Benito PErez Galdos

THE ASCETIC.

Leon was not long in discovering that Luis Gonzaga was out of his element in his father’s house. The lean, angular figure, wrapped in a black gown with a cord round the slender waist,—bare-headed, feeble and drooping, with eyes always fixed on the ground, with a dull, clammy skin and weak swaying neck that could hardly support the head above it, with broad, yellow, transparent hands like little faggots of thin sticks, too weak for anything but to be folded in prayer—wandered like an ominous shadow through the drawing-rooms hung with gaudy papers or tawdry tapestry. It was a dark and dismal stain on the gilded furniture, and the oriental and Japanese decorations, in which the queer figures, like those of a grotesque dream, seemed to harmonise, though remotely, with that of the emaciated student. He was always to be seen wandering and restless, like an imprisoned bird that seeks some escape; and when he cast an eye on the objects that environed him it was to select the most uncomfortable seat in the most obscure corner, where he might pursue his meditations. Now and again the servants, when dusting or tidying a room, would come upon the black and silent form, and pause in their bustle with a mechanical gesture of reverence, while Luis would fly to seek some fresh refuge in this desert of worldly adornment, of profane pictures, of damask and chintz, of satin and rosewood. The hapless, dying anchorite, as he fled from one corner to another, hunted by his own fevered mysticism, would stumble against a piano, a Chinese screen, a stand supporting a bowl of gold-fish, a pillowy sofa covered up with brown holland, or a nude bronze Venus.—He could not understand this covering up of furniture and uncovering of statues.

The servants did not trouble themselves about him, perhaps because he never spoke to them and never asked for anything out of pure humility; he could endure hunger and thirst for an incredible length of time, and knew no vexations, for his spirit, greedy of mortification, accepted them as a boon. A little lad with a jacket all covered with buttons, a merry mischievous face and a closely-cropped head, nimble of foot and with rough warty hands, was the only person who ever did anything for him, and that against the young man’s will. But he would ask him a few questions:

“What is your name?”

“Felipe Centeno.”

“Where do you come from?”

“From Socartes.”

But not much more; the young anchorite kept his eyes down; the page left him to himself. The other servants all looked sour and disobliging, like men doing penance willy-nilly, and condemned to poverty and abstinence in the midst of luxury and splendour.

The marquesa and MarÍa sat for hours with the invalid, trying to cheer him with trivial chat.

“I do not fear death,” he would say with perfect truth, “on the contrary, I long for it with all my soul, as a captive longs for liberty. You do not understand, for you cling to the world—you do not live that inner life, you have not broken, as I have, with every tie of earth.”

His mother listened with a sigh to these seraphic aspirations, which filled her with grief and admiration as she reflected how far she was from such heights of piety. Seclusion and the intense heat had made the poor lady melancholy and despondent.

One evening when Leon was going home he said to MarÍa:

“It is nothing but a feeling of dignity, or rather a dread of ‘what people will say,’ that has kept your mother from following the others in their miserable desertion. What a hideous world we live in! But since all the rest have fled we will stay. Your brother is very ill—he may outlive the summer, but on the other hand he may flicker out of life when we least expect it.”

The following day the physician declared that the TellerÍa’s house, which was in a densely-built quarter, very sunless and ill-ventilated, was quite an unfit residence for an invalid; and it was agreed that he should be removed to Leon’s house, which was in the outskirts of the city, exposed to fresh breezes and peacefully retired from all noise and bustle. The sick man made no difficulties—he never did—and was taken to his sister’s home. He was settled on the ground floor to avoid the fatigue of stairs with a bed-room next to Leon’s study; and the study itself, a large, sunny, cheerful room, to sit in. But none of these advantages seemed to strike his attention; to him a palace and the gloomiest dungeon were alike.

The first day he suffered much from the move and the pain was so constant and so prolonged that his mother and sister were much alarmed; he, in the intervals of the paroxysms, was calm and smiling:

“Why,” he said, “are you uneasy? Why do you shed tears? I am neither alarmed nor sad, but the more I suffer the more I rejoice. I assure you that, seeing death so near at hand, I am full of contentment; though perhaps it may be that the hope of soon finding myself free from this corrupt and earthly body has given rise to some vanity in my soul, or to some other feeling displeasing in the sight of the Lord. I can only pray that if indeed I am too proud to be dying, God will chasten me and condemn me to live yet a little longer.”

