Free The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist Page B

there among the trees. Josefa was thrown into some embarrassment when she recognized him as an acquaintance; but when, misinterpreting her confusion, he continued: ‘It will only be for a few minutes, Doña Josefa, and this child has not been fed since the time of the disaster which overtook us all,’ she said, ‘I had – a different reason for not replying, Don Fernando; in a terrible time like this no one can refuse to share whatever they may have.’ So saying she took the little stranger, handing her own child to its father, and put it to her breast. Don Fernando was most grateful for this kindness and asked her to come with him to his own party, where breakfast was just being prepared at the fire. Josefa answered that she would accept the invitation with pleasure and, since Jerónimo also made no objection, she accompanied Don Fernando to his family, where his two sisters-in-law, whom she knew to be young ladies of excellent character, received her most warmly and affectionately.
    Doña Elvira, Don Fernando’s wife, was lying on the ground with her feet seriously injured, and when she saw her sickly little boy at Josefa’s breast she drew the latter down towards her and kissed her lovingly. Don Pedro, Elvira’s father, who was wounded in the shoulder, also nodded to her in the most friendly manner.
    In the minds of Jerónimo and Josefa strange thoughts began to stir. When they found themselves treated with somuch familiarity and kindness they did not know what to think of the recent past: of the place of execution, the prison and the bells; or had all these been merely a dream? It seemed that in everyone’s mind, after the terrible blow that had so shaken them all, there was a spirit of reconciliation. Their memories seemed not to reach back beyond the disaster. Only Doña Isabel, who had been invited by a friend to witness yesterday’s spectacle but had declined the invitation, let her gaze rest pensively from time to time upon Josefa; but always her mind, having strayed only a little from the present, was snatched back into it as she heard the report of some new and ghastly misfortune.
    There were stories of how, immediately after the first main tremors, women all over the city had given birth to children in the sight of all the men; of how monks, crucifix in hand, had rushed hither and thither crying out that the end of the world had come; how on the Viceroy’s orders a guard had tried to clear the people out of a church, only to be told that there was no longer any Viceroy of Chile; how in the worst moments of the disaster the Viceroy had been obliged to have gallows erected to deter looters, and how one innocent man, escaping through a burning house by the back door, had been over-hastily arrested by the owner and strung up on the spot.
    Doña Elvira, whose injuries Josefa was busily tending, had taken the opportunity at a moment when these very tales were being most excitedly exchanged to ask her how, on that terrible day, she herself had fared. And when Josefa, her heart filled with anxiety, outlined to her some of the main features of her story, she had the joy of seeing the lady’s eyes fill with tears; Doña Elvira clasped her hand and pressed it, and with a gesture bade her say no more. Josefa felt as if she were in the land of the blessed. She had a feeling, which she could not suppress, that the preceding day, despite all the misery it had brought upon the world, had been a mercy such as heaven had never yet bestowedon her. And indeed, in the midst of this horrifying time in which all the earthly possessions of men were perishing and all nature was in danger of being engulfed, the human spirit itself seemed to unfold like the fairest of flowers. In the fields, as far as the eye could see, men and women of every social station could be seen lying side by side, princes and beggars, ladies and peasant women, government officials and day labourers,