The Dead Command

uí, lying on a white bed-perhaps Margalida's bed-h

ympathetic, trembling hands. His recollections were vague, dim, surrounded by a nimbus of whit

sounded deafening groans, broken words imploring the aid of all the celestial powers; and he, in his weakness, his temples palpitating from the buzzing that accompanied the dizziness, made strenuous efforts to steady himself, advancing step by ste

g by the light of a candle, Febrer experienced a sensation of well-being and rest. H

ts, in the basin of water which reddened as Pèp wet a cloth to bathe Febrer's chest. Each garment removed from his body was dripping. His underclothing sep

ting all prudence, clasped her hands and raised her

, silent, her eyes enlarged by terror, moved about the room, turning over clothing, opening chest

n his dark countenance, attended the wounde

ilence, women! Why so man

elous unguent treasured up ever since the times of his glor

side in order to examine and wash his breast and back, declaring that he had seen worse sights than this in his younger days, and that he understood something about wounds. When the blood was wiped o

mpons of lint to introduce into the wounds, which continued gently emitting the red liquid. Margal

ther. Perhaps I c

g from the cruel wound, a sensation of coolness, of sweet ca

s back and on his breast the cloths piled up

nsignificant wound; he felt better already. He was troubled by the sad expressions and the silence of those aroun

t keep perfectly still. The doctor would soon be here. Pepet had moun

eep when suddenly he was awakened by his wife calling him, and by the cries of the children, who made a rush for the door. Outside the farmhouse, in the direction of the tower, sounded sho

hill to the tower, without giving a thought to danger. The first one they found

ed, furious and malignant as a monkey, when he saw who it was, and drew a great knife from his belt, with the inten

knife presented to the Little Chaplain

mily had! They thought him dead. In circumstances like this one realizes his affection for a person; and the good pea

g Febrer saw. His eyes closed, and he gradually fell into a stupor,

trated through the little window of the sleeping room; the light of dawn. Jaime experienced a sensation of chill. The covers were being withdrawn from his body; agile hands were touchin

gray mustache, a face he had often seen on the roads, but which failed to arouse in his memory a name; however, gradually he came to recognize it. It must be the doctor from San José whom he had seen frequently

lt the torture of the hands he sank again into restful sleep. He closed his eyes, but his hearing seemed to be sharpened. He heard low voices in the next room, but he could only catch a few phrases. An unknown voice was congratulating himself that the ball h

actable organ of the whole body. The only

nd again he fell gently into the hazy sea of sleep, a sea immense, smooth, heavy,

lickering red spots which joined the shadows in a merry jig. He opened them again, imagining that only a few moments had passed, and it was day once more; a ray of sunshine entered the room, tracing a circle of gold at the foot of the bed. In this way day and night succeeded each other with strange rapidity,

aplain. Thinking him suddenly better, the boy spoke in a low voice

rotting in the earth. What a true shot Don Jaime was!

magistrate some pious neighbors had borne the body of the Ironworker to the cemetery of San José, and the powerful representatives of the law had come down to the farmhouse to quiz the wounded man. It was impossible to make him speak. He was sound asleep, and when they aroused him he looked at them with a vague stare, and immediately closed his eyes again. Really did not the se?or remember? They would question him again some other time when he was well. There was nothing to worry about; the magistrates and all honorable people were in his favor. As the Ironworker had no near relatives to avenge his death and as he had made himself obnoxious, the people had no

elieve that it was he who had gone in search of the detested Majorcan; he extolled the Ironworker as an innocent victim; but he was to be set at liberty at any time by the

s, moving her lips as if in prayer, and giving vent to profound sighs. No sooner did she encounter the glassy gaze of Febrer than she ran to a small

owsiness. The girl's eyes wore an adoring and timorous expression. She seemed to be imploring forgiveness with her tearful orbs outlined

had overcome her former shrinking. She arranged the disordered covers of his couch, she gave him to drink, and s

he turned her head as if she wished to hide her tear-filled eyes. She groaned with anguish, and the sick man thought he heard expressions of remorse such as

