Dona Perfecta Part 8

"I loved you before I had even seen you, and if you had not come I should have died of grief. Mamma used to give me your father's letters to read, and he praised you so much in them that I used to say, 'That is the man who ought to be my husband.' For a long time your father said nothing about our marrying, which seemed to me great negligence. Uncle Cayetano, whenever he spoke of you, would say, 'There are not many men like him in the world. The woman who gets him for a husband may think herself fortunate.' At last your father said what he could not avoid saying. Yes, he could not avoid saying it--I was expecting it every day."

Shortly after these words the same voice added uneasily: "Some one is following us."

Emerging from among the oleanders, Pepe, turning round, saw two men approaching them, and touching the leaves of a young tree near by, he said aloud to his companion:

"It is not proper to prune young trees like this for the first time until they have taken firm root. Trees recently planted have not sufficient strength to bear the operation. You know that the roots can grow only by means of the leaves, so that if you take the leaves from a tree--"

"Ah, Senor Don Jose," cried the Penitentiary, with a frank laugh, approaching the two young people and bowing to them, "are you giving lessons in horticulture? _Insere nunc Meliboee piros; pone ordine vites_, as the great singer of the labors of the field said. 'Graft the pear-tree, dear Meliboeus, trim the vines.' And how are we now, Senor Don Jose?"

The engineer and the canon shook hands. Then the latter turned round, and indicating by a gesture a young man who was behind him, said, smiling:

"I have the pleasure of presenting to you my dear Jacintillo--a great rogue, a feather-head, Senor Don Jose."

CHAPTER IX

THE DISAGREEMENT CONTINUES TO INCREASE, AND THEREAFTER TO BECOME DISCORD

Close beside the black ca.s.sock was a fresh and rosy face, that seemed fresher and rosier from the contrast. Jacinto saluted our hero, not without some embarra.s.sment.

He was one of those precocious youths whom the indulgent university sends prematurely forth into the arena of life, making them fancy that they are men because they have received their doctor's degree. Jacinto had a round, handsome face with rosy cheeks, like a girl's, and without any beard save the down which announced its coming. In person he was plump and below the medium height. His age was a little over twenty. He had been educated from childhood under the direction of his excellent and learned uncle, which is the same as saying that the twig had not become crooked in the growing. A severe moral training had kept him always straight, and in the fulfilment of his scholastic duties he had been almost above reproach. Having concluded his studies at the university with astonis.h.i.+ng success, for there was scarcely a cla.s.s in which he did not take the highest honors, he entered on the practice of his profession, promising, by his application and his apt.i.tude for the law, to maintain fresh and green in the forum the laurels of the lecture-hall.

At times he was as mischievous as a boy, at times as sedate as a man.

In very truth, if Jacinto had not had a little, and even a great deal of liking for pretty girls, his uncle would have thought him perfect. The worthy man preached to him unceasingly on this point, hastening to clip the wings of every audacious fancy. But not even this mundane inclination of the young man could cool the great affection which our worthy canon bore the charming offspring of his dear niece, Maria Remedios. Where the young lawyer was concerned, every thing else must give way. Even the grave and methodical habits of the worthy ecclesiastic were altered when they interfered with the affairs of his precocious pupil. That order and regularity, apparently as fixed as the laws of a planetary system, were interrupted whenever Jacinto was ill or had to take a journey. Useless celibacy of the clergy! The Council of Trent prohibits them from having children of their own, but G.o.d--and not the Devil, as the proverb says--gives them nephews and nieces in order that they may know the tender anxieties of paternity.

Examining impartially the qualities of this clever boy, it was impossible not to recognize that he was not wanting in merit. His character was in the main inclined to uprightness, and n.o.ble actions awakened a frank admiration in his soul. With respect to his intellectual endowments and his social knowledge, they were sufficient to enable him to become in time one of those notabilities of whom there are so many in Spain; he might be what we take delight in calling hyperbolically a distinguished patrician, or an eminent public man; species which, owing to their great abundance, are hardly appreciated at their just value. In the tender age in which the university degree serves as a sort of solder between boyhood and manhood, few young men--especially if they have been spoiled by their masters--are free from an offensive pedantry, which, if it gives them great importance beside their mamma's arm-chair, makes them very ridiculous when they are among grave and experienced men. Jacinto had this defect, which was excusable in him, not only because of his youth, but also because his worthy uncle stimulated his puerile vanity by injudicious praise.

When the introduction was over they resumed their walk. Jacinto was silent. The canon, returning to the interrupted theme of the _pyros_ which were to be grafted and the _vites_ which were to be trimmed, said:

"I am already aware that Senor Don Jose is a great agriculturist."

"Not at all; I know nothing whatever about the subject," responded the young man, observing with no little annoyance the canon's mania of supposing him to be learned in all the sciences.

"Oh, yes! a great agriculturist," continued the Penitentiary; "but on agricultural subjects, don't quote the latest treatises to me. For me the whole of that science, Senor de Rey, is condensed in what I call the Bible of the Field, in the 'Georgics' of the immortal Roman. It is all admirable, from that grand sentence, _Nec vero terroe ferre omnes omnia possunt_--that is to say, that not every soil is suited to every tree, Senor Don Jose--to the exhaustive treatise on bees, in which the poet describes the habits of those wise little animals, defining the drone in these words:

"'Ille horridus alter Desidia, latamque trahens inglorius alvum.'

