Maximina Part 68

When she felt her son's fresh, moist lips touching her, the little woman turned her head to look at him: through the tears gleamed in her eyes a smile of love and forgiveness, which it was a shame that that ungrateful little miscreant could not have appreciated.

One night, after dinner, Miguel felt lazy, as was often the case, and did not care to go out. They went to the study, and Maximina began to read the paper. Afterward, when she had taken her seat on her husband's knee, they began to talk, as usual, telling each other about the little events of the day.

"Do you know?" she said, "this afternoon I had a caller!"

"Who was it?"

"A villain!" said the little wife, smiling mischievously.

Miguel could not refrain from a slight frown. He was very jealous, as all men must be who really love, though he tried carefully to hide it.

"Who was the villain?"

The somewhat harsh tone of this question did not escape Maximina.

"The cure of Chamberi."

"The little old man who said ma.s.s on the ninth?"

"The very same.... Why didn't you like it that the villain was here? eh, you rogue!" she added, giving him a tender hug.

"And what brought the cure?" asked Miguel, in his turn parrying his wife's question.

"To put us down in his book.... I could not help laughing a little.... I opened the door for him, and he said to me: '_Hola_, child! go and tell your mamma the rector of Chamberi is here.'--'I haven't any mamma,' said I.--'Then tell the lady of the house.'--'I am she,' I told him, half dead with mortification. He began to cross himself, saying, '_Ave Maria!

Ave Maria!_ what a little, young thing!' He was still more surprised to know that we had been married two years and three months."

"That's natural enough,--with that smooth, round, baby cheek of yours, you would deceive any one."

"It is absurd; I am not a child any longer: I shall be eighteen next month."

Before going to bed, they put out the lights and opened the balcony window to enjoy for a little while the spectacle of the starry sky.

It was a clear, mild night toward the last of April. As they were on the third floor, and the section of the city where they lived was less built up, they could see more than half of the heavenly vault. As they stood together, Maximina leaning her arm on her husband's shoulder, they silently contemplated for a long time that sight which will forever be the most sublime of all.

"How large and beautiful that star is, Miguel. What a pure, bright light it gives!" said Maximina, pointing to the sky.

"That is Sirius. In the books of antiquity it is said that it used to shine with a red light. However, it is not any greater or more beautiful than the others, except that it is not so far away: it is one of three nearest to us."

"Though Sister San Onofre kept telling us that the earth was a star like those, only still smaller, I can never seem to believe it."

"And so small, Maximina! Each one of the stars that you see is thousands and millions of times bigger than our earth. Our solar system, of which we are the poorest and most insignificant part, belongs to that great nebula that crosses the sky like a white band. Each particle of that dust is a sun around which revolve other worlds, which, like ours, have no light of their own. In order that you may get some idea of its size, let me tell you it is isolated in the heavens like an island and is shaped like a lens; well, then, for a ray of light to travel from one extreme of the longer axis of this lens to the other it takes seventeen thousand years, and yet light travels at the rate of seventy thousand leagues a second!"

"_Madre mia!_ how tremendous!"

"But that is a mere nothing. Our nebula is only one of many others that people s.p.a.ce. There are others vastly larger. With the telescope they are constantly discovering new ones. When a telescope of greater power is invented, then the nebulae are separated into stars; but beyond these are other nebulae still, which had never been seen before. If a telescope of still greater power were made, those nebulae, also, in their turn, would be reduced to stars; but then, beyond that, there would be still other nebulae, and so on forever."

"And so there is no end to the sky?"

"That is the supposition."

Maximina remained for a few minutes rapt in thought.

"And are there inhabitants in those other worlds, Miguel?"

"There is no reason why there should not be. Such observations as we can make in our own solar system make it probable that the other stars have conditions of life very like our own.... Do you see that big beautiful star which looks like Sirius? That is Jupiter, one of our brother worlds; but an older brother--fourteen hundred times as big as we are.

He is a privileged brother, the first-born, so to speak, of the system.

