I declare that since September 28 I have suffered disappointments and vexations of every description. Your marriage was only another of the fatalities that were to fall on me.
One night not long ago, being unable to sleep, I reviewed in my mind all the vexations which have overwhelmed me during the last fortnight, and I found for them all but one compensation, which was your amiable letter, and your equally amiable promise to make me a sketch. Yet now I wish I could stab the sun, as the Andalusians say.
Mariquita de mi vida, (let me call you so until your marriage), I had a superb stone, finely cut, brilliant, sparkling, in every point perfect. I believed it to be a diamond, which I would not have exchanged for that of the Grand Mogul. Not so at all! It turns out to be but an imitation. A friend of mine, who is a chemist, has just analysed it for me. Fancy my disappointment. I have spent a great deal of time thinking of this imitation diamond, and of my good fortune in having found it. Now I must spend as much time, and more even, in persuading myself that it was not a genuine stone.
All this is only a parable. I took dinner the other evening with the false diamond, and made but a surly appearance. When I am angry I am rather skilful with the rhetorical figure called irony, and so I extolled the good qualities of the diamond in my most bombastic style and with frigid composure. I do not know, I am sure, why I tell you all this, especially since we are soon to forget each other. Meanwhile, I love you still, and commend myself to your prayers—“nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” etc.
Next Friday your picture will leave by mail, and should certainly reach London by Sunday. You might send for it Tuesday at Mr. V.’s, Pall-Mall.
Forgive the insanity of this letter; my mind is distracted with gloomy thoughts.
VIII
My dear platonic Friend: We are becoming very affectionate. You say to me, Amigo de mi alma, which from a woman’s lips is very sweet. You give me no news of your health. In your former letter you told me that my platonic friend was ill, and you should have known that I was anxious. Be more definite in future. It is all very well for you to complain of my reticence, you who are mystery incarnate! What more will you have on the story of the diamond, unless it is the name? Details, perhaps; but they would be tiresome to write, and some day they may amuse you, when we shall find nothing to say to each other, seated in our arm-chairs on opposite sides of the chimney corner.
Listen to the dream that I had two nights ago, and if you are sincere, interpret it for me. Methought we were both in Valencia, in a beautiful garden where there was an abundance of oranges, pomegranates, and other fruits. You were seated upon a bench, resting against a hedge. Opposite was a wall about six feet in height, separating this garden from another garden on a much lower level. I was standing facing you, and it seemed to me that we were speaking to each other in the Valencian tongue. Nota bene, that I am able to understand Valencian with much difficulty. What sort of a deuced language is it that one speaks in a dream, when one speaks a language that he does not know? For lack of something else to do, and from habit, I went and stood on a rock, looking over into the garden below. There I saw a bench also with its back against the wall, and seated on this bench was a Valencian gardener playing the guitar, and my diamond was listening. This sight put me instantly in a bad humour, but at first I gave no sign of this. The diamond raised her head, and seemed astonished to see me, but she did not start, or appear otherwise disconcerted.
After a time I stepped down from the stone, and said to you, casually and without mentioning the diamond, that it would be a great joke to throw a big stone over the top of the wall. This stone was very heavy. You were eager to help me, and without asking any questions (which is not natural to you), by dint of pushing we succeeded in placing the stone on the top of the wall, and we were making ready to push it over, when the wall itself gave way and crumbled, and we both fell with the stone and the débris of the wall. I do not know what happened then, for I awoke. That you may understand the scene better, I enclose a drawing of it. I was unable to see the gardener’s face, which is most exasperating.