Meanwhile poor Faustina wept and prayed, now scorned by Julio, but pitied by the little world in which she had lived. She wept and prayed, but tears seemed to afford no relief to the maiden in her anguish, and prayers appeared to have lost their efficacy: they brought no success, nay, worse, no comfort. Still Julio pursued his headlong career, heedless of the past, the present, or the future. It was dreadful to see the change in him: he seemed as one possessed. The reckless passion that had been roused by the wily Italian, burst all bounds, knew no restraint, no path; it was like a torrent that has been for some time dammed up, which, when set free, acknowledges no demarkation, no rule of banks or bed, but tears forward, involving in its impetuous rage the verdure and bloom that are around it.
Such was the state of affairs that occupied the attention of all the Aranjovites, when one morning Ursula the Italian disappeared. Julio was at work when the fact was communicated to him, which being done, he fell to the ground, as though the intelligence had struck him dead; and when he recovered from the swoon, he raved, frantic. He wandered to Madrid, but could discover no intelligence of her; he visited all the neighboring towns, he inquired of the police, but no trace of the woman could be found, till at last the reaction of his spirits, after the tense excitement, the grief, the balked passion, seemed to have prostrated his senses; he walked as a spectre, taking heed of no passer-by, callous to all changes, careless of remark and of appearance, a noonday ghoul preying on his own misery. But now the prayers of the poor girl who loved him so fondly seemed to her to have been granted. She had not besought a return of his former lukewarm regard, only an opportunity of proving her own devotion; and in his dull apathy she indeed proved herself a loving woman. She followed him in his walks, she arranged his cottage, sang to him the songs she thought he best loved; nay, to cheer him, would endeavor to repeat the airs she had at times heard from the lips of her Italian rival, though the attempt was but a self-inflicted wound; and in the heat of the day, she would take him often her own share of the domestic meal, or placing his unconscious head on her bosom, would tend him like a child, as he lay half sleeping, half senseless.
Her constancy received a qualified reward—Count ——, an officer having the chief authority in the royal demesnes, hearing the story, offered to Julio a good appointment in the gardens, with the proviso that he should espouse Faustina. To this Julio yielded without a sigh; poverty was beginning to make itself felt, and having resigned all hope of happiness he did not anticipate increased misery. His marriage did not alter his late mode of life. Listless and stupid he wandered about the gardens, inspecting, with an uninterested eye, the workmen over whom he had been placed, and he would soon have lost his appointment had it not been for his wife, who, "tender and true," in addition to her household duties, executed those which had been committed to his charge, slaving night and day for him she loved, careless of suffering and of labor, her only object to win his approbation, and some, however slight, token of returned affection: but she labored in vain; Julio did not see, or affected not to see, these exertions; he would enter the house or leave it, without uttering a syllable, while his wife continued her thankless office, rewarded only by her conscience. And how disheartening a task it is to practice self-denial unappreciated, to resign all for one who deigns not even to bestow a word of kind approval. But thus Faustina lived her life—one uninterrupted self-sacrifice. Alas! how often are such lives passed by women in every rank of life! How little can a stranger tell the heroism that occurs beneath the roofs of the noble or on the cold hearth of the beggar; at odd times, at sudden epochs, the world may hear of deeds practiced, that, of old, would have deified the performer; but often, how often, will noble acts, such as these, receive a thankless return; years passed as this, acknowledged only when too late; their premium in life, perchance, may be harsh words or curses, or transitory tears may moisten the grave when the gentle spirit passes from its earthly frame. These observations may be just, but they are somewhat trite.
