Benito PErez Galdos

THE MARQUIS.

He was a little man, with delicate and effeminate features, on which he wore a look of assumed gravity, at first carefully cultivated, but now as much a matter of habit as though it had been a cosmetic applied daily out of a gallipot in his old dandy’s dressing-case. His eyes, nose and mouth were, like his daughter’s, perfectly well shaped, but what in her was charming, in him was ridiculous, and what was beautiful in her, in him was purely comical; for there is nothing more preposterous than the face of a pretty woman hung on, like a mask, to the figure and manners of a pottering old man.

His fashionable dress, his easy demeanour, his refined and frigid courtesy, which masked a total absence of kindliness or intelligence, decorated his exterior as a gorgeous binding covers a book that is destitute of rational contents. He was not a vicious man; he was equally incapable of wilful evil or intentional good; he was a vacuous compound of weakness and dissipation, corrupt rather from “evil communications” than from inherent wickedness; one of so many! a creature so hard to be distinguished from the rest of his species, since absence of character has reduced certain groups of the upper classes—as well as of the lower—with a few notable exceptions, to a common type which will lack a generic name till the advance of terminology allows us to speak of them as “the masses of the upper class.” Still, this empty-headed and unenlightened mortal had a great command of words in no respect deficient in meaning, and was an admired master of all the commonplace of the press and the law; he added nothing to be sure, but, on the other hand, he deprived them of nothing. He was, in short, always prepared with a perfect thesaurus of those ready-made phrases which to many people form the Alpha and Omega of learning and wisdom. He was constantly insisting that “administration rather than legislation was what was needed;” he was convinced that “Spain is a nation past all government;” he was for “upholding the venerable creeds of the past so that we may once more become a terror to our foes at home and abroad;” he was convinced that nothing of native origin could be good for anything; that Spain is a ruined country, notwithstanding the fertility of her soil; and at the same time he maintained with punctilious exactitude the immovable dogmas of Castilian Nobility, of the Faith abandoned by the modern populace, of the materialistic tendencies of the age and so forth; he had a sacred horror of “Utopian dreams”—and anything he did not at once grasp was to him an Utopian dream. In short, not a string was wanting to his inexhaustible fiddle.

“In here as usual, always in this blessed study of yours, which is as dark and as small as a prior’s cell and might be a prince’s boudoir for the treasures it contains!... Here as usual Leon! I never meet you anywhere. And MarÍa? She was with us last evening ... tears and lamentations as usual; her mother tried to comfort her, and they sat whispering and talking—between them I suspect, they made things pleasant for you. They have nothing to think about but their subscription to the theatres, and the festival-services at San Prudencio’s; and after Mass they lay their heads together to talk of the fashions.... But you, are you ill? You look pale, what is the matter?”

“I?” said Leon, looking at his father-in-law like a man who suddenly wakes face to face with a stranger, “what were you saying?”

“That you look ill. We were talking of you last evening at the FÚcars’. Since Pepa married Cimarra, poor Don Pedro’s life is a bitter one—Poor Pepa! I hear dreadful things of Federico ... and what a sweet child that is of Pepa’s! Have you seen it? Do you never go there?... Your cigars are first-rate.”

The smoke of their Havanas mingled as it curled up to the ceiling, and for a minute or two there was silence in the pretty little room; nothing was to be heard but the bubbling trickle of the water in the hose with which the gardener was sprinkling the shrubs outside, and the twitter of caged birds in a window near, whose chirruping song sounded like a piping medley of musical notes trying to agree as to the best way of producing a Wagnerian symphony. In the study, on a book-stand as large as a pulpit, a huge geological atlas lay open, showing the successive ages of the globe. On the table were flowers, dissected so as to show their inmost mysteries; insects undergoing autopsy; shells sawn down the middle, revealing their secret chambers of enamel and pearl; prints, displaying eggs at the various stages of incubation; a model in papier-machÉ of the human eye of the size of a coconut; and in the midst of all this paraphernalia stood a microscope, the lens reflecting a sunbeam on to the marquis’ head which, being perfectly bald, offered a convenient subject for the study of craniology.

“So you are studying natural history now?” said TellerÍa with an air of condescending tolerance. “Well, it seems to be the science of the day—the science of materialism. Much good you are doing the human race by depriving it of its time-honoured beliefs and giving it in exchange ... what?—The precious discovery that we are first cousins to the apes of Retiro.” And he laughed with childish glee at his own idea as he cast his eye on the litter of books.

“You know,” he said suddenly, “that I am on the commission to report on the law concerning vagrants.”

“You will make a brilliant report.”

“It is a delicate matter,” added the marquis, throwing himself back in his chair so that he sat with his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his feet in the air. “It is the question of the day. I have said again and again to the president of the council: ‘so long as we have no good vagrancy law legislation is impossible.’ We must go to the root of the matter, to the foundation of things, do not you see? It is the immense number of idle and disreputable souls, the starving and thieving classes, who count on a revolution to make their harvest, who are the festering cause of the ferment in which we live. Sweep away all this low filth and I will be responsible for social good order.”

“Very true,” said Leon. “Sweep them away—a clean sweep, that is what is wanted.”

“But the worst of it is that I cannot give as much time as I could wish to the commission; I am so much occupied. And that reminds me, Leon, I had some business to discuss with you.”

