Plunging one hand into the depths of his ca.s.sock, he drew forth a small gold case and lighted a cigarette. He stretched out his legs with the complacency of one who being always accustomed to wear the frowning brow of authority, finds himself for a few moments at liberty.
"But have you not been ill?" inquired the gardener"s widow. "I had thought of coming round to the palace this afternoon to inquire after your health from Dona Visita."
"Hold your tongue, you fool; I have never felt better, especially since this morning. The slap I have given to _those_ by not going into the choir to pray with them has put me in a splendid humour, and in order that they may thoroughly understand my meaning I have come to see you. I wish them all to know that I am quite well, and that what is said about my illness is untrue. I wish all in Toledo to understand that the archbishop will not see his canons, and that he does so from a sense of dignity, not from pride, as at the same time he can come down to see his old friend the gardener"s widow."
And the terrible old man laughed like a child to think of the annoyance this visit would cause his Chapter.
"Do not believe, however, Tomasa," he continued, "that I have come to see you solely for this reason. I felt sad and worried in the palace this afternoon. Visitacion was busy with some friends from Madrid, and I had that heartache I sometimes feel when I think of the past. I felt that I must come and see you, more especially as it is always cool in the Cathedral garden, whereas outside it is as hot as an oven. Ah!
Tomasa! how strong I see you! So slim and so active. You wear better than I do; you are not wrapped in fat like this sinner, and you have not the pains that disturb my nights. Your hair is still dark, your teeth are well preserved, and you do not need like this old cardinal to have a mechanism inside your mouth; but all the same, Tomasa, you are just as old as I am. We have very few years of life left to us, however much the Lord may wish to preserve us. What would I not give to return to those days when I ran up to your house in my red gown in search of your father, the sacristan, and stole your breakfast. Eh, Tomasa?"
The two old people, forgetting social differences, recalled the past with the friendly resignation of those advancing towards death.
Everything was the same as in their childhood--the garden, the cloister; nothing about the Cathedral had changed.
His Eminence, closing his eyes, fancied himself once more the restless acolyte of fifty years before; the blue spirals from his cigarette seemed to carry his thoughts back through the interminable labyrinths of the past.
"Do you remember how your poor father used to laugh at me? "This boy,"
he would say in the sacristy, "is a Sixtus V. What do you wish to be?"
he would ask me, and I always gave the same answer, "Archbishop of Toledo." And the good sacristan would laugh again at the certainty with which I spoke of my hopes. Believe me, Tomasa, I thought much of him when I was consecrated bishop, regretting his death. I should have been delighted with his tears of joy seeing me with the mitre on my head. I have always loved you, you are an excellent family, and have often satisfied my hunger."
"Silence, senor, silence, and do not recall those things. I am the one who ought to be grateful for your kindness, so simple and genuine in spite of your rank, which comes next after the Pope. And the truth is," added the old woman with the pride of her frankness, "that no one is the loser. Friends like I am you can never have; like all the great ones of the earth, you are surrounded by flatterers and rascals. If you had remained a simple ma.s.s priest no one would have sought you out, but Tomasa would have always been your friend, always ready to do you a service. If I love you so much it is because you are kind and affable, but if you had put on pride like other archbishops, I should have kissed your ring and--"Good-bye." The cardinal to his palace, the gardener"s widow to her garden."
The prelate received the old woman"s frankness smilingly.
"You will always be Don Sebastian to me," she continued. "When you told me not to call you Eminence or to use the same ceremonies as other people, I was as pleased as if I had been given the mantle of the Virgin del Sagrario. Such ceremonies would have stuck in my throat and made me ready to cry out, "Let him have his fill of Eminence and Ill.u.s.trious, but we have scratched each other thousands of times when we were little, and this big thief could never see a sc.r.a.p of bread or an apricot in my hand without trying to s.n.a.t.c.h and devour it!" You may be thankful I spoke of you as "usted"[1] when you became a beneficiary of the Cathedral, for, after all, it would not do to "thou" a priest as if he were an acolyte."
[Footnote 1: Contraction of _vuestra merced_--your worship.]
Silence fell on the two old people, their eyes wandered tenderly over the garden, as if each tree or arcade covered with foliage contained some memory.
