The cause is lost, and I have made beggars of you
all!”--“Rise,--rise, dearest father,” cried the children, gathering
round him, “nothing is lost, if you are saved!”--“Rise, my love, from
that horrible and unnatural humiliation,” cried Ines, grasping the
arms of her husband; “help me, my children,--father,--mother, will you
not help me?”--and as she spoke, the tottering, helpless, and almost
lifeless figures of the aged grandfather and grandmother arose
from their chairs, and staggering forwards, added their feeble
strength,--their _vis impotentiæ_, to sustain or succour the weight
that dragged heavily on the arms of the children and their mother. By
this sight, more than by any effort, Walberg was raised from the
posture that agonized his family, and placed in a chair, around which
hung the wife and children, while the aged father and mother, retreating
torpidly to their seats, seemed to lose in a few moments the keen
consciousness of evil that had inspired them for an instant with a
force almost miraculous. Ines and her children hung round Walberg, and
uttered all of consolation that helpless affection could suggest; but
perhaps there is not a more barbed arrow can be sent through the heart,
than by the thought that the hands that clasp ours so fondly cannot
earn for us or themselves the means of another meal,--that the lips
that are pressed to ours so warmly, may the next ask us for bread,
and--ask in vain! “It was perhaps fortunate for this unhappy family, that the very
extremity of their grief rendered its long indulgence impossible,--the
voice of necessity made itself be heard distinctly and loudly amid all
the cry and clamour of that hour of agony. Something must be done for
the morrow,--and it was to be done immediately. “What money have you?”
was the first articulate sentence Walberg uttered to his wife; and when
she whispered the small sum that the expences of their lost cause had
left them, he shivered with a brief emphatic spasm of horror,--then
bursting from their arms, and rising, he crossed the room, as if he
wished to be alone for a moment. As he did so, he saw his youngest
child playing with the long strings of his grandfather’s band,--a mode
of sportive teazing in which the urchin delighted, and which was at
once chid and smiled at. Walberg struck the poor child vehemently, and
then catching him in his arms, bid him--“Smile as long as he could!”
* * * * *

“They had means of subsistence at least for the following week; and that
was such a source of comfort to them, as it is to men who are quitting a
wreck, and drifting on a bare raft with a slender provision towards some
coast, which they hope to reach before it is exhausted. They sat up all
that night together in earnest counsel, after Ines had taken care to see
the father and mother of her husband comfortably placed in their
apartment. Amid their long and melancholy conference, hope sprung up
insensibly in the hearts of the speakers, and a plan was gradually
formed for obtaining the means of subsistence. Walberg was to offer his
talents as a musical teacher,--Ines and her daughters were to undertake
embroidery,--and Everhard, who possessed exquisite taste both in music
and drawing, was to make an effort in both departments, and the friendly
priest was to be applied to for his needful interest and recommendation
for all. The morning broke on their long-protracted consultation, and
found them unwearied in discussing its subject. “We shall not starve,”
said the children hopefully.--“I trust not,” said Walberg
sighingly.--His wife, who knew Spain, said not a word.----




CHAPTER XXVIII. ------This to me
    In dreadful secrecy they did impart,
    And I with them the third night kept the watch. SHAKESPEARE. “As they spoke, a soft knock was heard, such as kindness gives at the
door of misfortune, and Everhard started up to answer it. “Stay,” said
Walberg, absently, “Where are the servants?” Then recollecting himself,
he smiled agonizingly, and waved his hand to his son to go. It was the
good priest. He entered, and sat down in silence,--no one spoke to him. It might be truly said, as it is sublimely said in the original, “There
was neither speech nor language, but voices were heard among them--_and
felt too_.” The worthy priest piqued himself on his orthodoxy of all
matters of belief and form enjoined by the Catholic church; and,
moreover, had acquired a kind of monastic apathy, of sanctified
stoicism, which priests sometimes imagine is the conquest of grace over
the rebellion of nature, when it is merely the result of a profession
that denies nature its objects and its ties. Yet so it was, that as he
sat among this afflicted family, after complaining of the keenness of
the morning air, and wiping away in vain the moisture, which he said it
had brought into his eyes, he at last yielded to his feelings, and
“lifted up his voice and wept.” But tears were not all he had to offer. On hearing the plans of Walberg and his family, he promised, with a
faultering voice, his ready assistance in promoting them; and, as he
rose to depart, observing that he had been entrusted by the faithful
with a small sum for the relief of the unfortunate, and knew not where
it could be better bestowed, he dropped from the sleeve of his habit a
well filled purse on the floor, and hurried away. “The family retired to rest as the day approached, but rose in a few
hours afterwards without having slept; and the remainder of that day,
and the whole of the three following, were devoted to applications at
every door where encouragement might be expected, or employment
obtained, the priest in person aiding every application. But there were
many circumstances unfavourable to the ill-starred family of Walberg. They were strangers, and, with the exception of their mother, who acted
as interpreter, ignorant of the language of the country. This was “a
sore evil,” extending almost to the total preclusion of their exertions
as teachers. They were also heretics,--and this alone was a sufficient
bar to their success in Seville. In some families the beauty of the
daughters, in others that of the son, was gravely debated as an
important objection. In others the recollection of their former
splendour, suggested a mean and rancorous motive to jealous inferiority
to insult them by a rejection, for which no other cause could be
assigned. Unwearied and undismayed, they renewed their applications
every day, at every house where admission could be obtained, and at many
where it was denied; and each day they returned to examine the
diminished stock, to divide the scantier meal, calculate how far it was
possible to reduce the claims of nature to the level of their ebbing
means, and smile when they talked of the morrow to each other, but weep
when they thought of it alone.