Part 19

Geraldo was shown into a small front room. Although it was not very spacious and was furnished with the greatest simplicity, this little room was so cool, shady, and fragrant, so full of flowers from the entrance door, which as well as the windows was entirely entwined with branches and garlands of flowers, that it looked more like an arbor or a grotto of greenery than a room at all. Almost all its light came from the back through a wide door opening onto an open veranda that faced the sea. From there the view, threading through coconut trunks that poured shade and coolness around the house, slid over the surface of the ocean and went to lose itself in the depths of a limpid sky full of splendors.

Miguel and Isaura, after having greeted the visitor and exchanged with him a few words of mere civility, presuming that they would wish to be alone, withdrew discreetly into the interior of the house.

"Truly, Alvaro," said the doctor, smiling, "this is a delightful dwelling, and it is no wonder you like to spend a great part of your time here. It really seems like the mysterious grotto of a fairy. It is a pity that a cursed necromancer suddenly broke the enchantment of your fairy, transforming her into a simple slave!"

"Ah! do not jest, my doctor; that extraordinary scene produced in my spirit the strangest and most painful impression; but, frankly, I confess to you, it changed only for moments the nature of my feelings toward that woman."

"What are you telling me?... to such a point will your eccentricity go?!"

"What do you expect? nature made me this way. In the first moments shame and even a kind of rage blinded me; I almost saw with pleasure the cruel ordeal she went through. What a sad and poignant disappointment! I saw in a moment crumble and dissolve into mud the brilliant castle that my imagination with so much love had erected!... a slave to deceive me for so long, and at last to mock me, exposing me before society to the most humiliating derision! imagine how confused and ashamed I would be before those illustrious ladies, with whom I had made a slave stand on equal footing in the middle of a ball, before the most distinguished and brilliant society!..."

"And what is more," added Geraldo, "a slave who outshone them all by her rare beauty and brilliant talents. Not even on purpose could you have prepared for them a more tremendous humiliation. It is a crime they will never forgive you, even though they know that you too were deceived."

"Well then, Geraldo; I, who on that occasion, disgraced and confused, did not know where to hide my face, today laugh and applaud myself for having given occasion to such an adventure. It seems that God had purposely prepared that interesting scene, to show in a throbbing way how vain and ridiculous all distinction is that comes from birth and wealth, and to humble to the dust of the earth the pride and fatuity of the great, and to exalt and ennoble the humble of birth, showing that a slave can be worth more than a duchess.

That first and unpleasant impression lasted little. Very soon compassion, curiosity, the interest that misfortune inspires in a person of that order, and perhaps also the love that not even with that resounding scandal had been able to extinguish itself in my heart, made me forget everything, and I resolved to protect frankly and at all costs the beautiful captive. As soon as I managed to get Isaura to regain her senses, and I saw her out of danger, I ran to the house of the chief of police, and exposing the case to him, thanks to the relations of friendship that I have with him, I obtained permission for Isaura and her father—be aware that he really is her father—to be able to retire freely to their house, with me standing as guarantor that they would not disappear; and so it was done, despite the roars of Martinho, who insisted on not wanting to let go of the prey. However, the next morning, the same chief, weighing the gravity and importance of the matter, wanted her to be brought into his presence to interrogate her and verify the identity of the person. I took charge of conducting her. Oh! if you had seen her then!... through the tears that her cruel situation drew from her, human dignity shone through in all its brilliance. There was nothing in her that denounced the abjection of the slave, or that did not reveal the candor and nobility of her soul. She was the angel of sorrow exiled from heaven and dragged before human tribunals. I even came to doubt the cruel reality. The chief of police, possessed of respect and admiration before such a gentle and noble figure, treated her with all amiability, and questioned her with gentleness and politeness. Covered with blush and shame she confessed everything with the ingenuousness of a pure soul. She had fled in the company of her father, to escape the love of a dissolute, lustful, and cruel master, who by dint of violence and torments tried to force her to satisfy his brutal desires. But Isaura, whom a privileged nature seconded by the finest and most careful education had inspired from infancy with the feeling of dignity and modesty, repelled with heroic energy all the seductions and threats of her unworthy master. Finally, threatened with the most debasing and barbarous treatments, which were already beginning to translate into acts, she took the extreme course of fleeing, the only one left to her.

"The motive for the flight, Alvaro, if true, is the most honorable possible for her, and makes her a heroine; but ... after all, she is still a runaway slave."

"And for that very reason more worthy of interest and compassion. Isaura has told me her whole life, and as I believe, she can allege, and perhaps prove, a right to freedom. Her old mistress, mother of the current master, who raised her with every indulgence, and to whom she owes the excellent education she has, had declared several times before witnesses that upon her death she would leave her free; the sudden and unexpected death of this lady, who died without a will, is the cause of Isaura still finding herself in the clutches of the most dissolute and infamous of masters.

"And now what do you intend to do?..."

