Читать книгу Maria (GB English) - Jorge Isaacs - Страница 1

Chapter I

I was still a child when I was taken away from my father's house to begin my studies at the school of Dr. Lorenzo María Lleras, established in Bogotá a few years before, and famous throughout the Republic at that time.

On the night before my journey, after the evening, one of my sisters came into my room, and without saying a word of affection to me, for her voice was filled with sobs, she cut a few hairs from my head: when she came out, some of her tears had rolled down my neck.

I fell asleep in tears, and experienced as it were a vague presentiment of the many sorrows I should suffer afterwards. Those hairs taken from a child's head; that caution of love against death in the face of so much life, made my soul wander in my sleep over all the places where I had spent, without understanding it, the happiest hours of my existence.

The next morning my father untied my mother's arms from my head, wet with tears. My sisters wiped them away with kisses as they bade me farewell. Mary waited humbly for her turn, and stammering her farewell, pressed her rosy cheek to mine, chilled by the first sensation of pain.

A few moments later I followed my father, who hid his face from my gaze. The footsteps of our horses on the pebbly path drowned my last sobs. The murmur of the Sabaletas, whose meadows lay to our right, was diminishing by the minute. We were already rounding one of the hills along the path, on which desirable travellers used to be seen from the house; I turned my eyes towards it, looking for one of the many loved ones: Maria was under the vines that adorned the windows of my mother's room.

Chapter II

Six years later, the last days of a luxurious August greeted me on my return to the native valley. My heart was overflowing with patriotic love. It was already the last day of the journey, and I was enjoying the most fragrant morning of the summer. The sky had a pale blue tinge: to the eastward and over the towering crests of the mountains, still half mourned, wandered a few golden clouds, like the gauze of a dancer's turban scattered by an amorous breath. To the south floated the mists that had blanketed the distant mountains during the night. I crossed plains of green grassland, watered by streams whose passage was obstructed by beautiful cows, which abandoned their grazing grounds to wander into the lagoons or along paths vaulted by flowering pines and leafy fig trees. My eyes had fixed greedily on those places half hidden from the traveller by the canopy of the ancient groves; on those farmhouses where I had left virtuous and friendly people. At such moments my heart would not have been moved by the arias of U***'s piano: the perfumes I inhaled were so pleasing compared to that of her luxurious dresses; the song of those nameless birds had harmonies so sweet to my heart!

I was speechless before so much beauty, the memory of which I had thought I had preserved in my memory because some of my stanzas, admired by my fellow students, had pale tints of it. When in a ballroom, flooded with light, full of voluptuous melodies, of a thousand mixed scents, of whispers of so many seductive women's clothes, we meet the one we dreamed of at eighteen, and a fugitive glance of hers burns our forehead, and her voice makes all other voices mute for us for an instant, and her flowers leave behind them unknown essences; then we fall into a heavenly prostration: our voice is powerless, our ears no longer hear hers, our eyes can no longer follow her. But when, our minds refreshed, she returns to our memory hours later, our lips murmur her praise in song, and it is that woman, it is her accent, it is her look, it is her light step on the carpets, which imitates that song, which the vulgar will believe to be ideal. Thus the sky, the horizons, the pampas and the peaks of the Cauca, make those who contemplate them fall silent. The great beauties of creation cannot be seen and sung at the same time: they must return to the soul, pale by unfaithful memory.

Before the sun had set, I had already seen my parents' house white on the mountainside. As I approached it, I counted with anxious eyes the clusters of its willows and orange trees, through which I saw the lights that were spread out in the rooms cross a little later.

At last I breathed in that never-forgotten smell of the orchard that had been formed. My horse's shoes sparkled on the cobbles of the courtyard. I heard an indefinable cry; it was my mother's voice: as she clasped me in her arms and drew me close to her bosom, a shadow fell over my eyes: a supreme pleasure that moved a virgin nature.

When I tried to recognise in the women I saw, the sisters I had left as children, Mary was standing beside me, and her wide lidded eyes were veiled with long lashes. It was her face that was covered with the most remarkable blush as my arm rolled from her shoulders and brushed her waist; and her eyes were still moist as she smiled at my first affectionate expression, like those of a child whose cry has silenced a mother's caress.

Chapter III

At eight o'clock we went to the dining room, which was picturesquely situated on the eastern side of the house. From it we could see the bare ridges of the mountains against the starry background of the sky. The auras of the desert passed through the garden gathering scents to come and frolic with the rose bushes around us. The fickle wind let us hear the murmur of the river for moments. That nature seemed to display all the beauty of its nights, as if to welcome a friendly guest.

My father sat at the head of the table and had me placed on his right; my mother sat on the left, as usual; my sisters and the children were seated indistinctly, and Maria was opposite me.

My father, grown grey in my absence, gave me looks of satisfaction, and smiled in that mischievous and sweet way, which I have never seen on any other lips. My mother spoke little, for at such times she was happier than all those around her. My sisters insisted on making me taste the snacks and creams; and she blushed whoever I addressed a flattering word or an examining glance to would blush. Maria hid her eyes from me tenaciously; but I could admire in them the brilliancy and beauty of those of the women of her race, on two or three occasions when, in spite of herself, they met mine squarely; her red lips, moist and graciously imperative, showed me only for an instant the veiled primness of her pretty teeth. She wore, like my sisters, her abundant dark-brown hair in two plaits, one of which was topped with a red carnation. She wore a dress of light muslin, almost blue, of which only part of the bodice and skirt could be seen, for a scarf of fine purple cotton concealed her breasts down to the base of her dull white throat. As her braids were turned behind her back, from where they rolled as she bent to serve, I admired the underside of her deliciously turned arms, and her hands manicured like those of a queen.

When supper was over, the slaves lifted the tablecloths; one of them said the Lord's Prayer, and their masters completed the prayer.

The conversation then became confidential between my parents and me.

Mary took in her arms the child sleeping on her lap, and my sisters followed her to the chambers: they loved her dearly and vied for her sweet affection.

Once in the living room, my father kissed his daughters' foreheads as he left. My mother wanted me to see the room that had been set aside for me. My sisters and Maria, less shy now, wanted to see what effect I was having with the care with which it was decorated. The room was at the end of the corridor at the front of the house; the only window in it was as high as a comfortable table; and at that moment, with the leaves and bars open, flowering branches of rose-bushes were coming in through it to finish decorating the table, where a beautiful blue porcelain vase was busily holding in its glass lilies and lilies, carnations and purple river bells. The bed curtains were of white gauze tied to the columns with broad rose-coloured ribbons; and near the headboard, by a motherly finery, was the little Dolorosa that had served me for my altars when I was a child. Some maps, comfortable seats, and a beautiful toilet set completed the trousseau.

–What beautiful flowers! -I exclaimed as I saw all the flowers from the garden and the vase covering the table.

–Maria remembered how much you liked them," my mother remarked.

I turned my eyes to thank him, and his eyes seemed to struggle to bear my gaze this time.

–Mary," I said, "is going to keep them for me, because they are noxious in the room where you sleep.

–Is it true? -he replied; "I will replace them to-morrow.

How sweet his accent was!

–How many of these are there?

–Lots of them; they will be replenished every day.

After my mother had embraced me, Emma held out her hand to me, and Maria, leaving me for a moment with hers, smiled as in childhood she smiled at me: that dimpled smile was that of the child of my childhood loves surprised in the face of a virgin of Raphael.

Chapter IV

I slept peacefully, as when I used to fall asleep in my childhood to one of Peter the slave's marvellous stories.

I dreamt that Mary came in to renew the flowers on my table, and that on her way out she had brushed the curtains of my bed with her flowing muslin skirt dotted with little blue flowers.

When I awoke, the birds were fluttering in the foliage of the orange and grapefruit trees, and orange blossoms filled my room with their scent as soon as I opened the door.

Mary's voice then came to my ears sweet and pure: it was her child's voice, but deeper and ready to lend itself to all the modulations of tenderness and passion; oh, how often in my dreams an echo of that same accent has come to my soul, and my eyes have searched in vain for that orchard where I saw her so beautiful on that August morning!

The child whose innocent caresses had been all for me, would no longer be the companion of my games; but on golden summer evenings she would be on walks by my side, in the midst of my sisters' group; I would help her to grow her favourite flowers; in the evenings I would hear her voice, her eyes would look at me, a single step would separate us.

After I had slightly arranged my dresses, I opened the window, and saw Maria in one of the garden streets, accompanied by Emma: she was in a darker dress than the evening before, and her purple kerchief, tied round her waist, fell in a band over her skirt; her long hair, divided into two braids, half concealed part of her back and bosom; she and my sister had bare feet. She carried a porcelain vase a little whiter than the arms that held her, which she filled with open roses during the night, discarding the less moist and luxuriant ones as withered. She, laughing with her companion, dipped her cheeks, fresher than the roses, into the overflowing bowl. Emma discovered me; Maria noticed it, and, without turning to me, fell on her knees to hide her feet from me, untied her kerchief from her waist, and, covering her shoulders with it, pretended to play with the flowers. The nubile daughters of the patriarchs were no more beautiful in the dawns when they gathered flowers for their altars.

After lunch, my mother called me to her sewing room. Emma and Maria were embroidering near her. She blushed again when I introduced myself; remembering perhaps the surprise I had unwittingly given her in the morning.

My mother wanted to see and hear me all the time.

Emma, more insinuating now, asked me a thousand questions about Bogota; demanded me to describe splendid balls, beautiful ladies' dresses in use, the most beautiful women then in high society. They listened without leaving their work. Maria sometimes glanced at me carelessly, or made low remarks to her companion at her seat; and as she rose to approach my mother to consult about the embroidery, I could see her feet beautifully shod: her light and dignified step revealed all the pride, not dejected, of our race, and the seductive modesty of the Christian virgin. Her eyes lit up when my mother expressed a desire that I should give the girls some lessons in grammar and geography, subjects in which they had but little knowledge. It was agreed that we would begin the lessons after six or eight days, during which time I would be able to assess the state of each girl's knowledge.

A few hours later I was told that the bath was ready and I went to it. A leafy, corpulent orange tree, overflowing with ripe fruit, formed a pavilion over the wide pool of burnished quarries: many roses were floating in the water: it resembled an oriental bath, and was perfumed with the flowers that Mary had picked in the morning.

Chapter V

Three days had passed when my father invited me to visit his estates in the valley, and I was obliged to oblige him; for I had a real interest in his enterprises. My mother was very anxious for our early return. My sisters were saddened. Mary did not entreat me, as they did, to return in the same week; but she followed me incessantly with her eyes during the preparations for the journey.

In my absence, my father had greatly improved his property: a handsome and costly sugar factory, many bushels of cane to supply it, extensive pastures with cattle and horses, good feedlots, and a luxurious dwelling-house, constituted the most remarkable features of his hot-land estates. The slaves, well dressed and contented, as far as it is possible to be in servitude, were submissive and affectionate to their master. I found men whom, as children a short time before, I had been taught to set traps for the chilacoas and guatines in the thickets of the woods: their parents and they returned to see me with unmistakable signs of pleasure. Only Pedro, the good friend and faithful ayo, was not to be found: he had shed tears as he placed me on the horse on the day of my departure for Bogotá, saying: "my love, I will see you no more". His heart warned him that he would die before my return.

I noticed that my father, while remaining a master, treated his slaves with affection, was jealous of his wives' good behaviour and caressed the children.

One afternoon, as the sun was setting, my father, Higinio (the butler) and I were returning from the farm to the factory. They were talking about work done and to be done; I was occupied with less serious things: I was thinking about the days of my childhood. The peculiar smell of the freshly felled woods and the smell of the ripe piñuelas; the chirping of the parrots in the neighbouring guaduales and guayabales; the distant pealing of some shepherd's horn, echoing through the hills; the chastening of the slaves returning from their labours with their tools on their shoulders; the snatches seen through the shifting reed beds: It all reminded me of the afternoons when my sisters, Maria and I, abusing some of my mother's tenacious licence, would take pleasure in picking guavas from our favourite trees, digging nests out of piñuelas, often with serious injury to arms and hands, and spying on parakeet chicks on the fences of the corrals.

