My mother, with her usual sagacity, saw at once that I was preoccupied and morose, but she made a mistake as to the cause.

“They must have slighted you at Tejo,” she said. “Don’t say it is not so, for I am sure that they treated you in a shameful manner. If not, why did you rush off like a frightened hare, without taking leave of anybody? Come, now, tell your mother all about it.”

Although I vowed and protested that I had been treated with the greatest kindness, she would not believe it.

“Well, well, keep it to yourself, make a mystery of it; but I’ll find it out, for everything leaks out. Some of the others will tell me all about it.”

I had to tell her all the particulars of the wedding; or, rather, she went ahead of my story, and showed herself acquainted with details in a way that amazed me. She was posted on points where I was ignorant. It was characteristic of her quick and sharp wit to master the minor matters of life, but to remain in ignorance of its deep, eternal laws, which can be perceived only by superior minds, and which will control life until its last breath is drawn, and the universe grows cold through the absence of love.

During the first days of my stay in the village I felt much better. The singular frenzy of the day of the wedding had subsided through lack of external stimuli to revive it; so much so that I came to fancy that my enthusiasm over Carmen, my furious jealousy, the poetic reveries on the beach, were only tricks of the imagination, which is apt to feign the existence of profound feelings where there is really only caprice, vague longings and delusions.

Luis Portal came from Orense to pass a week at my house, and his society helped to quiet me down. We took such long walks and ate such quantities of bread and milk that healthy fatigue and country life did their work, preparing me to listen calmly and even assent to arguments like the following:

“What is taking place in you,” Luis used to say when we were stretched out at the foot of a chestnut, where we had divided our lunch, “is a phenomenon very common among us Spaniards. While we honestly believe that we are preparing for the future and longing for it, we live infatuated with the past, and are really the bitterest kind of traditionalists at bottom, although we call ourselves Republicans. What charms and attracts you in your Uncle Felipe’s wife is precisely that in which she is most in opposition to your ideas, your convictions, and your manner of life as a man of the nineteenth century.

“You say that SeÑorita Aldao realizes the ideal of a Christian woman. Nonsense, my boy! Will you kindly tell me what attractiveness we can find in that ideal if we examine it carefully? The ideal for us ought to be the woman of the present, or, better, of the future; a woman who could understand us and share our aspirations. You will say that she does not exist. Then let us try to manufacture her. She will never exist if we condemn her before she is born.

“What are the virtues which you attribute to your aunt, and which you admire so much? In what do they consist? They appear to me negative, irrational, brutal. Don’t start up in that way,—I said brutal. She has married a man who is repulsive to her, given herself up to him like an automaton, and all for what? In order not to sanction by her presence another person’s sins. Who can be held responsible for anybody’s actions but his own? That young lady is either demented or a stark fool; and the friar who countenances her and seconds her,—well, I don’t care to say what I think of him, because my tongue would run away with me. He understands better than she does what she is binding herself to, and he ought to have prevented such a barbarous affair. I tell you that the little friar,—oh, well, a friar will be a friar; but we, who undertake to bring about social changes, must differentiate ourselves from him to some extent.

“A woman such as our modern society needs would go out to service, would take in sewing, or scrub floors, if she was not happy in her father’s house, if her self-respect was wounded, but she would never give up her liberty, her heart, and her person, to such a husband. You have caught the infection of Christianity. You must get rid of it. A perfect Christian woman! And why is it that you are charmed by a perfect Christian woman? Are you, perchance, a perfect Christian man? Do you aspire to be one? Or do you believe that the destined progress of society depends upon the wife being a Christian and the husband a rationalist?

“Salustio, wake up, for you are dreaming. Are you really going to fall in love with a woman, because her ideas are contrary to yours in almost every respect? Well, suppose she were single, and you should marry her, and that she should keep burning the torch of faith,—and—well—I would not give a fig for it all. Leave her to your uncle, she is just the thing for him. They’ll make a fine couple. But for you! My boy, cure yourself of romanticism and Christianity. That does not mean that you should not make love to your auntie; but do it in a human way, without any high tragedy business. If you like her, go on! That is, so long as you are careful to avoid family dramas. Leave the dramas for the Teatro Real; even there the greater part of them are senseless. Well, you understand me, no dramas. But if you dare to tell me any more tales about Christian women and Jewish men, I’ll give you a dose of bromide. And, above all things, grind away at your studies. I shall not waste any time next year, even if Venus herself should come and be sweet on me.”

