CONVINCED that she could neither be aided nor supported by the influential man who would not join her in these matrimonial projects, Maria determined to act by herself, with the certainty of overcoming the objections of the Gaviota, and those which Stein would oppose. Nothing stopped her, neither the boldness of Marisalada, nor the stolidity of Stein, because love is persevering as a sister of charity, and intrepid as a hero; and love was the grand spring of all this good old woman did. It was thus she said to Stein, and to the point:

“Do you know, Don Frederico, several days ago Marisalada was here, and she explained to us very clearly, and with a grace altogether natural, that she came here only on your account?”

“How do you find this frankness? I say that, if it be true, it was an ingratitude that my pretty nightingale was not capable of; she was no doubt jesting.”

“Don Frederico, the old are more experienced than the young, and the first impulses are the best. Does it cause you much grief to learn that you are beloved?”

“No—certainly. We are agreed upon this axiom which you repeat so often: ‘Love does not speak enough.’ But, good Maria, make of love constancy: I would sooner give than receive.”

“They do not talk thus to me,” cried the brave woman, with impatience.

“It is still true, my dear and good mother,” answered Stein, taking and pressing the hands of old Maria, “we have a running account of affection, we two, but the balance is against me. God grant that I may some day be able to furnish the proof of my attachment and my gratitude!”

“It is very easy, Don Frederico, and I am about to demand it.”

“At once, my good Maria; and what is this proof? say quickly.”

“Remain with us; and to that end get married, Don Frederico. You inspire us with continual uneasiness in this living in the idea of your departure, and you would then realize the proverb, ‘Which is your country? That of my wife.’”

Stein smiled.

“Whom shall I marry? with whom, my good mother, with whom shall it be? With your linnet?”

Maria replied: “With her, who is in your heart an eternal spring. She is so beautiful and so graceful: she is so moulded to your habits that she could not live without you! And what would you do without her? You love each other like two turtles—this is seen in your eyes.”

“I am too old for her, Maria,” replied Stein, sighing and blushing in a manner to prove that, as to him at least, the old woman had spoken truly; “I am too old,” he repeated, “for a girl of sixteen years. My heart is an invalid, to whom I desire to accord a sweet and tranquil existence; I would not expose it to new wounds.”

“Old!” exclaimed Maria, “what nonsense! you have scarcely attained to thirty years. Come—you reason like the leg of a table, Don Frederico.”

“What could I desire more,” replied Stein, “than to taste with an innocent young girl the sweet and holy felicity of domestic life, which is the only true, the only perfect, the only real, because it is that which God has taught us. But, good Maria, she cannot love me.”

“That is too strong; she has a very delicate taste, by my faith, she who would be ashamed of you! Say not to the contrary; you have the air of joking. Yes, the wife that you love will be the happiest in the whole world.”

“Do you believe so, Maria?”

“I believe it as I believe my salvation; and she who, in such a case, does not esteem herself happy, should be crucified alive.”

The following day, when Marisalada came, she met, on entering the court, face to face with Momo, who was seated on a stone of the mill, breakfasting on bread and sardines.

“You here already, Gaviota!” this was the sweet salutation Momo gave her; “if this continues, we will find you one day in our soup. You have then nothing to do at home?”

“I abandon all,” replied Marisalada, “to come and contemplate your face, which enchants me, and thine ears, which excite the envy of Golondrina, thine ass.”

In so saying she took hold of Momo’s ears, and pulled them.

The young girl had the chance at the first roar which Momo made with all the strength of his big lungs, for a mouthful of bread and sardines had stuck in his throat, and occasioned such a fit of coughing, that the Gaviota, light as a fawn, escaped the talons of the vulture.

“Good-day, my linnet,” said Stein, who, on hearing Marisalada, entered the court.

“She is beautiful, this linnet!” growled Momo, in his fit of coughing; “she is the most hoarse magpie which has sung this summer.”

“Come, Maria,” continued Stein, “come write, and read the verses I translated yesterday.”

“I do not remember them,” replied the young girl. “Were they not of that country where grow the oranges? These trees do not grow here; or they have withered: brother Gabriel’s tears are not sufficient to nourish their vitality. Let the verses go, Don Frederico, and play me the nocturn of Weber which these are the words of: ‘Listen, listen, my beloved! the chant of the nightingale is heard; on each branch flourishes a flower; before the nightingale ceases to sing, before the flowers wither, sing, sing, my best beloved.’”