As we came across a group of slaves, my father said to a young black man of remarkable stature:

–So, Bruno, is your marriage all set for the day after tomorrow?

–Yes, my master," he replied, taking off his reed hat and leaning on the handle of his spade.

–Who are the godparents?

–I will be with Dolores and Mr. Anselmo, if you please.

–Well. Remigia and you will be well confessed. Did you buy everything you needed for her and yourself with the money I sent for you?

–It's all done, my master.

–And that's all you want?

–You will see.

–The room Higinio pointed out to you, is it any good?

–Yes, my master.

–Oh, I know. What you want is dance.

Then Bruno laughed, showing his dazzlingly white teeth, turning to look at his companions.

–That's fair enough; you're very well behaved. You know," he added, turning to Higinio, "fix that, and make them happy.

–And are you leaving first? -asked Bruno.

–No," I replied, "we are invited.

In the early hours of the next Saturday morning Bruno and Remigia were married. That night at seven o'clock my father and I mounted up to go to the dance, the music of which we were just beginning to hear. When we arrived, Julian, the slave-captain of the gang, came out to take the stirrup for us and to receive our horses. He was in his Sunday dress, and the long, silver-plated machete, the badge of his employment, hung from his waist. A room in our old dwelling-house had been cleared of the labouring goods it contained, in order to hold the ball in it. A wooden chandelier, suspended from one of the rafters, had half a dozen lights spinning round: the musicians and singers, a mixture of aggregates, slaves, and manumissioners, occupied one of the doors. There were but two reed flutes, an improvised drum, two alfandoques, and a tambourine; but the fine voices of the negritos intoned the bambucos with such mastery; there was in their songs such a heartfelt combination of melancholy, joyous, and light chords; the verses they sang were so tenderly simple, that the most learned dilettante would have listened in ecstasy to that semi-wild music. We entered the room in our hats and hats. Remigia and Bruno were dancing at that moment: she, wearing a follao of blue boleros, a red-flowered tumbadillo, a white shirt embroidered with black, and a choker and earrings of ruby-coloured glass, danced with all the gentleness and grace that were to be expected from her cimbrador stature. Bruno, with his threaded ruana cloths folded over his shoulders, his brightly coloured blanket breeches, flattened white shirt, and a new cabiblanco around his waist, tapped his feet with admirable dexterity.

After that hand, which is what the peasants call every piece of dancing, the musicians played their most beautiful bambuco, for Julian announced that it was for the master. Remigia, encouraged by her husband and the captain, at last resolved to dance a few moments with my father: but then she dared not raise her eyes, and her movements in the dance were less spontaneous. At the end of an hour we retired.

My father was satisfied with my attention during the visit we made to the estates; but when I told him that I wished henceforth to share his fatigues by remaining at his side, he told me, almost with regret, that he was obliged to sacrifice his own welfare to me, by fulfilling the promise he had made me some time before, to send me to Europe to finish my medical studies, and that I should set out on my journey in four months' time at the latest. As he spoke to me thus, his countenance took on a solemn seriousness without affectation, which was noticeable in him when he took irrevocable resolutions. This happened on the evening when we were returning to the sierra. It was beginning to get dark, and had it not been so, I should have noticed the emotion his refusal caused me. The rest of the journey was made in silence; how happy I should have been to see Maria again, if the news of this journey had not come between her and my hopes at that moment!

Chapter VI

What had happened in those four days in Mary's soul?

She was about to place a lamp on one of the tables in the drawing-room, when I approached to greet her; and I had already been surprised not to see her in the midst of the family group on the steps where we had just dismounted. The trembling of her hand exposed the lamp; and I lent her assistance, less calm than I thought I was. She looked slightly pale to me, and around her eyes was a slight shadow, imperceptible to one who had seen her without looking. She turned her face towards my mother, who was speaking at the moment, thus preventing me from examining it in the light that was near us; and I noticed then that at the head of one of her plaits was a wilted carnation; and it was doubtless the one I had given her the day before I left for the Valley. The little cross of enamelled coral that I had brought for her, like those of my sisters, she wore round her neck on a cord of black hair. She was silent, sitting in the middle of the seats my mother and I occupied. As my father's resolution about my journey did not depart from my memory, I must have seemed sad to her, for she said to me in an almost low voice:

–Did the trip hurt you?

–No, Maria," I replied, "but we have been sunbathing and walking so much....

I was going to say something more to her, but the confidential accent in her voice, the new light in her eyes which I surprised me with, prevented me from doing more than look at her, till, noticing that she was embarrassed by the involuntary fixedness of my glances, and finding myself examined by one of my father's (more fearful when a certain passing smile wandered on his lips), I left the room for my room.

I closed the doors. There were the flowers she had gathered for me: I kissed them; I wanted to inhale all their scents at once, seeking in them those of Mary's dresses; I bathed them with my tears.... Ah, you who have not wept for happiness like this, weep for despair, if your adolescence has passed, because you will never love again!

First love!… noble pride in feeling loved: sweet sacrifice of all that was dear to us before in favour of the beloved woman: happiness that, bought for one day with the tears of a whole existence, we would receive as a gift from God: perfume for all the hours of the future: inextinguishable light of the past: flower kept in the soul and which it is not given to disappointments to wither: only treasure that the envy of men cannot snatch from us: delicious delirium… inspiration from heaven… Mary! Mary! How I loved you! How I loved you! How I loved you!…

Chapter VII

When my father made his last voyage to the West Indies, Solomon, a cousin of his whom he had loved from childhood, had just lost his wife. Very young they had come together to South America; and on one of their voyages my father fell in love with the daughter of a Spaniard, an intrepid naval captain, who, after having left the service for some years, was forced in 1819 to take up arms again in defence of the kings of Spain, and who was shot dead at Majagual on the twentieth of May, 1820.

The mother of the young woman my father loved demanded that he renounce the Jewish religion in order to give her to her as his wife. My father became a Christian at the age of twenty. His cousin became fond of the Catholic religion in those days, without, however, yielding to the urging that he should also be baptised, for he knew that what he had done for my father, giving him the wife he desired, would prevent him from being accepted by the woman he loved in Jamaica.

After some years of separation, the two friends met again. Solomon was already a widower. Sarah, his wife, had left him a child who was then three years old. My father found him morally and physically disfigured by grief, and then his new religion gave him comforts for his cousin, comforts which relatives had sought in vain to save him. He urged Solomon to give him his daughter to bring her up by our side; and he dared to propose that he would make her a Christian. Solomon agreed, saying, "It is true that my daughter alone has prevented me from undertaking a journey to India, which would improve my spirit and remedy my poverty: she also has been my only comfort after Sarah's death; but you will it, let her be your daughter. Christian women are sweet and good, and your wife must be a saintly mother. If Christianity gives in supreme misfortunes the relief you have given me, perhaps I would make my daughter unhappy by leaving her a Jewess. Do not tell our relatives, but when you reach the first coast where there is a Catholic priest, have her baptised and have the name Esther changed to Mary. This the unhappy man said, shedding many tears.

A few days later the schooner that was to take my father to the coast of New Granada set sail in Montego Bay. The light ship was testing her white wings, as a heron of our forests tests his wings before taking a long flight. Solomon came into my father's room, who had just finished mending his shipboard suit, carrying Esther seated in one of his arms, and hanging on the other a chest containing the child's luggage: she held out her little arms to her uncle, and Solomon, placing her in those of his friend, dropped sobbing on the little boot. That child, whose precious head had just bathed with a shower of tears the baptism of sorrow rather than the religion of Jesus, was a sacred treasure; my father knew it well, and never forgot it. Solomon was reminded by his friend, as he jumped into the boat that was to separate them, of a promise, and he answered in a choked voice: "My daughter's prayers for me, and mine for her and her mother, shall go up together to the feet of the Crucified.

I was seven years old when my father returned, and I disdained the precious toys he had brought me from his journey, to admire that beautiful, sweet, smiling child. My mother showered her with caresses, and my sisters showered her with tenderness, from the moment my father laid her on his wife's lap, and said, "This is Solomon's daughter, whom he has sent to you.

During our childish games her lips began to modulate Castilian accents, so harmonious and seductive in a pretty woman's mouth and in the laughing mouth of a child.

It must have been about six years ago. As I entered my father's room one evening, I heard him sobbing; his arms were folded on the table, and his forehead resting on them; near him my mother was weeping, and Mary was leaning her head on her knees, not understanding his grief, and almost indifferent to her uncle's lamentations; it was because a letter from Kingston, received that day, gave the news of Solomon's death. I remember only one expression of my father's on that afternoon: "If all are leaving me without my being able to receive their last farewells, why should I return to my country? Alas! his ashes should rest in a strange land, without the winds of the ocean, on whose shores he frolicked as a child, whose immensity he crossed young and ardent, coming to sweep over the slab of his grave the dry blossoms of the blossom trees and the dust of the years!

Few people who knew our family would have suspected that Maria was not my parents' daughter. She spoke our language well, was kind, lively and intelligent. When my mother stroked her head at the same time as my sisters and me, no one could have guessed which one was the orphan there.

She was nine years old. The abundant hair, still of a light brown colour, flowing loose and twirling about her slender, movable waist; the chatty eyes; the accent with something of the melancholy that our voices did not have; such was the image I carried of her when I left my mother's house: such she was on the morning of that sad day, under the creepers of my mother's windows.

Chapter VIII

Early in the evening Emma knocked at my door to come to table. I bathed my face to hide the traces of tears, and changed my dresses to excuse my lateness.

Mary was not in the dining-room, and I vainly imagined that her occupations had delayed her longer than usual. My father noticing an unoccupied seat, asked for her, and Emma excused her by saying that she had had a headache since that afternoon, and was asleep. I tried not to be impressed; and, making every effort to make the conversation pleasant, spoke with enthusiasm of all the improvements I had found in the estates we had just visited. But it was all to no purpose: my father was more fatigued than I was, and retired early; Emma and my mother got up to put the children to bed, and see how Maria was, for which I thanked them, and was no longer surprised at the same feeling of gratitude.

Though Emma returned to the dining-room, the conversation did not last long. Philip and Eloise, who had insisted on my taking part in their card-playing, accused my eyes of drowsiness. He had asked my mother's permission in vain to accompany me to the mountain the next day, and had retired dissatisfied.

Meditating in my room, I thought I guessed the cause of Maria's suffering. I recollected the manner in which I had left the room after my arrival, and how the impression made upon me by her confidential accent had caused me to answer her with the lack of tact peculiar to one who is repressing an emotion. Knowing the origin of her grief, I would have given a thousand lives to obtain a pardon from her; but the doubt aggravated the confusion of my mind. I doubted Mary's love; why, I thought to myself, should my heart strive to believe that she was subjected to this same martyrdom? I considered myself unworthy of possessing so much beauty, so much innocence. I reproached myself for the pride that had blinded me to the point of believing myself the object of his love, being only worthy of his sisterly affection. In my madness I thought with less terror, almost with pleasure, of my next journey.

Chapter IX

I got up at dawn the next day. The gleams that outlined the peaks of the central mountain range to the east, gilded in a semicircle above it some light clouds that broke away from each other to move away and disappear. The green pampas and jungles of the valley were seen as if through a bluish glass, and in the midst of them, some white huts, smoke from the freshly burnt mountains rising in a spiral, and sometimes the churns of a river. The mountain range of the West, with its folds and bosoms, resembled cloaks of dark blue velvet suspended from their centres by the hands of genii veiled by the mists. In front of my window, the rose bushes and the foliage of the orchard trees seemed to fear the first breezes that would come to shed the dew that glistened on their leaves and blossoms. It all seemed sad to me. I took the shotgun: I signalled to the affectionate Mayo, who, sitting on his hind legs, was staring at me, his brow furrowed with excessive attention, awaiting the first command; and jumping over the stone fence, I took the mountain path. As I entered, I found it cool and trembling under the caresses of the last auras of the night. The herons were leaving their roosts, their flight forming undulating lines that the sun silvered, like ribbons left to the whim of the wind. Numerous flocks of parrots rose from the thickets to head for the neighbouring cornfields; and the diostedé greeted the day with its sad and monotonous song from the heart of the sierra.

