Retracing her steps and jumping over the obstacles in her path, Nela made her way to a house on the left of the machine-sheds, and close to the stables where the sixty mules belonging to the establishment stood in grave meditation. The residence of the overseer, though of modern construction, was neither elegant nor even commodious. The roof was low, and it was too small by far to give adequate shelter to the parent couple of the Centenos—to their four children—to their cat—and to Nela into the bargain; but it figured, nevertheless, on the parchment plans of the settlement under the ostentatious name of "overseer's residence."

Inside, the house seemed to afford a practical illustration of the saying which we have already heard so emphatically stated by Marianela; namely, that she, Marianela, was of no good to anyone, only in the way. Somehow, in there, room was found for everything—for the father and mother, for their sons and their sons' tools, for a heap of rubbish, of the use of which no irrefragable proof has been found, for the cat, for the dish off which the cat was fed, for Tanasio's guitar, for the materials of which Tanasio made his garrotes—a kind of lidless hamper—for half a dozen old mule-halters, for the blackbird's cage, for two useless old boilers, for an altar—at which Dame Centeno worshipped the Divinity with offerings of artificial flowers and some patriarchal tapers, a perennial settlement for flies—in short, for everything and everybody excepting little MarÍa Canela. Constantly some one was heard to say: "You cannot take a step without falling over that confounded child, Nela!" or else:

"Get into your corner, do.—What a plague the creature is; she does nothing, and lets no one else do anything."

The house consisted of three rooms and a loft. The first of these served not only as dining-room and drawing-room, but also as the bedroom of the two elders; in the second slept the two young ladies, already grown-up women, and named La Mariuca and La Pepina. Tanasio, the eldest of all, stored himself in the garret, and Celipin, the youngest of the family and nearly twelve years old, had a bed in the kitchen—the innermost room, the dingiest, dampest and least habitable of the three rooms which composed the mansion of the Centenos.

Nela, during the many years of her residence there, had inhabited various nooks and corners, going from one to another, according to the exigencies of the moment, to make way for the thousand objects which served only to curtail the last scanty accommodation left for human beings. On some occasion—the precise facts are unknown to history—Tanasio, whose feet were as crippled as his brain, and who devoted himself to the manufacture of large hampers made of hazel rods, had placed in the kitchen a pile of at least half a dozen of these bulky trophies of his art. Marianela looked on, casting her eyes sadly around, and finding no corner left into which to creep; but the predicament itself inspired her with a happy idea, which she at once acted upon. She simply got into one of the baskets, and there passed the night in sound and blissful sleep. In fact, it was comfortable enough, and when it was cold she pulled another basket on the top. From that time, so long as there were garrotes (a local name for these coarse, open baskets) to be found, she never was at a loss for a crib, and the others would say of the child: "She sleeps like a jewel."

During meals, in the midst of a noisy discussion on the morning's work, a voice would suddenly say in rough tones: "Here!" and Nela would have a plate given her by one of the family, big or small, and would seat herself against the big chest to eat what she had got, in silence. But towards the end of the meal sometimes the master's harsh bleating voice would be lifted up saying, with a perfunctory air of benevolence: "Mother, you have given poor Nela nothing." And then SeÑana, a compound name abbreviated from SeÑora Ana, would move her head about as if trying to see some minute and remote object between the bodies of her own children, saying as she did so: "What, are you there? I thought you had stayed at Aldeacorba."

At night, after supper, the family repeated the Paternoster over their beads and then, staggering like bacchantes, and rubbing their eyes with their fists, Mariuca and Pepina went to their beds, which were snug and comfortable and covered with patchwork quilts. In a few minutes a duet of contralto snoring was heard which lasted without intermission till morning dawned. Tanasio went up to the higher regions and Celipin curled himself round on a heap of rags, not far from the basket into which Nela disappeared from sight.