“What ugly words,” murmured Momo, “this Gaviota remembers, and which are to her like bon-bons to a clove of garlic.”

“After that you have read, I will play thee the serenade of Carl Weber,” replied Stein, who by this single recompense could compel Marisalada to learn that which he would instruct her in. The young girl took, with an irritated gesture, the paper which Stein presented to her, and read it fluently, although with a bad grace.

“Mariquita,” said Stein, when the young girl had finished reading, “you who do not know the world, you cannot appreciate what grand and profound truth, what philosophy there is in these verses. Do you remember that I explained to you what philosophy is?”

“I recollect,” replied the Gaviota, “it is the science of happiness. But in that, seÑor, there are neither rules nor science which can constitute it: each one is happy after his own manner. Don Modesto places his happiness in possessing cannons in the fort as ruined as himself; brother Gabriel, to see return to the convent the holy Prior and the bells; the good Maria, that you do not quit her; my father, to take a corbina; and Momo, to do all the evil he can.”

Stein laughed, and placing affectionately his hand on Mariquita’s shoulder, “And you,” said he to her, “in what do you make happiness to consist?”

Mariquita hesitated an instant before finding a reply, raised her large black eyes, and looked at Stein; then her eyelids fell, and her glance rested on Momo; the young girl smiled to herself at the appearance of those ears which were redder than tomatoes.

“And you, Don Frederico,” she at last replied, “in what would you make it to consist? To return to your country?”

“No,” sighed Stein.

“In what then?” repeated Marisalada.

“I will tell thee, my linnet; but beforehand tell me in what thou makest thine to consist.”

“To always hear you play the flute,” she replied with sincerity.

At this moment Maria came from the kitchen with the good intention to terminate the affair; but she occasioned that which happens to a great many: excess of zeal spoiled all.

“Do you not see, Don Frederico, how pretty Marisalada is, and what a beautifully formed woman?”

“Yes, yes,” continued Stein to Maria, “she is handsome, and her eyes are the type of Arabian eyes so celebrated.”

“They say of the hedgehogs, each looks at a thorn,” growled Momo.

“And this mouth so pretty, which sings like a seraphim,” pursued the old woman, caressing the chin of her protÉgÉ.

“See there, a mouth like a basket, which knows how to speak wrong and contrary.”

“And thy mouth,” said the Gaviota to Momo, with a fury which this time she could not control, “and thy horrible mouth, which cannot extend from one ear to the other because that thy face is so large it is fatigued when half way over.”

Momo, for his only reply, sang in three different tones—

“Gaviota! Gaviota! Gaviota!”

“Romo! Romo! Romo!” sang Marisalada in her magnificent voice.

“Is it possible,” said Stein to his linnet, “that you notice what Momo says expressly to enrage you. These witticisms are stupid and gross, but without wickedness.”

“It must seem to you, Don Frederico, that this must be very stupid,” replied the Gaviota; “and to inform you that I have no desire to support this lout harder than a stone, I go.”

Upon this, the Gaviota went away; Stein followed her.

“You are a profligate,” said Maria to her grandson; “you have more spleen in your heart than good blood in your veins. You owe respect to women, villain gosling! there is not in the village one more wicked or more detested than thou.”

“You are in your turn tainted,” replied Momo, “with the beauty of this sea-magpie, who have put my ears in the condition you see! All others, according to your ideas, are gross people. This agua mala (polypus) bewitches you. See then a gaviota (sea-gull) which reads and writes! Has any one ever seen that? She does not employ herself all day but to grumble as water hisses on the fire; she does not cook for her father, who is obliged to prepare his own meals; she does not take care of his linen, and it is on you falls the work. You nourish a serpent.”

Stein having rejoined Marisalada, said to her—

“Of what avails it, Mariquita, that I have endeavored to tone down your spirit, if you have not learned at least to acquire the little superiority necessary to place yourself above these miseries, which are in themselves so trifling and unimportant?”

“Listen, Don Frederico,” replied Marisalada: “I comprehend that this superiority ought to serve to place me above others, but not below them.”

“God help me, Mariquita! is it thus you change things? Superiority teaches us not to be proud of our qualities, and not to revolt against injustices opposed to us. But,” added he smiling, “these are the faults of your youth, and of the vivacity of your southern blood. You will know all that when you have gray hairs, as I have. Have you remarked, Mariquita, that I have gray hairs?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“See then, I am very young, but sufferings have made my head like that of an aged man. My heart has remained pure, Mariquita, and I offer you the flowers of spring, if you do not believe you will be alarmed at the symbols of winter which circle my forehead.”