I descended to the mountainous plain of the river by the same path by which I had done so many times six years before. The thunder of its flow was increasing, and before long I discovered the streams, impetuous as they rushed over the falls, boiling into boiling foam in the falls, crystal clear and smooth in the backwaters, always rolling over a bed of moss-covered boulders, fringed on the banks by iracales, ferns and reeds with yellow stems, silky plumage and purple seed-beds.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge, formed by the hurricane with a stout cedar, the same where I had once passed. Flowery parasites hung from its slats, and blue and iridescent bells came down in festoons from my feet to sway in the waves. A luxuriant and haughty vegetation vaulted the river at intervals, and through it a few rays of the rising sun penetrated, as through the broken roof of a deserted Indian temple. Mayo howled cowardly on the bank I had just left, and at my urging resolved to pass over the fantastic bridge, taking at once, before me, the path that led to the possession of old José, who was expecting from me that day the payment of his welcome visit.

After a little steep and dark slope, and after skipping over the dry trees from the last felling of the highlander, I found myself in the little place planted with vegetables, from where I could see the little house in the midst of the green hills, which I had left among seemingly indestructible woods, smoking. The cows, beautiful in their size and colour, bellowed at the corral gate in search of their calves. The domestic fowls were in an uproar, receiving their morning ration; in the palm trees near by, which had been spared by the axe of the husbandmen, the oropendolas swayed noisily in their hanging nests, and in the midst of such a pleasant hubbub, one could sometimes hear the shrill cry of the birdcatcher, who, from his barbecue and armed with a slingshot, shooed away the hungry macaws that fluttered over the cornfield.

The Antioquian's dogs gave him warning of my arrival with their barking. Mayo, fearful of them, approached me sullenly. José came out to greet me, axe in one hand and hat in the other.

The little dwelling denoted industriousness, economy and cleanliness: everything was rustic, but comfortably arranged, and everything in its place. The living-room of the little house, perfectly swept, with bamboo benches all round, covered with reed mats and bearskins, some illuminated paper prints representing saints, and pinned with orange thorns to the unbleached walls, had on the right and left the bedroom of Joseph's wife and that of the girls. The kitchen, made of reed and with a roof of leaves of the same plant, was separated from the house by a small vegetable garden where parsley, camomile, pennyroyal and basil mingled their aromas.

The women seemed more neatly dressed than usual. The girls, Lucia and Transito, wore petticoats of purple sarsen, and very white shirts with lace gowns trimmed with black braid, under which they hid part of their rosaries, and chokers of opal-coloured glass bulbs. The thick, jet-coloured plaits of their hair played on their backs at the slightest movement of their bare, careful, restless feet. They spoke to me with great shyness; and it was their father who, noticing this, encouraged them, saying: "Is not Ephraim the same child, because he comes from school wise and grown up? Then they became more jovial and smiling: they linked us amicably with the memories of childhood games, powerful in the imagination of poets and women. With old age, José's physiognomy had gained a lot: although he did not grow a beard, his face had something biblical about it, like almost all those of the old men of good manners in the country where he was born: abundant grey hair shaded his broad, toasted forehead, and his smiles revealed a calmness of soul. Luisa, his wife, happier than he in the struggle with the years, retained in her dress something of the Antioquian manner, and her constant joviality made it clear that she was content with her lot.

José led me to the river, and told me of his sowing and hunting, while I plunged into the diaphanous backwater from which the water cascaded in a small waterfall. On our return we found the provocative lunch served at the only table in the house. Corn was everywhere: in the mote soup served in glazed earthenware dishes and in golden arepas scattered on the tablecloth. The only piece of cutlery was crossed over my white plate and bordered with blue.

Mayo sat at my feet looking attentive, but more humble than usual.

José was mending a fishing line while his daughters, clever but shameful, served me with care, trying to guess in my eyes what I might be lacking. They had beautified themselves, and from being little girls, they had become official women.

After gulping down a glass of thick, frothy milk, the dessert of that patriarchal lunch, José and I went out to look around the orchard and the brushwood I was picking. He was amazed at my theoretical knowledge of sowing, and we returned to the house an hour later to say goodbye to the girls and my mother.

I put the good old man's mountain knife, which I had brought him from the kingdom, round his waist; around the necks of Tránsito and Lucía, precious rosaries, and in Luisa's hands a locket that she had entrusted to my mother. I took the turn of the mountain when it was noon by the edge of the day, according to José's examination of the sun.

Chapter X

On my return, which I did slowly, the image of Mary came back to my memory. Those solitudes, its silent forests, its flowers, its birds and its waters, why did they speak to me of her? What was there of Mary in the damp shadows, in the breeze that moved the foliage, in the murmur of the river? It was that I saw Eden, but she was missing; it was that I could not stop loving her, even though she did not love me. And I breathed in the perfume of the bouquet of wild lilies that Joseph's daughters had formed for me, thinking that perhaps they would deserve to be touched by Mary's lips: thus my heroic resolutions of the night had been weakened in so few hours.

As soon as I got home, I went to my mother's sewing room: Maria was with her; my sisters had gone to the bathroom. After answering my greeting, Maria lowered her eyes to her sewing. My mother expressed her delight at my return; they had been startled at home by the delay, and had sent for me at that moment. I talked to her, pondering over Joseph's progress, and Mayo tongued my dresses to get rid of the hips that had got caught in the weeds.

Mary raised her eyes again, and fixed them on the bunch of lilies which I held in my left hand, while I leaned with my right on the shotgun: I thought I understood that she wanted them, but an indefinable fear, a certain respect for my mother and my intentions for the evening, prevented me from offering them to her. But I delighted in imagining how beautiful one of my little lilies would look on her lustrous brown hair. They must have been for her, for she would have gathered orange blossoms and violets in the morning for the vase on my table. When I went into my room I did not see a flower there. If I had found a viper rolled up on the table, I would not have felt the same emotion as the absence of the flowers: its fragrance had become something of Mary's spirit that wandered around me in the hours of study, that swayed in the curtains of my bed during the night.... Ah, so it was true that she did not love me, so my visionary imagination had been able to deceive me so much! And what could I do with the bouquet I had brought for her? If another woman, beautiful and seductive, had been there at that moment, at that moment of resentment against my pride, of resentment against Mary, I would have given it to her on condition that she would show it to all and beautify herself with it. I lifted it to my lips as if to bid farewell for the last time to a cherished illusion, and threw it out of the window.

Chapter XI

I made efforts to be jovial for the rest of the day. At the table I spoke enthusiastically about the beautiful women of Bogotá, and intentionally praised P***'s graces and wit. My father was pleased to hear me: Eloísa would have wanted the after-dinner conversation to last into the night. Maria was silent; but it seemed to me that her cheeks sometimes grew pale, and that their primitive colour had not returned to them, like that of the roses which during the night have adorned a feast.

Towards the latter part of the conversation, Mary had pretended to play with the hair of John, my three-year-old brother whom she spoiled. She put up with it to the end; but as soon as I got to my feet, she went with the child into the garden.

All the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening it was necessary to help my father with his desk work.

At eight o'clock, after the women had said their usual prayers, we were called into the dining room. As we sat down to table, I was surprised to see one of the lilies on Mary's head. There was such an air of noble, innocent, sweet resignation in her beautiful face that, as if magnetised by something unknown to me in her until then, I could not help looking at her.

Loving, laughing girl, as pure and seductive a woman as those I had dreamed of, so I knew her; but resigned to my disdain, she was new to me. Divinised by resignation, I felt unworthy to fix a glance on her brow.

I answered wrongly to some questions that were put to me about Joseph and his family. My father could not conceal my embarrassment; and turning to Mary, he said with a smile:

–Beautiful lily in your hair: I have not seen such in the garden.

Maria, trying to conceal her bewilderment, replied in an almost imperceptible voice:

–There are only lilies of this kind in the mountains.

I caught at that moment a kindly smile on Emma's lips.

–And who sent them? -asked my father.

Mary's confusion was already noticeable. I looked at her; and she must have found something new and encouraging in my eyes, for she answered with a firmer accent:

–Ephraim threw some into the garden; and it seemed to us that, being so rare, it was a pity they should be lost: this is one of them.

–Mary," said I, "if I had known that these flowers were so dear, I should have kept them for you; but I have found them less beautiful than those which are daily placed in the vase on my table.

She understood the cause of my resentment, and a glance of hers told me so plainly, that I feared the palpitations of my heart might be heard.

That evening, just as the family was leaving the salon, Maria happened to be sitting near me. After hesitating for a long time, I finally said to her in a voice that betrayed my emotion: "Maria, they were for you, but I couldn't find yours".

She stammered some apology when, tripping over my hand on the sofa, I held hers by a movement beyond my control. She stopped talking. Her eyes looked at me in astonishment and fled from mine. He ran his free hand anxiously across his forehead, and leaned his head on it, sinking his bare arm into the immediate cushion. At last, making an effort to undo that double bond of matter and soul which at such a moment united us, she rose to her feet; and as if concluding a commenced reflection, she said to me so quietly that I could scarcely hear her, "Then … I will pick the prettiest flowers every day," and disappeared.

Souls like Mary's are ignorant of the worldly language of love; but they shudder at the first caress of the one they love, like the poppy of the woods under the wing of the winds.

I had just confessed my love to Mary; she had encouraged me to confess it to her, humbling herself like a slave to pick those flowers. I repeated her last words to myself with delight; her voice still whispered in my ear: "Then I will pick the most beautiful flowers every day".

Chapter XII

The moon, which had just risen full and large under a deep sky over the towering crests of the mountains, illuminated the jungle slopes, whitened in places by the tops of the yarumos, silvering the foams of the torrents and spreading its melancholy clarity to the bottom of the valley. The plants exhaled their softest and most mysterious aromas. That silence, interrupted only by the murmur of the river, was more pleasing than ever to my soul.

Leaning on my elbows on my window frame, I imagined seeing her in the midst of the rose bushes among which I had surprised her on that first morning: she was there gathering the bouquet of lilies, sacrificing her pride to her love. It was I who would henceforth disturb the childish sleep of her heart: I could already speak to her of my love, make her the object of my life. Tomorrow! magical word, the night when we are told that we are loved! Her gaze, meeting mine, would have nothing more to hide from me; she would be beautified for my happiness and pride.

Never were the July dawns in the Cauca as beautiful as Maria when she presented herself to me the next day, moments after coming out of the bath, her tortoiseshell hair shaded loose and half curled, her cheeks a softly faded rose-colour, but at times fanned by blushing; and playing on her affectionate lips that most chaste smile which reveals in women like Maria a happiness which it is not possible for them to conceal. Her looks, now more sweet than bright, showed that her sleep was not so peaceful as it had been. As I approached her, I noticed on her forehead a graceful and barely perceptible contraction, a sort of feigned severity that she often used with me when, after dazzling me with all the light of her beauty, she would impose silence on my lips, about to repeat what she knew so well.

It was already a necessity for me to have her constantly by my side; not to lose a single instant of her existence abandoned to my love; and happy with what I possessed, and still eager for happiness, I tried to make a paradise of the paternal house. I spoke to Maria and my sister of the desire they had expressed to do some elementary studies under my direction: they were again enthusiastic about the project, and it was decided that from that very day it would begin.

They turned one of the corners of the living room into a study cabinet; they unpinned some maps from my room; they dusted off the geographic globe that had hitherto been ignored on my father's desk; two consoles were cleared of ornaments and made into study tables. My mother smiled as she witnessed all the disarray that our project entailed.

We met every day for two hours, during which time I would explain a chapter or two of geography, and we would read a little universal history, and more often than not many pages of the Genius of Christianity. I was then able to appreciate the full extent of Maria's intelligence: my sentences were indelibly engraved on her memory, and her comprehension almost always preceded my explanations with childlike triumph.

Emma had surprised the secret, and was pleased with our innocent happiness; how could I conceal from her, in those frequent conferences, what was going on in my heart? She must have observed my motionless gaze on her companion's bewitching face as she gave a requested explanation. She had seen Maria's hand tremble if I placed it on some point sought in vain on the map. And whenever, sitting near the table, with them standing on either side of my seat, Mary bent down to get a better view of something in my book or on the cards, her breath, brushing my hair, her tresses, rolling from her shoulders, disturbed my explanations, and Emma could see her straighten up modestly.

