HEINRICH VON KLEIST
[Germany]
BORN IN what is now Germany, Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) had such a tumultuous life, career, and death that he might as well have been a character in one of his own stories. For example, Kleist and his beloved, Henriette Vogel, who was terminally ill at the time, committed suicide together. His plays are matched in popularity by his short fiction. “The Earthquake in Chile” (in German, “Das Erdbeben in Chili,” but in its original journal appearance called “Jeronimo und Josefe. Eine Szene aus dem Erdbeben zu Chili, vom Jahr 1647” [“Jeronimo and Josefa: A Scene from the Earthquake in Chile in the Year 1647”]) is based on one or two historical facts and a tidal wave of imagination.
The Earthquake in Chile (1807)
(Translated from the German by Stanley Appelbaum)
IN SANTIAGO, THE capital of the kingdom of Chile,1 at the very moment of the great earthquake of the year 1647, in which many thousands of people perished, a young Spaniard accused of a crime, Jerónimo Rugera by name, was standing by a pillar of the prison in which he had been confined and was about to hang himself. About a year previously, Don Enrique Asterón, one of the richest noblemen in the city, had dismissed him from his house, where he was employed as a tutor, because Jerónimo and Doña Josefa, Asterón’s only daughter had fallen in love. A secret tryst, which had been revealed to the old Don—after he had expressly warned his daughter—by the malicious vigilance of his haughty son, so infuriated him that he placed her in the Carmelite convent of Our Lady of the Mountain in that city. Here, through a lucky accident, Jerónimo had been able to resume the relationship and, one night, had secretly made the convent garden the scene of his highest bliss.
It was Corpus Christi day, and the solemn procession of the nuns, whom the novices followed, was just setting out when the unfortunate Josefa sank down on the cathedral steps in labor pains as the bells began to ring. This incident created an unusual sensation; the young sinner, with no regard to her condition, was immediately thrown in prison, and scarcely had she arisen from childbed when, by order of the archbishop, she was subjected to the most harrowing trial.
This scandal was discussed in the city with so much animosity, and people’s tongues dealt so harshly with the entire convent in which it had taken place, that neither the intercession of the Asterón family nor even the request of the abbess herself—who had grown fond of the young girl because of her otherwise irreproachable conduct—was able to palliate the severity with which the monastic laws threatened her. All that could be done was to have the death by fire, to which she had been condemned, commuted to beheading by decree of the viceroy, much to the indignation of the matrons and maidens of Santiago. In the streets along which the execution procession would pass, windows were rented, the roofs of the houses were leveled, and the pious daughters of the city invited their girl friends to attend the spectacle offered to divine vengeance at their sisterly side.
Jerónimo, who meanwhile had also been clapped in prison, thought he would go out of his mind when he heard about this horrible turn of events. In vain did he ponder ways of rescuing her: wherever the wings of even the most unbridled notions carried him, he came up against bolts and walls; and an attempt to file through the window grating only gained him a still more cramped dungeon when he was discovered. He flung himself down before the image of the Mother of God, and prayed to her with tremendous ardor, believing her to be the only one from whom salvation could still come.
But the dreaded day arrived, and with it, in his heart, a conviction of the total hopelessness of his situation. The bells that accompanied Josefa to her place of execution rang out, and despair took hold of his soul. Life seemed hateful to him, and he decided to kill himself with a rope that had been left to him by chance. He was just standing, as mentioned above, by a wall pillar and was securing the rope that was to snatch him from this world of sorrow to an iron clamp that was inserted into the pillar molding, when suddenly the greater part of the city sank with a roar as if the sky were falling, and buried all living things beneath its ruins.
Jerónimo Rugera was rigid with terror; and, as if all his presence of mind had been wiped out, he now held on to the pillar on which he had intended to die, in order not to fall over. The ground shook beneath his feet, all the walls of the prison were cleft, the whole structure threatened to collapse onto the street, and only the subsidence of the building opposite, occurring at the same time as the prison was slowly falling apart, prevented its complete leveling with the ground by creating an accidental supporting vault.
Trembling, his hair on end, and with knees about to buckle under him, Jerónimo slid across the now tilted floor toward the opening that the collision of the two buildings had torn in the front wall of the prison. Scarcely was he out in the open when a second earth tremor caused the entire street, already badly shaken, to cave in altogether. Unable to think how he could escape from this universal destruction, he hastened away over debris and timbers toward one of the nearest city gates, while death attacked him from all sides.