Portal’s sensible remarks did not fail to influence me greatly. At least they made me ponder on the problem of my wild enthusiasm. It was true that my aunt’s ideas and feelings were radically opposed to mine; I did not believe at all in what she venerated as dogma; her ideas of morality differed from mine; the word duty had a meaning for her different from the one I put upon it; but, nevertheless, that very difference of ideals attracted me toward her, in the same manner that a white man is sometimes charmed by the olive hue of a mulatto, or a passionate gypsy woman by the golden hair of an Englishman.

Was Portal right in saying that we knew no woman suited to us, and that we ought to search for one, to fashion her in our own image, so that she might comprehend us, and her brain work in unison with ours? Or, on the contrary, was a piquant unlikeness of souls a greater attraction, and the having in one’s own soul hidden chambers, like Blue Beard’s, where a wife would never be able to enter? Why did I exalt that woman, seeing in her a perfect type of womanhood? Why did her self-sacrifice, which would have appeared so absurd in me, seem so sublime in her?

“Luis is right on one subject,” I definitely decided; “we must devote our minds to our books; a drama in one’s own life is an enemy of study.”

In fact, I took up my books in order to take advantage of the leisure of vacation time to do a little reviewing, and when I tried to concentrate my mind on inflexible mathematics, a fearful battle raged in my brain, which I used to call, in my private dialect, the war between straight lines and curved. The straight lines were the equations, the polynomials, the theorems, the problems connected with the cutting of angles, and other such demoniacal puzzles; while the curved lines stood for amorous reveries, hatred of Jews, and all the troublesome ebullitions of my youthful fancy. At first the curved lines had the best of it, but the superior tactics and precision of the straight lines finally routed that undisciplined army, which, in the utmost confusion, retreated toward the heart, its last refuge.

The vacation was drawing to a close, when we had an unexpected visitor. The irrepressible SerafÍn made his appearance without any signs of bitterness or ill-will, lazy and good-natured as a little dog, and took up his abode at Ullosa. I could not recollect that I had ever given him any invitation, and my mother was sure that she had not. We made the best of the situation, and from the first day my mother devoted him to trimming out the vines on the arbors, picking fruit, and feeding the chickens—tasks which he performed with the greatest pleasure. When we talked by ourselves, instead of displaying the slightest resentment, he embraced me warmly.

“Don’t you know?” he asked, affectionately; “as soon as you left, I untied myself. If they had caught me in such a fix, tied up, a nice time we should have had! What a joke! It was not right to watch them; but it was jolly fun. The wine was to blame for it all. The married couple went off to Pontevedra that very afternoon. Now they are showing themselves off there. The Saint complimented them by a grand dinner at Naranjal; they served up fried brains of taxpayers and pickled client’s leg. They had nougat for desert—as your uncle’s house is already rented for the post-office. Hey? He, he, he! SeÑor Aldao has obtained some cross or other, and is now called ‘Your Excellency.’ And you don’t know the best of it. Haven’t you heard about the irrision,—I mean procession,—in honor of the Virgin? I was amazed that fire from heaven did not fall upon it, as was said—Pluit super Sodomam et Gomorrham sulphur et ignem a domino de coelo. If you could have seen that masquerade! There was Don Vicente carrying the standard; Pimentel, very stuck up, with his white cravat; your uncle carrying a lighted taper, with a face which looked like mortal sin; behind him all the political hangers-on, grasping tapers—they who never thought they would do such a thing! Then came the fellows with leggins, the secretaries to the Common Council, with white ruffles round their knees; all the mayors, and all the judges, and all the registrars, and all the supernumeraries. Oh, why didn’t you go to Pontevedra that day? We wont have another such in twenty years to come. Even the newspaper men and the masons carried tapers. I assure you it is true. And afterward El Teucrense called the procession a festival. What is a festival? Like a saturnalia, I presume.”