Occasionally, household chores would come to the attention of my disciples, and my sister would always take it upon herself to go and do them, only to return a little later to join us. Then my heart was pounding. Mary, with her childishly grave forehead and almost laughing lips, would abandon to mine some of her dimpled, aristocratic hands, made for pressing foreheads like Byron's; and her accent, without ceasing to have that music which was peculiar to her, became slow and deep as she pronounced softly articulated words which in vain would I try to remember to-day; for I have not heard them again, because pronounced by other lips they are not the same, and written on these pages they would appear meaningless. They belong to another language, of which for many years not a sentence has come to my memory.

Chapter XIII

The pages of Chateaubriand were slowly giving a touch of colour to Mary's imagination. So Christian and full of faith, she rejoiced to find the beauties she had foreseen in Catholic worship. Her soul took from the palette that I offered her the most precious colours to beautify everything; and the poetic fire, a gift of Heaven that makes men admirable who possess it and divinises women who reveal it in spite of themselves, gave her countenance charms hitherto unknown to me in the human face. The poet's thoughts, welcomed in the soul of that woman so seductive in the midst of her innocence, came back to me like the echo of a distant and familiar harmony that stirs the heart.

One evening, an evening like those of my country, adorned with clouds of violet and pale gold, beautiful as Mary, beautiful and transitory as it was for me, she, my sister and I, seated on the broad stone of the slope, from where we could see to the right in the deep valley roll the noisy currents of the river, and with the majestic and silent valley at our feet, I read the episode of Atala, and the two of them, admirable in their immobility and abandonment, heard from my lips all that melancholy that the poet had gathered to "make the world weep". My sister, resting her right arm on one of my shoulders, her head almost joined to mine, followed with her eyes the lines I was reading. Maria, half-kneeling near me, did not take her wet eyes off my face.

The sun had gone down as I read the last pages of the poem in an altered voice. Emma's pale head rested on my shoulder. Maria hid her face with both hands. After I had read that heart-rending farewell of Chactas over the grave of his beloved, a farewell which has so often wrung a sob from my breast: "Sleep in peace in a foreign land, young wretch! In reward for thy love, thy banishment and thy death, thou art forsaken even of Chactas himself," Mary, ceasing to hear my voice, uncovered her face, and thick tears rolled down her face. She was as beautiful as the poet's creation, and I loved her with the love he imagined. We walked slowly and silently to the house, and my soul and Maria's were not only moved by the reading, they were overwhelmed with foreboding.

Chapter XIV

After three days, on coming down from the mountain one evening, I seemed to notice a start in the countenances of the servants whom I met in the inner corridors. My sister told me that Maria had had a nervous attack; and, adding that she was still senseless, endeavoured to soothe my painful anxiety as much as possible.

Forgetting all precaution, I entered the bedchamber where Maria was, and mastering the frenzy that would have made me clasp her to my heart to bring her back to life, I approached her bed in bewilderment. At the foot of it sat my father: he fixed on me one of his intense glances, and then turning it on Mary, seemed to want to remonstrate with me by showing her to me. My mother was there; but she did not raise her eyes to look for me, for, knowing my love, she pitied me as a good mother pities her child, as a good mother pities her own child in a woman loved by her child.

I stood motionless gazing at her, not daring to find out what was wrong with her. She was as if asleep: her face, covered with a deadly pallor, was half hidden by her dishevelled hair, in which the flowers I had given her in the morning had been crumpled; her contracted forehead revealed an unbearable suffering, and a light perspiration moistened her temples; tears had tried to flow from her closed eyes, which glistened on the lashes of her eyelashes.

My father, understanding all my suffering, rose to his feet to retire; but before leaving, he approached the bed, and taking Mary's pulse, said:

–It's all over. Poor child! It is exactly the same evil that her mother suffered from.

Mary's bosom rose slowly as if to form a sob, and returning to its natural state, she exhaled only a sigh. My father being gone, I placed myself at the head of the bed, and forgetting my mother and Emma, who remained silent, I took one of Maria's hands from the cushion, and bathed it in the torrent of my tears hitherto restrained. It measured all my misfortune: it was the same malady as her mother's, who had died very young, attacked by an incurable epilepsy. This idea took possession of my whole being to break it.

I felt some movement in that inert hand, to which my breath could not return the warmth. Mary was already beginning to breathe more freely, and her lips seemed to struggle to utter a word. She moved her head from side to side, as if trying to throw off an overwhelming weight. After a moment's repose, she stammered unintelligible words, but at last my name was clearly perceived among them. As I stood, my gaze devouring her, perhaps I pressed my hands too tightly in hers, perhaps my lips called out to her. She slowly opened her eyes, as if wounded by an intense light, and fixed them on me, making an effort to recognise me. Half sitting up a moment later, "What is it?" she said, drawing me aside; "What has happened to me?" she continued, turning to my mother. We tried to reassure her, and with an accent in which there was something of remonstrance, which I could not at the time explain to myself, she added, "You see, I was afraid.

She was, after the access, in pain and deeply saddened. I returned in the evening to see her, when the etiquette established in such cases by my father permitted it. As I bade her farewell, holding my hand for a moment, she said, "See you to-morrow," and emphasised this last word as she used to do whenever our conversation was interrupted in some evening, looking forward to the next day for us to conclude it.

Chapter XV

As I went out into the corridor that led to my room, an impetuous breeze was swaying the willows in the courtyard; and as I approached the orchard, I heard it tearing through the orange groves, from which the frightened birds were darting. Faint flashes of lightning, like the instantaneous reflection of a buckler wounded by the glow of a fire, seemed to want to illuminate the gloomy bottom of the valley.

Leaning against one of the columns in the corridor, without feeling the rain lashing at my temples, I thought of Mary's illness, about which my father had spoken such terrible words; my eyes wanted to see her again, as in the silent and serene nights that might never come again!

I don't know how much time had passed, when something like the vibrating wing of a bird came to brush against my forehead. I looked towards the immediate woods to follow it: it was a black bird.

My room was cold; the roses at the window trembled as if they feared to be abandoned to the rigours of the tempestuous wind; the vase contained already withered and fainting the lilies that Mary had placed in it in the morning. At this a gust of wind suddenly blew out the lamp; and a clap of thunder let its rising rumble be heard for a long time, as if it were that of a gigantic chariot plunging from the rocky peaks of the mountain.

In the midst of that sobbing nature, my soul had a sad serenity.

The clock in the living room had just struck twelve. I heard footsteps near my door, and then my father's voice calling me. "Get up," he said as soon as I answered; "Maria is still unwell.

The access had been repeated. After a quarter of an hour I was ready to leave. My father was giving me the last indications about the symptoms of the illness, while the little black Juan Angel was quieting my impatient and frightened horse. I mounted; his shod hooves crunched on the cobbles, and a moment later I was riding down towards the plains of the valley, looking for the path in the light of some livid flashes of lightning. I was going in search of Dr. Mayn, who was then spending a season in the country three leagues from our farm.

The image of Mary as I had seen her in bed that afternoon, as she said to me, "See you tomorrow," that perhaps she would not come, was with me, and, quickening my impatience, made me measure incessantly the distance that separated me from the end of the journey; an impatience which the speed of the horse was not enough to moderate,

The plains began to disappear, fleeing in the opposite direction to my run, like immense blankets swept away by the hurricane. The forests that I thought were closest to me seemed to recede as I advanced towards them. Only the moaning of the wind among the shady fig-trees and chiminangos, only the weary wheezing of the horse and the clash of its hoofs on the sparking flints, interrupted the silence of the night.

Some huts of Santa Elena were on my right, and soon after I stopped hearing the barking of their dogs. Sleeping cows on the road began to make me slow down.

The beautiful house of the lords of M***, with its white chapel and its ceiba groves, could be seen in the distance in the first rays of the rising moon, like a castle whose towers and roofs had crumbled with the passing of time.

The Amaime was rising with the rains of the night, and its roar announced it to me long before I reached the shore. By the light of the moon, which, piercing the foliage of the banks, was going to silver the waves, I could see how much its flow had increased. But I could not wait: I had done two leagues in an hour, and it was still too little. I put my spurs to the horse's hindquarters, and with his ears laid back towards the bottom of the river, and snorting deafly, he seemed to calculate the impetuosity of the waters that were lashing at his feet: he plunged his hands into them, and, as if overcome by an invincible terror, he spun back on his legs. I stroked his neck and moistened his mane, and again prodded him into the river; then he threw up his hands impatiently, asking at the same time for all the rein, which I gave him, fearful that I had missed the flood-hole. He went up the bank about twenty rods, taking the side of a crag; he brought his nose close to the foam, and raising it at once, plunged into the stream. The water covered almost all of me, reaching up to my knees. The waves soon curled around my waist. With one hand I patted the animal's neck, the only visible part of its body, while with the other I tried to make it describe the cut line more curved upwards, because otherwise, having lost the lower part of the slope, it was inaccessible due to its height and the force of the water, which swung over the broken branches. The danger had passed. I alighted to examine the girths, one of which had burst. The noble brute shook himself, and a moment later I continued my march.

After a quarter of a league, I crossed the waves of the Nima, humble, diaphanous and smooth, which rolled illuminated until they were lost in the shadows of silent forests. I left the pampa of Santa R., whose house, in the midst of ceiba groves and under the group of palm trees that raise their foliage above its roof, resembles on moonlit nights the tent of an oriental king hanging from the trees of an oasis.

It was two o'clock in the morning when, after crossing the village of P***, I dismounted at the door of the house where the doctor lived.

Chapter XVI

In the evening of the same day the doctor took leave of us, after leaving Maria almost completely recovered, and having prescribed a regimen to prevent a recurrence of the access, and promised to visit her frequently. I was unspeakably relieved to hear him assure her that there was no danger, and for him, twice as fond as I had hitherto been of her, just because such a speedy recovery was predicted for Maria. I went into her room, as soon as the doctor and my father, who was to accompany him a league's journey, had set out. She was just finishing braiding her hair, looking at herself in a mirror that my sister held up on the cushions. Blushing, she pushed the piece of furniture aside and said to me:

–These are not the occupations of a sick woman, are they? but I am well enough. I hope I shall never again cause you such a dangerous journey as last night.

–There was no danger on that trip," I replied.

–The river, yes, the river! I thought of that and of so many things that could happen to you because of me.

A three-league journey? You call this…?

–That voyage on which you might have drowned," said the doctor here, so surprised, that he had not yet pressed me, and was already talking about it. You and he, on your return, had to wait two hours for the river to go down.

–The doctor on horseback is a mule; and his patient mule is not the same as a good horse.

–The man who lives in the little house by the pass," Maria interrupted me, "when he recognised your black horse this morning, he was amazed that the rider who jumped into the river last night had not drowned just as he was shouting to him that there was no ford. Oh, no, no; I don't want to get sick again. Hasn't the doctor told you that I won't get sick again?

–Yes," I replied; "and he has promised me not to let two days in succession pass in this fortnight without coming to see you.

–Then you won't have to make another overnight trip. What would I have done if I…

–You would have cried a lot, wouldn't you? -I replied with a smile.

He looked at me for a few moments, and I added:

–Can I be sure of dying at any time convinced that…

–From what?

And guessing the rest in my eyes:

–Always, always! -she added almost secretly, appearing to examine the beautiful lace on the cushions.

–And I have very sad things to say to you," he continued after a few moments' silence; "so sad, that they are the cause of my illness. You were on the mountain. Mamma knows all about it; and I heard papa tell her that my mother had died of a disease whose name I never heard; that you were destined to make a fine career; and that I – I – I don't know whether it's a matter of the heart or not. Ah, I don't know whether what I heard is true – I don't deserve that you should be as you are with me.

Tears rolled from her veiled eyes to her pale cheeks, which she hastened to wipe away.

–Don't say that, Maria, don't think it," I said; "no, I beg you.

–But I heard about it, and then I didn't know about myself.... Why, then?