Here yet another house collapsed and, flinging its ruins far and wide, forced him into a side street; here flames were already shooting out of every gable, flashing in clouds of smoke, driving him in terror into another street; here the Mapocho River, shifting from its bed, rolled toward him, sweeping him with a roar into a third street. Here lay a heap of corpses, here a voice was still groaning beneath the debris, here people were shouting from burning rooftops, here humans and animals were struggling with the waves, here a courageous rescuer was making an effort to help; here stood another man, pale as death, speechlessly extending his trembling hands toward heaven.
When Jerónimo reached the gate and had ascended a hill outside it, he fell down there in a faint. He had probably lain there completely unconscious for a quarter of an hour when he finally awoke again and partly raised himself from the ground, his back turned toward the city. He felt his forehead and chest, not knowing what to make of his condition, and an immense feeling of bliss came over him when a westerly breeze from the sea quickened his recovering senses, and his eyes roved in all directions over the flourishing countryside of Santiago. Only the clusters of agitated people that were everywhere to be seen saddened his heart; he could not comprehend what had brought him and them to this place, and only when he turned around and saw the city in ruins behind him, did he recall the fearful moment he had lived through. He bowed his head so low that his forehead touched the ground, in order to thank God for his miraculous rescue; and, as if the one terrible impression that had been stamped on his mind had driven all earlier ones from it, he wept for happiness because he still enjoyed the charms of life with all its manifold phenomena.
Then, noticing a ring on his finger, he suddenly recalled Josefa as well; and, along with her, his prison, the bells he had heard there, and the moment preceding its collapse. Deep melancholy filled his heart again; he began to regret having prayed, and the Being that rules above the clouds seemed fearsome to him. He mingled with the people who were dashing out of the gates on all sides, busy saving their belongings, and timidly risked asking about Asterón’s daughter and whether her execution had been carried out; but no one was able to give him detailed information. A woman bent over almost to the ground under an enormous load of utensils she was carrying on her shoulders and two children who were clutching her bosom, said as she passed by—speaking as if she had been an eyewitness—that Josefa had been beheaded.
Jerónimo turned aside; and, since, on calculating the time elapsed, he himself had no doubts that the execution had taken place, he sat down in a lonely wood and abandoned himself fully to his grief. He wished that the destructive power of nature would come down upon him again. He could not comprehend why he had escaped death, which his miserable soul now sought, at the time when it was offering itself to him freely on all sides. He resolved firmly not to waver even if the oaks were now uprooted and their tops were to tumble down upon him.
So, after he had wept his fill and, in the midst of his hottest tears, hope had returned to him, he arose and walked back and forth over the area in all directions. He visited every hilltop on which people had gathered; he met them on every path on which the stream of refugees still flowed; his trembling feet bore him wherever a women’s garment fluttered in the breeze, but no garment clad the beloved daughter of Asterón.
The sun was again setting, and with it his hope, when he stepped to the edge of a cliff and obtained a view of a broad valley to which very few people had come. Undecided what he should do, he hurried from one to another of the individual groups, and was about to turn away again when he suddenly saw, by a brook that watered the valley, a young woman busy bathing a child in its stream. And his heart leaped at that sight: full of presentiment, he sprang down over the rocks, shouting “O Holy Mother of God!” and recognized Josefa when she timidly looked about on hearing the sound.
With what rapture they embraced, that unfortunate pair whom a miracle of heaven had saved! On her march to death, Josefa had already been quite close to the place of execution when suddenly the entire procession had been scattered by the resounding collapse of the buildings. Then her first terrified steps brought her to the nearest gate; but she soon recovered her presence of mind and turned back in haste to the convent, where her helpless little boy had been left behind.
She found the entire convent already in flames; the abbess, who in those moments which were to have been Josefa’s last, had promised to care for the infant, was standing in front of the gates calling for help to save him. Josefa, undaunted by the smoke that billowed toward her, dashed into the building, which was already collapsing all around her, and, as if all the angels in heaven were protecting her, carried him out through the entrance again, unharmed. She was just about to sink into the arms of the abbess, who clasped her hands together over her head, when the abbess, together with almost all her nuns, was ignominiously killed by a falling gable of the building.