The family thus being disposed of, the parents sat up for a while in the living-room, and while Centeno, seating himself with a stretch close to the little table and taking up a newspaper, made a series of grimaces to convey his bold intention of reading it, his wife took a stocking full of money out of the family chest, and after counting it and adding or taking out a few pieces, carefully restored it to its place. Then she took out sundry paper packets containing gold pieces and transferred some from one parcel to another. Meanwhile such remarks as these were made. "Mariuca's petticoat cost thirty-two reales. I gave Tanasio the six reales he had to pay. We only want eleven duros [2] to make up the five hundred."

Or, on the other hand:

"The deputies agreed."—"Yesterday a conference was held, etc...."

SeÑana's fingers did her sums, while her husband's forefinger passed doubtfully and waveringly along the lines, to guide his eye and mind through the labyrinth of letters. And these sentences gradually died away into monosyllables; one yawned, then the other, and at last all sunk into silence, after extinguishing the lamp by which the overseer of the mules had been cultivating his mind.

One night, when all was quiet, a creaking of baskets became audible in the kitchen. It was not perfectly dark there, for the shutters of the little window were never shut, and Celipin Centeno, who was not yet asleep, saw the topmost baskets, which were packed one inside the other, rising slowly like a gaping oyster-shell, and out of the opening peeped the nose and black eyes of Nela.

"Celipin," she said, "Celipinillo, are you asleep?" and she put a hand out.

"No, I am awake; Nela, you look like a mussel in its shell. What do you want?"

"Here, take this, it is a peseta [3] that a gentleman gave me this evening—the brother of Don CÁrlos. How much have you got now? This is something like a present; now I have given you something better than coppers!"

"Give it here and thank you very much, Nela," said the boy, sitting up to reach the money. "You have given me nearly thirty-two reales now, a copper at a time. [4] I have it all safe here, inside my shirt, in the little bag you gave me. You are a real good girl."

"I do not want money for anything; but take good care of it, for if SeÑana were to find it, she would think you would get into some mischief with it and thrash you with the big stick."

"No, no, it is not to get into mischief," said the boy vehemently, and clenching the money to his breast with one hand, while he supported himself on the other. "It is to make myself a rich man, Nela, a clever man like some I know. On Sunday, if they will let me go to Villamojada, I must buy a spelling-book to learn to read, although they will not teach me here. Who cares! I will learn by myself. Do you know, Nela, they say that Don CÁrlos is the son of a man who swept the streets in Madrid, and he, all by himself, learnt everything he knows."

"And so you think you can do the same, noodle."

"I believe you! If father will not take me away from these confounded mines, I will find some other way; ah! you shall see what sort of a man I am. I was never meant for that Nela. You just wait till I have collected a good sum, and then you will see—you will see how I will find a place in the town there, or take the train to Madrid, or a steamboat to carry me over to the islands out there, or get a place as a servant to some one who will let me study."

"Dear Mother of Heaven!" exclaimed Nela, opening her oyster-shell still wider and putting out her whole head. "How quiet you have kept all these sly plans."

"Do you take me for a fool? I tell you what Nela, I am in a mad rage. I cannot live like this; I shall die in the mines. Drat it all! Why, I spend my nights in crying, and my hands are all knocked to pieces and—but do not be frightened, Nela, at what I am going to say, and do not think me wicked—I would not say it to any other living soul...."

"Well?"

"I do not love father and mother—not as I ought."

"Oh! if you say such things I will never give you another real. Celipin, for God's sake, think of what you are saying."

"I cannot help it. Why, just look how we go on here. We are not human beings, we are brutes. Sometimes I almost think we are less than the mules, and I ask myself if I am in any way better than a donkey—fetching a basket of the ore and pitching it into a truck; shoving the truck up to the furnaces; stirring the mineral with a stick to wash it!—Oh dear, oh dear!" ... and the hapless boy began to sob bitterly. "Drat—drat it all! but if you spend years upon years in work like this, you are bound to go to the bad at last, your very brains turn to iron-stone.—No, I was never meant for this. I tell my father to let me go away and learn something, and he answers that we are poor, and that I am too full of fancies.—We are nothing, nothing but brutes grinding out a living day by day.—Why do you say nothing?"