He hardly ever spoke to Leon, for whenever his brother-in-law went to enquire how he was, or to sit with him for a while, he always found him engaged in his endless devotions which he would never shorten or postpone even on his worst days. They brought him everything that was choicest and most nourishing to eat, but he always picked out the worst pieces.

“Not that,” he would say, “I like it too well.”

When they begged him to take this or that remedy he always refused.

“But if you would rather not take it,” his sister would say with subtle logic, “mortify yourself by taking it,” and he would smile and give way.

He received visits from various priests, principally Frenchmen, with fringes of hair and three-cornered cocked hats, highly-bred, worldly, soft-tongued, and they discussed the affairs of the Seminary. There was a veneer of polish in their conversation with an affected tone peculiar to certain circles. More rarely there came grave Spanish priests, who, when they are really good men, are the most priestly priests in Christendom, true ministers of God, pious, affable without affectation and full of sound and healthy wisdom. Luis Gonzaga liked their company, but he preferred solitude; still, in conversation he displayed his keen judgment—not devoid of flavour and wit, his perfect piety which none could fail to appreciate, and his gift of grave, subtle and impassioned eloquence. He went every morning in the carriage, carefully wrapped and watched, to church, and came back towards evening; on his return, he meditated for a time on his knees, and would take no food but when his emaciated frame was fainting for lack of it, and even in the midst of his scanty meal he would often be seized with such acute spasms that it seemed as though his last hour had come. He would allow no one to help him to dress and undress, nor to sleep in his room; MarÍa pointed out to her husband that sometimes the bed was undisturbed and he must have lain on the floor. The padded sofas and chairs, which the march of industry has placed within the reach of the most modest household, knew not the weight of his bones; he commonly sat on a cane stool without a back and remained there for hours, rigid, weary and bathed in sweat. When he could no longer hold himself up, he would push the stool to the wall and lean his aching shoulders against that, with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his hands clasped—he looked like a criminal about to be throttled.

He never spoke of his absent brothers or his father; the person to whom he showed most attachment, and some confidence was MarÍa; Leon he never even looked at.

He was often tormented by religious scruples and would sometimes speak of them. If by chance his mind wandered for a quarter of an hour from the contemplation of death he was deeply distressed and blamed himself severely. His ambition was to imitate exactly, or as nearly as possible, the famous and saintly child whose name he bore—that angelic spirit that fled from earth, burnt out by mystical fervours, at the age of twenty-three, and which during its brief existence here was a voluntary martyr to every form of mortification, repressing every natural impulse, and cherishing the inner life of the spirit, by relentlessly cutting off and plucking out every thought and feeling that was foreign to the aim of self-purification and a passionate yearning for salvation.

Like his Jesuit model, Luis TellerÍa suffered frightfully from headaches. Acute neuralgia, which had frequently attacked him at the Seminary of PuyÓo, tormented him no less at Madrid, scorching his brain and upsetting his whole frame; his head felt like a mould filled with molten lead. But through all these periods of intense suffering, his soul, thrown back on itself, revelled in the martyrdom and accepted physical torture with a defiant rapture which bordered on pride, and a sort of delirious luxury. He never uttered a complaint; nay, when his brain seemed turned to fiery serpents he could force his lips to smile. When Saint Luis Gonzaga suffered thus, his Superior advised him not to think so much and he would have less pain. His friends gave his namesake the same advice; but the young man, rejoiced at the implied comparison, answered:

“You wish me to think less that I may have less headache, but it would hurt me far more to try not to think.”

His physician ordered him a variety of soothing and other medicines. He took them as he was desired when his mother besought him with prayers and sobs; but the medicine he preferred was a scourge of leather with iron spikes which he always carried twisted through his girdle. His sister often stole on tiptoe to his door at night, and found him on his knees in front of the crucifix which he had placed at the foot of his bed.

