LVIII

Never to be forgotten is that last night passed in the home where I spent the years of my childhood and the happy days of my youth. As a bird driven by the hurricane out upon the parched plains tries in vain to direct its flight towards the shade of its native woods, so my buffeted soul goes in the hours of sleep to wander about what was once the home of my parents. Leafy orange-trees, graceful willows, that grew up together with me, how old you must have grown! María’s roses and lilies, who will love them? Odors of the luxuriant garden, I shall never breathe you again! Whispering winds, murmurous river⁠—I shall hear them no more!

Midnight found me watching in my room. Everything was as I had left it. On the table was the package of letters which she had returned to me on her death. I opened it. Those lines written by me when I was so far from thinking they would be my last words to her; those sheets which had been pressed to her bosom, I unfolded and read, one after the other. Looking among María’s letters for the answer to each one I had written her, I put together that dialogue of deathless love, inspired by hope, and broken off by death.

Holding in my hands María’s braids, I lay down upon the sofa on which Emma had heard her last messages. The clock struck two. It was the same that had measured the hours of that sorrowful night before I went away; it was fitting that it should do the same for the last night I passed in the dwelling of my ancestors.

I dreamed that María was my wife. That pure dream had been, and was to continue, the only delight of my soul. She wore a filmy white dress, and an apron as blue as if it had been made of a piece of the sky⁠—the same which I had so often helped her fill with flowers. She carefully pushed open the door of my room, and, trying not to make the least rustling with her garments, kneeled down on the rug at the foot of the sofa. Then she looked at me, half smiling, as if she feared my sleep might be feigned, and touched my forehead with lips as soft as the velvet of a Páez iris. Less fearful now that I was deceiving her, she let me drink in for a moment her warm and fragrant breath. Still seated on the rug, she took my hand and pressed it to her cheek. She leaned her head upon my breast and⁠ ⁠…

A cry⁠—it was mine⁠—broke off that dream. The lamp had burned out. The cold morning wind came in through the window. My numb hands were clasping her hair, the only reality of my dream.