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
“You have heard your father’s letter, daughter,” said Doña 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 Doña 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!”
Doña 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 Doña 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 hombre 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 Doña Clara for her sudden indisposition, entreated 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 forever; 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
