THE SECRET OF THE WIND AND THE WALNUT-TREES
Maria's fever lasted only eight days; nevertheless, when she left her bed, her parents found her more changed in face and in mind than if the eight days had been eight months. Her eyes had grown darker, and had assumed a peculiar expression of calm and precocious maturity. She spoke more distinctly and rapidly, but to those who were not to her liking, she would not speak at all, would not even greet them. This was more displeasing to Franco than to Luisa. Franco wished her to be amiable, but Luisa feared to spoil her sincerity. For her mother Maria cherished an affection violent rather than demonstrative, a jealous, almost fierce affection. She was very fond of her father also, but it was evident that she felt he was unlike herself. Franco had passionate outbursts of affection for her, when he would catch her up unexpectedly, press her close, and cover her with kisses. At such moments she would throw her head back, plant one little hand upon her father's face, and look frowningly at him, as if something in him were strange and repugnant to her. Often Franco would scold her angrily, and Maria would cry and stare at him through her tears, motionless, and as if fascinated, and always wearing the expression of one who does not understand. He noticed the child's predilection for her mother, and this was pleasing to him, for it seemed a just preference, and he never doubted that later Maria would love him tenderly also. Luisa, loving her husband as she did, was much troubled that the child should exhibit greater affection for herself; however this sentiment of hers was less lively, less pure, than Franco's generous pleasure. It seemed to Luisa that, after all, in spite of his transports, Franco loved his daughter as a being distinct from himself, while she, who had no transports of external tenderness, loved the child as a vital part of herself. Moreover she cherished in her heart a future Maria probably very different from the one Franco cherished. For this reason also she could not regret her moral ascendency over her daughter. She foresaw the danger that Franco might favour an exaggerated development of the child's religious sentiment, and this, to her, was a very serious danger, for in Maria, full of curiosity, eager for stories, there were the germs of a very lively imagination, which would be most favourable to religious fancies, and a badly balanced moral sense might be the result. It was not a question of abolishing religious sentiment; this Luisa, out of respect for Franco, if for no other reason, would never have sought to do, but it was imperative that Maria, on reaching womanhood, should be able to find the pivot of her own existence in her own sure and vigorous moral sense, a moral sense not founded upon beliefs which, after all, were simply hypotheses and opinions, and which, sooner or later, might fail her. The preservation of faith in Justice and in Truth, setting aside all other faith, all hope, all fear, seemed to her the most sublime condition of the human conscience. She believed that because she went to Mass, and twice a year to the sacraments, she had renounced such perfection for herself, and she intended to renounce it for Maria also, but as one who, finding himself hampered by wife and children, must renounce Christian perfection, but who does so unwillingly, and in as slight a degree as possible.