But Nela did not answer—perhaps she was comparing the boy's hard lot with her own, and finding her own much the worse of the two.

"What do you want me to say?" she replied at last. "I can never be any good to any one—I am nobody. I can say nothing to you.... But do not think such wicked things—about your father I mean."

"You only say so to comfort me; but you know quite well it is true, and I do believe you are crying."

"I ... no."

"Yes, you are, I am sure."

"Every one has something to cry for," said MarÍa in a broken voice. "But it is very late, Celipin; we must go to sleep."

"No indeed, not if I know it!"

"Yes, child; go to sleep and do not think of such miserable things. Good-night."

The shell closed and all was silent.

We hear a great deal said about the hard and narrow materialism of cities, a dry rot which, amid all the splendor and pleasures of civilization, eats into the moral cohesion of society; but there is a worse and deeper disease; the parochial materialism of country villages—which ossifies millions of living beings, crushes every noble ambition in their souls and shuts them into the petty round of a mechanical existence, reducing them to the meanest animal instincts. There are many more blatant evils in the social order as, for instance, speculation, usury, the worship of mammon among men of high culture; but above all these, broods a monster which secretly and silently ruins more than all else, and that is the greed of the peasant. The covetous peasant acknowledges no moral law, has no religion, no clear notions of right and wrong; they are all inextricably mixed up in his mind with a strange compound of superstition and calculating avarice. Behind an air of hypocritical simplicity, there lies a sinister arithmetic which, for keenness and intelligibility, far transcends the methods of the best mathematicians. A peasant who has taken a fancy to hoard copper coin, and dreams of changing it presently into silver and then the silver into gold, is the most ignoble creature in creation; he is capable of every form and device of malice known to man, combined with an absence of feeling that is appalling. His soul shrinks and shrivels till it is nothing more than a minim measure. Ignorance, coarseness, and squalor complete the abominable compound and deprive it of all the means of veiling the desolation within. He can only count on his fingers, but he is capable of reducing to figures all moral sense, conscience and the soul itself.

SeÑana and Centeno, who, after many struggles, had contrived to earn their "morsel of bread" in the mines of Socartes, were able to make, with the added toil of their four children, a daily wage which they would have regarded as a princely fortune in the days when they wandered from fair to fair selling pots and pipkins. It should be mentioned with regard to the intellectual powers of Centeno, that his head, in the opinion of many persons, rivalled the steam-hammer in the workshops for sheer hardness; with no disparagement to that of dame Ana, his wife, who seemed to be a woman of much prudence and discrimination, and who governed her household as carefully as the wisest prince could govern his dominions. She bagged the wages, earned by her husband and children, with the best grace in the world, and they amounted to a neat little sum; and each time the money was brought home, she felt as if the very sacrament itself were being carried in, so intense was her delight at the mere sight of coin.

SeÑana afforded her children very little comfort in return for the fortune she was accumulating by the labor of their hands; however, as they never complained of the utter and debasing misery in which they lived, as they betrayed no wish for emancipation, nor for a breath of any nobler life worthier of intelligent beings, SeÑana let the days slip on. Many indeed had slipped away before her children slept in beds, and many, many more before their brawny limbs were covered with decent garments. She gave them regular and wholesome meals, following in this respect the rules most in vogue; but eating in her house was a melancholy ceremony nevertheless, a mere doling out of fodder, as it were, to human animals.

So far as mental nourishment was concerned, SeÑana firmly believed that her husband's erudition, acquired by much miscellaneous reading, was amply sufficient to credit the whole family with learning, and for that reason she forbore to cram the minds of her progeny even with the amount of instruction which is given in schools. The elder ones helped her, and the youngest lived free of pedagogues, buried alive for twelve hours out of every twenty-four in brutalizing toil in the mines, so that the whole family swam at large and at leisure in the vast and stagnant ocean of dulness.