–Look, I beg you, I… I… Will you allow me to command you to speak no more of it?

She had dropped her forehead on the arm on which she was leaning, and whose hand I was clasping in mine, when I heard in the next room the rustle of Emma's clothes approaching.

That evening at dinner time my sisters and I were in the dining room waiting for my parents, who took longer than usual. At last they were heard talking in the drawing-room, as if ending an important conversation. My father's noble physiognomy showed, in the slight contraction of the extremities of his lips, and in the little wrinkle between his brows, that he had just had a moral struggle which had upset him. My mother was pale, but without making the least effort to appear calm, she said to me as she sat down at the table:

–I hadn't remembered to tell you that José came to see us this morning and to invite you to a hunt; but when he heard the news, he promised to come back very early tomorrow morning. Do you know if it's true that one of his daughters is getting married?

–He will try to consult you about his project," my father remarked absently.

–It's probably a bear hunt," I replied.

–Of bears? What! Do you hunt bears?

–Yes, sir; it's a funny hunt I've done with him a few times.

–In my country," said my father, "they would think you a barbarian or a hero.

–And yet such a game is less dangerous than that of deer, which is made every day and everywhere; for the former, instead of requiring the hunters to tumble unwittingly through heather and waterfalls, requires only a little agility and accurate marksmanship.

My father, his countenance no longer showing its former frown, spoke of the way deer were hunted in Jamaica, and of how fond his relatives had been of this kind of pastime, Solomon being distinguished among them for his tenacity, skill, and enthusiasm, of whom he told us, with a laugh, some anecdotes.

As we got up from the table, he came up to me and said:

–Your mother and I have something to talk over with you; come to my room later.

As I entered the room, my father was writing with his back to my mother, who was in the less well-lit part of the room, sitting in the armchair she always sat in whenever she stopped there.

–Sit down," he said, stopping his writing for a moment and looking at me over the white glass and gold-rimmed mirrors.

After a few minutes, having carefully put back the account book in which he was writing, he moved a seat nearer to the one I was sitting on, and in a low voice spoke thus:

–I wanted your mother to be present at this conversation, because it is a serious matter on which she has the same opinion as I have.

He went to the door to open it and throw away the cigar he was smoking, and continued in this manner:

–You have been with us three months now, and it is only after two more that Mr. A*** will be able to start on his journey to Europe, and it is with him that you must go. This delay, in a certain degree, means nothing, both because it is very agreeable to us to have you with us after six years' absence, to be followed by others, and because I note with pleasure that even here, study is one of your favourite pleasures. I cannot conceal from you, nor must I, that I have conceived great hopes, from your character and aptitudes, that you will crown the career you are about to pursue with brilliancy. You are not unaware that the family will soon need your support, and all the more so after the death of your brother.

Then, pausing, he continued:

–There is something in your conduct which I must tell you is not right; you are but twenty years old, and at that age a love inconsiderately fostered might render illusory all the hopes of which I have just spoken to you. You love Maria, and I have known it for many days, as is natural. Maria is almost my daughter, and I should have nothing to observe, if your age and position allowed us to think of a marriage; but they do not, and Maria is very young. These are not only the obstacles which present themselves; there is one perhaps insuperable, and it is my duty to speak to you of it. Mary may drag you and us with you into a lamentable misfortune of which she is threatened. Dr. Mayn dares almost to assure that she will die young of the same malady to which her mother succumbed: what she suffered yesterday is an epileptic syncope, which, taking increase at every access, will terminate in an epilepsy of the worst character known: so says the doctor. You answer now, with much thought, a single question; answer it like the rational man and gentleman that you are; and let not your answer be dictated by an exaltation foreign to your character, when it is a question of your future and that of your own. You know the doctor's opinion, an opinion that deserves respect because it is Mayn who gives it; the fate of Solomon's wife is known to you: if we consented to it, would you marry Mary to-day?

–Yes, sir," I replied.

–Would you take it all in?

–Everything, everything!

–I think I speak not only to a son but to the gentleman I have tried to form in you.

At that moment my mother hid her face in her handkerchief. My father, moved perhaps by those tears, and perhaps also by the resolution he found in me, knowing that his voice would fail him, stopped speaking for a few moments.

–Well," he continued, "since that noble resolution animates you, you will agree with me that you cannot be Maria's husband before five years. It is not for me to tell you that she, having loved you since she was a child, loves you to-day so much, that it is intense emotions, new to her, which, according to Mayn, have caused the symptoms of the disease to appear: that is to say, that your love and hers need precautions, and that I require you henceforth to promise me, for your sake, since you love her so much, and for her sake, that you will follow the doctor's advice, given in case this case should come to pass. You must promise nothing to Mary, for the promise to be her husband after the time I have appointed would make your intercourse more intimate, which is precisely what is to be avoided. Further explanations are useless to you: by following this course, you can save Mary; you can spare us the misfortune of losing her.

–In return for all that we grant you," said he, turning to my mother, "you must promise me the following: not to speak to Maria of the danger which threatens her, nor to reveal to her anything of what has passed between us to-night. You must also know my opinion of your marriage with her, if her illness should persist after your return to this country – for we are soon to be separated for some years: as your and Maria's father, I would not approve of such a liaison. In expressing this irrevocable resolution, it is not superfluous to let you know that Solomon, in the last three years of his life, succeeded in forming a capital of some consideration, which is in my possession destined to serve as a dowry for his daughter. But if she dies before her marriage, it must pass to her maternal grandmother, who is at Kingston.

My father paced a few moments in the room. Thinking our conference concluded, I rose to retire; but he resumed his seat, and pointing to mine, resumed his discourse thus.

–Four days ago I received a letter from Mr. de M*** asking me for Maria's hand for his son Carlos.

I could not hide my surprise at these words. My father smiled imperceptibly before adding:

–Mr. de M*** gives you fifteen days to accept or not his proposal, during which time you will come to pay us a visit that you promised me before. Everything will be easy for you after what has been agreed between us.

–Good night, then," he said, laying his hand warmly on my shoulder, "may you be very happy in your hunt; I need the skin of the bear you kill to put at the foot of my cot.

–All right," I replied.

My mother held out her hand to me, and holding mine, she said:

–We're expecting you early; watch out for those animals!

So many emotions had been swirling around me in the last few hours that I could hardly notice each one of them, and it was impossible for me to cope with my strange and difficult situation.

Mary threatened with death; promised thus as a reward for my love, by a terrible absence; promised on condition of loving her less; me obliged to moderate so powerful a love, a love forever possessed of my whole being, on pain of seeing her disappear from the earth like one of the fugitive beauties of my reveries, and having henceforth to appear ungrateful and insensible perhaps in her eyes, only by a conduct which necessity and reason compelled me to adopt! I could no longer hear her confidences in a moved voice; my lips could not touch even the end of one of her plaits. Mine or death's, between death and me, one step nearer to her would be to lose her; and to let her weep in abandonment was an ordeal beyond my strength.

Cowardly heart! you were not capable of letting yourself be consumed by that fire which, poorly hidden, could consume her? Where is she now, now that you no longer palpitate; now that the days and years pass over me without my knowing that I possess you?

Carrying out my orders, Juan Ángel knocked on the door of my room at dawn.

–How is the morning? -I asked.

–Mala, my master; it wants to rain.

–Well. Go to the mountain and tell José not to wait for me today.

When I opened the window I regretted having sent the little black man, who, whistling and humming bambucos, was about to enter the first patch of forest.

A cold, unseasonable wind was blowing from the mountains, shaking the rose bushes and swaying the willows, and diverting the odd pair of travelling parrots in their flight. All the birds, the luxury of the orchard on cheerful mornings, were silent, and only the pellars fluttered in the neighbouring meadows, greeting the sad winter's day with their song.

In a short time the mountains disappeared under the ashen veil of a heavy rain, which was already making its growing rumble heard as it came lashing through the woods. Within half an hour, murky, thundering brooks were running down, combing the haystacks on the slopes on the other side of the river, which, swollen, thundered angrily, and could be seen in the distant rifts, yellowish, overflowing, and muddy.

Chapter XVII

Ten days had passed since that distressing conference took place. Not feeling able to comply with my father's wishes as to the new sort of intercourse which he said I was to use with Maria, and painfully concerned at the proposal of marriage made by Charles, I had sought all sorts of pretexts for getting away from home. I spent those days, either shut up in my room, or in José's possession, often wandering about on foot. My companion on my walks was some book I couldn't manage to read, my shotgun, which never fired, and Mayo, who kept tiring me out. While I, overcome by a deep melancholy, let the hours pass hidden in the wildest places, he tried in vain to doze off curled up in the leaf litter, from which ants dislodged him or ants and mosquitoes made him jump impatiently. When the old fellow tired of the inaction and silence, which he disliked in spite of his infirmities, he would come up to me and, laying his head on one of my knees, would look at me affectionately, and then go away and wait for me a few rods away on the path that led to the house; And in his eagerness to get us on our way, when he had got me to follow him, he would even make a few jumps of joyous, youthful enthusiasms, in which, besides forgetting his composure and senile gravity, he came off with little success.

One morning my mother came into my room, and sitting at the head of the bed, from which I had not yet emerged, she said to me:

–This cannot be: you must not go on living like this; I am not satisfied.

As I kept silent, he continued:

–What you do is not what your father has required; it is much more; and your conduct is cruel to us, and more cruel to Maria. I was persuaded that your frequent walks were for the purpose of going to Luisa's, on account of the affection they have for you there; but Braulio, who came yesterday evening, let us know that he had not seen you for five days. What is it that causes you this deep sadness, which you cannot control even in the few moments you spend in society with the family, and which makes you constantly seek solitude, as if it were already troublesome for you to be with us?

Her eyes were filled with tears.

–Mary, madam," I replied, "he must be entirely free to accept or not to accept the lot which Charles offers him; and I, as his friend, must not delude him in the hopes which he must rightly entertain of being accepted.

Thus I revealed, without being able to help it, the most unbearable pain that had tormented me since the night I heard of the proposal of the gentlemen of M***. The doctor's fatal prognoses of Maria's illness had become nothing to me before that proposal; nothing the necessity of being separated from her for many years to come.

–How could you have imagined such a thing? -She has only seen your friend twice, once when he was here for a few hours, and once when we went to visit his family.

–But, dear me, there is little time left for what I have thought to be justified or to vanish. It seems to me to be well worth waiting for.

–You are very unjust, and you will regret having been so. Mary, out of dignity and duty, knowing herself better than you do, conceals how much your conduct is making her suffer. I can hardly believe my eyes; I am astonished to hear what you have just said; I, who thought to give you a great joy, and to remedy all by letting you know what Mayn told us yesterday at parting!

–Say it, say it," I begged, sitting up.

–What's the point?

–Won't she always be… won't she always be my sister?

–Or can a man be a gentleman and do what you do? No, no; that is not for a son of mine to do! Your sister! And you forget that you are saying it to one who knows you better than you know yourself! Your sister! And I know that she has loved you ever since she slept you both on my knee! And it is now that you believe it? now that I came to speak to you about it, frightened by the suffering that the poor thing tries uselessly to conceal from me.

–I would not, for one instant, give you cause for such a displeasure as you let me know. Tell me what I am to do to remedy what you have found reprehensible in my conduct.

–Don't you want me to love her as much as I love you?

–Yes, ma'am; and it is, isn't it?

–It will be so, though I had forgotten that she has no mother but me, and Solomon's recommendations, and the confidence he thought me worthy; for she deserves it, and loves you so much. The doctor assures us that Mary's malady is not the one that Sara suffered.

–Did he say so?

–Yes; your father, reassured on that score, wanted me to let you know.

–So can I go back to being with her as I was before? -I asked in a maddened way.

–Almost…

–Oh, she will excuse me; don't you think so? The doctor said there was no danger of any kind? -I added; "it is necessary that Charles should know it.

My mother looked at me strangely before answering me:

–And why should it be concealed from him? It is my duty to tell you what I think you must do, since the gentlemen of M*** are to come to-morrow, as they announce. Tell Maria this afternoon. But what can you tell her that would be sufficient to justify your detachment, without disregarding your father's orders? And even if you could speak to her of what he demanded of you, you could not excuse yourself, for there is a cause for doing what you have done these days, which for pride and delicacy's sake you must not discover. That is the result. I must tell Mary the real cause of your sorrow.