There the day lasts five hours, and the night five; but as he has four moons which are constantly shining, and long twilights, it may be said that nights do not exist there. The same may almost be said of the seasons. Eternal spring reigns over its whole surface. For us that is the symbol or the ideal of a happy existence. Why should there not be inhabitants in that fortunate world?"

The young wife was again silent and thoughtful, and at last she asked:--

"How do those worlds hang in s.p.a.ce, and travel forever, and never run into each other?"

"They are sustained, and they live through love.... Yes, through love,"

he repeated, seeing the curiosity in his wife's eyes. "Love is the law that rules the whole creation: the sublime law that unites thy heart to mine is the same that unites all the beings of the universe, and yet keeps them distinct. We are one in G.o.d, in the Creator of all things, but we still enjoy the beautiful privilege of individuality. This great privilege, however, is at the same time our great imperfection, Maximina. Through it we are separated from G.o.d. To live eternally united to Him, to sleep in His bosom as the child in its mother's lap, is the constant aspiration of humanity. The man who most keenly and imperiously feels this necessity is the best and most righteous. What is the meaning of self-abnegation and sacrifice? Can it be anything else than the expression of that secret voice which has its seat in our hearts, and tells us that to love one's self is to love the finite, the imperfect, the ephemeral, and to love others is to be united by antic.i.p.ation with the Eternal. Alas for the man who does not listen to the call of this voice! Alas for him who shuts his ears to the breathings of his soul, and runs in hot haste after transitory things! Such a man will always be a miserable slave of time and necessity...."

Miguel grew eloquent as he went on speaking. Maximina listened to him with ecstatic eyes. She did not absolutely comprehend his words, but she saw clearly that all that proceeded from her husband's lips was n.o.ble and lofty and religious, and that was sufficient for her to be in accord with him.

He still went on speaking. At last he suddenly stopped. Both stood in silence, gazing into the immensity of the heavens. A solemn and pure emotion had come over them. In rapt contemplation they listened to the mysterious harmonies of their souls, which, without the aid of speech, by a kind of magnetic power, vibrated from one heart to the other. After a while Maximina said in a whisper:--

"Miguel, would you not like to repeat a Pater Noster?"

"Yes," he replied, tenderly pressing her hand.

The young wife said the Pater Noster with true fervor. Her husband repeated it with equal earnestness.

Never in his life, either before or after, did our hero feel himself nearer G.o.d than at that moment.

The night was advancing. The clock in the study struck its twelve silvery notes. They shut the window, and lighted the lamps to retire.

x.x.x.

In the morning Maximina, after taking chocolate, felt a trifle indisposed. They attributed it to a little indigestion, and took no account of it. All that day she dragged about, feeling wretchedly, but still keeping up. When Miguel came from his office, she had thrown herself on the bed; on hearing the bell she quickly got up, and came out as usual to receive him. Nevertheless, she soon felt obliged to lie down again; she kept getting up to attend to this thing and that, but returned to a lying posture again, now on Miguel's bed, now on her own.

"I am going to call a doctor," said he. Maximina was strongly opposed.

The only compromise that he could make was that she would allow him to call one on the next day if she were not better. She absolutely expected to wake up the next day sound and well.

But it was not so.

She awoke with a quick pulse, and Miguel would not hear to her sitting up. He called in an old and experienced doctor that there was in the ward, and he, after taking her pulse and looking at her tongue, declared that she had some fever, but that apparently there was no disorder of the stomach. Miguel, on hearing this, wished to stay away from the office, but his wife was so opposed to it that finally he gave in to her, promising to come home early.

In the afternoon her temperature had risen slightly; still she was calm: only from time to time, as though she felt some oppression, she would draw long, deep sighs.

The next morning the doctor found her decidedly feverish, but he could not as yet decide what was the cause, for the frequent and deep inspirations which he obliged her to take were perfect, and there seemed to be no lung difficulty, and the stomach also was in sound condition.