To the repeated
offers of his children to assist or attend their ancient relatives, he
answered, “No, dear children, your mother will do better,--your mother
always does best.” As he spoke, his children, according to a custom now
forgot, kneeled before him to ask his blessing. His hand, tremulous with
affection, rested first on the curling locks of the darling Everhard,
whose head towered proudly above those of his kneeling sisters, and of
Maurice, who, with the irrepressible and venial levity of joyous
childhood, laughed as he knelt. “God bless you!” said Walberg--“God
bless you all,--and may he make you as good as your mother, and as happy
as--your father is this night;” and as he spoke, the happy father turned
aside and wept. CHAPTER XXVII. ------Quæque ipsa miserrima vidi,
    Et quorum pars magna fui. VIRGIL. “The wife of Walberg, who was naturally of a cool sedate temper, and to
whom misfortune had taught an anxious and jealous prevoyance, was not so
intoxicated with the present prosperity of the family, as its young, or
even its aged members. Her mind was full of thoughts which she would not
communicate to her husband, and sometimes did not wish to acknowledge to
herself; but to the priest, who visited them frequently with renewed
marks of Guzman’s bounty, she spoke explicitly. She said, that however
grateful for her brother’s kindness, for the enjoyment of present
competence, and the hope of future wealth, she wished that her children
might be permitted to acquire the means of independent subsistence for
themselves, and that the money destined by Guzman’s liberality for their
ornamental education, might be applied to the purpose of ensuring them
the power of supporting themselves, and assisting their parents. She
alluded slightly to the possible future change in her brother’s
favourable feelings towards her, and dwelt much on the circumstance of
her children being strangers in the country, wholly unacquainted with
its language, and averse from its religion; and she mildly but strongly
stated the difficulties to which a heretic family of strangers might be
exposed in a Catholic country, and implored the priest to employ his
mediation and influence with her brother, that her children might be
enabled, through his bounty, to acquire the means of independent
subsistence, as if----and she paused. The good and friendly priest (for
he was truly both) listened to her with attention; and after satisfying
his conscience, by adjuring her to renounce her heretical opinions, as
the only means of obtaining a reconciliation with God and her brother,
and receiving a calm, but firm negative, proceeded to give her his best
LAY advice, which was to comply with her brother’s wishes in every
thing, to educate her children in the manner which he prescribed, and to
the full extent of the means which he so amply furnished. He added, _en
confiance_, that Guzman, though, during his long life, he had never been
suspected of any passion but that of accumulating money, was now
possessed with a spirit much harder to expel, and was resolved that the
heirs of his wealth should be, in point of all that might embellish
polished society, on a level with the descendants of the first nobility
of Spain. Finally, he counselled submission to her brother’s wishes in
all things,--and the wife of Walberg complied with tears, which she
tried to conceal from the priest, and had completely effaced the traces
of before she again met her husband. “In the mean time, the plan of Guzman was rapidly realized. A handsome
house was taken for Walberg,--his sons and daughters were splendidly
arrayed, and sumptuously lodged; and, though education was, and still
is, on a very low level in Spain, they were taught all that was then
supposed to qualify them as companions for the descendants of Hidalgoes. Any attempt, or even allusion to their being prepared for the ordinary
occupations of life, was strictly forbidden by the orders of Guzman. The
father triumphed in this,--the mother regretted it, but she kept her
regret to herself, and consoled herself with thinking, that the
ornamental education her children were receiving might ultimately be
turned to account; for the wife of Walberg was a woman whom the
experience of misfortune had taught to look to the future with an
anxious eye, and that eye, with ominous accuracy, had seldom failed to
detect a speck of evil in the brightest beam of sun-shine that had ever
trembled on her chequered existence. “The injunctions of Guzman were obeyed,--the family lived in luxury. The
young people plunged into their new life of enjoyment with an avidity
proportioned to their youthful sensibility of pleasure, and to a taste
for refinement and elegant pursuits, which their former obscurity had
repressed, but never extinguished. The proud and happy father exulted in
the personal beauty, and improving talents of his children. The anxious
mother sighed sometimes, but took care the sigh should never reach her
husband’s ear. The aged grandfather and grandmother, whose infirmities
had been much increased by their journey to Spain, and possibly still
more by that strong emotion which is a habit to youth, but a convulsion
to age, sat in their ample chairs comfortably idle, dozing away life in
intervals of unuttered though conscious satisfaction, and calm but
venerable apathy;--they slept much, but when they awoke, they smiled at
their grandchildren, and at each other. “The wife of Walberg, during this interval, which seemed one of
undisturbed felicity to all but her, sometimes suggested a gentle
caution,--a doubtful and anxious hint,--a possibility of future
disappointment, but this was soon smiled away by the rosy, and laughing,
and kissful lips of her children, till the mother at last began to smile
at her apprehensions herself. At times, however, she led them anxiously
in the direction of their uncle’s house. She walked up and down the
street before his door with her children, and sometimes lifted up her
veil, as if to try whether her eye could pierce through walls as hard as
the miser’s heart, or windows barred like his coffers,--then glancing on
her children’s costly dress, while her eye darted far into futurity, she
sighed and returned slowly home. This state of suspence was soon to be
terminated. “The priest, Guzman’s confessor, visited them often; first in quality of
almoner or agent of his bounty, which was amply and punctually bestowed
through his hands; and secondly, in quality of a professed chess-player,
at which game he had met, even in Spain, no antagonist like Walberg. He
also felt an interest in the family and their fortunes, which, though
his orthodoxy disowned, his heart could not forbear to acknowledge,--so
the good priest compromised matters by playing chess with the father,
and praying for the conversion of his family on his return to Guzman’s
house.