–But if you do, if I have been light in believing what I have believed, what will she think of me?

–He will think you less ill, than to consider yourself capable of a fickleness and inconsistency more odious than anything else.

–You are right up to a certain point; but I beg you will not tell Maria anything of what we have just spoken of. I have made a mistake, which has perhaps made me suffer more than her, and I must remedy it; I promise you I will remedy it; I demand only two days to do it properly.

–Well," he said, getting up to leave, "are you going out today?

–Yes, ma'am.

–Where are you going?

I am going to pay Emigdio his welcome visit; and it is indispensable, for I sent word to him yesterday with his father's butler to expect me to lunch to-day.

–But you'll be back early.

–At four or five o'clock.

–Come and eat here.

–Are you satisfied with me again?

–Of course not," he replied, smiling. Till the evening, then: you will give the ladies my best regards, from me and the girls.

Chapter XVIII

I was ready to go, when Emma came into my room. She was surprised to see me with a laughing countenance.

–Where are you going so happy," he asked me.

–I wish I didn't have to go anywhere. To see Emigdio, who complains of my inconstancy in every tone, whenever I meet him.

–How unfair! -he exclaimed with a laugh. Unfair you?

–What are you laughing at?

–Poor thing!

–No, no: you're laughing at something else.

–That's just it," said he, taking a comb from my bath-table, and coming up to me. Let me comb your hair for you, for you know, Mr. Constant, that one of your friend's sisters is a pretty girl. Pity," she continued, combing the hair with the help of her graceful hands, "that Master Ephraim has grown a little pale these days, for the bugueñas can't imagine manly beauty without fresh colours on their cheeks. But if Emigdio's sister were aware of....

–You are very talkative today.

–Yes? and you're very cheerful. Look in the mirror and tell me if you don't look good.

–What a visit! -I exclaimed, hearing Maria's voice calling my sister.

–Really. How much better it would be to go for a stroll along the peaks of the boquerón de Amaime and enjoy the… great and solitary landscape, or to walk through the mountains like wounded cattle, shooing away mosquitoes, without prejudice to the fact that May is full of nuches…, poor thing, it is impossible.

–Maria is calling you," I interrupted.

–I know what it's for.

–What for?

–To help him do something he shouldn't do.

–Can you tell which one?

–She is waiting for me to go and fetch flowers to replace these," said she, pointing to those in the vase on my table; "and if I were her, I should not put another one in there.

–If you only knew…

–And if you knew…

My father, who was calling me from his room, interrupted the conversation, which, if continued, could have frustrated what I had been trying to do since my last interview with my mother.

As I entered my father's room, he was looking at the window of a beautiful pocket watch, and he said:

–It is an admirable thing; it is undoubtedly worth the thirty pounds. Turning at once to me, he added:

–This is the watch I ordered from London; look at it.

–It's much better than the one you use," I observed, examining it.

–But the one I use is very accurate, and yours is very small: you must give it to one of the girls and take this one for yourself.

Without leaving me time to thank him, he added:

–Are you going to Emigdio's house? Tell his father that I can prepare the guinea-pasture for us to fatten together; but that his cattle must be ready on the fifteenth of the next.

I immediately returned to my room to take my pistols. Mary, from the garden, at the foot of my window, was handing Emma a bunch of montenegros, marjoram, and carnations; but the most beautiful of these, for their size and luxuriance, was on her lips.

–Good morning, Maria," I said, hurrying to receive the flowers.

She, paling instantly, returned the greeting curtly, and the carnation fell from her mouth. She handed me the flowers, dropping some at my feet, which she picked up and placed within my reach when her cheeks were again flushed.

–Do you want to exchange all these for the carnation you had on your lips," I said as I received the last ones?

–I stepped on it," he replied, lowering his head to look for it.

–Thus trodden, I will give you all these for him.

He remained in the same attitude without answering me.

–Do you allow me to pick it up?

He then bent down to take it and handed it to me without looking at me.

Meanwhile Emma pretended to be completely distracted by the new flowers.

I shook Mary's hand with which I was handing over the desired carnation, saying to her:

–Thank you, thank you! See you this afternoon.

She raised her eyes to look at me with the most rapturous expression that tenderness and modesty, reproach and tears, can produce in a woman's eyes.

Chapter XIX

I had walked a little more than a league, and was already struggling to open the door that gave access to the mangones of Emigdio's father's hacienda. Having overcome the resistance of the mouldy hinges and shaft, and the even more tenacious resistance of the pylon, made of a large stone, which, suspended from the roof with a bolt, gave torment to passers-by by keeping that singular device closed, I considered myself fortunate not to have got stuck in the stony mire, the respectable age of which was known by the colour of the stagnant water.

I crossed a short plain where the fox-tail, the scrub-plate and the bramble dominated over the marshy grasses; there some shaven-tailed milling-horse browsed, colts scampered and old donkeys meditated, so lacerated and mutilated by the carrying of firewood and the cruelty of their muleteers, that Buffon would have been perplexed to have to classify them.

The large, old house, surrounded by coconut and mango trees, had an ashen, sagging roof overlooking the tall, dense cocoa grove.

I had not exhausted the obstacles to get there, for I stumbled into the corrals surrounded by tetillal; and there I had to roll the sturdy guaduas over the rickety steps. Two blacks came to my aid, a man and a woman: he was dressed in nothing but breeches, showing his athletic back shining with the peculiar sweat of his race; she was wearing a blue fula and for a shirt a handkerchief knotted at the nape of her neck and tied with the waistband, which covered her chest. They both wore reed hats, the kind that soon turn straw-coloured with little use.

The laughing, smoking pair were going to do no less than have it out with another pair of colts whose turn had already come in the flail; and I knew why, for I was struck by the sight not only of the black, but also of his companion, armed with lassoed paddles. They were shouting and running when I alighted under the wing of the house, disregarding the threats of two inhospitable dogs that were lying under the seats of the corridor.

A few frayed reed harnesses and saddles mounted on the railings were enough to convince me that all the plans made in Bogotá by Emigdio, impressed by my criticisms, had been dashed against what he called his father's shanties. On the other hand, the breeding of small livestock had improved considerably, as was shown by the goats of various colours that stank up the courtyard; and I saw the same improvement in the poultry, for many peacocks greeted my arrival with alarming cries, and among the Creole or marsh ducks, which swam in the neighbouring ditch, some of the so-called Chileans were distinguished by their circumspect demeanour.

Emigdio was an excellent boy. A year before my return to Cauca, his father sent him to Bogota in order to set him, as the good gentleman said, on his way to become a merchant and a good trader. Carlos, who lived with me at the time and was always in the know even about what he wasn't supposed to know, came across Emigdio, I don't know where, and planted him in front of me one Sunday morning, preceding him as he entered our room to say: "Man, I'm going to kill you with pleasure: I've brought you the most beautiful thing.

I ran to embrace Emigdio, who, standing at the door, had the strangest figure imaginable. It is foolish to pretend to describe him.

My countryman had come laden with the hat with the coffee-with-milk-coloured hair that his father, Don Ignacio, had worn in the holy weeks of his youth. Whether it was too tight, or whether he thought it was good to wear it like that, the thing formed a ninety-degree angle with the back of our friend's long, rangy neck. That skinny frame; those thinning, lank sideburns, matching the most disconsolate hair in its neglect ever seen; that yellowish complexion peeling the sunny roadside; the collar of the shirt tucked hopelessly under the lapels of a white waistcoat whose tips hated each other; the arms imprisoned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms caught in the sleeves of a blue coat; the chambray breeches with wide cordovan loops, and the boots of polished deer-hide, were more than enough to excite Charles's enthusiasm.

Emigdio was carrying a pair of big-eared spurs in one hand and a bulky parcel for me in the other. I hastened to unburden him of everything, taking an instant to look sternly at Carlos, who, lying on one of the beds in our bedchamber, was biting a pillow, crying his eyes out, which almost caused me the most unwelcome embarrassment.

I offered Emigdio a seat in the little sitting-room; and as he chose a spring sofa, the poor fellow, feeling that he was sinking, tried his best to find something to hold on to in the air; but, having lost all hope, he pulled himself together as best he could, and when he was on his feet, he said:

–What the hell! This Carlos can't even come to his senses, and now! No wonder he was laughing in the street about the sticking he was going to do to me. And you too? Well, if these people here are the same devils. What do you think of the one they did to me today?

Carlos came out of the room, taking advantage of this happy occasion, and we were both able to laugh at our ease.

–What Emigdio! -said he to our visitor, "sit down in this chair, which has no trap. It is necessary that you should keep a leash.

–Yes," replied Emigdio, sitting down suspiciously, as if he feared another failure.

–What have they done to you? -he laughed more than Carlos asked.

–Have you seen? I was about not to tell them.

–But why? -insisted the implacable Carlos, throwing an arm round his shoulders, "tell us.

Emigdio was angry at last, and we could hardly content him. A few glasses of wine and some cigars ratified our armistice. As for the wine, our countryman remarked that the orange wine made in Buga was better, and the green anisete from the Paporrina sale. The cigars from Ambalema seemed to him inferior to the ones he carried in his pockets, stuffed in dried banana leaves and perfumed with chopped fig and orange leaves.

After two days, our Telemachus was now suitably dressed and groomed by Master Hilary; and though his fashionable clothes made him uncomfortable, and his new boots made him look like a candlestick, he had to submit, stimulated by vanity and by Charles, to what he called a martyrdom.

Once settled in the house where we lived, he amused us in the after-dinner hours by telling our landladies about the adventures of his journey and giving his opinion about everything that had attracted your attention in the city. In the street it was different, for we were obliged to leave him to his own devices, that is, to the jovial impertinence of the saddlers and hawkers, who ran to besiege him as soon as they saw him, to offer him Chocontana chairs, arretrancas, zamarros, braces and a thousand trinkets.

Fortunately, Emigdio had already finished all his shopping when he came to find out that the daughter of the lady of the house, an easy-going, carefree, laughing girl, was dying for him.

Charles, without stopping at bars, succeeded in convincing him that Micaelina had hitherto disdained the courtships of all the diners; but the devil, who does not sleep, made Emigdio surprise his kid and his beloved one night in the dining-room, when they thought the wretch asleep, for it was ten o'clock, the hour at which he was usually in his third sleep; a habit which he justified by always getting up early, even if he was shivering with cold.

When Emigdio saw what he had seen and heard what he had heard, which, if only he had seen and heard nothing for his and our peace of mind, he thought only of speeding up his march.

As he had no complaint against me, he confided in me the night before the journey, telling me, among many other unburdenings:

In Bogotá there are no ladies: these are all… seven-soled flirts. When this one has done it, what do you expect? I'm even afraid I won't say goodbye to her. There's nothing like the girls of our land; here there's nothing but danger. You see Carlos: he's a corpus altar, he goes to bed at eleven o'clock at night, and he's more full of himself than ever. Let him be; I'll let Don Chomo know so that he can put the ashes on him. I admire to see you thinking only of your studies.

So Emigdio departed, and with him the amusement of Carlos and Micaelina.

Such, in short, was the honourable and friendly friend whom I was going to visit.

Expecting to see him coming from inside the house, I gave way to the rear, hearing him shouting at me as he jumped over a fence into the courtyard:

–At last, you fool! I thought you'd left me waiting for you. Sit down, I'm coming. And he began to wash his hands, which were bloody, in the ditch in the courtyard.

–What were you doing? -I asked him after our greetings.

–As today is slaughter day, and my father got up early to go to the paddocks, I was rationing the blacks, which is a chore; but I'm not busy now. My mother is very anxious to see you; I'm going to let her know you're here. Who knows if we'll get the girls to come out, because they've become more closed-minded every day.

–Choto! he shouted; and soon a half-naked little black man, cute sultanas, and a dry, scarred arm, appeared.

–Take that horse to the canoe and clean the sorrel colt for me.

