Marianela 27

Marianela 27

Golfin once more relieved him of the bandage, and giving him a pair of

suitable spectacles, he left him free to look about him.

 

"Oh! is that Nela! Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Pablo enchanted.

 

"This is your cousin Florentina."

 

"Ah!" said the lad, coloring with confusion.

 

"That is my cousin. I had no idea any person could be so

beautiful.--Oh! thank God for giving me the faculty which enables me to

see anything so lovely. Cousin Florentina, you are like the most lovely

music--like the most perfect embodiment of some delicious harmony.--And

Nela, where is she?"

 

"You will have time enough to see her," said Don Francisco delighted.

"Try now to be calm."

 

"Florentina, Florentina!" repeated Pablo excitedly. "What is it in your

face that makes me feel as if the spirit of God himself was shining

through it? You stand in the midst of a glory which must, to be sure,

be the sun. Beams, rays seem to shine from your face.--Ah! at last I

know what the angels are like--and your dress, your hands, your hair,

seem to fill me with some new and strange sensation. What is it?"

 

"He is beginning to see color," muttered Golfin to himself. "He perhaps

perceives every object surrounded by the colors of the spectrum. But he

cannot estimate degrees of distance."

 

"I seem to have you inside my eyes," Pablo went on. "You seem to have

become part of my thoughts, and the sight of you comes upon me like a

memory; but a memory of what? I never saw any thing or any body before.

Can I have lived before I came into this world? I know not--but I knew

your eyes. And you, father--where are you? I have seen you--yes I have

pictured you too--you are just what I have loved. And now my uncle? You

are very much alike.--And where, where is that dear good Golfin?--bless

him!"

 

"Here, minding my patient," said the surgeon coming forward. "Here I am

as ugly as sin.--As you have never seen a lion or a Newfoundland dog,

you can have no idea of my style of beauty. They say I am exactly like

those two noble beasts."

 

"All good kind souls!..." said Pablo.

 

"But my cousin is the prettiest--oh! infinitely the prettiest. But

Nela, for pity's sake, where is Nela?"

 

They told him that his _lazarillo_ never came to the house, and that

they had been too busy to go to look for her, and he was extremely

distressed at this intelligence. They succeeded in soothing him, and as

they feared he might become feverish, they persuaded him to go to bed

and try to sleep.

 

The next day he was in a state of great prostration, but his vigorous

nature triumphed over everything. He begged to have a glass of water

and when he saw it, he exclaimed: "I feel as I were drinking at the

mere sight of water."

 

His __EXPRESSION__s were equally vivid and picturesque about everything he

saw which struck his fancy strongly. After correcting the defective

sphericity of the eye by means of glasses, which he tried one after

another, Golfin began to direct his attention to the differences and

combinations of colors, and the young man's sound mind and taste never

failed in distinguishing the ugly from the beautiful. Indeed, he felt

these two attributes as two absolute and distinct ideas, without

connecting them in any way with any notion of utility or, on the other

hand, of goodness. A butterfly which flew by accident into his room

enchanted him, but an ink-bottle he thought simply horrible, though

his father explained to him that it could not be otherwise, since its

use was to hold ink to write with. When he was shown two prints, one

of the Crucifixion, and one of Galatea riding in a shell and escorted

by Tritons and Nymphs, he preferred the second--which was a great

scandal to Florentina, who promised herself that she would teach him

to hold sacred things far above everything profane. He watched their

faces with the keenest attention, and the wonderful coincidence of

facial __EXPRESSION__ with language astonished him excessively. When he

saw the maids and other women about the place, he was greatly annoyed

if they were ugly or commonplace; indeed, his cousin's beauty made

him indifferent to any other woman. In spite of this he wanted to see

them all; his curiosity was like a raging thirst which nothing could

satisfy. Every day he was disappointed at never seeing Nela; but he was

so fond of Florentina that he could not bear her to leave him for a

moment.

 

On the third day Golfin said to him: "You have now made acquaintance

with a great many things--the marvels of this visible world. Now--you

must see yourself."

 

He brought a mirror, and Pablo looked in it.

 

"That is I!" he exclaimed with simple admiration. "It is difficult to

believe it. How have I come inside that hard still sheet of water?

What a wonderful thing glass is! It seems as if it could not be true

that men made that stony atmosphere.--My word! but I am not an ugly

fellow!--What do you say cousin? And you, when you look in this, do you

see yourself as pretty as you are? No, impossible. Look up into the sky

and you will find your image there. You may believe you see an angel

when you only look at yourself!"