The two girls, Mariuca and Pepina, were not destitute of charms, though youth and robust growth were the chief. One of them read fluently, but not the other, and, so far as knowledge of the world was concerned, it is easy to suppose that some rudimentary information, at least, was not lacking to girls who lived with a perfect chorus of nymphs of all ages and every grade of respectability—or the contrary—perpetually employed in mechanical work which left their tongues free to wag. Mariuca and Pepina were buxom and well grown, and as erect and strong as Amazons. They wore short petticoats, displaying half the calf of the leg which, as well as their broad feet, was bare, and their rough heads might have supported an architrave as stoutly as those of Caryatides. The russet dust of the iron ore which colored them from head to foot, like all in the mines, gave them the appearance of massive figures in terra-cotta.

Tanasio was a lethargic being; his want of character and ambition verged on idiocy. Confined to the house from his earliest years, incapable of taking any exercise, of feeling either annoyance or pleasure, or of fulfilling any task, the boy, who was born to be a machine, had sunk into something not superior to the roughest tool. The day which found such a creature able to originate an idea, would infallibly see the total subversion of the order of nature; for, hitherto, no stone has been known to think.

The relation of this family to their mother was that of abject submission on their part, and unlimited despotism on hers. The only child who ever dared to show symptoms of rebellion was the little one. SeÑana, with her narrow capacities, could not at all understand this diabolical ambition to be something better than a stone. Was there—did he suppose—any happier or more exemplary life than that of a stone? She would not admit that it might be changed, even for that of a rolling stone. SeÑana loved her children—but there are so many ways of loving. She placed them above every other consideration—so long as they submitted to work perpetually in the mines, to pour all their earnings into one bowl, to obey her blindly, to cherish no wild aspirations nor wish to appear in fine clothes, not to marry too young, nor to learn any mischievous trash and cram their heads with school-work, since "poor folks"—she would say—"must always remain poor and behave as such, and not be wanting to jabber in the style of the rich city folks, who were eaten up with vices and rotten with sin."

I have described the manners and customs which prevailed in the Centeno's house in order that the reader may understand the life to which Nela was doomed, a helpless, forsaken creature, alone, useless, incapable of earning a day's wages; alike without a past and without a future, with no right to anything on earth beyond a bare subsistence. SeÑana gave her this, and firmly believed that her generosity was nothing short of heroic. Many a time would she say, as she filled Nela's little platter: "What a reward I am laying up for myself hereafter in Heaven!" And she believed it as if it were Gospel. No true light could penetrate her thick skull as to the saintly exercise of charity; she could never have understood that a kind word, a caress, a loving and gentle action, which may make a wretch forget his misery, are infinitely more precious—aye, and more heroic—than the broken meat left from a bad meal. It was but a chance that she did not give them to the cat, who, at least, was far more kindly spoken to. Nela never heard herself addressed as michita, little pet, precious darling—nor by any other of the sweet and endearing names that were lavished on the cat.

Nothing ever suggested to Nela that she was born of human beings, like the other inhabitants of the house. She was never punished; but she felt that this immunity arose from their contemptuous pity for her feeble frame, and certainly not from any special esteem or care for her person. No one had ever taught her that she had a soul ready to bring forth good fruit if she cultivated it with care, nor that she bore within herself, like other mortals, that spark of the divine fire which is called human intelligence, and that this spark might be fanned to beneficent light and flame. No one had ever told her that her grotesque smallness included in itself the germ of every noble and delicate sentiment, and that those tiny buds might open out to lovely flowers, with no more cultivation than a herb that we glance at now and again. No one had told her that she had a right, by the very sternness of Nature in creating her, to certain tender cares which the strong can dispense with—the healthy and those who have parents and a home; since under the laws of Christian jurisprudence the helpless, the poor, the orphan, and the destitute, are all alike worthy of protection.

On the other hand, everything combined to impress upon her, her absolute resemblance to a rolling stone, which has not even a shape of its own, but takes that which the waters give it or the kick of the man that spurns it. Everything told her that her place in the house was something below the cat, whose sleek back received the only caresses ever bestowed on anyone, and the blackbird that hopped about its cage. And of them, at any rate, no one said in heartless compassion: "Poor creature! it is a pity she did not die!"