And turning to me, having noticed my horse, he added:

–Carrizo with the retinto!

–How did that boy's arm break down like that? -I asked.

–They're so rough, they're so rough! He's only good for looking after the horses.

Soon they began to serve lunch, while I was with Doña Andrea, Emigdio's mother, who almost left her kerchief without fringes, for a quarter of an hour we were alone talking.

Emigdio went to put on a white jacket to sit down at the table; but first he presented us with a black woman adorned with a Pastuzean cape with a handkerchief, wearing a beautifully embroidered towel hanging from one of her arms.

The dining room served as our dining room, whose furnishings were reduced to old cowhide couches, some altarpieces representing saints from Quito, hung high up on the not very white walls, and two small tables decorated with fruit bowls and plaster parrots.

The truth be told, there was no greatness at lunch, but Emigdio's mother and sisters were known to understand how to arrange it. The tortilla soup flavoured with fresh herbs from the garden; the fried plantains, shredded meat and cornmeal doughnuts; the excellent local chocolate; the stone cheese; the milk bread and the water served in big old silver jugs, left nothing to be desired.

When we were having lunch, I caught a glimpse of one of the girls peeping through a half-open door; and her cute little face, lit up by eyes as black as chambimbes, suggested that what she was hiding must be very much in harmony with what she was showing.

I said goodbye to Mrs. Andrea at eleven o'clock, because we had decided to go to see Don Ignacio in the paddocks where he was rodeoing, and to take advantage of the trip to take a bath in the Amaime.

Emigdio stripped off his jacket and replaced it with a threaded ruana; he took off his sock boots to put on worn-out espadrilles; he fastened some white tights of hairy goat skin; he put on a big Suaza hat with a white percale cover, and mounted the sorrel, first taking the precaution of blindfolding him with a handkerchief. As the colt curled up into a ball and hid his tail between his legs, the rider shouted at him: "You're coming with your trickery!" immediately unloading two resounding lashes with the Palmiran manatee he was wielding. So, after two or three corcovos, which did not even move the gentleman in his Chocontan saddle, I mounted and we set off.

As we reached the site of the rodeo, distant from the house more than half a league, my companion, after he had taken advantage of the first apparent flat to turn and scratch the horse, entered into a tug-of-war conversation with me. He unpacked all he knew about the matrimonial pretensions of Carlos, with whom he had resumed friendship since they met again in the Cauca.

–What do you say? -he ended up asking me.

I slyly dodged an answer; and he went on:

–What's the use of denying it? Charles is a working lad: once he is convinced that he can't be a planter unless he lays aside his gloves and umbrella first, he must do well. He still makes fun of me for lassoing, and making a fence, and barbequing mule; but he's got to do the same or go bust. Haven't you seen him?

–No.

–Do you think he doesn't go to the river to bathe when the sun is strong, and if they don't saddle his horse he won't ride, just so he won't get a tan and get his hands dirty? As for the rest, he's a gentleman, that's for sure: it wasn't eight days ago that he got me out of a jam by lending me two hundred patacones that I needed to buy some heifers. He knows he doesn't let it go to waste; but that's what you call serving in time. As for his marriage… I'll tell you one thing, if you offer not to scorch yourself.

–Say, man, say what you want.

–In your house they seem to live with a great deal of tone; and it seems to me that one of those little girls brought up among soots, like the ones in fairy tales, needs to be treated like a blessed thing.

He laughed and continued:

–I say that because that Don Jerónimo, Carlos's father, has more shells than a siete-cueros, and he's as tough as a chili pepper. My father can't see him since he's got him involved in a land dispute and I don't know what else. The day he finds him, at night we have to put some yerba mora ointment on him and give him a rub of aguardiente with malambo.

We had arrived at the rodeo site. In the middle of the corral, in the shade of a guásimo tree and through the dust raised by the moving bulls, I discovered Don Ignacio, who approached me to greet me. He was riding a pink and coarse quarter horse, harnessed with a tortoiseshell whose lustre and decay proclaimed his merits. The meagre figure of the rich owner was decorated as follows: shabby lion's pauldrons with uppers; silver spurs with buckles; an unplacked jacket of cloth and a white ruana overloaded with starch; crowning it all was an enormous Jipijapa hat, the kind they call when the wearer gallops: Under its shadow, Don Ignacio's big nose and small blue eyes played the same game as in the head of a stuffed paletón, the garnets that he wears for pupils and the long beak.

I told Don Ignacio what my father had told me about the cattle they were to fatten together.

–He replied, "It's all right," he said, "You can see that the heifers can't get any better: they all look like towers. Don't you want to come in and have some fun?

Emigdio's eyes were going wild watching the cowboys at work in the corral.

–Ah tuso! -he shouted; "beware of loosening the pial.... To the tail! To the tail!

I excused myself to Don Ignacio, thanking him at the same time; he continued:

–Nothing, nothing; the Bogotanos are afraid of the sun and the fierce bulls; that's why the boys are spoiled in the schools there. Don't let me lie to you, that pretty boy, son of Don Chomo: at seven o'clock in the morning I met him on the road, bundled up with a scarf, so that only one eye was visible, and with an umbrella!.... You, as far as I can see, don't even use such things.

At that moment, the cowboy shouted, with the red-hot brand in his hand, applying it to the paddle of several bulls lying and tied up in the corral: "Another… another".... Each of these shouts was followed by a bellow, and Don Ignacio would use his penknife to make one more notch on a guasimo stick that served as a foete.

As the cattle could be dangerous when they got up, Don Ignacio, after having received my farewell, got to safety by going into a neighbouring corral.

Emigdio's chosen spot on the river was the best place to enjoy the bathing that the waters of the Amaime offer in the summer, especially at the time we reached its banks.

Guabos churimos, on whose flowers fluttered thousands of emeralds, offered us dense shade and cushioned leaf litter where we spread out our ruanas. At the bottom of the deep pool that lay at our feet, even the smallest pebbles were visible and silver sardines frolicked. Down below, on the stones that were not covered by the currents, blue herons and white egrets fished peeping or combed their plumage. On the beach in front, beautiful cows were lying on the beach; macaws hidden in the foliage of the cachimbo trees were chattering in a low voice; and lying on the high branches, a group of monkeys slept in lazy abandonment. The cicadas were everywhere resounding their monotonous songs. A curious squirrel or two peeped through the reeds and disappeared swiftly. Further into the jungle we heard from time to time the melancholy trill of the chilacoas.

–Hang your tights away from here," I said to Emigdio, "or else we'll come out of the bath with a headache.

He laughed heartily, watching me as I placed them on the fork of a distant tree:

–Do you want everything to smell like roses? The man must smell like a goat.

–Surely; and to prove that you believe it, you carry in your tights all the musk of a goatherd.

During our bath, whether it was the night and the banks of a beautiful river that made me feel inclined to confide in him, or whether it was because I had given myself traces for my friend to confide in me, he confessed to me that after having kept the memory of Micaelina as a relic for some time, he had fallen madly in love with a beautiful ñapanguita, a weakness that he tried to hide from the malice of Don Ignacio, since the latter would try to thwart him, because the girl was not a lady; And in the end he reasoned thus:

–As if it could be convenient for me to marry a lady, so that I should have to serve her instead of being served! And gentleman as I am, what on earth could I do with a woman of that sort? But if you knew Zoila? Man! I don't weary you; you'd even make verses of her; what verses! your mouth would water: her eyes could make a blind man see; she has the slyest laugh, the prettiest feet, and a waist that....

–Slowly," I interrupted him: "You mean you're so frantically in love that you'll drown if you don't marry her?

–I'm getting married even if the trap takes me!

–With a woman of the village? Without your father's consent? I see: you are a man of beards, and you must know what you are doing. And has Charles any news of all this?

–God forbid! God forbid! In Buga they have it in the palms of their hands and what do you want in their mouths? Fortunately Zoila lives in San Pedro and only goes to Buga every few days.

–But you would show it to me.

–It's a different matter for you; I'll take you any day you like.

At three in the afternoon I parted from Emigdio, apologising in a thousand ways for not eating with him, and four o'clock would be when I got home.

Chapter XX

My mother and Emma came out into the corridor to meet me. My father had ridden out to visit the works.

Soon after I was called to the dining-room, and I did not delay in going, for there I expected to find Maria; but I was deceived; and as I asked my mother for her, she answered me:

As the gentlemen are coming to-morrow, the girls are busy making some sweets, and I think they have finished them, and will come now.

I was about to get up from the table when José, who was coming up from the valley to the mountain herding two mules loaded with cane-brava, stopped on the high ground overlooking the interior, and shouted at me:

–Good afternoon! I can't get there, because I'm carrying a chúcara, and it's getting dark. I'll leave you a message with the girls. Be very early to-morrow, for the thing is sure to happen.

–Well," I replied, "I'll come very early; say hello to everybody.

–Don't forget the pellets!

And waving his hat at me, he continued up the stairs.

I went to my room to prepare the shotgun, not so much because she needed cleaning as because I was looking for an excuse not to stay in the dining room, where at last Maria did not show up.

I had a box of pistons open in my hand when I saw Maria coming towards me, bringing me the coffee, which she tasted with the spoon before she saw me.

The pistons spilled all over the floor as soon as it came near me.

Without resolving to look at me, she bade me good evening, and placing the saucer and cup on the rail with an unsteady hand, she searched for an instant with cowardly eyes for mine, which made her blush; and then, kneeling down, she began to pick up the pistons.

–Don't do that," I said, "I'll do it later.

–I have a very good eye for small things," he replied; "let's see the little box.

He reached out to meet her, exclaiming at the sight of her:

–Oh, they've all been watered!

–It wasn't full," I observed, helping him.

–And that you need these tomorrow," he said, blowing the dust off the ones he held in the rosy palm of one of his hands.

–Why tomorrow and why these?

–Because, as this hunt is dangerous, I think that to miss a shot would be terrible, and I know from the little box that these are the ones the doctor gave you the other day, saying they were English and very good.....

–You hear everything.

–I would sometimes have given anything not to hear. Perhaps it would be better not to go on this hunt.... José left you a message with us.

–Do you want me not to go?

–And how could I demand that?

–Why not?

He looked at me and did not answer.

–I think there is no more," said he, rising to his feet, and looking at the floor around him; "I am going. The coffee will be cold by this time.

–Try it.

–But don't finish loading that shotgun now..... It's good," he added, touching the cup.

–I'll put the gun away and take it; but don't go away.

I had gone into my room and come out again.

–There's a lot to do in there.

–Oh, yes," I replied, "preparing desserts and galas for tomorrow, so you're leaving?

He made a movement with his shoulders, at the same time tilting his head to one side, which meant: as you wish.

–I owe you an explanation," I said, approaching her. Do you want to hear me?

–Didn't I say there are things I wouldn't want to hear? -he replied, rattling the pistons inside the box.

–I thought that what I…

–It is true what you are going to say; what you believe.

–What?

–That I should hear you; but not this time.

–You must have thought badly of me these days!

She read, without answering me, the signs on the cash register.

–I will tell you nothing, then; but tell me what you have supposed.

–What's the point?

–You mean you won't allow me to apologise to you either?

–What I should like to know is, why you have done that; but I am afraid to know, for I have given no reason for it; and I always thought you had some that I should not know..... But as you seem to be glad again – I am glad too.

–I don't deserve you to be as good as you are to me.

–Perhaps it is I who do not deserve....

–I have been unjust to you, and if you would allow it, I would ask you on my knees to forgive me.

His long-veiled eyes, shone with all their beauty, and he exclaimed:

–Oh, no, my God! I've forgotten everything… do you hear well? everything! But on one condition," he added after a short pause.

–Whatever you want.

–The day I do or say something that displeases you, you will tell me; and I will never do or say it again. Isn't that easy?

–And should I not demand the same from you?

–No, for I cannot advise you, nor always know whether what I think is best; besides, you know what I am going to tell you, before I tell you.

–Are you sure, then, that you will live convinced that I love you with all my soul? -I said, in a low, moved voice.

–Yes, yes," he answered very quietly; and almost touching my lips with one of his hands to signify to me to be quiet, he took a few steps towards the drawing-room.