Afterward, lowering his voice, he added:

“There was a bishop there also, gaping away, and not out of devotion to the Virgin, either, but for the sake of the great saint with the fat offices. But don’t feel shocked at that. Nestorius was bishop of Constantinople. And who promoted the schism of that big hog of a king of England but another pig of a heretical bishop, who was called CrÉmor or Cremer! Don’t talk to me about bishops. The Church will have to be reformed by the Pope and us clergy alone—no, I mean the clergy’s apprentices and a few laymen with grievances—no matter what the Encyclical, cum multa, says.”

I assured him that I did not know what that Encyclical said, and then asked him, as though by chance, after CandidiÑa.

“A nice girl she is! He, he, he! She is there all alone with the old man, now. She’ll drive him distracted.”

He also spoke of Father Moreno, and I learned that the Moorish friar intended to spend a few days at Ullosa as soon as he had finished taking his sea-baths.

In fact, the Father arrived a few days later, covered with dust from his long ride in the diligence. My mother, who was very fond of him, received him quite coldly at first; she could not forgive him for having officiated at the marriage. But I overwhelmed him with polite attentions. I should have liked to be able to say to Aben Jusuf:

“My delirium has passed away. The sentimental fever has abated. If you only knew, Father, how well I feel now. Just like a person who uses an anÆsthetic to cure his neuralgia, and does cure it. My neuralgia, or lover’s toothache, no longer exists. It seems impossible that I am the same one who almost broke his neck falling off a tree, lowered his dignity by playing the spy on a certain wedding night, wanted to throw himself into the sea, and begged a novitiate’s habit of you. Here you see a well-behaved young man, a student of engineering, and the son of Benigna Unceta, who, as you know, is a very practical lady. I am now sound and whole.”

If not exactly this, it was something very similar that I said to him in the course of a ramble over the mountains. I recollect that he seemed well pleased, and answered as follows:

“I am indeed glad to hear it, but don’t be too sure. These heart fevers do not go on as they begin; but the Lord help us, if you get a relapse. And it’s our fault if we have a relapse, because we go near the fire. In that lottery, they give prizes to the nearest numbers. Don’t you get near. Keep at a respectful distance. Establish a sanitary cordon. If you do not do so, I shall not consider you a man of honor.”

Mutatis mutandis, so Father Moreno expressed his opinions. After her momentary annoyance, my mother, whose heart is as good as gold and who is very hospitable, showered attentions on the Father, and insisted on feeding him at all hours of the day, until finally the friar, with a comical air, rose in revolt:

“No more chicken, not even if you cut me in pieces! Not a morsel more! What a woman! Hard-hearted creature, do you want me to burst on the spot? You may wear as big a bustle as you choose, madam, but I must control the bulging of my own stomach.”

But her exaggerated gastronomical entertainment of the friar did not last long, for he went off to his monastery after the two days, leaving a great void behind him. His vacation was over, and the leave of absence granted by his Superior in order that he might take sea-baths and recruit his health; so the Moor in a friar’s garb meekly wended his way back to his gloomy retreat in Compostela, where the walls were covered with dampness, and a green moisture was visible on the window-sills and the cracks of the masonry. In spite of the hearty manner in which he assured me that he was willing to fulfill his obligations, I could see that that Spaniard, who was half Saracen, so fond of the warmth of Africa, must suffer keenly both in mind and body on being banished to such a damp and dreary region.

I saw him march away to his exile, recalling with amazement that I had envied him his garb, and even the vows which bound him.

I surely must have been sick with a sort of psycalgia, or moral neurosis, this summer, and now that I am convalescent I perceive it.

During the few days before my return to Madrid, as we had no guests or particular amusements, I buried myself in the reading of two or three interesting books, works on philosophy, among them Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Exempt as it is, in my judgment, from all flow of mere sentiment and misleading hallucinations, I read it with the purest delight; my mind, already disciplined by the study of mathematics, fairly absorbing the teaching of the philosopher. I felt the remotest cells of my brain penetrated, in gentle firmness, by those truths of criticism, which, far from leading us to skeptical negations, fill us with a serene conviction of the uselessness of our endeavors to become acquainted with the external world, and shut us up in the beneficent selfishness of the study of our own faculties.

When, after reading Kant, I would roam through the meadows, the groves, the modest belongings of our patrimonial estate, and the peace of twilight would sink into my spirit, I would find myself feeling happy; completely cured of my folly; shut up to the straight line. “Understand, and you will be free,” I repeated to myself, with youthful pride.