Let me add the extraordinary
proof of my daughter’s insanity at the ball.”--“Add or diminish, compose
or confound, what you will, in God’s name!” said Fra Jose, vexed at the
frequent erazures and lituras which disfigured the lines of his
dictation; “for though in style I may somewhat boast of my superiority,
in scratches no hen on the best dunghill in Spain can contend with you! On, then, in the name of all the saints!--and when it pleases heaven to
send an interpreter to your husband, we may hope to hear from him by the
next post-angel, for surely such a letter was never written on earth.”

“With this encouragement and applause, Donna Clara proceeded to relate
sundry other errors and wanderings of her daughter, which, to a mind so
swathed, crippled, and dwarfed, by the ligatures which the hand of
custom had twined round it since its first hour of consciousness, might
well have appeared like the aberrations of insanity. Among other proofs,
she mentioned that Isidora’s first introduction to a Christian and
Catholic church, was on that night of penitence in passion-week, when,
the lights being extinguished, the _miserere_ is chaunted in profound
darkness, the penitents macerate themselves, and groans are heard on
every side instead of prayers, as if the worship of Moloch was renewed
without its fires;--struck with horror at the sounds she heard, and the
darkness which surrounded her, Isidora demanded what they were
doing.--“Worshipping God,” was the answer. “At the expiration of Lent, she was introduced to a brilliant assembly,
where the gay fandango was succeeded by the soft notes of the
seguedilla,--and the crackling of the castanets, and the tinkling of the
guitars, marked alternate time to the light and ecstatic step of youth,
and the silvery and love-tuned voice of beauty. Touched with delight at
all she saw and heard,--the smiles that dimpled and sparkled over her
beautiful features reflecting every shade of pleasure they encountered,
like the ripplings of a brook kissed by the moon-beams,--she eagerly
asked, “And are not these worshipping God?”--“Out on it, daughter!”
interposed Donna Clara, who happened to overhear the question; “This is
a vain and sinful pastime,--the invention of the devil to delude the
children of folly,--hateful in the eyes of heaven and its saints,--and
abhorred and renounced by the faithful.”--“Then there are two Gods,”
said Isidora sighing, “the God of smiles and happiness, and the God of
groans and blood. Would I could serve the former!”--“I will take order
you shall serve the latter, heathenish and profane that you are!”
answered Donna Clara, as she hurried her from the assembly, shocked at
the scandal which her words might have given. These and many similar
anecdotes were painfully indited in Donna Clara’s long epistle, which,
after being folded and sealed by Fra Jose, (who swore by the habit he
wore, he had rather study twenty pages of the Polyglot fasting, than
read it over once more), was duly forwarded to Don Francisco. “The habits and movements of Don Francisco were, like those of his
nation, so deliberate and dilatory, and his aversion to writing letters,
except on mercantile subjects, so well known, that Donna Clara was
actually alarmed at receiving, in the evening of the day in which her
epistle was dispatched, another letter from her husband. “Its contents must be guessed to be sufficiently singular, when the
result was, that Donna Clara and Fra Jose sat up over them nearly the
whole of the night, in consultation, anxiety, and fear. So intense was
their conference, that it is recorded it was never interrupted even by
the lady telling her beads, or the monk thinking of his supper. All the
artificial habits, the customary indulgences, the factitious existence
of both, were merged in the real genuine fear which pervaded their
minds, and which asserted its power over both in painful and exacting
proportion to their long and hardy rejection of its influence. Their
minds succumbed together, and sought and gave in vain, feeble counsel,
and fruitless consolation. They read over and over again this
extraordinary letter, and at every reading their minds grew darker,--and
their counsels more perplexed,--and their looks more dismal. Ever and
anon they turned their eyes on it, as it lay open before them on Donna
Clara’s ebony writing-desk, and then starting, asked each other by
looks, and sometimes in words, “Did either hear some strange noise in
the house?” The letter, among other matter not important to the reader,
contained the singular passage following. * * * * * *

“In my travel from the place where I landed, to that whence I now
write, I fortuned to be in company with strangers, from whom I heard
things touching me (not as they meant, but as my fear interpreted
them) in a point the most exquisite that can prick and wound the soul
of a Christian father. These I shall discuss unto thee at thy more
leisure. They are full of fearful matter, and such as may perchance
require the aid of some churchman rightly to understand, and fully
to fathom. Nevertheless this I can commend to thy discretion, that
after I had parted from this strange conference, the reports of which
I cannot by letter communicate to thee, I retired to my chamber full
of sad and heavy thoughts, and being seated in my chair, pored over a
tome containing legends of departed spirits, in nowise contradictive
to the doctrine of the holy Catholic church, otherwise I would have
crushed it with the sole of my foot into the fire that burned before
me on the hearth, and spit on its cinders with the spittle of my
mouth. Now, whether it was the company I fortuned to be into, (whose
conversation must never be known but to thee only), or the book I had
been reading, which contained certain extracts from Pliny, Artemidore,
and others, full-filled with tales which I may not now recount, but
which did relate altogether to the revivification of the departed,
appearing in due accordance with our Catholic conceptions of Christian
ghosts in purgatory, with their suitable accoutrements of chains and
flames,--as thus Pliny writeth, “_Apparebat eidolon senex, macie et
senio confectus_,”--or finally, the weariness of my lonely journey, or
other things I know not,--but feeling my mind ill-disposed for deeper
converse with books or my own thoughts, and though oppressed by sleep,
unwilling to retire to rest,--a mood which I and others have often
experienced,--I took out thy letters from the desk in which I duly
reposit them, and read over the description which thou didst send me
of our daughter, upon the first intelligence of her being discovered
in that accursed isle of heathenism,--and I do assure thee, the
description of our daughter hath been written in such characters on the
bosom to which she hath never been clasped, that it would defy the art
of all the limners in Spain to paint it more effectually.