Thus they lived for five years, one pretty little girl being the only fruit of this union; a child who, in her earliest days, was taught to suffer, and who partook her mother's disposition, nay, even her mother's character, as it appeared, tempered by the grief of womanhood; when one day, to the horror and disgust of the township, Ursula, the teterrima causa, reappeared at Aranjuez. She was grown much older in appearance—years and evident care had worn furrows in her cheeks; but the flashing eye of sin was not yet dimmed, her head not bent, nor the determination that had of old gained such a baneful influence on the mind of Julio. One morning Faustina, leaving her house, beheld her husband in conversation with her rival. That day had sealed her doom. Morning, noon, and night, Julio was at the side of Ursula, as before, obeying her slightest command, groveling at her feet, like a slave; his ancient energy of passion had returned, but only to brutalize his nature; instead of cold looks to his wife, he now treated her with blows at the rare interviews he held with her; the cold apathy was changed into deep hate, and though no direct act of violence caused her death, the shock, the harshness, added to neglect, soon broke her heart. Poor Faustina died, blessing with her latest breath, the being who had by his cruelty killed her, and deprecating even remorse to visit him, she left the world, in which she had loved in vain.
At her death, Julio found himself comparatively wealthy—wealthy by her exertion; and ere another moon shone over his roof, his bride, the dark Italian, beat his child on the spot where the mother had so lately died.
Dark rumors soon spread over the village, a scowling Italian, given out by Ursula as her brother, came and took up his abode in her newly-acquired house; curious neighbors whispered tales how, peeping in at night, they had beheld the three deal heavy blows to poor Faustina's daughter; screams often were heard from the desecrated habitation, and the child was never seen to leave the house. Julio had recovered, to a certain extent, the use of his faculties, and was enabled now himself to attend to his affairs, but his subordinates soon felt the loss of Faustina's mild rule, and with the discrimination of the Spanish peasantry, attributed their sufferings, not to the miserable tool, but to the fiend-hearted woman.
Julio was walking in the garden alone, during the time usually devoted to the mid-day sleep; his underlings were reclining beneath the shade of the trees; and, at last, overcome by the heat, he himself gave way to slumber; his dreams were troubled, but were not of long duration; for he had not long laid himself on the sward, when he felt himself rudely shaken, and, awaking, discovered an officer of justice standing near him, who desired his society. The alguazil led him to his own abode, and, on reaching it, what did he behold? His wife, who was then with child, pinioned, between two villagers acting for the nonce as constables, one of whom held in his hand a bloody navaja; the brother(!), also pinioned, standing near her; and on the ground, surrounded by a knot of peasants, glad at the vengeance that was to overtake the guilty pair, he saw the child of Faustina, decapitated, dismembered, discovered thus on the floor of the cottage, ere the murderous couple had been enabled to conceal the mangled remains. A workman, a near relation of Julio's first wife, who had, by chance, heard a suppressed scream in passing, hastily summoning assistance, had arrived in time only to apprehend the assassins, the shedders of innocent blood. There was no flaw in the evidence, and, ere long, Ursula and her paramour, for such was the true relative position in which she stood with the stranger, were sentenced to the doom they so richly deserved. I have not, however, ended, my narrative, but I will endeavor to curtail the rest of my history, to me the strangest part of it. Julio was not disenchanted; by extraordinary exertions to save the mother of a child, shrewdly suspected not to be his own, he prevailed on his patron, Count ——, to procure the commutation of his wife's sentence to a term of imprisonment; and though the murderer forfeited his life, the murderess escaped after some years' incarceration, having given birth to a child shortly after her trial, who, innocent, bore on her brow the mark of the instrument of her mother's crime; and, can it be credited!—Julio took the woman to his home, his love unabated, his subserviency undiminished!
They now live in Aranjuez, and the child is left to wander about unnoticed, except with punishment; my kind-hearted landlady alone feeds the poor creature, whom all others shun: and even she feels uncomfortable in the presence of one born under such auspices. Her fellow-townsfolk, as they pass the scene of virtue and of crime, bless the memory of Faustina, and curse the life of Ursula, praying for the peace of the first one and of her child; and, while execrating the latter, refuse shelter or relief to her innocent offspring, who, in the universal spirit of poetry that reigns in Spain, is known far and near, and pointed to the stranger as La Hija de Sangre, the Daughter of Blood.