Benito PErez Galdos

CONQUERED BY THE ANGEL.

“It is nothing, it is over,” murmured Luis as he saw his brother-in-law coming towards them. “A sharper attack than usual ... to-morrow....”

Leon stood looking at him but he did not touch him; silent, gloomy, and oppressed by his recent nightmare, he dared not trust his own feelings.

“No,” he said to himself, “it is nothing more than an antipathy which will fade into pity—for the poor wretch is dying.”

Luis took his sister’s hands and addressed her in his weak, quavering, broken voice, half-solemn but excited by the force of the fever that was consuming him:

“The worst danger that awaits you is that you will be asked to yield to compromises, to arrange matters. Guard yourself against this snare of the devil. It is a snare, though it is hidden under roses, my child. Between faith and unfaith no compromise is possible. Nay, can you conceive of any between everlasting life and death? There is no common measure for the temporal and the eternal. Make no concessions, do not yield an inch of the firm and lofty ground you now stand upon. You cannot be religious by halves; if you are not wholly religious you are not religious at all. Our Lord requires that the work, to be perfect, shall be so intimately complete that the abstraction of a single jot nullifies the whole. Beware, I say, beware of the snare!... Compromise is the note of the times we live in, and it has sent more souls to hell than the crassest infidelity.... But you ... remember me, think of me. Do not forget that I came here to save you, to call you into the true path, and to die in your arms that my presence should be more real to you. God sent us into the world together and he bids us meet again at the foot of his throne of glory.... MarÍa! MarÍa...!”

“Be calm; pray, pray be calm,” said MarÍa in desperate alarm.

Luis opened his eyes and looking up at Leon exclaimed in bewildered accents: “there is some one there! MarÍa, who is that man?”

“It is Leon—my husband.... Send for the doctor, do not you think that we ought, Leon? Call the servants—where are they all...?”

MarÍa started up and was going to call some one, but her brother clung to her arm.

“Do not leave me alone,” he said. “Your husband, did you say; oh, God, what is this doubt that torments me? Is it a foolish scruple, like so many others I have suffered from, or is it a true warning of conscience? Tell me, who is it...? Leon did you say?” But neither of them replied and he went on: “I have offended him? What an idea. I only gave my sister such advice as my faith required of me. It was God that spoke through me ... God himself.... It is a mere scruple—and yet even a scruple must be listened to.... Ah! here is my good Paoletti!” But his eyes were still fixed on Leon.

“Padre Paoletti, tell me, have I offended him?” Then after a pause, as though he had heard an answer he added: “no, no, very true. I cannot have offended him, and if I have, to-morrow—on my death-bed, I will ask his forgiveness. Then, too, I will warn her—MarÍa ... once more....”

“We must carry him indoors,“ said Leon.

“I will call the servants,” gasped MarÍa who could hardly speak. But the dying man pushed her aside, as she and Leon were about to lift him.

“Let me be,” he said. “Sit down by me.” MarÍa obeyed, and bent her head over his. “To-morrow, to-morrow when I have received my Saviour—I will deliver up my soul ... but how cold it is! It is snowing, is it not?” his dimmed eyes wandered heavenwards.

“There are no stars to-night,” he murmured hoarsely. “A dark night before the dawn of glory. To-morrow—I will ask forgiveness of you all, and fall asleep in the Lord’s arms—you see I am quite easy now, quite at rest.... My only fear is that this respite may prolong my life. Oh! I do not long for health, I do not want to be better, all I ask is to suffer, to choke—suffocate—die. The relief I feel now....”

His head fell gently on his sister’s shoulder and lay there as helplessly as though his neck were broken. He shut his eyes, his breathing was no more than a fluttering sigh. He was dying as softly as a bird drops to sleep.

“It is over,” said Leon bending over him.

MarÍa clung to the body and kept it from falling to the ground, and when the servants came hurrying out and carried him to his bed, she kissed him passionately again and again, kneeling by the cold form. Leon, hardly certain even now that he could be dead, came to the bedside to feel his pulse and hold a mirror to his lips; but his wife started to her feet and standing in front of her husband, with a prohibitory gesture and eyes flashing with horror and tears, she cried out in a tone of furious scorn:

“Wretch! would you dare to touch him?”