The Fourth Estate Volume I Part 32

Neither the vehement broken utterances of her mother nor the sobs which succeeded them made her change her position. She remained thus for some time, motionless, and white as a statue.

In those large, limpid eyes there at last trembled a tear; it grew, it moved, then overflowing, it left a wet track upon her wan cheek, and fell like a drop of fire upon her hand, and there remained. A little later it evaporated. An angel had gathered it up and taken it to G.o.d in protest for her who had shed it.

CHAPTER XIII

"THE LIGHT OF SARRIO"

A new bright day dawned upon Sarrio after the recent heavy gloom. By the mercy and grace of G.o.d the beautiful town was now, when least expected, provided with a press organ, which was to be biweekly, or as the ill.u.s.trious organizer expressed it, "hepdomenal." Grave obstacles and perilous difficulties were at first opposed to the realization of the undertaking, but the genius of the wonderful man who undertook it overcame them all. The first difficulty was that of money. Fifty shares of a thousand ducats each were issued for the support of the periodical.

The friends of Don Rosendo only took up nine. Don Rudesindo had five allotted to him, Don Feliciano two, and Don Pedro Miranda, in spite of his large income, only another two--no more. Alvaro Pena, Don Rufo, Navarro, _et al._, excused themselves for want of funds, and that with reason; besides, they gave the business the benefit of their brains, which no doubt was a great thing. So Don Rosendo, with a generosity which greatly impressed the rest of the company, was the holder of the remaining forty-one shares.

Messengers were despatched to Lancia in search of a printing press, but the negotiations proving fruitless, the press organizer went himself to the town. At the end of some days he was fortunate enough to find a printer who had been ruined for some years, and no purchaser had been forthcoming for his broken-down, rotting apparatus which lay covered with dust in a dark cellar. When Don Rosendo proceeded to examine it with its owner, he could not help feeling respectful emotion, and grave thoughts filled his mind as he contemplated it.

"Here," he said, "is lying in idleness the most influential instrument of human progress, and this not from any fault of the owner, but through the desertion of mankind. How much information, how much spiritual food might it not have produced during these barren dumb years! While barbarism and ignorance are rampant in the greater part of our country, that printing apparatus, the only agent of their dispersion, stands motionless for the want of a hand to work it and to bring forth from it the secrets of science and politics."

He almost kissed and fondled the machine in his enthusiasm. The printer, seeing his visitor so well disposed in its favor, could not be outdone, and he declared himself so devotedly attached to the very skeleton of his machine that he would not part with it for any money, for it had always been the faithful companion by which he had earned his bread (and according to report, his wine too). He descanted upon its perfections with as much enthusiasm as if he were its offspring and indebted to it for his life's breath; and he moreover made the solemn statement that it printed better and cleaner than all the printing presses of the day.

Hearing these facts Don Rosendo fully concurred in the exordium on the machine, and tried to prove to him that he ought to part with it to prevent its wondrous qualities being lost to the world. But the more eloquent the merchant grew, the more tender and clinging became the printer. Finally, seeing there was no persuading the man to part with his treasure, and he had not the heart to enforce it, he arranged for him to go to Sarrio with it, and settle down there. He was to take a few compositors with him, who were to teach the trade to some of the lads in the town, and he was to be furnished with all necessary materials for the establishment of a printing office. Folgueras, the ruined printer, was thus to be the director and master of the concern, and his salary was to be drawn from the journal, and according to our calculations this proved to be twice as much as what is given in the best printing office in Madrid. However, it is not much if we consider the merit of the machine and the deep love professed for it by the owner.

The t.i.tle of the newspaper was one of the points in which the inventive, superior mind of Don Rosendo particularly distinguished itself. It was called "The Light of Sarrio," a name extremely impressive and well-sounding, and moreover testifying to its mission, which its founder wished to be that of enlightening and dignifying the town of Sarrio.

He secretly ordered from Madrid an engraving for the head of the paper, and on its arrival a few days later it caused rapturous delight among the shareholders and all those who had the good fortune to see it. It represented a seaport, like Sarrio, in the dark hours of the night--to judge by the black hue of the sky and sea; on the left towered the heights of an ideal mountain, upon which was seen a man, bearing a distant resemblance to Don Rosendo, turning the rays of an enormous lantern upon the town; round about him were the heads of several people, and the shareholders believed in good faith that they represented themselves, and so they felt deeply indebted to the designer.

