Christmas Stories from French and Spanish Writers

by Unknown

Celinina was greatly disappointed when she found that he had not brought her the two jewels that were to complete her treasure. The good man was about to repair his fault immediately, but just then the doctor came in. Celinina had grown considerably worse during the day; and as his words were far from comforting, nobody thought of mules or oxen.

On the 24th the poor father resolved not to leave the house. For a brief moment, however, Celinina seemed so much better that her parents were wild with hope, and the father said joyously,—

"I am going right out to get those things."

But it was not a moment before Celinina fell into an intense fever, just as a bird, wounded in its upward flight through the pure regions of the air, drops swiftly to the ground. She tossed about, trembling and suffocating in the hot arms of her disease, that tightened around her and shook her violently as if to eject her life. In the confusion of her delirium, on the broken waves of her thoughts, like the one thing saved from a cataclysm, floated the persistent yearning, the idea of that longed-for mule and that sighed-for ox.

The father rushed out of the house like a madman, then suddenly, "This is no time to think of figures for a Bethlehem manger," thought he; and running here and there, climbing stairs and ringing door-bells, he succeeded in getting seven or eight doctors, whom he took home with him. Celinina should be saved at any cost.

V.

But apparently it was not the will of God that the seven or eight disciples of Æsculapius should interfere with the orders he had given, so Celinina grew worse and worse, struggling with indescribable anguish, like a bruised butterfly quivering with broken wings on the ground. Her parents bent over her with wild anxiety, as though they expected to detain her in this world by the power of their will, as though they expected to arrest the rapid course of human disorganization, and breathe their own life into the little martyr, who was exhaling hers in a sigh.

From the street came the thumping of drums and the jingling of tambourines. Celinina opened her eyes; and with an appealing look and a few solemn words, which seemed already the language of another world, she asked her father for that which he had failed to bring her. The father and mother, in their distress, thought of deceiving her; and with the hope of casting a ray of happiness through the misery of this supreme moment they handed her the turkeys, saying, "Look, my darling, here are the little mule and the little ox."

But Celinina, even at the point of death, was conscious enough to know that turkeys can never be anything but turkeys; and she pushed them away gently. From that time on she lay still with her great eyes fixed on her parents, and her little hand on her head to show them where the terrible pain was. That rhythmical sound which is like the last vibration of life gradually grew fainter and fainter, until it was hushed entirely, like the machinery of a clock that has stopped, and the dainty little girl was only an exquisite scrap of matter, inert, cold, and as white and transparent as the sublimated wax that burns on the altars.