lackness, by torture which wrung from his breast groans of fear and cries of anguish. He was delirious. Often he would awake from one of his frightful nightmares for an instant, barely long enough to find himself sitting up in bed, his arms pinned down by other arms, which endeavored to hold him. Then he would sink back into that world of shadows, peopled with horrors. In this fleeting cons

ich were uttered near his bedside. "Traumatic pneumonia-delirium." These words were repeated by different voices, but he doubted that they referred to himself. He felt well. This was nothing;

ating, their extremities free, moving them to convince themselves of their activity and of their liberty, while the bodies were joined one to another. The spokes of the wheel attracted Febrer's attention by their diverse forms. Some were swords, their blood-stained blades wound with garlands of laurel, the symbol of heroism; others seemed golden scepters tipped by crowns of kings or emperors; rods of justice; ingots of gold formed by coins laid one upon another; she

traveling forward, admiring at each revolution new spaces, new things. They fancied the very point through which they had passed but a moment before an unfamiliar and astounding region. Ignorant of the immovability of the center around which they were turning, they believed with the best of faith that the movement was an advance. "How we are run

tened to the wheel, jumbled with that credulous and childish humanity, but lacking the consolation of their fond delusion; and his traveling companions insulted him, spat up

mystery of eternity; and he fell and fell, for years, for centuries, until he dropped upon the soft bed. Then he opened his eyes. Margalida stood near, gazing at him b

e! Ay, Do

d with an evident desire to fall to the floor, he had been talk

disordered clothing, drew up the covers and tucked them around his sho

in their circles of blue. He felt the warm gust of her breath on his lips, and then he felt their thrill at a silky, moist contact, a light, timid caress, similar to the brushing of a wing. "Sleep, Don Jaime." The se?

lacial landscape. Craniums with wings similar to those of cherubims in religious pictures fluttered through the heavens uttering through their fleshless jaws hoarse hymns to the great divinity who filled the whole space with the folds of his shroud, and whose bony head was lost in the clouds. He felt that invisible beings were ripping off his flesh in bleeding tatters, which, having adhered to him throughout a whole lifetime, drew from him shrieks of pain as they were torn away. Then he beheld himself a white skeleton, ble

n togas, who were those who moved the hands of the judges as they wrote, and who dictated their sentences over their heads. The dead judge! He saw great halls of vertical light with concentric rows of seats, and on them hundreds of men speaking, vociferating and gesticulating, in the noisy task of making laws. Behind them crouched the real legislators, the dead, the deputies in their winding sheets, whose presence was unguessed by these me

which seemed to say to men: "Admire us! This is our work, and all which you do will be after our example!" The entire world belonged to the dead. They reigned. The living, as they opened their mouths to receive food, masticated particles of those who had preceded them along the pathway of life; when they wished to feast their eyes and ear

, they asphyxiated him; there were millions upon millions; all the ancestors of the human race! Finding no space whereon to set their feet, they stood in rows one upon another. They were a kind of in-coming tide of bones which rose and swelled until it reached the summit of the highest mountains and touched the clouds. Jaime was choking in this white inundation, hard and crackling. They trampled him underfoot; they weighed upon his chest with the heaviness of dead things. He was going

recognized Pablo Valls bending over him, moving his lips as if murmuring affectionate

the emptied glass with a gesture of unsatisfied eagerness, now began to diminish. In his delirium he had seen clear streams, great silent rivers, which he could never reach, his limbs overcome by a painful paralysis. Now he

umatic pneumonia again. "It is conquered." And a voice added joyfully: "That is good! We have a

oppression which had tortured him until a moment ago, as if the whole earth weighed upon his body. He felt the haze clearing away from his brain. He was still delirious, but his delirium was not pierced by scenes of terror and cries of anguish. It was, instead, a placid sleep, in which the body relaxed, and his thoughts took wing through pleasant horizons of optimi

e more the wheel, the immense wheel, the image of humanity, which turned and turned in

ion of coolness, thought that he po

ving through the infinite, b

of his own eyes? Was it he who was mistaken, and were not those millions of beings who uttered shouts

tivity. For what then the existence of created things? Had humanity no other purpose than to deceive itself, turning by it

