“You are so right,” exclaimed Artegui, dropping the osier branch and seizing the young girl’s hand, “that I am now firmly persuaded that pure and sinless natures possess a certain power of divination, a certain marvelous and peculiar intuition denied to us who, in exchange, see clearly the irremediable sadness of life.”
Lucía looked with a serious and disturbed countenance at her companion.
“You see!” she found voice to say at last, making an effort to form her lips into a smile and succeeding with difficulty. “So that all those foolish notions that resemble the houses of cards that father used to build for me when I was a child, and which would fall down at a breath, have now vanished?”
“In this you are mistaken, child,” said Artegui, dropping her hand with one of his languid, mechanical gestures. “The contrary is the case. When sadness springs from some definite cause, if the cause is removed the sadness may also disappear; but if sadness springs up spontaneously in the soul like those weeds and rushes you see growing on the borders of that pond, if it is in ourselves, if it is the essence of our being, if it does not spring up here and there only, but everywhere, if nothing on earth can alleviate it, then--believe me, child, the patient is beyond help. There is no hope for him.”
He smiled as he spoke, but his smile was like the light falling on a statue in a niche.
“But, tell me,” said Lucía, with painful and feverish curiosity. “Have you ever met with any terrible misfortune--any great grief?”
“My mother adores me--and if it were not for her----” said Artegui, allowing himself to be drawn, as if against his will, into the gentle current of confidence.
“He died many years ago. He was a Biscayan, a Carlist emigrant, a man of great energy, of indomitable will; he took refuge in the interior of France; he found himself there without money and without friends; he worked as he had fought, with lion-like courage, and succeeded in establishing a vast commercial business, accumulating a fortune, buying a house in Paris and marrying my mother, who belongs to a distinguished Breton family, also legitimist. I was their only child; they lavished affection upon me but without neglecting my education or spoiling me by over-indulgence. I studied, I saw the world, I expressed a wish to travel, and my mother placed the means of doing so at my disposal; I had whims, many whims, when I grew up, and they were gratified, I have traveled in the United States and in the East, not to speak of Europe; I spend the winters in Paris and in summer I generally go to Spain; my health is good and I am not old. You see then that I am what people are accustomed to call a favorite of fortune, a happy man.”