“What a country this is!” exclaimed the great merchant, his face still beaming with a smile at the last epigram he had read. “Do you know, Cimarra, what strikes me? Every one here speaks ill of political men, of the ministers, of the employés, of Madrid—but I begin to think that Madrid and the ministers and all the ruck of politicians—as they call them, are the pick of the nation. The representatives are bad enough, but the electors are worse.”
“Then everything is bad together,” said Federico, with the cold philosophy which is the sarcasm of a worn-out heart and an atrophied intellect, united to dwell in a sickly frame. “Equally bad—and nothing to choose from.”
“And at the bottom of all the mischief is laziness.”
“Laziness! That is as much as to say the national idiosyncracy—the very Spirit of Spain. Yes I say: Laziness, thy name is Spain. We have a great deal of smartness—so I hear; I do not perceive it anywhere. We are all alike; we hide I believe....”
“Oh! if only we had a government that would give a spur to industry and labour....”
Cimarra put on a very grave face; it was his way of making fun of his neighbours.
“Labour!—Why we scarcely know how to weave homespun cloth; hemp-shoes are fast disappearing; our home-made water-jars are growing quite scarce and even our brooms are brought from England.—Still, we can fall back upon Agriculture; that is the favourite theory with all these fools. There is not an idiot in the country who will not talk to you of agriculture. I should like them to tell me what agriculture you can have without irrigation, how you can have irrigation without rivers, or rivers without forests, or forests without men to plant them and look after them—and how are you going to get men when there are no crops? It is a vicious circle from which there is no issue—no escape! My dear Marquis, it is a matter of race I tell you.—It is one of the few things which are of the nature of primary truth: the fatality of inheritance. We have nothing to rely upon but communism supported by the Lottery—that is our future. The State must take the national wealth into its own hands and distribute it by means of raffles.
“What—you are astonished? But you will live to see it, take my word for it. Why it is a splendid idea—and as good a theory as any other. Ask your friend Don Joaquín Onésimo, who is a beacon-light of knowledge in such matters, and who, in my opinion, has one of the best heads that ever thought in Spain.”
“Is he here?” said Fúcar laughing and looking round. “He should come and hear your theory.”
“He is discussing social science with Don Francisco Cucúrbitas, an equally great man according to the Spanish standard. He is one of these men who are always talking a great deal about administration and management which simply means expedients. What would this world become but for expedients! The Almighty created these gentlemen for the express purpose of preaching social Quietism; and they might do worse. My scheme of communism and lotteries will float, my dear Sir. The taxes will bring the money, the lotteries will redistribute it.—By Jupiter! Do you know my friend we might have a very snug little game here.” And before Fúcar could answer Federico went to the door to call the men who were still in the next room; then returning to the marquis, he took a pack of cards out of his pocket and spread them on the table; they lay in a curve, overlapping each other, like an angular serpent.
“Here too!” exclaimed Fúcar with some annoyance.
Cimarra went back to the drawing-room where the lights were now being put out and presently four other men came in at his request. Only Leon Roch remained walking up and down the darkened room. After speaking a few words to the waiter, Cimarra took the young man’s arm and walked with him for a few minutes. The words that passed between them were somewhat sharp; however, Leon at length went up to his room from which, in a few minutes he returned.
“Here—vampire!” he said contemptuously to his friend, filling his hand with gold coin;—and then he was alone again.
Looking into the card-room he could see the group in the centre,—six men, some of whom bore names not unknown to fame among their countrymen. One or two, to be sure enjoyed not a very enviable reputation; but there were others too who had gained credit by their splendid speeches, amply spiced with high-sounding words on social anarchy and the national vice of indolence. Of them all the Marqués de Fúcar was the only one who played for the sake of the game and shuffled the cards with a frank smile and a jest at each turn of fortune. Cimarra dealt—he had his hat on, his brows were knit, his eyes sparkled keenly with an expression at once alert and absorbed, a solemn look of divination—or idiocy? His thin lips murmured inarticulate syllables, which an uninitiated bystander might have taken for some formula of invocation to call a spirit up. It was the jargon of the professional gambler who keeps up a running dialogue with the cards as they slip through his hands, sometimes growling, sometimes only breathing hard, as they alternately smile upon him or mock him with impish grimaces.
The contest with Chance is one of the maddest and fiercest battles in which the human mind ever engages. Chance, which is neither more nor less than an incessant and incalculable contradiction of facts, is never tired out; we can never meet her face to face, and to defy her is folly. She is as nimble and supple as a tiger, she fells and clutches her prey, while her favours—if by a whim she bestows them—light a flame in her victim’s soul that consumes him from within. His brain reels and he raves in dreams like those of the drunkard—for a vague picture of the Gorgon with whom he is contending takes possession of him and reduces him to bestial madness. Fighting in the dark, desperately and wildly, the gambler is the victim of a hideous incubus; he finds himself started in an orbit of torturing unrest, like a stone flung off into measureless space.
And at each deal the marquis would say:
“Gentlemen, it is getting late—it is time to go to bed. It is good to have a little amusement—but we must not have too much of a good thing. We must not exaggerate.”
CHAPTER VI.
PEPA.
Leon Roch having seen enough, left the house. A calm mild night invited him to walk along the terrace where there was not a living soul to be seen, and not a sound to be heard but the croaking of the toads. After pacing the avenue to the end and back for the second time, he thought he discovered a figure at one of the nearest ground-floor windows. It was in white, a woman beyond a doubt, whose arm rested on the sill, above which she was visible as a half-length. Leon went towards her and perceiving that she did not move, he went quite near. She might have been carved in marble but for her black hair and a slight motion of her hand among the leaves of a plant that grew near.
“Pepa?” he said.
“Yes, Pepa—I have turned romantic and am gazing at the stars. To be sure, there is not a star to be seen—but it is all the same.”
“It is a very dark night; I did not recognise you,” said Leon, putting his hand on the top of the window railing. “The damp air is not good for you. Why do you not shut the window? It is of no use to wait for your father. That rascally Cimarra has got him to gamble and they are all quite happy—Go indoors.”
“It is so hot inside!”
The night was in fact pitch dark and Leon could not see the girl’s face; but he could study the tone of her voice, for the voice is singularly treacherous. Pepa’s voice quavered. Her head, leaning on one side, rested against