nd continents with outlines like those he had seen on maps. It was the Earth! He, an imperceptible molecule in the immensit

sible, that which all could appreciate, was insignificant. Another movement was the one of real importance. Above that of the monotonous rotation, ever aroun

agine that it was the only one. The earth itself was the image of life. It ever rotated through determined spaces of time; days and seasons were repeated, as, in the history of ma

eated as are days and seasons on earth; but although everything seemed alike it was n

d not sustain themselves upon its surface. They clutched at the crust with their bony claws, struggling for years, perhaps for centuries,

uminous blue, then grow larger and larger, until it filled the whole of space, passing near him with the velocity of a rotating projectile; and now it was becom

was equally false, and that the Earth turned like a wheel around the sun-no; neither was the sun stationary, but with all its familiar company of planets

prison and breathes the air of freedom. He thought that scales fell from his eyes as from those of the Hebrew Apostle at Damascus. He beheld a new li

with the silent and intimate joy of the la

e of Pablo Valls fastened upon his. Valls was holding one of

med to float around his mouth and beard. Was it not then an illusion? Had he really seen him in the

augh, displaying his long

nger. The wounds are healed. You must feel the itching of a thousand demons in them; something as if you had

n the region of his wounds he felt an itch

tion of curiosity in

mediately. Your friend the Chueta will always be the same. What anxiety you have given us! Pneumonia, my boy, and in a dangerous form! You opened

uld look at her with eyes free from fever. Ah, Almond Blossom! Jaime's glance, tender and sweet, brought a flush to her cheeks. She fe

ntil we can go back to Palma together. You know me. I understan

ischievously, sure of his cleverness i

ntire family seemed dependent upon his orders, admiring him a

they thought Don Jaime was going to die. Valls had wept, while at the same time he muttered curses. The Little Chaplain adored that great gentleman from Majorca

blo and the sick man

an quick in h

arranged. You are in the right, and everybody knows it-self defense! A few annoyances when you get well, but they won't amount to much

e hands of Febrer, who, on his part, wished to as

room, Valls grasped her by the

the girl you love? They haven't succeeded in changing her, have they? Then give her yo

ly true? His eyes sought those of the girl, which remained lowered,

aid Valls, gently shovin

hreatened by a danger, freed he

u'll kiss each other before v

her father's millions. Margalida was a fine woman. He understood these things; when Jaime should take her away from the island, and accustom h

't shake your head; I know that you want to work, and now more than ever since you are in love and mean to raise a family. You will work. We'll set up a business together; we can decide on

The peasant farmer offered little resistance. Since Don Pablo desired the marriage of Margalida to the se?or and gave his word that it would not bring misfortune to the girl, they might marry. It was

uld be a peasant-farmer. Can Mallorquí would be left to him. He had even received the knife from his father, at the intercession of Don Pablo, and he was counting on the gift of a modern pistol promised by the captain, one of those marvelous weapons which he had admired in Palma in the s

ir he gazed fondly upon the tranquil landscape outspread before him. Upon the summit of the headland rose the Pirate's Tower. How much he had dreamed and suffered th

ood, he breathed in the warm atmosphere of the luminous

g eyes, which still held something of timidity,

had taken out his pipe, filling it with Engl

ed eyes embracing the sky, the hills, the fields, and t

ame as the bird and the insect, on the bosom of Nature. There was a place for all. Why confine oneself by the bonds which others had invented, tyranniz

ting, trying to repel them with frightful struggles. As he listened to Jaime's explanations, as he realized his respect for the past and his submis

that the dead

in its decadence. In other times they commanded like despots; there was no doubt of that. It might be that now they commanded only in some places, i

akes and his worries. Accursed dead! Humanity could never

t us kill

with a certain anxiety, but seeing the serenit

m, for al

Let us crush beneath our feet all useless obstacles, old things that obstruct and complicate our pathway. We live according to the word of Moses, to the w

t figure of Margalida. Then he thought over all his old anxieties and all the new truths

roused him from

e in your present state of mind

g; yet something was lacking for the fulfillment of that union; something which was above the will of man, superior to his power,

ad ended. Now

nd! It is life that comma