第16章 DON FELIPE HENAREZ TO DON FERNAND PARIS(2)

Thus I have still a country and a name,should I wish to take up a position in the world again.

Thank Heaven,this finishes our business,and the house of Soria is saved!

At the very moment when I drop into simple Baron de Macumer,the French cannon announce the arrival of the Duc d'Angouleme.You will understand why I break off....

October.

When I arrived here I had not ten doubloons in my pocket.He would indeed be a poor sort of leader who,in the midst of calamities he has not been able to avert,has found means to feather his own nest.For the vanquished Moor there remains a horse and the desert;for the Christian foiled of his hopes,the cloister and a few gold pieces.

But my present resignation is mere weariness.I am not yet so near the monastery as to have abandoned all thoughts of life.Ozalga had given me several letters of introduction to meet all emergencies,amongst these one to a bookseller,who takes with our fellow-countrymen the place which Galignani holds with the English in Paris.This man has found eight pupils for me at three francs a lesson.I go to my pupils every alternate day,so that I have four lessons a day and earn twelve francs,which is more than I require.When Urraca comes I shall make some Spanish exile happy by passing on to him my connection.

I lodge in the Rue Hillerin-Bertin with a poor widow,who takes boarders.My room faces south and looks out on a little garden.It is perfectly quiet;I have green trees to look upon,and spend the sum of one piastre a day.I am amazed at the amount of calm,pure pleasure which I enjoy in this life,after the fashion of Dionysius at Corinth.

From sunrise until ten o'clock I smoke and take my chocolate,sitting at my window and contemplating two Spanish plants,a broom which rises out of a clump of jessamine--gold on a white ground,colors which must send a thrill through any scion of the Moors.At ten o'clock I start for my lessons,which last till four,when I return for dinner.

Afterwards I read and smoke till I go to bed.

I can put up for a long time with a life like this,compounded of work and meditation,of solitude and society.Be happy,therefore,Fernand;my abdication has brought no afterthoughts;I have no regrets like Charles V.,no longing to try the game again like Napoleon.Five days and nights have passed since I wrote my will;to my mind they might have been five centuries.Honor,titles,wealth,are for me as though they had never existed.

Now that the conventional barrier of respect which hedged me round has fallen,I can open my heart to you,dear boy.Though cased in the armor of gravity,this heart is full of tenderness and devotion,which have found no object,and which no woman has divined,not even she who,from her cradle,has been my destined bride.In this lies the secret of my political enthusiasm.Spain has taken the place of a mistress and received the homage of my heart.And now Spain,too,is gone!Beggared of all,I can gaze upon the ruin of what once was me and speculate over the mysteries of my being.

Why did life animate this carcass,and when will it depart?Why has that race,pre-eminent in chivalry,breathed all its primitive virtues --its tropical love,its fiery poetry--into this its last offshoot,if the seed was never to burst its rugged shell,if no stem was to spring forth,no radiant flower scatter aloft its Eastern perfumes?Of what crime have I been guilty before my birth that I can inspire no love?

Did fate from my very infancy decree that I should be stranded,a useless hulk,on some barren shore!I find in my soul the image of the deserts where my fathers ranged,illumined by a scorching sun which shrivels up all life.Proud remnant of a fallen race,vain force,love run to waste,an old man in the prime of youth,here better than elsewhere shall I await the last grace of death.Alas!under this murky sky no spark will kindle these ashes again to flame.Thus my last words may be those of Christ,/My God,Thou hast forsaken me!/Cry of agony and terror,to the core of which no mortal has ventured yet to penetrate!

You can realize now,Fernand,what a joy it is to me to live afresh in you and Marie.I shall watch you henceforth with the pride of a creator satisfied in his work.Love each other well and go on loving if you would not give me pain;any discord between you would hurt me more than it would yourselves.

Our mother had a presentiment that events would one day serve her wishes.It may be that the longing of a mother constitutes a pact between herself and God.Was she not,moreover,one of those mysterious beings who can hold converse with Heaven and bring back thence a vision of the future?How often have I not read in the lines of her forehead that she was coveting for Fernand the honors and the wealth of Felipe!When I said so to her,she would reply with tears,laying bare the wounds of a heart,which of right was the undivided property of both her sons,but which an irresistible passion gave to you alone.

Her spirit,therefore,will hover joyfully above your heads as you bow them at the altar.My mother,have you not a caress for your Felipe now that he has yielded to your favorite even the girl whom you regretfully thrust into his arms?What I have done is pleasing to our womankind,to the dead,and to the King;it is the will of God.Make no difficulty then,Fernand;obey,and be silent.

/P.S./Tell Urraca to be sure and call me nothing but M.Henarez.

Don't say a word about me to Marie.You must be the one living soul to know the secrets of the last Christianized Moor,in whose veins runs the blood of a great family,which took its rise in the desert and is now about to die out in the person of a solitary exile.

Farewell.