The
    which qualities, as I have always perceived to reside in you, so I
    hope you have laboured to transfer to her,--a transfer by which the
    receiver is enriched, and the giver not impoverished. “Finally, as maidens should be rewarded for their chastity and
    reserve by being joined in wedlock with a worthy husband, so it is
    the duty of a careful father to provide such a one for his daughter,
    that she do not pass her marriageable age, and sit in discontent and
    squalidness at home, as one overlooked of the other sex. My fatherly
    care, therefore, moving me, I shall bring with me one who is to be
    her husband, Don Gregorio Montilla, of whose qualifications I have
    not now leisure to speak, but whom I expect she will receive as
    becomes the dutiful daughter, and you as the obedient wife, of

    FRANCISCO DI ALIAGA.”

  (23) Vide Don Quixote, Vol. II. Smollet’s Translation. “You have heard your father’s letter, daughter,” said Donna Clara,
placing herself as in act to speak, “and doubtless sit silent in
expectation of hearing from me a rehearsal of the duties pertaining to
the state on which you are so soon to enter, and which, I take it, are
three; that is to say, obedience, silence, and thriftiness. And first of
the first, which, as I conceive, divides itself into thirteen
heads,”---- “Holy saints!” said the duenna under her breath, “how pale
Madonna Isidora grows!”--“First of the first,” continued Donna Clara,
clearing her throat, elevating her spectacles with one hand, and fixing
three demonstrative fingers of the other on a huge clasped volume,
containing the life of St Francis Xavier, that lay on the desk before
her,--“as touching the thirteen heads into which the first divides
itself, the eleven first, I take it, are the most profitable--the two
last I shall leave you to be instructed in by your husband. First,
then,”---- Here she was interrupted by a slight noise, which did not,
however, draw her attention, till she was startled by a scream from the
duenna, who exclaimed, “The Virgin be my protection! Madonna Isidora has
fainted!”

“Donna Clara lowered her spectacles, glanced at the figure of her
daughter, who had fallen from her cushion, and lay breathless on the
floor, and, after a short pause, replied, “She _has_ fainted. Raise
her.--Call for assistance, and apply some cold water, or bear her into
the open air. I fear I have lost the mark in the life of this holy
saint,” muttered Donna Clara when alone; “this comes of this foolish
business of love and marriage. I never loved in my life, thank the
saints!--and as to marriage, that is according to the will of God and of
our parents.”

“The unfortunate Isidora was lifted from the floor, conveyed into the
open air, whose breath had the same effect on her still elementary
existence, that water was said to have on that of the _ombre pez_,
(man-fish), of whom the popular traditions of Barcelona were at that
time, and still have been, rife. “She recovered; and sending an apology to Donna Clara for her sudden
indisposition, intreated her attendants to leave her, as she wished to
be alone. Alone!--that is a word to which those who love annex but one
idea,--that of being in society with one who is their all. She wished in
this (to her) terrible emergency, to ask counsel of him whose image was
ever present to her, and whose voice she heard with the mind’s ear
distinctly even in absence. “The crisis was indeed one calculated to try a female heart; and
Isidora’s, with its potency of feeling, opposed to utter destitution of
judgment and of experience,--its native habits of resolution and
self-direction, and its acquired ones of timidity and diffidence almost
to despondency,--became the victim of emotions, whose struggle seemed at
first to threaten her reason. “Her former independent and instinctive existence revived in her heart
at some moments, and suggested to her resolutions wild and desperate,
but such as the most timid females have been known, under the pressure
of a fearful exigency, to purpose, and even to execute. Then the
constraint of her new habits,--the severity of her factitious
existence,--and the solemn power of her newly-learned but deeply-felt
religion,--made her renounce all thoughts of resistance or opposition,
as offences against heaven. “Her former feelings, her new duties, beat in terrible conflict against
her heart; and, trembling at the isthmus on which she stood, she felt
it, under the influence of opposing tides, narrowing every moment under
her feet. “This was a dreadful day to her. She had sufficient time for reflection,
but she had within her the conviction that reflection could be of no
use,--that the circumstances in which she was placed, not her own
thoughts, must decide for her,--and that, situated as she was, mental
power was no match for physical. “There is not, perhaps, a more painful exercise of the mind than that of
treading, with weary and impatient pace, the entire round of thought,
and arriving at the same conclusion for ever; then setting out again
with increased speed and diminished strength, and again returning to the
very same spot--of sending out all our faculties on a voyage of
discovery, and seeing them all return empty, and watch the wrecks as
they drift helplessly along, and sink before the eye that hailed their
outward expedition with joy and confidence. “All that day she thought how it was possible to liberate herself from
her situation, while the feeling that liberation was impossible clung to
the bottom of her heart; and this sensation of the energies of the soul
in all their strength, being in vain opposed to imbecillity and
mediocrity, when aided by circumstances, is one productive alike of
melancholy and of irritation. We feel, like prisoners in romance, bound
by threads to which the power of magic has given the force of adamant. “To those whose minds incline them rather to observe, than to sympathize
with the varieties of human feeling, it would have been interesting to
watch the restless agony of Isidora, contrasted with the cold and serene
satisfaction of her mother, who employed the whole of the day in
composing, with the assistance of Fra Jose, what Juvenal calls “_verbosa
et grandis epistola_,” in answer to that of her husband; and to conceive
how two human beings, apparently of similarly-constructed organs, and
destined apparently to sympathize with each other, could draw from the
same fountain waters sweet and bitter. “On her plea of continued indisposition, Isidora was excused from
appearing before her mother during the remainder of the day. The night
came on,--the night, which, by concealing the artificial objects and
manners which surrounded her, restored to her, in some degree, the
consciousness of her former existence, and gave her a sense of
independence she never felt by day. The absence of Melmoth increased her
anxiety.