Caesar or Nothing Part 71

"Yes."

"No, that isn't true. You don't think so."

"Then why this constant inclination to distress me, to poke fun at me?"

"I never poked fun at you."

"Then I have made a mistake.... I had come to think that you took some interest in me."

"And so I did. I did take an interest in you, and I keep on taking an interest in you."

"And why so?"

"Because I see that you are unhappy, and you are alone."

"Ah! You are sorry for me!" "Now you are offended. Yes, I am sorry for you."

"Sorry!"

"Yes, sorry. Because I see that you despise everybody and despise yourself, because you think people are bad, and that you are too, and to me this seems so sad that it makes me pity you deeply."

Caesar began to walk up and down the gallery, trembling a little.

"I don't see why you say this to me," he murmured. "I am a morbid man, with an ulcerated, wounded spirit.... I know that. But why say it to me?

Do you take pleasure in humiliating me?"

"No, Caesar," said Amparito, drawing near him. "You don't believe that I take pleasure in humiliating you. No, you know well that I do not."

On saying this, Amparito burst into tears, and she had to lean against the gallery window, to hide her face and dissemble her emotion.

Caesar took her hand, and as she did not turn her head, he seized her other, too. She looked at him with her eyes shining and full of tears; and in that look there was so much attachment, so much distress, that Caesar felt a weakness in his whole frame. Then, taking Amparito's head between his hands, he kissed it several times.

She leaned her head on Caesar's shoulder and stood pressed against him, sobbing. Caesar felt a sensation of anguish and pain, as if within the depths of his soul, the strongest part of his personality had broken and melted.

They heard the footsteps of the old woman, coming back to say that she had found nothing in the room Laura had occupied during her stay.

Amparito dried her tears, and smiled, and her face was redder than usual. Presently she said to the nurse:

"Probably you didn't look well. I am going to go myself."

Amparito went out.

Caesar was pale and absorbed; he felt that something extraordinary had happened to him. His hands trembled and things swam around him.

In a short while Amparito returned. She had a round gla.s.s box in her hand, which she said she had found in Laura's room.

"This afternoon I am going to Our Lady of the Rock," said Amparito.

"Will you come, Caesar?"

"Yes."

"Then, good-bye till then."

Amparito gave him her hand, and Caesar kissed it. The old servant was dumfounded. Amparito burst out laughing.

"He is my beau. Hadn't you noticed it before?"

"No," said the old woman with a gesture of violent negation.

Amparito laughed again and disappeared.

The first days of his engagement Caesar was constantly in-tranquil and uneasy. He kept thinking that it was impossible to live like that, giving his whole attention to nothing except the desires of a girl. He imagined that the awakening would come from one moment to the next; but the awakening didn't arrive.

By degrees Caesar abandoned all the affairs of the district, which had taken all his attention, and took to occupying himself solely with his sweetheart. The whole town knew their relations and talked of the coming wedding.

That dazzling idyll intrigued all the girls in Castro. The truth was that none of them had considered Caesar a marrying man; some had imagined him already old; others an experienced and vicious bachelor, incapable of yielding to the matrimonial yoke; and now they saw him a youth, of distinguished type, with distinguished manners and looks.

Caesar went almost daily to Amparito's father's country-place. It was a magnificent estate, another ancient property of the Dukes of Castro Duro, with a house adorned with escutcheons, and an extensive stone pool, deep and mysterious. The garden did not resemble that at Don Calixto's house, for that one was of a frantic gaiety, and the one on Amparito's father's estate was very melancholy. Above all, the square of water in the pool, whose edges were decorated with great granite vases, had a mysterious, sad aspect.

"Doesn't it make you very sad to look at this deep water in the pool?"

Caesar asked his fiancee.

"No, it doesn't me."

"It does me."

"Because you are a poet," she said, "and I am not; I am very prosaic."

"Really?"

"Yes."

The more Caesar talked with Amparito, the less he understood her and the more he needed to be with her.

"We really do not think the same about anything," Caesar used to tell himself, "and yet we understand each other."

Many times he endeavoured to make a psychological resume of Amparito's character, but he didn't succeed. He didn't know how to cla.s.sify her; her type always escaped him.

"All her notions are different from mine," he used to think; "she speaks in another way, feels in another way, she even has a different moral code. How strange!"

Also, what Amparito knew was completely heterogeneous; she spoke French well and wrote it fairly correctly; in Spanish, on the other hand, she had no idea of spelling. Caesar was always stupefied on seeing the transpositions of h's, s's, and z's that she made in her letters.

There remained by Amparito, from her pa.s.sage through the French school, a recollection of the history of France made up of a few anecdotes and a few phrases. Thus, it was not unusual to hear her speak of Turenne, of Francis I, or of Colbert. For the rest, she played the piano badly enough and with extremely little enthusiasm.

This was the part belonging to her education as a rich young lady; that which belonged to the country girl, who lived among peasants, was more curious and personal.

She knew many plants by their vulgar names, and understood their industrial and medicinal use. Besides, she spoke in such pure, natural phrases that Caesar was filled with admiration.