At this horrible sight Josefa stepped back, trembling; she hastily closed the abbess’ eyes and, filled with terror, ran off to save from destruction her dear boy, whom heaven had restored to her. She had taken only a few more steps when she came across the crushed corpse of the archbishop as well, which had just been pulled out of the debris of the cathedral. The viceroy’s palace had disappeared, the court in which her sentence had been pronounced was in flames, and on the spot where her father’s house had stood there was a boiling lake emitting reddish vapors. Josefa summoned up all her strength in order to go on.
Banishing sorrow from her heart, she courageously proceeded from street to street with her prize and was already near the gate, when she also saw lying in ruins the prison in which Jerónimo had languished. At that sight she tottered and thought she would faint away at a street corner; but at the same moment the collapse of a building behind her, which the tremors had already totally shaken apart, frightened her into renewed vigor and propelled her forward; she kissed the child, squeezed the tears from her eyes and, no longer heeding the horrors that surrounded her, reached the gate.
When she found herself outside, she soon realized that not everyone who had lived in a ruined building had necessarily been crushed beneath it. At the next crossroads she stopped and waited to see whether the one who, after little Felipe, was dearest to her in the world, might still appear. She went on, since no one came and the crowd of people grew, and turned around again and waited again; and, shedding many tears, she stole into a dark, pine-shaded valley to pray for his soul, which she thought had departed; and found him here in the valley, that beloved man, and found bliss, as if it had been the valley of Eden.
She now told Jerónimo all this with great emotion, and, when she had finished, held the boy out for him to kiss. Jerónimo took him, dandled him with immense paternal joy and, when the child started to cry on seeing a strange face, stopped his mouth with endless kisses and caresses.
Meanwhile, a most beautiful night had fallen, full of wonderfully soft fragrance, as silvery-bright and calm as only poets dream of. Everywhere along the brook in the valley people had settled down in the glimmer of the moonlight and were preparing soft beds of moss and leaves to rest upon after such a painful day. And because the poor people were still lamenting—one because he had lost his house, another because he had lost wife and child, and a third because he had lost everything—Jerónimo and Josefa stole into a denser thicket so as not to sadden anyone with the secret rejoicing of their souls. They found a splendid pomegranate tree with wide-spreading branches full of aromatic fruit; and the nightingale sang its song of delight in the top of the tree.
Here Jerónimo sat down by the tree trunk and, with Josefa in his lap and Felipe in hers, they sat, covered by his cloak, and rested. The shadow of the tree, with its scattering of light, moved over them, and the moon was already growing pale again in anticipation of dawn before they fell asleep. For they had an infinite number of things to talk about, the convent garden, and the prisons, and what they had gone through for each other; and they were very moved when they thought of how much misery had to come upon the world for them to be happy!
They decided to go to Concepción, where Josefa had an intimate woman friend, as soon as the earth tremors ended; with a small loan that she hoped to receive from her they would take ship for Spain, where Jerónimo’s maternal relatives lived, and remain happily there to the end of their days. Then, exchanging many kisses, they fell asleep.
When they awoke the sun was already high in the sky, and they noticed several families near them busy preparing a small breakfast by the fire. Jerónimo, too, was just thinking how he could procure food for his own family, when a well-dressed young man with a child in his arms came over to Josefa and discreetly asked her whether she would not briefly nurse the poor infant whose mother was lying injured under the trees there.
Josefa was a little confused when she recognized him as an acquaintance; but when, misinterpreting her confusion, he continued, “It would be just for a few minutes, Doña Josefa, and this child has had no nourishment since the moment that was calamitous for us all,” she replied: “My silence—was for a different reason, Don Fernando; in these terrible times no one refuses to give a share of whatever he possesses.” She took the little stranger, giving her own child to his father, and laid him to her breast.
Don Fernando was very grateful for this kindness and asked whether they did not wish to accompany him to that group of people who were just preparing a small breakfast by the fire. Josefa replied that she would accept that invitation with pleasure, and, since Jerónimo had no objection either, she followed Don Fernando to his family and was received most heartily and tenderly by his two sisters-in-law, whom she knew to be very respectable young ladies.
When Doña Elvira, Don Fernando’s wife, who was lying on the ground with severe foot wounds, saw her hungry child at Josefa’s breast, she drew her down toward herself with great friendliness. Don Pedro, too, Fernando’s father-in-law, who was wounded in the shoulder, nodded to her kindly.
Thoughts of a strange kind stirred in the hearts of Jerónimo and Josefa. If they found themselves treated with so much familiarity and goodness, they did not know in what light to consider the past, the place of execution, the prison and the bell; had they merely dreamed all that? It was as if all minds were reconciled since the fearsome blow that had stunned them. They could go no farther back in their memory than to the catastrophe.
