“Give them to God,” answered the Jesuit gently. “Come, there is no occasion for grief, Señora Doña Lucía; on the contrary, we have cause for congratulation.”
“No, no; I am weeping for joy,” answered the nurse. And as the black cassock and the tall belted figure of the Jesuit were receding from view, she softly called to him. The priest retraced his steps.
“I too, Father Arrigoitia, desire to confess myself, and soon, very soon,” she said.
“Ah, very good, very good. But you are in no danger of death, thanks be to God. In San Sulpicio, in the confessional to the right, as you enter--I am always at your service, Señora. I shall return shortly to see our little patient. There, don’t cry, you look like a Magdalen.”
That afternoon Lucía went down as usual into the garden. But so exhausted was she both in mind and body that, leaning back against the trunk of the plane tree, she soon fell fast asleep. Before long she began to dream, and the oddest part of her dream was that she did not imagine she was in any strange or unknown place, but in the very spot where she sat in the garden, only that this, in the capricious mirroring of her dream, instead of being small and narrow, seemed to be enormous. It was the same garden but seen through a colossal magnifying-glass. The railing had receded far, far away into the distance and looked like a row of points of light on the horizon; and this increase in its size increased the gloom of the little garden, making it seem like a dry and parched field. Casting her eyes around, Lucía fixed her gaze on what seemed to be the front of Artegui’s house, from one of whose open windows issued a pale hand that made signs to her. Was it a man’s hand or a woman’s hand? Was it the hand of a living being or of a corpse? Lucía did not know, but the mysterious beckoning of that unknown hand exercised a spell over her that grew stronger every moment and she ran on and on, trying to approach the house. But the field continued to stretch away; one sandy belt followed another; and after walking hours and hours she still saw before her the long row of sickly plane trees fading into the distance and Artegui’s house further off than ever. But the hand continued to beckon furiously, impatiently, like the hand of an epileptic agitating itself in the air; its five fingers resembled whirling asps, and Lucía, breathless, panting, continued to run on and on, and one plane tree succeeded another and the house was still in the distance. “Fool that I am!” she cried, “since I cannot reach it running, I will fly.” No sooner said than done; with the ease with which one flies in dreams, Lucía stood on tip-toe, and presto! she was in the air at a bound. Oh, happiness! oh, bliss! the field lay beneath her, she winged her way through the serene, pure blue atmosphere; and now the house was no longer distant, and now there was an end to the interminable row of plane trees, and now she distinguished the form to which the hand belonged. It was a form, slender, without being meager, surmounted by a countenance manly, though of a melancholy cast, but which now smiled kindly, with infinite tenderness. How fast Lucía flew! how blissfully she drew her breath in the serene atmosphere! Courage, it is but a little distance now! Lucía could hear the flapping of her wings, for she had wings, and the grateful coolness refreshed her heart. Now she was close beside the window.