The printing press was to be set up in a storehouse of Don Rudesindo's, to whom, of course, a rent was to be paid; and at the printing office there was to be another room, but these plans required some consideration before they could be carried out. The printing press was finally set up, but not without heavy, unexpected expenses, for Folgueras, who pretended he was furnished with all that was necessary, had nothing at all, and they had to send to Madrid for sets of type, have type galleys made, buy tables, etc., etc.

At last everything was in order. Don Rosendo worked like a slave, and busied himself with the smallest details, and his talent as organizer was more shown than ever on this occasion. He made Sinforoso Suarez chief editor with a salary of twenty-five crowns a month, and he made Don Rufo's eldest son manager. But the paper for printing had not come.

They had telegraphed to Madrid for a supply and it had not arrived. The impatience of Belinchon knew no bounds. Telegrams went and came by the electric wires. They said it was detained at Lancia--a telegram to Lancia asking for it. Then they heard it had not left Valladolid--telegram to Valladolid. Then that it had not left Madrid--telegram to Madrid. Don Rosendo swore he would have no more paper from Madrid, but that he would order it henceforth from Belgium. But disappointment changed into delight, as it often does, when the news came that several bales had arrived at Lancia, and were there awaiting a cart to take them to their destination.

As the copy for the first number had been ready for some days, the printing was immediately proceeded with, and it had to be done on an extensive scale, for Don Rosendo intended to circulate it through the provinces, to send it all over Spain, and even to introduce it into foreign countries. Both he and his partners took a personal interest in seeing the printing press started, and they never wearied of admiring its complicated machinery, the wonderful precision of its movement, and the marvelous velocity with which it worked, for it cast off no fewer than two hundred copies in one hour. Its ill.u.s.trious founder could not restrain the press ardor which consumed him; he tore off his coat in the presence of everybody, and literally put his shoulder to the wheel until the sweat poured copiously from his manly brow. A striking instance of enthusiasm and love of civilization to which we like to draw the attention of the rising generation!

At last "The Light of Sarrio" appeared in great style, for its founder had seen that the paper was good, and it was fairly well printed. The only faulty feature was the engraving on the front page, for the majority of the people thought that the individual holding a lantern in his hand was a negro, instead of the respectable individual we have mentioned. It contained a leading article in large type called "Our Objects." Although it was signed by the staff, it emanated entirely from the pen of Don Rosendo. The purport of the appearance of "The Light" in the press was chiefly to defend cap-a-pie the moral and material interests of Sarrio, to combat ignorance in all its forms, and in the fierce battles of the press to fight unweariedly for the triumph of the reforms that the progress of the times requires.

"The Light" maintained that the hour had struck for breaking with the doctrines of the past. Sarrio earnestly desired to emanc.i.p.ate itself from the thraldom of pettiness and conventionality; it wished to break the bonds which had hitherto restrained it, and enter into full possession of its own conscience and rights.

"We trust," said the writer, "that a period of moral and material activity will date from the appearance of our publication, and that we shall a.s.sist at one of those social reformations which mark an epoch in the annals of the town. If our voice is successful in awakening the town of Sarrio from its long sleep and apathy and we soon see the dawn of an era of labor and study befitting the reform movement that we hope to inaugurate, we shall feel amply repaid for our efforts and sacrifices."

The language could not have been more n.o.ble and patriotic, and modesty, as usual, tempered the tone of the authoritative eloquence.

"We do not aspire," he said, "to being the vanguard in this great battle of thought about to take place in the town of Sarrio, but we do aspire to fighting like common soldiers, for we do expect a place in the rear-guard. There we shall fight like good men, and if we finally fall vanquished, we will envelop ourselves in the sacred banner of progress."

The military allegorical style was very effective in the town, and it contributed not a little to the enthusiastic reception accorded to the paper.

In short, the article was so rich in expression, so replete with deep remarks, and the style was so concise, that the public was at a loss to attribute it to any one but the ill.u.s.trious director--and in this it was right.

Then the periodical contained a long article by Sinforoso on "Woman." It consisted of two close columns of poetic prose, embroidered with all the flowers of rhetoric, describing the sweet influence of this half of the human race.