"Do you know what I have just remembered," said Tomasa. "I remember that we saw each other just here many many years ago, at least forty-eight or fifty. I was with my poor elder sister who had just married Luna the gardener, and in the cloister wandering round me was he who afterwards became my husband. We saw a handsome sergeant come into the summer-house with a great jingle of spurs, a sword on his arm, and a helmet with a tail just like the Jews on the Monument. It was you, Don Sebastian, who had come to Toledo to visit your uncle the beneficiary, and who would not leave without visiting your friend Tomasita. How handsome and smart you were. I do not say it to flatter you, it is truth. You looked like being a rogue with the girls! And I still remember you said something to me about how pretty and fresh you thought me after so many years absence. You don"t mind my reminding you of this? Really? It was only a soldier"s gallant jests. How many would say that now? When you left, I said to my brother-in-law, "He has put on the uniform for good and all; it is useless his uncle, the beneficiary, thinking of making a priest of him.""
"It was a youthful sally," said the cardinal smiling, remembering with pride the dashing sergeant of dragoons. "In Spain, there are only three professions worthy of a man--the sword, the Church and the toga.
My blood was hot and I wanted to be a soldier, but unluckily I fell on times of peace, my promotion would have been very slow, and in order not to embitter my uncle"s last years, I renewed my studies and turned to the Church. One can serve G.o.d or one"s country as well in one place as another, but, believe me, very often in spite of the pomp of my cardinalate I think with envy of that soldier you saw. What happy times they were! Even now the sword draws me. When I see the cadets I would gladly exchange with some of them, giving them my crozier and cross. And possibly I might have done better than any of them! Ah! if only the great times of the reconquest could return when the prelates went out to fight the Moors! What a great Archbishop of Toledo I should have been!"
And Don Sebastian drew up his fat old body, and proudly stretched out his arms with all the remains of his former strength.
"You have always been a strong man," said the gardener"s widow. "I say very often to some of the priests who speak of you and criticise you: "You must not trifle with His Eminence, he is quite capable of going one day into the choir--some he likes and some he does not--and driving you all out at one fell swoop.""
"I have more than once been tempted to do so," said the prelate firmly, his eyes flashing with energy, "but I have been prevented by the thought of my charge and my character as a peaceful priest. I am the shepherd of a Catholic flock, not a wolf who tears the sheep in his fierceness. But sometimes I can bear no more, and G.o.d forgive me!
I have often been tempted to raise the shepherd"s crook and chastise with blows that rebel flock who harbour in the Cathedral."
The prelate became excited, speaking of his quarrels with the Chapter; the placidity of mind produced by the quiet of the garden disappeared as he thought of his hostile subordinates. He felt obliged as at other times to confide his troubles to the gardener"s widow with that instinctive kindly feeling which often causes highly-placed people to confide in humble friends.
"You cannot imagine, Tomasa, what those men make me suffer. I will subdue them because I am the master, because they owe me obedience by the rule of discipline without which there can be neither Church nor religion; but they oppose and disobey me. My orders are carried out with grumbling, and when I a.s.sert myself even the last ordained priest stands on what he calls his rights, lays complaints against me and appeals either to the Rota[1] or to Rome. Let us see, am I the master or am I not? Ought the shepherd to argue with his sheep and consult how to guide them in the right way? They sicken and weary me with their complaints and questions. There is not half a man amongst them, they are all cowardly tale-bearers. In my presence they lower their eyes, smile and praise His Eminence, and as soon as I turn my back they are vipers trying to bite me, scorpion tongues which respect nothing. Ay, Tomasa, my daughter! pity me! when I think of all this it makes me quite ill."
[Footnote 1: Ecclesiastical court.]
The prelate turned pale, rising from his seat as though he felt a sudden spasm of pain.
"Do not worry yourself so much," said the old woman, "you are above them all, and you will overcome them."
"Clearly, I shall defeat them; if not, it would fill my cup, for it would be the first time I had been vanquished. These squabbles among comrades do not trouble me much after all, for I know in the end I shall see my detested enemies at my feet. But it is their tongues, Tomasa!--what they say about the beings I love most in the world, that is what wounds me, and is killing me."
He sat down again, coming quite close to the gardener"s widow, so as to speak in a very low voice.
"You know my past better than anyone; I have such great confidence in you that I have told you everything. Besides, you are very quick, and if I had not told you, you would have guessed. You know what Visitacion is to me, and most certainly you are aware of what those wretches say about her. Do not play the fool; everyone inside and outside the Cathedral listens to these calumnies and believes them.
