María quotes

I fell asleep sorrowful, filled with a vague foreboding of coming trouble.

That lock of hair taken from a boy’s head; that precaution of love against death, even in the presence of abounding life, caused my thoughts to wander all night about those scenes where I had passed, without knowing it, the happiest hours of my life.

The next morning, my father had to loosen my mother’s arms from my neck. My sisters tried to kiss away my tears. María quietly waited her turn, and stammering out a goodbye, touched her blushing cheek to mine, chilled by the first feeling of sorrow.

So the sky, the horizon, the plains, the crests of Cauca, make those speechless who behold them.

The great beauties of nature cannot be sung at the same time they are seen; they must return to the soul, made dim by a faulty memory.

Before sunset I had seen my father’s house whitening on the shoulder of the mountain. As I drew near it, I anxiously noted the groups of willows and orange-trees behind which I saw the glancing lights in the rooms.

When I went to my room, not a single flower was there.

If I had found a viper coiled up on my table it would not have caused me so great a shock.

The fragrance of María’s flowers had come to stand with me for something of her own spirit, floating about near me in my hours of study and of sleep. It was true, then; she did not love me! My dreamy imagination had been deceiving me.

At last she made an effort, and stood up; and then, as if finishing what she had begun, she said, though in so low a tone that I could scarcely hear her, “Then … I … I will pick the most beautiful flowers every day.”

Souls like María’s are not ignorant of the common language of love; but they bow tremblingly at the first caress of the one they love, as the wood-poppy does under the wing of the wind.

I had confessed my love to María; she had encouraged me to confess it, humbling herself like a slave to pick up those flowers. I repeated to myself with delight her last words;

Then it was I who was to make the untroubled sleep of childhood impossible for her hereafter; it was I who could tell her of love, could make her the object of my life.

Tomorrow! Magical word, the night we have been told we are beloved!

Her glances, after this, would have nothing to conceal from me; she would make herself beautiful for my happiness and pride.

and her tones, without ceasing to have their peculiar music, would grow slow and solemn as she spoke words which it would be vain for me to try to recall now:

I cannot hear them any more, and when they are uttered by other lips they are not the same; if they were written on this page they would seem meaningless.

They belong to another language, of which every phrase went from my memory many years ago.

“Yes, sir; it’s fine sport. I’ve enjoyed it with him several times.”

“In my country,” said my father, “they would take you for a savage⁠—or for a hero.”

“But it’s really less dangerous than deer-hunting, and that’s done everywhere all the while; for, instead of having to shoot at something bursting out on you unexpectedly between crags and waterfalls, all you need is to be quick and a sure shot.”

My lullaby was the murmur of the river, the cries of the geese, the lowing of the cattle pastured on the hills near by, and the songs of the girls washing clothes in the brook.

Nature is the most loving of mothers when grief has taken possession of our souls; and if happiness is our lot, she smiles upon us.

“And so you risk everything, everything?” he asked me, in amazement. “And this disease, which is probably the same that her mother had—

Why, are you going to spend half your life seated beside a grave?

”

She took leave of me with the same words, but was surprised that I kept the handkerchief which was in the hand she gave me to press.

María did not understand that this scented handkerchief was my treasure for a whole night.

it was not the majestic flight of the black eagles above the neighboring peaks; it was none of these things my eyes rested upon.

It was what I shall never see again; what my spirit, broken by sad realities, looks for no more, or admires only in my dreams: the world, nature, as Adam might have seen it on the first morning.

In the dark and winding path from the hills, I saw Tránsito and her father coming, in fulfillment of their promise to María.

“That is true,” he remarked, listening to me with considerable calmness; “that can be done. But who would have suspected it?

I shall die without having learned to distrust men.

”

But those were other days.

There are strokes of misfortune which one receives in youth with indifference, without uttering a complaint; then one trusts in the future. But those which come upon one in old age seem the work of a cowardly enemy; it is but a short distance to the grave.

Three hours had passed. As my father went to bed he said to me, “We must conceal from your mother, as far as possible, what has happened; and we shall also have to delay our return for another day.”

pairs of doves took up their flight towards neighboring fields; the chattering of flocks of parrots mingled with the noise of a clamorous brook; and from the blossom-laden summits of the cacao-trees, the herons rose in slow and easy flight.

Never again shall I admire those songs, drink in those perfumes, or gaze upon those landscapes flooded with light. Today strangers dwell in my father’s house.

The afternoon was nearly gone when, the next day, my father and I were riding up the long green mountain-slope to our house.

The night continued calm. The rosebushes were motionless. Not a rustle could be detected in the tops of the trees. Only the sighs of the river disturbed the impressive silence.

Against the dark-blue mantle of the mountains, some scattered clouds were whitening, like scarfs of snowy gauze made to ripple by the wind over the blue skirt of an odalisque.

The transparent circle of the sky arched itself above the numberless peaks, like a vase of blue-tinted glass incrusted with diamonds.

Only the sighs of the river disturbed the impressive silence. Against the dark-blue mantle of the mountains, some scattered clouds were whitening, like scarfs of snowy gauze made to ripple by the wind over the blue skirt of an odalisque.

The transparent circle of the sky arched itself above the numberless peaks, like a vase of blue-tinted glass incrusted with diamonds.

María still delayed. My mother came to ask me to come into the parlor. My father was seated on a sofa, María at his side. She did not lift her eyes to look at me. He pointed me to a seat near hers.

“Yes, yes; but today you ought to tell me.”

“That you always love me as you do now,” she replied, and her hand pressed mine.

“

I think that the Virgin will not need so many roses.

”

“

Forgotten? What! is it so easy to forget?

”

You will not be looking upon all this. Absorbed in your studies, seeing new countries, you will be able to forget, hours together. But I shall not be able to forget at all. You leave me here.

I shall die of remembering and waiting.

”

But you are going away, and I shall remain alone. I cannot be again as I was before.

Alas! why did you ever come?

”

“María,” I replied, lifting my face, in which she must have seen something strange and solemn, so fixedly did she look at me, “do not blame me for coming back.

Blame the one who made you the companion of my boyhood, the one who wished me to love you as I do; complain, then, that you are what you are⁠—blame God.

What have I asked of you, what have you given me, that could not be asked and given in His presence?”

Only the distant cry of the gurríes and the murmur of the river disturbed the silence of the woods. My heart was saying farewell to each spot—to each tree by the path, to each brook I crossed.

Seated on the river’s bank, I thought of those good souls who had shed tears at my departure. My own fell to mingle with the fleeing waters⁠—fleeing from me like the happy days of those six months.

In half an hour I reached the house, and went to my mother’s sewing-room. Only she and Emma were there; more than an hour passed before I asked for María.

Soon the night surrounded us with all its American splendor.

Why is it that nights in Cauca, in London, on the high seas, were never so majestically melancholy as that one?

At eight we were all settled for sleep. Lorenzo arranged everything for me with an almost maternal care, and then went to lie down in his own hammock.

It seemed incredible that our progress should be more difficult than it had been, but it was.

To the Dagua nothing is impossible.

We passed that night in Saltico, a poor and disagreeable village. From Saltico to Salto the perils of the journey were beyond all exaggeration.

“My darling boy!” exclaimed my mother, in a tone of the deepest tenderness, pressing me to her bosom again, “in heaven!”

Something like the cold blade of a dagger pierced my brain.

I could not see or breathe. It was Death wounding me. Cruel and implacable, why did he not kill?