He had in fact reached the point which was the object of his visit; but though he approached the matter with a degree of anxiety that made his heart beat, he contrived to conceal his agitation. The man was too weak not to suffer from such qualms, but too highly artificial to betray them.

“You are aware that I am one of the directors on the board of administration of the Bank of Agriculture. It is a grand national undertaking; our function is to raise the credit of landed property from the abyss into which it has sunk.” Such phrases of financial cant were a frequent garnish to the marquis’ conversation, and he went on to deliver himself of a variety of novel ideas: as for instance, that Spain is essentially an agricultural country; that its territorial wealth cannot be developed for want of capital; that the capital nevertheless exists—why should it not?... That all that is needed is to concentrate it, to secure it, and to redistribute it, so as to enable it to fertilise—to benefit—to fructify—and the marquis, having lost his thread, could not finish the sentence, which he was improvising instead of repeating by heart. He stopped short. The Bank of Agriculture was closely connected with a great English company, “The Spanish Phosphate Company, Limited,” which was destined to effect a complete transformation in the country; it was a magnificent scheme. “Funds, subscribers—these were the two poles of the axis on which the regeneration of Spain was to turn.” This, again, was borrowed from the company’s prospectus, and the marquis wound up his harangue by saying with apparent indifference: “Well, what do you think of it? Will you invest some of your capital in our shares.”

“I must save my capital to secure my income,” said Leon with feigned simplicity.

“What, man!”

And then Leon went on to tell him such plain truths about certain companies that his father-in-law suddenly lost the delicate hue that his complexion usually wore and a deep purple tinge, like mulberry stain, flushed his cheek and betrayed his indignation. After a short pause, during which he devoted himself to twirling the waxed ends of his grizzled moustache till they looked as formidable as bull-darts, he rose and began to examine the objects of natural history.

“Well, there is nothing more to be said on the subject,” he muttered.

He touched and turned over everything, taking up this thing or that to inspect it more closely and then peeped through the microscope.

“But I cannot see anything,” he said, with that odd pride of ignorance that is occasionally to be met with. “I am no good at all at such things ... thanks.... How much your microscope helps you! Now, do tell me—can they see the soul with this? Or is it because they cannot see it that they maintain that it has no existence?”

And before his son-in-law could reply he went close up to him, and, standing in front of him, looked at him for a minute or two; then shaking his head he said: “I cannot help thinking that my poor daughter has very good reasons for complaining.... I do not mean that you are not a thorough good fellow, Leon; but really if you think of it ... she has her beliefs, you have yours—or, to be accurate, you have none. Your lack of religion and your contempt for the time-honoured beliefs of the Spanish People grieve and offend her deeply. My dear fellow,” he added, laying his hand on his son-in-law’s head with an affectionate gesture. “You must remember that the Spanish People are above everything religious, and you know Leon that we are not in Germany here—that land of Utopian dreams.”

Leon attempted some explanation. “No, no, to leave her at liberty is not enough,” TellerÍa began again with some vehemence. “You must take some definite step. You have a reputation for atheism that is really appalling. I am frank with you, and for my part I would rather lose my position and my name in the world than have such a character for atheism as you have gained. I quite enter into MarÍa’s feelings; she is deeply religious—she and her twin brother were born to be saints—and in the end she will hold you in horror; she will fear and detest you, and be unable to live with you ... and if it comes to that, the fault will be yours for having expressed yourself so extravagantly in your works. Of course we all have our leaven, more or less, of heresy ... that is to say, I have not; I am orthodox to the bone, I do not meddle with philosophies ... however, we all, even the firmest believers, fail in our duties and neglect them; but at any rate we exercise some caution, we have some tact, we keep up appearances, we remember that we live among an eminently religious nation and that we must set an example to the lower classes or they will kick over the traces. This is not Germany. There is nothing I hate more than a Utopia. The Spanish People have many faults but they will never outrage the sentiments which have formed the foundation of their country’s glory and of the respect it commands both at home and abroad. To crown our misfortunes the aristocracy of Castile....” But the worthy gentleman did not succeed in finishing his sentence, for Leon interrupted him with some energy.

For a long time their voices could be heard alternately even in the distant room where the birds were singing. MarÍa and her brother paused in their conversation to listen to the parliamentary muttering that reached them from the study.

“Those tiresome birds do not allow us to hear a single word,” said the young man. “Listen MarÍa, papa and your lord and master are disputing over something. What a waste of time!”

“Be quiet, you little plagues,” said MarÍa impatiently to the birds and she tried to hear what was going on. Presently the curtain over the door was hastily jerked open and revealed the pointed horns of the marquis’ moustache and his face, in which solemnity was now tempered by affability as though nature had intended it as a living symbol of the eternal and supreme duplicity of the human species.

“Well, you know,” he said in a bitter-sweet tone between grave and gay. “I am a hypocrite, and tact is my profession.... Your amiable wife has told me so in so many words.... A humbug, a hypocrite—yes, that is what she calls me....” And he kissed his daughter. “Do you know I really think Leon is a little weak in his mind,” he went on. “It is a pity, for he is such a clever fellow.... Oh! those dreadful birds will not let one speak.”

“Be quiet you little torments,” said MarÍa.

What a wonderful interest they take in the affairs and disputes of their masters; between the sentences of the conversation their shrill notes try to drown the differences of humanity in a flood of rapture.

The party sat talking for some time longer, but the birds prevented their being overheard, and the reader must have patience till the birds have ceased singing.