“It is true,” replied the Gaviota, who could not restrain the natural ejaculation, “that a lover with gray hairs would not please me.”

“I have thought it would be thus,” said Stein with sadness. “My heart is loyal, and the good Maria, when she assured me that my happiness was still possible, instilled in my heart some hope, but which is as the flowers of the air without roots, and as the breath of the breeze.”

Mariquita, who saw that she had wounded, with her accustomed rudeness, a soul too delicate to insist, and a man so modest as to persuade himself that this sole objection annulled the other advantages, immediately said—

“If a lover with gray hairs pleases me not, a husband with such hair would not frighten me.”

Stein was taken by surprise at this brusque remark of Mariquita, and above all at the decision and impassibility with which she had enunciated it. Soon he smiled at Marisalada, and said to her—

“And then you will marry me, beautiful child of nature?”

“Why not?”

“Mariquita, she who accepts a man for a husband, and unites herself to him to pass her life, or, the better to express it, to make of two existences one only, as in a torch two lights blended make but one flame, such a person, I say, accords to this man a greater favor than she who accepts him for a lover.”

“And of what use,” replied the young girl with a mixture of innocence and indifference, “of what use are the guitarists, who sing badly and play badly, if not to frighten away the cats?”

They had arrived at the beach, and Stein begged Mariquita to sit beside him on a rock. On the part of both there was a long silence. Stein was profoundly agitated. The young girl with stoical indifference had taken a stick, and traced figures on the sand.

“How nature speaks in the heart of a man!” at last exclaimed Stein. “What sympathy reigns in all that God has created! A pure life is like a serene day; a life of unloosed passions resembles a tempestuous day. See those sombre clouds which slowly approach to interpose between the earth and the sun, they are such as should interpose between a heart and an illicit love, and let fall on the heart their cold but pure emanations. Happy the land on which they fall not! But our felicity will be unalterable like the sky in May, because you will always love me. Is it not so, Mariquita?”

This girl, whose rude and untutored soul comprehended neither the poetry nor the elevated sentiments of Stein, did not care to answer; but as she could not withdraw herself from this obligation, she wrote upon the sand the word siempre (always) with the stick which distracted her idleness.

Stein, whose emotion increased, mistook ennui for modesty.

“Look,” pursued he, “look at the sea! Listen to the murmur of the waves, murmurs so full of charms and of terrors! ’Tis said they confine grave secrets in an unknown language. The waves, Mariquita, are those dangerous and perfidious sirens, personified by the flowery and fantastic imagination of the Greeks; creatures of a rare beauty, but without hearts, as seductive as terrible, and whose sweet voices attract men to their perdition. But thy sweet voice, Mariquita, seduces not to deceive; you attract like the siren, you will not be perfidious like her. Is it not true, Mariquita, you will never be ungrateful?”

Nunca (never), wrote Mariquita on the sand. And the rising waves amused themselves in effacing the word the young girl had written, as if they would parody the waves of time, which flowing on efface in the heart what is sworn to endure thereon forever.

“Why does not thy voice reply to me, Mariquita?”

“What would you, Don Frederico? I cannot say to a man that I love him. I am unfeeling and unnatural, Maria says, who, however, does not the less love me. I am, like my father, economical in words.”

“If you were like him, I could desire nothing more, because the good Pedro—I say my father, Mariquita—has a heart the most loving that has ever beaten in the breast of a man; such hearts belong to angels, and to a few chosen men!”

“My father a superior man!” thought Mariquita, repressing with difficulty a mocking laugh. “So be it! so much the better, if he has the air of one.”

“Mariquita,” said Stein in approaching her, “let us offer to God our pure and holy love; let us promise Him to render ourselves acceptable by our fidelity, and by the discharge of those duties which will be imposed on us when this love shall have been consecrated at the divine altar. Now let me embrace you as my wife and companion.”

“No!” cried Mariquita, drawing back suddenly, and knitting her eyebrows. “No person shall touch me.”

“It is well, my pretty fugitive,” answered Stein with sweetness, “I respect all your delicacy, and submit myself to your will. Is it not appropriate to say, with one of our ancient and sublime poets, that the greatest of all felicities is, to ‘obey in loving?’”