But dissimulation always teaches dissimulation; and the only
question is, whether we shall be the masters of the art or its victims? a question soon decided by our self-love. “It was on the sixth day that I heard, with a beating heart, a carriage
stop. I could have sworn to the sound of its wheels. I was in the hall
before I was summoned. I felt I could not be in the wrong, nor was I. I
drove to my father’s palace in a delirium,--a vision of repulse and of
reconciliation, of gratitude and of despair. I was ushered into a room,
where were assembled my father, my mother, and the Director, all seated,
and silent as statues. I approached, I kissed their hands, and then
stood at a small distance breathless. My father was the first to break
silence, but he spoke very much with the air of a man who was repeating
a part dictated to him; and the tone of his voice contradicted every
word he _prepared_ to utter. “My son, I have sent for you, no longer to
contend with your weak and wicked obstinacy, but to announce to you my
own resolution. The will of Heaven and of your parents has devoted you
to its service, and your resistance can only make us miserable, without
in the least frustrating that resolution.” At these words, gasping for
breath, my lips involuntarily unclosed; my father imagined this was an
attempt to reply, though in fact I was not capable of uttering a
syllable, and hastened to prevent it. “My son, all opposition is
unavailing, all discussion fruitless. Your destiny is decided, and
though your struggles may render it wretched, they cannot reverse it. Be
reconciled, my child, to the will of Heaven and your parents, which you
may insult, but cannot violate. This reverend person can better explain
to you the necessity of your obedience than I can.” And my father,
evidently weary of a task which he had reluctantly undertaken, was
rising to go away, when the Director detained him. “Stay, Senhor, and
assure your son before you depart, that, since I last saw him, I have
fulfilled my promise, and urged every topic on your mind, and that of
the duchess, that I thought might operate for his _best interests_.” I
was aware of the hypocritical ambiguity of this expression; and,
collecting my breath, I said, “Reverend father, as a son I seek not to
employ an intercessor with my own parents. I stand before them, and if I
have not an intercessor in their hearts, your mediation must be
ineffectual altogether. I implored you merely to state to them my
invincible reluctance.” They all interrupted me with exclamations, as
they repeated my last words,--“Reluctance! invincible! Is it for this
you have been admitted to our presence? Is it for this we have borne so
long with your contumacy, only to hear it repeated with aggravations?”
“Yes, my father,--yes, for this or nothing. If I am not permitted to
speak, why am I suffered in your presence?” “Because we hoped to witness
your submission.” “Allow me to give the proofs of it on my knees;”--and
I fell on my knees, hoping that my posture might soften the effect of
the words I could not help uttering. I kissed my father’s hand,--he did
not withdraw it, and I felt it tremble. I kissed the skirt of my
mother’s robe,--she attempted to withdraw it with one hand, but with the
other she hid her face, and I thought I saw tears bursting through her
fingers. I knelt to the Director too, and besought his benediction, and
struggled, though with revolting lips, to kiss his hand; but he snatched
his habit from my hand, elevated his eyes, spread out his fingers, and
assumed the attitude of a man who recoils in horror from a being who
merits the extreme of malediction and reprobation. Then I felt my only
chance was with my parents. I turned to them, but they shrunk from me,
and appeared willing to devolve the remainder of the task on the
Director. He approached me. “My child, you have pronounced your
reluctance to _the life of God_ invincible, but may there not be things
more invincible even to your resolution? The curses of that God,
confirmed by those of your parents, and deepened by all the fulminations
of the church, whose embraces you have rejected, and whose holiness you
have desecrated by that rejection.” “Father, these are terrible words,
but I have no time now but for meanings.” “Besotted wretch, I do not
understand you,--you do not understand yourself.” “Oh! I do,--I do!” I
exclaimed. And turning to my father, still on my knees, I cried, “My
dear father, is life,--human life, all shut up from me?” “It is,” said
the Director, answering for my father. “Have I no resource?” “None.” “No
profession?” “_Profession!_ degenerate wretch!” “Let me embrace the
meanest, but do not make me a monk.” “Profligate as weak.” “Oh! my
father,” still calling on my father, “let not this man answer for you. Give me a sword,--send me into the armies of Spain to seek death,--death
is all I ask, in preference to that life you doom me to.” “It is
impossible,” said my father, gloomily returning from the window against
which he had been leaning; “the honour of an illustrious family,--the
dignity of a Spanish grandee--” “Oh! my father, of how little value will
that be, when I am consuming in my early grave, and you die
broken-hearted on it, over the flower your own voice has doomed to
wither there.” My father trembled. “Senhor, I entreat,--I command you to
retire; this scene will unfit you for the devotional duties you must
perform this evening.” “And you leave me then?” I cried as they
departed. “Yes,--yes,”--repeated the Director; “leave you burdened with
the curse of your father.” “Oh no!” exclaimed my father; but the
Director had hold of his hand, and pressed it strongly. “Of your
mother,” he repeated. I heard my mother weep aloud, and felt it like a
repeal of that curse; but she dared not speak, and I could not. The
Director had now two victims in his hands, and the third at his feet. He
could not avoid showing his triumph. He paused, collected the full power
of his sonorous voice, and thundered forth, “And of God!” And as he
rushed from the room, accompanied by my father and mother, whose hands
he grasped, I felt as if struck by a thunderbolt. The rushing of their
robes, as he dragged them out, seemed like the whirlwind that attends
the presence of the destroying angel. I cried out, in my hopeless agony
of destitution, “Oh! that my brother were here to intercede for
me,”--and, as I uttered these words, I fell. My head struck against a
marble table, and I sunk on the floor covered with blood. “The domestics (of whom, according to the custom of the Spanish
nobility, there were about two hundred in the palace) found me in this
situation. They uttered outcries,--assistance was procured,--it was
believed that I had attempted to kill myself; but the surgeon who
attended me happened to be a man both of science and humanity, and
having cut away the long hair clotted with blood, and surveyed the
wound, he pronounced it trifling.