You are the only one who does not credit them because you know the truth. But ay! the truth cannot be told, I cannot proclaim it, these robes forbid me."
And he seized a handful of his ca.s.sock with his clenched fingers as if he would rend it.
A long silence followed. Don Sebastian looked fixedly at the ground, clutching with his hands as though he were trying to grasp invisible enemies; every now and then he felt a stab of pain and sighed uneasily.
"Why do you think about these things?" said the gardener"s widow; "they only make you ill, and you ought not to have disturbed yourself to come and see me, you would have done better to remain in the palace."
"No, you distract my mind from them, it is a great comfort to tell you of my troubles. Up there I feel in despair, and have to exert all my self-command to suppress my anger. I do not wish my servants to understand, for they are quite capable of laughing at me, neither do I wish poor Visitacion to know anything. I cannot dissimulate. I cannot feign happiness when I am so irritated! What a h.e.l.l I suffer! I cannot say that I have been a man, and that I have been weak as the flesh of which I am made, that I have with me the fruit of my faults, and that I will not separate myself from them, though persecuted by calumny.
Every man acts as he is able, and I wish to be good in spite of my faults. I might have separated from my children, I might have deserted them, as others have done to preserve their reputation as saints, but I am a man, and I am proud of them; I am a man with all his defects and all his virtues, neither greater nor less than the general run of humanity. The feeling of paternity is so deeply rooted in me that I would sooner lose my mitre than abandon my children. You remember when Juanito"s father, who pa.s.sed as my nephew, died, how deeply I felt it, I thought I should have died also. Such a fine, handsome man, and with such a brilliant future before him! I would have made him a magistrate, president of the supreme court, minister, anything I wished! And in twenty-four hours he was dead as though Heaven wished to punish me. It is true I have my grandson remaining, but this Juanito in no way resembles his father, and I confess it to you, I do not care much for him. I can only see in him the most distant reflection of my poor son. Of my past, of that time which was the happiest of my life, all I have left me is Visitacion. She is the living image of the poor dead one. I worship her! and this feeble ray of happiness these wretched people disturb with their calumnies. It is enough to make one kill them!"
Overcome by the happy recollection of the spring-time which had flowered during the first years of his episcopate, far away in an Andalusian diocese, he repeated once again to Tomasa the tale of his relations with a certain devout lady, who from her childhood had felt a horror of the world. Devotion had drawn them together, but life was not long in a.s.serting her rights, opening herself a way by their almost mystical relations, and finally uniting them in a carnal embrace. They had lived faithful to each other in the secrecy of ecclesiastical life, loving each other with scrupulous prudence, so that no rumour of their relations had ever publicly transpired, until she died, leaving two children. Don Sebastian, a man of strong pa.s.sions, was almost vehement in his paternal feelings--those two beings were the image of the poor dead woman, the remembrance of the only idyll which had softened a life wholly given over to ambition, and the calumnies circulated by his enemies, founded on the presence of his daughter in the archiepiscopal palace nearly drove him mad.
"They believe her to be my mistress!" he said angrily. "My poor Visitacion, so good, so affectionate, so gentle to all, changed to a courtesan by these wretches! A sweetheart that I have taken for my amus.e.m.e.nt from the college of n.o.ble Ladies! As if I, old and infirm, were able to think of such things! Brutes! wretches! Crimes have been committed for less!"
"Let them say on. G.o.d is in heaven and sees us all."
"I know it, but this is not enough to quiet me. You have children, Tomasa, and you know what it is to love them. It is not only what is done against them that wounds us, but what is said. What days of suffering I endure! You know since my boyhood all my dreams have been to rise to where I am. I used to look at the throne in the choir and think how comfortable I should be in it--of the immense happiness of being a prince of the Church. Well, now I am on the throne. I have spent half a century removing the stones from my path, leaving my skin and even my flesh on the brambles of the hillside. I only know how I was able to rise from the black ma.s.s and obtain a bishopric!