"I intend to petition that Isaura be maintained in freedom, and that a curator be appointed for her in order to handle her right."

"And where do you hope to find proofs or documents to prove the allegations you make?"

"I do not know, Geraldo; I wished to consult you, and I was waiting for you with impatience precisely for that purpose. I want you with your legal knowledge to enlighten and inspire me in this matter. I have already taken up the first and most obvious expedient that offered itself to me, and on the very day after the ball I wrote to Isaura's master with the most measured and persuasive words I could use, inviting him to open a price for her freedom. It was worse; the lustful and jealous Rajah became enraged and sent me in reply this insolent letter, which I have just received, in which he calls me a seducer and harborer of other people's slaves, and protests that he will take legal means to have the slave delivered to him.

"He is quite foolish and discourteous, that little sultan," said Geraldo after having rapidly gone through the letter that Alvaro presented to him; "but the certain thing is that, setting aside the insolence..."

"For which he must give me complete and solemn satisfaction, I protest."

"Setting aside the insolence, if you have nothing of value to present in favor of the freedom of your protégée, he has the incontestable right to reclaim and seize his slave wherever she may be.

"Infamous and cruel right is that, my dear Geraldo. It is already a mockery to give the name of right to a barbarous institution, against which civilization, morality, and religion loudly protest. But for society to tolerate that a tyrannical and brutal master, led by infamous and shameful motives, has the right to torture a fragile and innocent creature, only because she had the misfortune to be born a slave, is the height of wickedness and abomination.

"It is not so much so, my dear Alvaro; those excesses and abuses must be curbed; but how can justice or public power pry into the interior of the domestic hearth, and meddle in the governance of a citizen's house? what abominable and hideous mysteries, to which slavery gives rise, do not take place on those mills and plantations, without—I will not say justice, but not even the neighbors—having knowledge of them?... As long as there is slavery, those examples will occur. A bad institution produces an infinity of abuses, which can only be extinguished by cutting out the evil at the root.

"It is unfortunately so; but if society inhumanely abandons those victims to the fury of their executioners, there are still in the world generous souls who take it upon themselves to protect them or avenge them. As for me, I protest, Geraldo, as long as a heart beats in my breast, I shall dispute Isaura from slavery with all my strength, and I hope that God will favor me in so just and holy a cause.

"From what I see, my Alvaro, you are not acting this way only out of a spirit of philanthropy, and you still love that slave very much.

"You have said it, Geraldo; I love her very much, and I shall love her always; nor do I make any mystery of it. And is it a strange or shameful thing to love a slave? The patriarch Abraham loved his slave Hagar, and for her abandoned Sarah, his wife. The humility of her condition cannot strip Isaura of the candid and brilliant halo with which I saw her and still today see her surrounded. Beauty and innocence are stars that shine most when plunged into the deep darkness of misfortune.

"Your philosophy is beautiful, and worthy of your noble heart; but what do you expect? civil laws, social conventions, are works of man, imperfect, unjust, and often cruel. The angel suffers and groans under the yoke of slavery, and the demon rises to the summit of fortune and power.

"And so then," reflected Alvaro with discouragement, "in those disastrous laws you find no means of disputing that innocent victim from the executioner?"

--None, Alvaro, as long as you can produce no proof in favor of the right of your protégée. The law sees in the slave only property, and almost entirely disregards in him the human nature. The master has an absolute right of property over the slave, and can only lose it by manumitting him or freeing him in any manner, or by litigation proving his freedom, but not because of cruelties he may commit or any other similar motive.

--Miserable and stupid paperwork, these laws of yours. To ensnare good faith, protect fraud, deceive ignorance, defraud the poor and favor the usury and rapacity of the rich, they are fertile in resources and stratagems of every kind. But when one has in view a humanitarian end, when it is a matter of protecting helpless innocence against tyranny, of sheltering misfortune against an unjust persecution, then either they are mute, or they are cruel.

But despite them I shall employ every effort within my reach to free the unhappy woman from the affronting yoke that oppresses her. For such an enterprise I am encouraged not only by an impulse of generosity, but also by the purest and most ardent love, without shame I confess it.

Alvaro's friend bristled at this deliberation so frankly and enthusiastically proclaimed with such exalted language, which seemed to him a deplorable aberration of the imagination.

--I never thought,--he replied gravely,--that the exaltation of this eccentric and ill-fated love of yours would reach such a point. That out of an impulse of humanity you seek to protect a helpless slave, nothing is more worthy and more natural. The rest is nothing but the delirium of an exalted and romantic imagination. Would it be graceful and worthy of the position you occupy in society, for you to let yourself be dominated by a violent passion for a slave?...

--Slave!--exclaimed Alvaro, more and more exalted,--that is nothing but an empty name, which expresses nothing, or expresses a lie. Purity of an angel, beauty of a fairy, that is the reality! Can a man or the whole of society thwart the designs of the creator, and transform into a vile slave the angel that fell upon the earth from the hands of God?...