He maintained, in fervent language, that civilization can not exist apart from matrimony; conjugal love is its only basis. Everything is holy, everything is beautiful, everything is happy in the intimate union of a young married couple. The man, rendered happy by his companion, feels his faculties increase, and is capable of carrying out enterprises otherwise impossible to him. The influence of the woman presses him onward to virtue and glory; it is the sweetest and at the same time the most powerful of social forces. Sinforoso queried with surprise, "How could some beings consider woman inferior to man? She with her beauty, delicacy, grace, sweetness, perspicacity, and patience is the highest work of creation. But the mission of woman is to be a wife and mother.

Without being these she is not fully evolved, she fades like a flower without perfume." The writer concluded by advising woman to bear this in mind, and for no earthly consideration to consent to be voluntarily deprived of the two conditions of her honor and glory.

This exordium on matrimony, although addressed to the fair s.e.x in general, was written for the special edification of a certain pretty cigarette-maker of the Calle de Caborana, whom Sinforoso had courted in vain for some years. The public thought that the girl would end by accepting him, partly by reason of the poetic terms in which he made his case clear, and partly because of the fifty reales a month which the suitor now received for his work on the staff.

Then followed a contribution from the professor, Don Jeronimo de la Fuente; it was a serious, violent attack on Kepler's three great laws of the motions of the planetary bodies, or rather on two of them, for he preserved silence on the first, which treats of the elliptical orbit of the planets. He fiercely opposed the second, maintaining and demonstrating by means of a most brilliant calculation that the areas described by the radius vector are not in any degree equal to the time employed in making them, but they concord with the attractive or repulsive force of the celestial bodies. But the chief object of his attack was the third law, for Don Jeronimo rejected as antiquated and absurd the idea that the time taken for the revolutions of planets was proportionate to the cubic feet of their distances from each other; for he showed not merely by empty words, but by figures, that there was no ground for such a calculation.

He announced another article for the next number, which was to establish a new basis for the celestial mechanism which would quite smash up the old one. In it he maintained that the stars were attracted by one pole and repelled by another like electric bodies, and upon this great principle he satisfactorily explained the movements of the celestial bodies, their disturbances, and many problems which had hitherto been deemed insoluble.

Thanks to the telescope in the window of his house, Don Jeronimo had made a series of prodigious discoveries which set at naught all the existing knowledge of astronomy. It was not astonishing that the learned professor, filled with legitimate pride, exclaimed at the end of his article:

"Down with Kepler, Newton, Laplace, and Galileo from the pedestal upon which man's ignorance has placed them and all colossal standard-bearers of false science! All their calculations have vanished like smoke, and their magnificent systems are like dry leaves, fallen from the tree of science to rot and decay."

Some verses by Periquito, the son of Don Pedro Miranda, were also inserted that confided to a certain mysterious "G" that he was a worm, and she a star; he a branch, and she a tree; she a rose, and he a caterpillar; she a light, and he the shadow; she the snow, and he the mud, etc.

There were reasons for suspecting that this "G" was a certain Gumersinda, the wife of a corn merchant, a woman remarkable for her stout figure, which caused her some difficulty in walking. Periquito had a particular fancy for ladies who were plump and married. When both these qualities were combined in one being his pa.s.sion knew no bounds.

And such was the present case. One must not think by this that the young man was a vicious creature. The husbands of Sarrio were not disturbed about him. Periquito was always in love, sometimes with one, sometimes with another lady, but he never dared to address them or send a love letter. Such courses were not in his line, which consisted chiefly in fascinating them by his gaze. Therefore, whenever he came across one of these fair creatures at church, or in the theatre, he first managed to take a seat at a convenient distance, and once he had taken up his position, he directed the magnetic power of his eyes straight at the pa.s.sive object of his experiment until she occasionally glanced at him with an expression of surprise. The respectable matron, often not considering herself worthy of such particular attention, would look round and ask those with her if she had a spot on her face, or if her hair were out of order.

Periquito was indefatigable, and went through all these performances with the gravity they deserved. Sometimes he spent an hour or more with his eyes fixed on one person, and often when the hour had elapsed, and the enamored youth thought his soul must have filtered through the pores of the obese lady to the affection of all her faculties and feelings, this same lady would say in an undertone to her companions:

"Goodness, how that fellow Don Pedro does stare!"

How far the poet was from supposing that the star of his dreams held him in such small account!