"'Of a horrible and slothful figure, dragging along the ign.o.ble weight of the belly,' Senor Don Jose."

"You do well to translate it for me," said Pepe, "for I know very little Latin."

"Oh, why should the men of the present day spend their time in studying things that are out of date?" said the canon ironically. "Besides, only poor creatures like Virgil and Cicero and Livy wrote in Latin. I, however, am of a different way of thinking; as witness my nephew, to whom I have taught that sublime language. The rascal knows it better than I do. The worst of it is, that with his modern reading he is forgetting it; and some fine day, without ever having suspected it, he will find out that he is an ignoramus. For, Senor Don Jose, my nephew has taken to studying the newest books and the most extravagant theories, and it is Flammarion here and Flammarion there, and nothing will do him but that the stars are full of people. Come, I fancy that you two are going to be very good friends. Jacinto, beg this gentleman to teach you the higher mathematics, to instruct you concerning the German philosophers, and then you will be a man."

The worthy ecclesiastic laughed at his own wit, while Jacinto, delighted to see the conversation turn on a theme so greatly to his taste, after excusing himself to Pepe Rey, suddenly hurled this question at him:

"Tell me, Senor Don Jose, what do you think of Darwinism?"

Our hero smiled at this inopportune pedantry, and he felt almost tempted to encourage the young man to continue in this path of childish vanity; but, judging it more prudent to avoid intimacy, either with the nephew or the uncle, he answered simply:

"I can think nothing at all about the doctrines of Darwin, for I know scarcely any thing about him. My professional labors have not permitted me to devote much of my time to those studies."

"Well," said the canon, laughing, "it all reduces itself to this, that we are descended from monkeys. If he had said that only in the case of certain people I know, he would have been right."

"The theory of natural selection," said Jacinto emphatically, "has, they say, a great many partisans in Germany."

"I do not doubt it," said the ecclesiastic. "In Germany they would have no reason to be sorry if that theory were true, as far as Bismarck is concerned."

Dona Perfecta and Senor Don Cayetano at this moment made their appearance.

"What a beautiful evening!" said the former. "Well, nephew, are you getting terribly bored?"

"I am not bored in the least," responded the young man.

"Don't try to deny it. Cayetano and I were speaking of that as we came along. You are bored, and you are trying to hide it. It is not every young man of the present day who would have the self-denial to spend his youth, like Jacinto, in a town where there are neither theatres, nor opera bouffe, nor dancers, nor philosophers, nor athenaeums, nor magazines, nor congresses, nor any other kind of diversions or entertainments."

"I am quite contented here," responded Pepe. "I was just now saying to Rosario that I find this city and this house so pleasant that I would like to live and die here."

Rosario turned very red and the others were silent. They all sat down in a summer-house, Jacinto hastening to take the seat on the left of the young girl.

"See here, nephew, I have a piece of advice to give you," said Dona Perfecta, smiling with that expression of kindness that seemed to emanate from her soul, like the aroma from the flower. "But don't imagine that I am either reproving you or giving you a lesson--you are not a child, and you will easily understand what I mean."

"Scold me, dear aunt, for no doubt I deserve it," replied Pepe, who was beginning to accustom himself to the kindnesses of his father's sister.

"No, it is only a piece of advice. These gentlemen, I am sure, will agree that I am in the right."

Rosario was listening with her whole soul.

"It is only this," continued Dona Perfecta, "that when you visit our beautiful cathedral again, you will endeavor to behave with a little more decorum while you are in it."

"Why, what have I done?"

"It does not surprise me that you are not yourself aware of your fault,"

said his aunt, with apparent good humor. "It is only natural; accustomed as you are to enter athenaeums and clubs, and academies and congresses without any ceremony, you think that you can enter a temple in which the Divine Majesty is in the same manner."

"But excuse me, senora," said Pepe gravely, "I entered the cathedral with the greatest decorum."

"But I am not scolding you, man; I am not scolding you. If you take it in that way I shall have to remain silent. Excuse my nephew, gentlemen.

A little carelessness, a little heedlessness on his part is not to be wondered at. How many years is it since you set foot in a sacred place before?"

"Senora, I a.s.sure you----But, in short, let my religious ideas be what they may, I am in the habit of observing the utmost decorum in church."

"What I a.s.sure you is----There, if you are going to be offended I won't go on. What I a.s.sure you is that a great many people noticed it this morning. The Senores de Gonzalez, Dona Robustiana, Serafinita--in short, when I tell you that you attracted the attention of the bishop----His lords.h.i.+p complained to me about it this afternoon when I was at my cousin's. He told me that he did not order you to be put out of the church only because you were my nephew."

Rosario looked anxiously at her cousin, trying to read in his countenance, before he uttered it, the answer he would make to these charges.

"No doubt they mistook me for some one else."

"No, no! it was you. But there, don't get angry! We are talking here among friends and in confidence. It was you. I saw you myself."