–What are you going to do? -I said.

–Can't you hear that John is calling me and crying because he can't find me?

Undecided for a moment, in her smile there was such sweetness and such loving languor in her gaze, that she had already disappeared and I was still gazing at her in rapture.

Chapter XXI

The next day at dawn I took the mountain road, accompanied by Juan Angel, who was carrying some of my mother's presents for Luisa and the girls. Mayo followed us: his fidelity was superior to all chastisement, in spite of some bad experiences he had had in this kind of expeditions, unworthy of his years.

After the river bridge, we met José and his nephew Braulio, who had already come to look for me. Braulio told me about his hunting project, which had been reduced to striking an accurate blow at a tiger famous in the vicinity, which had killed some lambs. He had tracked the animal and discovered one of its dens at the source of the river, more than half a league above the possession.

Juan Angel stopped sweating when he heard these details, and placing the basket he was carrying on the leaf litter, he looked at us with such eyes as if he were listening to us discuss a murder project.

Joseph went on to talk about his plan of attack in this way:

–I answer with my ears that he is not leaving us. We'll see if the Vallonian Lucas is as much of a check as he says he is. From Tiburcio I do answer, does he bring the big ammunition?

–Yes," I replied, "and the long gun.

To-day is Braulio's day. He is very anxious to see you make a play, for I have told him that you and I call shots wrong when we aim at a bear's forehead and the bullet goes through one eye.

He laughed loudly, patting his nephew on the shoulder.

–Well, let's go," he continued, "but let the little black man take these vegetables to the lady, because I'm going back," and he threw Juan Ángel's basket on his back, saying, "are they sweet things that the girl María puts out for her cousin?

–Here is something my mother sent to Luisa.

–But what has the child got into her? I saw her yesterday evening, as fresh and pretty as ever. She looks like a rosebud of Castile.

–It's good now.

–And what are you doing there that you don't get out of here, you nigger," said José to Juan Ángel. Carry the guambía and go, so that you'll be back soon, because later on it won't be good for you to be alone around here. There's no need to say anything down there.

–Be careful not to come back! -I shouted at him when he was on the other side of the river.

Juan Ángel disappeared into the reeds like a frightened guatín.

Braulio was a young boy of my age. Two months ago he had come from the province to accompany his uncle, and he had been madly in love, for a long time, with his cousin Tránsito.

The physiognomy of the nephew had all the nobility that made the old man's interesting; but the most remarkable thing about it was a pretty mouth, without yet a goatee, whose feminine smile contrasted with the manly energy of the other features. Meek of character, handsome, and indefatigable in his work, he was a treasure to José, and the most suitable husband for Tránsito.

Madame Louise and the girls came out to greet me at the door of the hut, laughing and affectionate. Our frequent dealings over the past few months had made the girls less shy with me. Joseph himself on our hunts, that is, on the battlefield, exercised a paternal authority over me, all of which disappeared when they came to the house, as if our loyal and simple friendship were a secret.

–At last, at last! -said Madame Louise, taking me by the arm to lead me into the sitting-room, "seven days!

The girls looked at me smiling mischievously.

–But Jesus, how pale he is," exclaimed Louisa, looking at me more closely. That's no good; if you came here often, you'd be the size of a fat man.

–And what do I look like to you? -I said to the girls.

–I say," said Transito. -said Transito: "Well, what are we going to think of him, if he's over there studying and…

–We have had so many good things for you," interrupted Lucia: "we left the first badea of the new bush damaged, waiting for you: on Thursday, thinking you were coming, we had such a good custard for you....

–And what a peje, eh Luisa? -added José; "if that has been the trial; we have not known what to do with him. But he has had reason not to come," continued he, in a grave tone; "there has been reason; and as you will soon invite him to spend a whole day with us? won't you, Braulio?

–Yes, yes, let's make peace and talk about it. When is the big day, Mrs. Luisa? When is it, Tránsito?

She was as mad as a hatter, and wouldn't have looked up to see her boyfriend for all the gold in the world.

–That takes time," said Luisa; "don't you see that the little house needs whitewashing and the doors put on? It will be the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, for Tránsito is her devotee.

–And when is that?

–And you don't know? Well, on the twelfth of December. Haven't these guys told you that they want to make you their godfather?

–No, and the delay in giving me such good news I do not forgive Transit.

–I told Braulio to tell you, because my father thought it was better that way.

–I am as grateful to you for this choice as you cannot imagine; but it is in the hope that you will soon make me a compadre.

Braulio looked most tenderly at his beautiful bride, and, embarrassed, she hurried off to arrange lunch, taking Lucia with her.

My meals at José's house were no longer like the one I described on another occasion: I was part of the family; and without any table apparatus, except the one piece of cutlery that was always given to me, I received my ration of frisoles, mazamorra, milk and chamois from the hands of Mrs. Luisa, sitting no more and no less than José and Braulio, on a bench made of guadua root. It was not without difficulty that I got them used to treating me like this.

Years later, as I travelled through the mountains of Joseph's country, I saw, at sunset, cheerful peasants arrive at the hut where I was given hospitality: after praising God before the venerable head of the family, they waited around the hearth for the supper that the old and affectionate mother was distributing: a plate was enough for each pair of spouses; and the little ones were making pinafores leaning on their parents' knees. And I turned my eyes away from these patriarchal scenes, which reminded me of the last happy days of my youth....

Lunch was succulent as usual, and seasoned with conversation that revealed Braulio and José's impatience to start the hunt.

It was about ten o'clock when, with everyone ready, Lucas loaded with the cold meat that Luisa had prepared for us, and after José's entrances and exits to put cabuya cubes and other things that he had forgotten, we set off.

There were five of us hunters: the mulatto Tiburcio, a labourer at the Chagra; Lucas, a Neivano from a neighbouring hacienda; José, Braulio and myself. We were all armed with shotguns. Those of the first two were shotguns, and excellent, of course, according to them. José and Braulio also carried lances, carefully fitted with spears.

There was not a useful dog left in the house: they all, two by two, swelled the expeditionary party, howling with pleasure; and even cook Martha's favourite, Pigeon, whom the rabbits feared with blindness, stuck out his neck to be counted in the number of the skilful; but Joseph dismissed him with a zumba! followed by some humiliating reproaches.

Luisa and the girls were uneasy, especially Tránsito, who knew that it was her boyfriend who would be in the greatest danger, as his suitability for the case was indisputable.

Taking advantage of a narrow, tangled trail, we began to ascend the northern bank of the river. Its slanting riverbed, if such can be called the jungle bottom of the gully, hemmed in by crags on the tops of which grew, as on roofs, curling ferns and reeds entangled by flowering creepers, was obstructed at intervals by huge stones, through which the currents escaped in swift waves, white gushes and whimsical plumage.

We had gone little more than half a league, when José, stopping at the mouth of a wide, dry ditch, walled in by high cliffs, examined some badly gnawed bones scattered on the sand: they were those of the lamb that had been used as bait by the wild beast the day before. Braulio preceded us, and José and I went deeper into the ditch. The tracks were rising. Braulio, after about a hundred rods of climbing, stopped, and without looking at us motioned for us to stop. He listened to the rumours of the jungle; sucked in all the air his chest could hold; looked up at the high canopy that the cedars, jiguas and yarumos formed above us, and walked on with slow, silent steps. He stopped again after a while; repeated the examination he had made at the first station; and showing us the scratches on the trunk of a tree rising from the bottom of the ditch, he said, after a new examination of the tracks: "This is the way he came out: it is known to be well eaten and well baquiano". The chamba ended twenty rods ahead by a wall from the top of which it was known, from the hole dug at the foot, that on rainy days the streams of the foothills would flow down from there.

Against my better judgement, we looked for the river bank again, and continued up it. Soon Braulio found the tiger's tracks on a beach, and this time they went all the way to the shore.

It was necessary to make sure whether the beast had passed that way to the other side, or whether, prevented by the currents, which were already very strong and impetuous, it had continued up the bank where we were, which was more likely.

Braulio, shotgun cocked on his back, forded the stream, tying a rejojo to his waist, the end of which José held to prevent a misstep from rolling the boy into the immediate waterfall.

There was a profound silence, and we silenced the occasional impatient yelp from the dogs.

–There's no trace here," said Braulio after examining the sands and undergrowth.

As he stood up, turned towards us, on the top of a crag, we understood from his gestures that he was ordering us to stand still.

He slung the shotgun from his shoulders, leaned it against his chest as if to fire at the rocks behind us, leaned forward slightly, steady and calm, and fired.

–There! -he shouted, pointing towards the wooded crags whose edges we could not see; and leaping down to the bank, he added:

–The tight rope! The dogs higher up!

The dogs seemed to be aware of what had happened: as soon as we released them, following Braulio's order, while José helped him to cross the river, they disappeared to our right through the reed beds.

–Hold it," shouted Braulio again, gaining the bank. -cried Braulio again, gaining the bank; and as he hastily loaded the shotgun, catching sight of me, he added:

–You here, boss.

The dogs were in close pursuit of the prey, which must not have had an easy way out, as the barking came from the same point on the slope.

Braulio took a spear from José, saying to both of us:

–You lower and higher, to guard this pass, for the tiger will come back on his trail if he escapes from where he is. Tiburcio with you," he added.

And addressing Lucas:

–The two of them to go round the top of the rock.

Then, with his usual sweet smile, he finished by placing a piston in the shotgun's chimney with a steady hand:

–It's a kitten, and it's already wounded.

In saying the last words we dispersed.

José, Tiburcio and I climbed up to a conveniently located rock. Tiburcio looked and looked over the stock of his shotgun. José was all eyes. From there we could see what was happening on the crag and could keep the recommended pace; for the trees on the slope, though stout, were rare.

Of the six dogs, two were already out of action: one of them was gutted at the feet of the beast; the other, with his entrails showing through one of his ribs torn open, had come to look for us and was expiring with pitiful whimpers by the stone we were occupying.

With his back against a clump of oak trees, his tail swaying, his back bristling, his eyes blazing and his teeth bared, the tiger snorted hoarsely, and when he shook his huge head, his ears made a noise similar to that of wooden castanets. As he rolled over, harassed by the dogs, which were not frightened but not very healthy, blood dripped from his left flank, which he sometimes tried to lick, but to no avail, for then the pack would be on his tail with advantage.

Braulio and Lucas appeared coming out of the reed bed on the crag, but a little further away from the beast than we were. Lucas was livid, and the carate spots on his cheekbones were turquoise blue.

The hunters and the game formed a triangle and both groups could shoot at the same time without offending each other.

–Fire all at once! -shouted José.

–No, no; the dogs! -replied Braulio; and leaving his companion alone, he disappeared.

I realised that a general shot might end it all; but it was certain that some dogs would succumb; and the tiger not being dead, it was easy for him to do mischief by finding us without loaded guns.

Braulio's head, his mouth half-open and panting, his eyes unfolded and his hair dishevelled, peeped out from the reeds, a little behind the trees that defended the beast's back: in his right arm he held his spear, and with his left he deflected the vines that prevented him from seeing well.

We were all speechless; the dogs themselves seemed interested in the end of the game.

José shouted at last:

–Hubi! Killaleon! Hubi! -Hubi! Chop him, Truncho!

It was not advisable to give the beast any respite, and Braulio would not be put at greater risk.

The dogs returned to the attack simultaneously. Another one of them died without a whimper.

The tiger let out a horrified meow.

Braulio appeared behind the group of oak trees, towards our side, wielding the spear shaft without the blade.

The beast turned the same way in search of him; and he cried out:

–Fire! Fire! -leaping back to the same spot where he had struck.

The tiger was looking for him. Lucas had disappeared. Tiburcio was olive-coloured. He took aim and only the bait was burnt.

José fired: the tiger roared again, as if trying to bite its back, and leapt instantly back upon Braulio. The latter, turning again behind the oaks, rushed towards us to pick up the spear that José was throwing at you.

Then the beast faced us. Only my shotgun was available: I fired; the tiger sat on its tail, staggered and fell.

Braulio looked back instinctively to see the effect of the last shot. José, Tiburcio and I were already close behind him, and we all gave a shout of triumph at the same time.