 

That evening, when he was alone with her and she was giving him some

little help he needed as an invalid, Pablo said to her:

 

"Cousin, my father read me, I remember, a passage in history about

Christopher Columbus who discovered a New World, which no European had

ever seen before. That navigator opened the eyes of the Old World, so

that they saw another and more beautiful one. I cannot help thinking

of him as a man like Teodoro Golfin, and of Europe as a blind man to

whom America and its wonders were like a revelation of light. Well,

and I have seen a New World.--You are my America, you are that first

and lovely island where Columbus set foot on land. He never saw the

continent, with its vast forests and immense rivers, and I too perhaps

have not yet seen what is loveliest of all...." He broke off and sat

sunk in thought; then presently he asked:

 

"Where is Nela?"

 

"I cannot think what has come over the poor child," said Florentina. "I

suppose she does not wish to see you."

 

"She is bashful and very shy," replied Pablo: "She is afraid of

troubling us in the house. Florentina, I must tell you--in confidence,

that I love her dearly; you will love her too. I have a most eager

wish to see my good little comrade and friend."

 

"I will go and look for her to-morrow morning myself."

 

"Yes, do--but do not be gone long. When I do not see you I feel very

lonely; I have become accustomed to see you, and these three days have

been centuries of happiness.--Do not rob me of a minute. Last night my

father told me that after having seen you I ought never to want to see

another woman."

 

"What nonsense!" exclaimed the girl blushing. "There are plenty much

prettier than I am...."

 

"No, no; they all say no." Pablo vehemently declared, turning his

blindfold eyes towards his cousin, as if he could see her even through

his bandages. "They used to tell me so before, and I could not believe

it; but now that I have seen the world and know what beauty is, I

believe it--yes indeed I do. You are perfectly lovely; there is no

one--there can be no one more lovely.--Give me your hand." And he

grasped it eagerly in both of his.

 

"I laugh now," he went on, "to think of my absurd blind man's vanity,

of my foolish attempts to realize the true aspect of things without

seeing them. I believe that as long as I live I shall never forget the

surprise that the reality was to me. Reality! Oh, the man who knows it

not is blind indeed, a perfect idiot!--Florentina I was an idiot."

 

"No, cousin, you were always very clever and so you are still. But do

not let your fancy work too vividly now. It will soon be time to go to

bed. Don Teodoro particularly said that I was not to let you talk so

late, because it keeps you from sleeping; if you do not keep quiet I

shall go away."

 

"Is it night already?"

 

"Yes, quite night."

 

"But day or night I love to talk to you," Pablo persisted, tossing over

on his bed, on which he was lying dressed and very restless. "I will be

silent on one condition, and that is that you do not go away from my

side, and that, from time to time, you pat the bed with your hand that

I may know that you are there."

 

"Very well, so I will, and this is the first sign of life," said

Florentina, laughing and patting the mattress.

 

"When I hear you laugh, I feel as if a breath of sweet fresh air blew

round me, and all my senses help in some way to remind me of you. Your

image lives in my memory so vividly, that even with my eyes bandaged I

can see you still the same."

 

"Will you have done chattering or must I fetch Don Teodoro?" said the

girl gaily.

 

"No, no--stay quiet. I cannot be silent--if I were to be silent all my

thoughts--all I can see in my brain--would only torment me twice as

much. And you want me to go to sleep! Sleep! But I have you in here,

Florentina, making a turmoil in my brain, and driving me crazy. I am so

full of joy and rapture that I have no words to express them. All last

night I fancied I was talking to you and to Nela.--Poor little Nela! I

am most curious to see her.--Desperately curious."

 

"Well, I will find her to-morrow. Now, have done with your talking; if

you do not cease I shall go."

 

"No, stop. I will only talk to myself. I will say all the things I say

to you at night when I fancy we are alone together--I will remember

what you say to me."

 

"I?"

 

"Well, the things I can fancy I hear said in your voice--Now, do you be

silent, Señorita. I am alone now with my own imaginings."

 

The next day when Florentina came up to her cousin's room, she said:

 

"I brought Maraquilla up here and she ran away. Ungrateful little

thing!"

 

"And you did not look for her?"

 

"Where was I to look? She ran away from me. This evening I will go out

again and hunt her till I find her."

 

"No, no; do not go out," said Pablo eagerly. "She will come back, she will come of her own accord."