It was in Marseille that I learned of Riego’s fate. I sadly mused that my life too would end in martyrdom, but of a long and obscure sort. Is a man truly alive when he can neither devote himself to a country nor live for a woman? Love and conquest, those two aspects of one single idea, were the law engraved on our sabers, written in letters of gold on the vaults of our palaces, endlessly repeated by the sprays of water shooting heavenward in our marble fountains. But in vain does that law rule my heart: the saber is broken, the palace lies in ruins, the rushing spring has been swallowed by the sterile sands.

Here, then, is my testament.

Don Fernand, you will soon understand why I reined in your fervor with the command to remain faithful to the rey netto.[16] As your brother and friend, I implore you to obey; as your master, I order it. You will go to the king, you will ask him for my grandezas and my holdings, my position and my titles; he may well hesitate, he will put on a few royal scowls, but you will tell him that you are loved by Maria Hérédia, and that Maria can only marry the Duke de Soria. You will then see him all atremble with joy: the Hérédia family’s vast fortune barred him from consummating my destruction, and now he will think it complete. He will immediately give you everything that was mine. You will marry Maria, for I have discovered the secret of your covert love, and I have prepared the old count for that substitution. Maria and I always respected the rules of good conduct, just as we respected our fathers’ wishes. You are as handsome as a child of love, and I as ugly as a Spanish grandee; you are loved, and I the object of an unspoken repugnance. You will soon overcome any resistance my misfortunes might inspire in her noble Spanish soul. Duke de Soria, your predecessor will exact from you not one single regret, will not deprive you of one single maravedi. With Maria’s jewels, you will have no need for my mother’s diamonds in your house; those diamonds will assure me an independent existence, and so you will send them to me along with my old nursemaid, Urraca, the only one of my former domestics I wish to keep, for she alone knows how to make my hot chocolate.

During our short-lived revolution, my constant labors reduced my life to its barest essentials, and I lived solely on my ministerial salary. You will find the revenues of those last two years in your steward’s hands. That sum belongs to me: the wedding of a Duke de Soria will cost a great deal, and so we shall half it. You will not refuse this wedding present from your brother the bandit. In any case, such is my will. The barony of Macumer not being under the thumb of the King of Spain, it remains mine alone, and so I still have a fatherland and a name, should I ever wish to make something of myself.

God be praised, it is over, the house of Soria is saved!

At this moment, when I am nothing more than Baron de Macumer, the French cannons are announcing the Duke d’Angoulême’s entry into Madrid. You will understand, monsieur, why I interrupt my letter here. . . .

October

I had not ten quadruples to my name when I arrived in this place. Is there any smaller man than a man of state who, amid the catastrophes he failed to prevent, proves to have planned ahead for his preservation? For defeated Moors, only a horse and the desert; for disappointed Christians, the monastery and a handful of coins. Nonetheless, my resignation is for the moment nothing more than weariness. I am not so near the monastery as to give up all thoughts of living. Believing they might prove useful, Ozalga provided me with letters of introduction, among them one written to a bookdealer, who is for our com-patriots here what Galignani[17] is for the English. That man has found me eight students, at three francs a lesson. I visit my students every other day; each day, then, I teach four lessons and earn twelve francs, far more than I need. When Urraca comes, I will pass my clients on to some lucky Spanish exile. I have found lodging in a poor widow’s boardinghouse on the rue Hillerin-Bertin.[18] My bedroom faces south and overlooks a small garden. I hear none of the sounds of the city, I see only greenery, and all told I spend no more than one piaster per day; I am quite astonished at the pure, tranquil pleasures I find in this life, like Dionysius the Younger in Corinth.[19] From sunup to ten, I smoke and drink my chocolate, sitting at my window, gazing out at two Spanish plants, a broom plant standing tall amid clumps of jasmine: gold on a white background, an image that will always cheer a descendant of the Moors. At ten I set off for my lessons, returning home at four; I dine, then smoke and read until it comes time to retire. I can go on for some time leading this life, divided between labor and meditation, solitude and society.