Part 7 (1/2)
The Cardinal was a man of exuberant pride, and he knew how to control himself. He felt a great fondness for Laura; but if there was anything more in this fondness than tranquil fatherly affection, if there was any pa.s.sion, only he knew it; the fire lurked very deep in his overshaded soul.
Laura made, socially speaking, a good marriage. She married the Marquis of Vaccarone, a babbling Neapolitan, insubstantial and light. In a short while, seeing that they were not congenial, she arranged for an amicable separation and the two lived independent.
III. CaeSAR MONCADA
AT THE ESCOLAPIANS
Caesar studied in Madrid in an Escolapian college in the Calle de Hortaleza, where he was an intern all the time he was taking his bachelor's degree.
His mother had gone to live in Valencia, after marrying Laura off, and Caesar pa.s.sed his vacations with her at a country-place in a neighbouring village.
Several times a year Caesar received letters and photographs from his sister, and one winter Laura came to Valencia. She retained a great fondness for Caesar; he was fond of her too, although he did not show it, because his character was little inclined to affectionate expansion.
At college Caesar showed himself to be a somewhat strange and absurd youth. As he was slight and of a sickly appearance, the teachers treated him with a certain consideration.
One day a teacher noticed that Caesar creaked when he moved, as if his clothes were starched.
”What are you wearing?” he asked him.
”Nothing.”
”Nothing, indeed! Unb.u.t.ton your jacket.”
Caesar turned very pale and did not unb.u.t.ton it; but the master, seizing him by a lapel, unb.u.t.toned his jacket and his waistcoat, and found that the student was covered with papers.
”What are these papers? For what purpose are you keeping them here?”
”He does it,” one of his fellow students replied, laughing, ”because he is afraid of catching cold and becoming consumptive.” They all made comments on the boy's eccentricity, and a few days later, to show that he was not a coward, he tried to go out on the balcony on a cold winter night, with his chest bare.
Among his fellow-students Caesar had an intimate friend, Ignacio Alzugaray, to whom he confided and explained his prejudices and doubts.
Alzugaray was not a boarder, but a day-scholar.
Ignacio brought anti-clerical periodicals to school, which Caesar read with enthusiasm. His sojourn in a religious college was producing a frantic hatred for priests in young Moncada.
Caesar was remarkable for the rapidity of his decisions and the lack of vacillation in his opinions. He felt no timidity about either affirming or denying.
His convictions were absolute; when he believed in the exact truth of a thing, he did not vacillate, he did not go back and discuss it; but if his belief faltered, then he changed his opinion radically and went ahead stating the contrary of his previous statements, without recollecting his abandoned ideas.
His other fellow-students did not care about discussions with a lad who appeared to have a monopoly of the truth.
”Professor So-and-So is a beast; What-you-call-him is a talented chap; that fellow is a thick-witted chap. This kid is all right; that one is not.”
In this rail-splitting manner did young Moncada announce his decisions, as if he held the secret explanation of all things tight between his fingers.
Alzugaray seldom shared his friend's opinions; but in spite of this divergence they understood each other very well.