Only Doña Isabel, who had been invited to stay with a lady friend in order to see the previous morning’s spectacle, but had not accepted the invitation, let her dreamy gaze occasionally rest on Josefa; but an account that was made of some ghastly new misfortune jerked her mind back into the present, from which it had barely escaped. It was reported that right after the first main tremor the city had been full of women who went into labor in the sight of all the men; that the monks had run about, crucifixes in their hands, shouting that the end of the world was at hand; that a guard who had requested the evacuation of a church by order of the viceroy received the reply that there was no longer any viceroy of Chile; that at the most fearful moments the viceroy had been compelled to have gallows erected to put a halt to looting; and that an innocent man who had entered a burning house from the back to save himself had been seized by the overhasty owner and immediately hanged.
Doña Elvira, to whose wounds Josefa was busily attending, had at one point—just when these stories were arriving most quickly, each interrupting the other—taken the opportunity to ask her how she had fared on that terrible day. And when, with anguished heart, Josefa recounted some of the main features of her story, she was delighted to see tears well up in that lady’s eyes; Doña Elvira seized her hand and squeezed it and gestured to her to be silent.
Josefa counted herself among the blessed. With a feeling she could not suppress, she began to consider the previous day—despite all the misery it had brought to the world—a benefaction greater than any yet vouchsafed her by heaven. And, indeed, in the midst of these awful moments, in which all the earthly goods of man were destroyed and all of nature was threatened with burial, the human spirit itself seemed to open out like a beautiful flower.
In the fields, as far as the eye could reach, people of all ranks could be seen mingled together, princes and beggars, matrons and peasant women, bureaucrats and day laborers, monks and nuns. They sympathized with one another, assisted one another and cheerfully shared whatever they had been able to save to keep themselves alive, as if the universal calamity had made a single family of all who had escaped it.
Instead of the usual meaningless tea-table chitchat based on mundane events, now they narrated examples of extraordinary feats: people who had normally been of low esteem in society had shown greatness worthy of ancient Romans; there were examples in plenty of fearlessness, of cheerful disregard of danger, of self-denial and godlike self-sacrifice, of the unhesitating casting away of one’s own life as if, like the most worthless possession, it might be recovered the next minute. Yes, since there was no one who had not had some emotional experience on that day, or who had not himself done something magnanimous, the sorrow in every heart was mingled with so much sweet pleasure that Josefa felt it could not be determined whether the sum of universal welfare had not increased on the one hand just as much as it had been diminished on the other.
Jerónimo took Josefa by the arm, after the two of them had silently dwelt on these thoughts for as long as they wished, and led her to and fro beneath the leafy shade of the pomegranate grove with enormous cheerfulness. He told her that, in view of this general frame of mind and this revolution in the entire social order, he was abandoning his decision to take ship for Europe; that he would risk prostrating himself before the viceroy (should he still be alive), who had always favored his cause; and that he had hopes—and here he kissed her—of remaining in Chile with her.
Josefa replied that similar thoughts had occurred to her; that, were her father only still alive, she too no longer doubted she could be reconciled with him; but that, instead of the personal petition to the viceroy, she advised going to Concepción and corresponding with the viceroy from there with the aim of reconciliation; in Concepción they would be close to the harbor in any case, and in the best case—if the affair should take the desired turn—they could easily return to Santiago. After considering the wisdom of these measures briefly, Jerónimo gave them his approval, walked around with her a little more on the forest paths, speaking about the happy times they would have in the future, and returned to their group with her.
Meanwhile it had become afternoon, and the minds of the refugees who were roving about had barely become a little calmer again—now that the tremors were abating—when the news spread that in the Dominican church, the only one spared by the earthquake, a solemn Mass would be read by the prior of the monastery himself, to beseech heaven to prevent further disaster. People were already starting out all over the countryside and hastening to the city in throngs.
In Don Fernando’s party the question was raised whether or not to participate in this solemnity and join the general procession. Doña Isabel, with some anguish, reminded them what a calamity had occurred in the church the day before; she remarked that thanksgiving celebrations like this one would be repeated, and that at a later date, when the danger would be clearly past, they could give vent to their feelings all the more cheerfully and calmly.
