The daughters, who understood her too well, relinquished their
instruments, and, accustomed to see every article of furniture converted
into the means of casual subsistence, they thought no worse than that
their ghitarras might be disposed of this day, and the next they hoped
they would have to teach on those of their pupils. They were mistaken. Other symptoms of failing resolution,--of utter and hopeless
abandonment, appeared that day. Walberg had always felt and expressed
the strongest feelings of tender respect towards his parents--his father
particularly, whose age far exceeded that of his mother. At the division
of their meal that day, he shewed a kind of wolfish and greedy jealousy
that made Ines tremble. He whispered to her--“How much my father
eats--how heartily he feeds while we have scarce a morsel!”--“And let us
want that morsel, before your father wants one!” said Ines in a
whisper--“I have scarce tasted any thing myself.”--“Father--father,”
cried Walberg, shouting in the ear of the doting old man, “you are
eating heartily, while Ines and her children are starving!” And he
snatched the food from his father’s hand, who gazed at him vacantly, and
resigned the contested morsel without a struggle. A moment afterwards
the old man rose from his seat, and with horrid unnatural force, tore
the untasted meat from his grandchildren’s lips, and swallowed it
himself, while his rivelled and toothless mouth grinned at them in
mockery at once infantine and malicious. “Squabbling about your supper?” cried Everhard, bursting among them with
a wild and feeble laugh,--“Why, here’s enough for to-morrow--and
to-morrow.” And he flung indeed ample means for two day’s subsistence on
the table, but he looked _paler and paler_. The hungry family devoured
the hoard, and forgot to ask the cause of his increasing paleness, and
obviously diminished strength. * * * * * *

“They had long been without any domestics, and as Everhard disappeared
mysteriously every day, the daughters were sometimes employed on the
humble errands of the family. The beauty of the elder daughter, Julia,
was so conspicuous, that her mother had often undertaken the most menial
errands herself, rather than send her daughter into the streets
unprotected. The following evening, however, being intently employed in
some domestic occupation, she allowed Julia to go out to purchase their
food for to-morrow, and lent her veil for the purpose, directing her
daughter to arrange it in the Spanish fashion, with which she was well
acquainted, so as to hide her face. “Julia, who went with trembling steps on her brief errand, had somehow
deranged her veil, and a glimpse of her beauty was caught by a cavalier
who was passing. The meanness of her dress and occupation suggested
hopes to him which he ventured to express. Julia burst from him with the
mingled terror and indignation of insulted purity, but her eyes rested
with unconscious avidity on the handful of gold which glittered in his
hand.--She thought of her famishing parents,--of her own declining
strength, and neglected useless talents. The gold still sparkled before
her,--she felt--she knew not what, and to escape from some feelings is
perhaps the best victory we can obtain over them. But when she arrived
at home, she eagerly thrust the small purchase she had made into her
mother’s hand, and, though hitherto gentle, submissive, and tractable,
announced, in a tone of decision that seemed to her startled mother
(whose thoughts were always limited to the exigencies of the hour) like
that of sudden insanity, that she would rather starve than ever again
tread the streets of Seville alone. “As Ines retired to her bed, she thought she heard a feeble moan from
the room where Everhard lay, and where, from their being compelled to
sell the necessary furniture of the bed, he had entreated his parents to
allow Maurice to sleep with him, alleging that the warmth of his body
would be a substitute for artificial covering to his little brother. Twice those moans were heard, but Ines did not dare to awake Walberg,
who had sunk into that profound sleep which is as often the refuge of
intolerable misery, as that of saturated enjoyment. A few moments after,
when the moans had ceased, and she had half persuaded herself it was
only the echo of that wave that seems for ever beating in the ears of
the unfortunate,--the curtains of her bed were thrown open, and the
figure of a child covered with blood, stained in breast, arms, and legs,
appeared before her, and cried,--“It is Everhard’s blood--he is bleeding
to death,--I am covered with his blood!--Mother--mother--rise and save
Everhard’s life!” The object, the voice, the words, seemed to Ines like
the imagery of some terrible dream, such as had lately often visited her
sleep, till the tones of Maurice, her youngest, and (in her heart) her
favourite child, made her spring from the bed, and hurry after the
little blood-spotted figure that paddled before her on its naked feet,
till she reached the adjoining room where Everhard lay. Amid all her
anguish and fear, she trod as lightly as Maurice, lest she should awake
Walberg. “The moon-light fell strongly through the unshuttered windows on the
wretched closet that just contained the bed. Its furniture was
sufficiently scanty, and in his spasms Everhard had thrown off the
sheet. So he lay, as Ines approached his bed, in a kind of corse-like
beauty, to which the light of the moon gave an effect that would have
rendered the figure worthy the pencil of a Murillo, a Rosa, or any of
those painters, who, inspired by the genius of suffering, delight in
representing the most exquisite of human forms in the extremity of human
agony. A St Bartholomew flayed, with his skin hanging about him in
graceful drapery--a St Laurence, broiled on a gridiron, and exhibiting
his finely-formed anatomy on its bars, while naked slaves are blowing
the coals beneath it,--even these were inferior to the form
half-veiled,--half-disclosed by the moon-light as it lay. The snow-white
limbs of Everhard were extended as if for the inspection of a sculptor,
and moveless, as if they were indeed what they resembled, in hue and
symmetry, those of a marble statue. His arms were tossed above his head,
and the blood was trickling fast from the opened veins of both,--his
bright and curled hair was clotted with the red stream that flowed from
his arms,--his lips were blue, and a faint and fainter moan issued from
them as his mother hung over him. This sight banished in a moment all
other fears and feelings, and Ines shrieked aloud to her husband for
assistance. Walberg, staggering from his sleep, entered the room,--the
object before him was enough. Ines had only strength left to point to
it. The wretched father rushed out in quest of medical aid, which he was
obliged to solicit gratuitously, and in bad Spanish, while his accents
betrayed him at every door he knocked at,--and closed them against him
as a foreigner and a heretic.