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

she replied that she had an unhappy foreboding, though she could not tell of what. Doña Elvira calmed her and suggested that she should remain behind with her and her sick father. Josefa said: ‘In that case, Doña Isabel, perhaps you will relieve me of this little darling, who, as you can see, has found his way to me again.’ ‘Gladly,’ replied Doña Isabel, and reached out to take the baby; but when the latter wailed piteously at this infringement of his rights and would not consent to it on any terms, Josefa said with a smile that she would keep him and kissed him till he was quiet again. Then Don Fernando, who was charmed by the dignity and grace of her bearing, offered her his arm; Jerónimo, carrying little Felipe, escorted Doña Constanza; the others who had joined the party followed behind, and in this order they set off towards the city.
    They had scarcely walked fifty paces when Doña Isabel, who had been having an animated private discussion with Doña Elvira, was heard to call out: ‘Don Fernando!’ And she ran forward to catch them up, evidently in some agitation. Don Fernando stopped and turned round, waiting for her without letting go of Josefa’s arm; but when she remained standing some distance away as if waiting for him to come and meet her, he asked her what she wanted. At this Doña Isabel approached them, though evidently with reluctance, and murmured some words in his ear in such a way that Josefa could not hear them. ‘Well?’ asked Don Fernando, ‘and what harm can come of that?’ Doña Isabel, looking quite distraught, continued to whisper sharply in his ear. Don Fernando flushed with irritation and replied: ‘That will do! Tell Doña Elvira that there is no need for concern.’ So saying, he continued to escort Josefa on their way.
    When they arrived at the Dominican church the organ greeted them with splendid music, and an immense crowd was surging inside. The throng extended far beyond the portals into the square in front of the church, and inside it small boys had climbed up the walls and were perched against the frames of paintings, with their caps clutched expectantly in their hands. All the candelabra were blazing with light, the pillars cast mysterious shadows in the gathering dusk, the great rose window of stained glass at the far end of the church burned like the very evening sun that gleamed upon it, and now that the organ was silent, stillness reigned in the whole assembly as if everyone there had been struck dumb. Never did such a flame of zeal rise to heaven from a Christian cathedral as on that day from the Dominican church at Santiago, and no hearts nourished it with a warmer fervour than those of Jerónimo and Josefa.
    The service began with a sermon delivered from the pulpit by one of the oldest canons, vested in ceremonial robes. Raising his trembling hands high up to heaven, with the wide folds of his surplice flowing around them, he began at once to give praise and glory and thanks that there should still be, in this part of the world that was crumbling to ruins, men and women able to raise up their faltering voices to God; he described how, at the will of the Almighty, an event had taken place that must scarcely be less terrible than the Last Judgement; and when, nevertheless, pointing to a crack in the wall of the cathedral, he called yesterday’s earthquake a mere foretaste of that day of doom, a shudder ran through the whole congregation. From this point his flood of priestly eloquence bore him on to the subject of the city’s moral depravity: he castigated it for abominations such as Sodom and Gomorrah had not known, and ascribed it only to God’s infinite forbearance that Santiago had not been totally obliterated from the face of the earth.
    But what a piercing dagger-stroke it was to the hearts of our two unhappy friends, rent as they were already by the preacher’s words, when he took