Josefa, standing up quickly with a degree of enthusiasm, stated that she had never felt a livelier urge to lay her face in the dust before her Creator than she did right then, when He was thus manifesting His incomprehensible and lofty power. Doña Elvira declared with vivacity that she shared Josefa’s opinion. She insisted upon hearing the Mass, and called upon Don Fernando to lead their group; whereupon everyone stood up, including Doña Isabel.
But when Isabel, her breast heaving violently, lagged back upon observing their little preparations for departure and, on being asked what was wrong with her, replied that she had a strange foreboding of disaster, Doña Elvira calmed her and invited her to stay behind with her and her wounded father, Josefa said: “In that case, Doña Isabel, perhaps you would take my little darling, who, as you see, is with me once again.” “Very gladly,” answered Doña Isabel, and made as if to take hold of him; but when he screamed lamentably over the injustice being done him and would in no way consent to it, Josefa said with a smile that she would keep him, and she kissed him until he was quiet again.
Then Don Fernando, who was very pleased with all the dignity and grace of her demeanor, offered her his arm; Jerónimo, who carried little Felipe, escorted Doña Constancia; the other people who had become members of the group followed; and in this order they proceeded to the city.
They had scarcely gone fifty paces when Doña Isabel, who had meanwhile been engaged in vehement secret conversation with Doña Elvira, was heard to call: “Don Fernando!” and was seen hastening toward the walking group with agitated steps. Don Fernando halted and turned around; he tarried for her without releasing his hold on Josefa and—when she stopped at some distance as if waiting for him to meet her partway—he asked her what she wished.
Then Doña Isabel approached him, although with reluctance as it seemed, and murmured a few words in his ear, too low for Josefa to hear. “Well,” asked Don Fernando, “and what calamity can arise from that?” Doña Isabel continued to whisper in his ear with a haggard expression on her face. Don Fernando’s face grew red with displeasure; he replied: “All right! Please tell Doña Elvira to calm down,” and continued to escort Josefa onward.
When they arrived at the Dominican church, they could already hear the musical splendor of the organ, and a countless number of people were surging inside. Outside the doors the crowd stretched far out over the forecourt of the church, and high up on the walls, in the frames of the paintings, boys were perched, holding their caps in their hands with an expectant gaze. Light poured down from all the chandeliers; the pillars cast mysterious shadows in the twilight that was falling; the great stained-glass rose window at the far back of the church glowed like the very evening sun that illuminated it; and, now that the organ had fallen silent, silence reigned in the whole congregation as if no one had a word to say. Never did a flame of ardor leap up to heaven from a Christian church as on that day from the Dominican church in Santiago; and no human heart added a warmer glow to the whole than Jerónimo’s and Josefa’s!
The celebration began with a sermon spoken from the pulpit by the oldest prebendary, dressed in ceremonial robes. Raising to heaven his trembling hands, which were encircled by his surplice, he began immediately with praise, glorification and thanks that in that part of the world, which was falling into ruins, there were still people able to stammer their thanks to God. He described what had occurred at the beck of the Almighty; the Last Judgment could not be more awesome; and when, pointing to a crack that the church had sustained, he called the previous day’s earthquake merely a foretaste, as it were, a shudder ran through the entire congregation.
Next, in the flow of his sacerdotal eloquence, he turned to the moral depravity of the city; he castigated the city for abominations unknown to Sodom and Gomorrah; and he ascribed it only to the infinite forbearance of God that Santiago had not yet been totally wiped out by the earthquake. But the hearts of our two unfortunates, already deeply wounded by this sermon, were stabbed as by a dagger when the prebendary took this opportunity to mention circumstantially the sin that had been committed in the Carmelites’ convent garden; he termed the indulgence it had received from society “godless” and, in a parenthetical passage filled with curses, consigned the souls of the perpetrators, mentioned by name, to all the princes of hell!
Doña Constancia, tugging Jerónimo’s arm, cried out: “Don Fernando!” But the latter replied, as forcefully as was consonant with his secret tones: “Doña, be silent, don’t move a muscle, and pretend to faint; then we will leave the church.” But before Doña Constancia had taken these ingeniously conceived measures for escape, a voice, loudly interrupting the prebendary’s sermon, was already exclaiming: “Stand well back, citizens of Santiago, here are these godless people!” And when another voice fearfully asked “Where?”—while a wide circle of horror formed around them—“Here!” replied a third and, with vileness prompted by religion, dragged Josefa down by the hair so that she would have reeled to the floor with Don Fernando’s son if the Don had not been holding onto her.
