, without looking at Don Luis, her face bathed with tears, beside herself, rushed toward the door that led to the inner apartment. An unconquerable tenderness, a fatal pity, took possession of Don Luis. He feared Pepita would die. He started forward to detain her, but it was too late. Pepita had crossed the threshold. Her form disappeared in the obscurity within. Don Luis, impelled by a superhuman power, drawn as by an invisible hand, followed her into the darkened chamber.
The library remained deserted.
The servants' dance must have already terminated, for the only sound to be heard was the murmur of the fountain in the garden below.
Not even a breath of wind troubled the stillness of the night and the serenity of the air.