The Seminary of PuyÓo could boast of many saintly men and many wise ones, some clever and some worldly, but all agreed to sing the praises of Luis—of his virtues and of that holy hatred of himself which, notwithstanding all that is preached in its honour, would seem to be a somewhat archaic form of piety. Nevertheless, the very tendency of modern devotion to come to a compromise with good living and easy sleeping, makes the resolute abstinence and voluntary martyrdom of the marquis’ son, all the more praiseworthy. His fame was great throughout the catholic world and talked of even in Rome.

He lived habitually in tranquil silence, and in spite of his sincere affection for his parents, he had fought out many a desperate battle with himself to keep his mind from ever dwelling on the thought of them, so that nothing should alienate his mind from the constant presence of God which was the sole aim and end of his hopes and sufferings. His talents were as conspicuous as his saintliness; he had made rapid progress in his studies and was so versatile and keen-witted that he had early mastered philosophy and theology, and could argue so closely that the most practised debaters were astonished. But this became a great anxiety to his conscience, for all these praises jarred on his humility; so, for fear they should make him vain, he affected stupidity; to be treated as the lowest and least in his college was his greatest desire, and it was only by the peremptory command of the Superior that he consented to display his talents, but then his convincing logic and persuasive eloquence drew tears from the most strong-hearted. He always obeyed his Superior, was exact in his observance of rules and regulations, and achieved such perfect command of his senses that at length he seemed to have lost them; his closed ears and eyes always fixed on the ground, paid no heed to anything that went on. He passed other people without even seeing them; now and then he would take a walk with his companions, but he observed nothing. He had registered a vow never to look on the face of a woman excepting his mother or his sister, and he kept it with the utmost strictness. By such a system he must surely keep his spirit pure—almost as pure, as that of the babe unborn!

When his doctors pronounced his illness incurable, he declared himself infinitely happy, nay, he rejoiced so fervently in the idea of suffering much and dying in torments, that he made a crime even of that joy, and asked his spiritual director whether he had not in fact sinned in glorying in the certainty of approaching death, and if it were not a snare of vanity. When his conscience was set at rest on this delicate point, he watched the progress of the disease and aggravated it in secret by his austerities, and by never following the advice of his doctors. The decision of the Superior to send him home when death seemed certainly near, had at first greatly grieved him; but then a plan formed itself in his mind that reconciled him to being removed to Madrid, and to an imprisonment in the splendid rooms which to him were like a reflection or embodiment of his own disease, no less horrible, diabolical and revolting.

Thus, in direct contravention of all natural law and instinct, he encouraged his disease as we cherish a precious plant; he fed the monster that preyed upon him, triumphing in the wasting and decay of his miserable flesh, which he regarded solely as a burden.

“The world,” he would say, “is a foul and narrow alley in which mankind revels and struggles as in a wild delirium. We are all condemned to pass through it, disguised in the loathsome mask of our body. How happy are they who are soon at the end, and who may then cast aside the mask, and appear as they are before God!”

This was the angelic spirit, the enthusiastic and ecstatic soul, full of faith and contempt for the world, that was worthy to give our age what, indeed, it still lacks—a Saint, if the nineteenth century did not seem inclined, on the contrary, to break the die that coins saints. To be sure Luis did not work miracles; but who can tell whether he may not have had the power, and have concealed it in obedience to his pious habit of chastening his vanity? Some indeed said that all this piety was nothing more than a well-acted part; but this, in fact, was without foundation; those were nearer the truth who said that sanctity, like chivalry, has it Quixotes. Luis was pious in good faith; if he deceived any one it was himself, and he certainly was magnanimous and heroic. Not one of the young novices who at that time tried to imitate Saint Luis Gonzaga—and there was a perfect mania for it among the aspirants to the priesthood—could compare with TellerÍa in the closeness of the copy. Still, no one can imitate the inimitable, and of what avail is an exact reproduction of certain acts and words when all that is most essential is overlooked or ignored?

My readers may perhaps say that this figure is an anachronism, a reminiscence of the middle ages. But it is not; it is a sketch of our own day; at the same time, to see it you must know where to look for it, and that is not in a fashionable promenade. They do exist, these seraphic youths, and are the glory of our Church. The nineteenth century—the richest and most encyclopedic of the centuries—has produced them as it has produced every type. Ours is a monstrous synthesis of all the ages, and who can foresee how far it will go before it has ceased shuffling and mingling its own inventions and marvels with the relics and curiosities of the distant past?