Afterwards--now I am an archbishop! now I am a cardinal! At last I can rise no higher! And what is it all? Happiness always floats before us like the cloud of light which guided the Israelites. We see it, we almost touch it, but it never lets itself be caught. I am more unhappy now than in the days when I struggled to rise, and thought myself the most unfortunate of men. I am no longer young; the height on which I stand draws all eyes to me and prevents me defending myself. Ay, Tomasa! pity me, for I am worthy of compa.s.sion! To be a father and to be obliged to hide it as a crime! To love my daughter with an affection which increases more and more as I draw nearer to death, and have to endure that people should imagine this pure affection to be something so repugnant!"
And the terrible glance of Don Sebastian, which terrified all the diocese, was clouded with tears.
"Moreover, I have other troubles," he went on, "but they are those of a far-seeing man who fears the future. When I die, all that I have will be my daughter"s. Juanito inherits what belonged to his mother, who was rich; besides, he has his profession and the support of my friends. Visitacion will be very rich. You know my adversaries throw in my face what they call my avarice. Avaricious I am not, but foreseeing, and anxious for the well-being of those belonging to me. I have saved a great deal. I am not one of those who distribute bread at the gate of his palace, nor who seek popularity through almsgiving.
I have pasture lands in Estremadura, many vineyards in La Mancha, houses, and above all State stock--much stock. As a good Spaniard I have wished to help the Government with my money, more especially as it bears interest. I do not quite know how much I possess, but certainly twenty millions of reals, and probably more, all saved by myself and increased by fortunate speculations. I cannot complain of fate, and the Lord has helped me. Everything is for my poor Visitacion. I should delight in seeing her married to a good man; but she will not leave me. She is drawn to the Church, and that is my fear. Do not be surprised, Tomasa; I, a prince of the Church, fear to see how she is attracted by devotion, and I do all I can to turn her from it. I respect a religious woman, but not one who is only happy in the Church. A woman ought to live; she ought to be happy as a mother.
I have always looked badly on nuns."
"Let her be, senor," said the gardener"s widow; "there is nothing strange in her love for the Church. Living as she does she could scarcely do otherwise."
"For the present time, I have no fear. I am by her side, and her being fond of the society of the nuns signifies very little to me. But I may die to-morrow, and just imagine what a splendid mouthful poor Visitacion and her millions would be, left alone, with this predilection to religious life, of which those cunning people would be sure to take advantage! I have seen a great deal. I belong to the cla.s.s, and I am in the secret. There is no lack of religious orders who devote themselves to hunting heiresses for the greater glory of G.o.d, as they say. Besides, there are many foreign nuns with great flapping caps travelling about here, who are lynxes for that sort of work, and I am terrified lest they should pounce on my daughter. I belong to the ancient Catholicism, to that pure Spanish religion, free from all modern extravagances. It would be sad to have spent my life in saving, only to fatten the Jesuits or those sisters who cannot speak Castilian. I do not wish my money to share the fate of that of the sacristans in the proverb. For this reason, to the annoyance I feel at my struggles with this inimical Chapter, I must add the distress I feel at my daughter"s feeble character. Probably she will be hunted; some rake will laugh at me and possess himself of my money."
Excited by his gloomy thoughts, he gave vent to an interjection both caustic and obscene, a memory of his soldiering days; in the presence of the gardener"s widow there was no need to control himself, and the old woman was accustomed to this relief of his temper.
"Let us see," he said imperiously after a long silence. "You, who know me better than anyone, am I as bad as my enemies suppose? Do I deserve that the Lord should punish me for my faults? You are one of G.o.d"s souls, simple and good, and you know more of all this by your instinct than all the doctors of theology."
"You bad, Don Sebastian? Holy Jesus! You are a man like all others, neither more nor less; but you are sincere, all of one piece, without deceit or hypocrisy."
"A man--you have said it. I am a man like the rest. We who attain a certain height are like the saints on the fronts of the churches: from below we cause admiration for our beauty, but viewed closely we cause horror from the ugliness of the stones corroded by time. However much we wish to sanctify ourselves, keeping ourselves apart, we are still nothing but men--creatures of flesh and blood like those who surround us.
"In the Church those who free themselves from human pa.s.sion are most rare. And who knows if, even among those few privileged ones, some are not driven by the demon of vanity to increase the asceticism of their lives, thinking of the glory of being on an altar! The priest who succeeds in subduing his flesh falls into avarice, which is the ecclesiastical vice _par excellence_. I have never h.o.a.rded from vice; I have saved for my own, but never for myself."
The prelate was silent for a long while; but in his irresistible desire to confide in the simple old woman he went on.