Sometimes, but very seldom, Periquito got a little farther. When he was quite sure that the husband was not at home, nor even about the town, he sent the mysterious lady a bunch of flowers which was really a pa.s.sionate eloquent letter, if the lady had only been as well versed as he was in the language of flowers. Unfortunately, the supine ignorance of the fair s.e.x in Sarrio made these ingenious modes of communication null and void. The same can be said of certain other delicate attentions to which Periquito resorted to show his devotion. If he saw the lady wear a blue dress, he donned a cravat of the same color, a blue striped shirt and a blue flower in his b.u.t.tonhole; and if the lady continued wearing the same dress, he went as far as to adopt blue trousers; and if the color were green, brown, or gray, he also followed suit. If the unhappy lady were of a religious turn of mind, Periquito voluntarily imposed on himself the terrible ordeal of rising early, and attending the ma.s.s to which she went; and if on Sat.u.r.day, Monday, or Thursday she approached the sacred table to communicate, he also received the spiritual food from the priest on the same days. If the lady had plants in her window, Periquito promptly ascertained her hour of watering them, and took care to pa.s.s by at that time, when he was in the seventh heaven if perchance a few drops fell from the watering-pot on his hat. In the small hours of the night he wandered about the house, making invocations to the moon, and praying it might watch over the dreams of his love.

On one occasion, when he was in love with the wife of a lieutenant of the carbineers who was ordered to Burgos, he nearly died of grief. His mad pa.s.sion inspired him with the idea of going off to get a glimpse of her, so after writing a letter of farewell to his father and taking twenty dollars of his savings he started for the City of the Cid; but in Venta de Banas he unfortunately came across a married lady of the Civil Guard who attracted him to Palencia; there he saw another lady who took him farther, and so on, until he came back to Sarrio. This was not his only escapade. On another occasion he went fifteen miles on foot merely to cast an amatory glance at a certain lady as she sat at the window, and this lady was married to a second husband.

As the final touch to this description we must add that Periquito, to use his father's expression, ate like Heliogabulus, and yet he never grew fat.

"The Light of Sarrio" was for our impressionable young man an admirable means of airing the vague fancies, anxieties, joys, and distresses which consumed his soul, and declaring himself in mysterious acrostics to all the matrons, more or less stout, who paraded their plump forms in the streets of the flourishing town.

Finally came the columns of "Intelligence" under different headings. The genius of Sinforoso and the rest of the staff of "The Light" shone in this portion of the paper. The paragraph called "Going and Coming"

referred to the visitors who had come to Sarrio in view of the approaching festivities.

Another, headed "Sarriensians out Walking," maintained in a graceful, sparkling style that the weather was delicious, and that the people of Sarrio could not do better in the evening than take a turn in the pretty, leafy environs of the town.

Another, "The Mayor to the Fore," was an appeal to Don Roque to have gutters put to several houses.

Later on this section dropped the t.i.tle of "Intelligence" for that of "News to Hand," which Don Rosendo put in in imitation of "_Nouvelle a la Main_" of the "Figaro."

The journal ended with a charade in verse.

The fiction was Don Rufo's department, and as he had been studying French on the Ollendorf system for a year and a half, he decided to translate for the paper the six volumes of the "Mysteries of Paris." It is unnecessary to say that although "The Light of Sarrio" lived for some years, it never got as far as the third volume. Don Rufo was a wonderful translator. If he had a defect it was that of translating too literally.

Once he wrote: "The carriage went off at a quick trot, inside a lady fair and frail."

In another pa.s.sage, he said that Monsieur Rudolph pa.s.sed his youth in the perusal of the chief works of antiquity. Finally, he represented the Countess as taking hold of the b.u.t.ton (instead of b.u.t.tonholing) of the secretary, and this provoked so much derision from ignorant folk that Don Rufo lost his temper and resigned the work, which then was undertaken by a pilot who for several years had made the run to Bayonne.

The success of the first number, as was expected, was prodigious: the article by Sinforoso, the learned dissertation by La Fuente, the "Intelligence," and even Periquito's verses, were all read with due appreciation by the public. But Don Rosendo's article headed "Our Objects" made the profoundest impression on people of a serious turn of mind. The well-turned phrases, so full of spirit and fire, the n.o.ble thoughts, the enthusiasm for the interests of Sarrio, the frankness and modesty that characterized it, filled their hearts with joy, and made them feel as if an era of prosperity and well-being had dawned.