“Are you insane?” shouted the young man, putting his arm around Josefa: “I am Don Fernando Ormez, son of the commandant of the city, whom you all know.” “Don Fernando Ormez?” shouted a cobbler, standing directly in front of him; this cobbler had done work for Josefa and knew her at least as well as he knew her dainty feet. “Who is the father of this child?” he said, turning with insolent defiance toward Asterón’s daughter.
Don Fernando turned pale at that question. Now he looked timidly at Jerónimo, now he glanced quickly over the congregation to see if there was anyone who knew him. Josefa, urged on by the frightening situation, cried out: “This is not my child as you think, Master Pedrillo,” and, looking at Don Fernando in extreme anguish of soul, “this young gentleman is Don Fernando Ormez, son of the commandant of the city, whom you all know.” The cobbler asked: “Citizens, who among you knows this young man?” And several of those standing near repeated: “Who can recognize Jerónimo Rugera? Let him step forth!”
Now, it happened that at the same moment little Juan, frightened by the uproar, strained to leave Josefa’s breast for Don Fernando’s arms. Whereupon, “He is the father!” a voice shouted; a second voice called, “He is Jerónimo Rugera!”; a third, “They are the blasphemous people!”; and “Stone them! Stone them!” cried all the Christians assembled in the temple of Jesus!
Then Jerónimo said, “Stop, you inhuman people! If you seek Jerónimo Rugera, he is here! Release that man, who is innocent!” The furious mob, confused by Jerónimo’s statement, hesitated; several hands loosed their grip on Don Fernando; and when at the same moment a naval officer of high rank rushed over and, pushing through the press of people, asked, “Don Fernando Ormez, what has happened to you?,” Don Fernando, now completely free, answered with truly heroic self-possession: “Just look at these assassins, Don Alonzo! I would have been lost if this estimable man had not pretended to be Jerónimo Rugera to pacify the raging crowd. Be so good as to take him as well as this young lady into custody for the protection of both; and,” seizing Master Pedrillo: “Arrest this scoundrel, who instigated the whole uproar!”
The cobbler shouted: “Don Alonzo Onoreja, I ask you on your conscience, is this girl not Josefa Asterón?” When Don Alonzo, who knew Josefa very well, hesitated to answer, and several bystanders, in whom this kindled new rage, called: “It is she, it is she!” and “Death to her!,” Josefa placed little Felipe, whom Jerónimo had been carrying up to then, in Don Fernando’s arms together with little Juan, and said: “Go, Don Fernando, save your two children and leave us to our fate!”
Don Fernando took the two children and said that he would rather be killed than allow harm to befall his party. After requesting the naval officer’s sword, he offered Josefa his arm and invited the couple behind him to follow him. The crowd, impressed by this procedure, made way for them with a sufficient show of respect, and they actually managed to leave the church, thinking they were safe.
But scarcely had they stepped into the forecourt, which was just as crowded with people, when a man from the frenzied throng that had dogged their steps called: “Citizens, this is Jerónimo Rugera, for I am his own father!” and knocked him to the ground at Doña Constancia’s side with a mighty cudgel blow. “Jesus and Mary!” shouted Doña Constancia, fleeing to her brother-in-law; but there were already cries of “Convent whore!” and from another side came a second cudgel blow that laid her lifeless alongside Jerónimo.
“Monsters!” shouted an unidentified man, “that was Doña Constancia Xares!” “Why did they lie to us?” replied the cobbler; “find the right woman and kill her!” When Don Fernando caught sight of Constancia’s body, he burned with anger; he drew the sword, swung it and aimed a stroke at the fanatical assassin who had caused these abominations, a furious stroke that would have cut him in two had he not eluded it by a twist of his body.
But when she saw that the Don could not overpower the mob crowding in on him, Josefa cried: “Farewell, Don Fernando, you and the children!” and “Here, murder me, you bloodthirsty tigers!” and voluntarily threw herself into their midst, to put an end to the combat. Master Pedrillo felled her with his cudgel. Then, spattered all over with her blood, he cried: “Send her bastard to hell after her!” and, his blood lust still unsated, pushed forward again.
Don Fernando, that godlike hero, now stood with his back leaning on the church; with his left hand he held the children, in his right hand the sword. With every flash of his weapon an opponent fell to the ground; a lion does not defend itself better. Seven ravenous dogs lay dead before him, even the prince of the satanic horde was wounded. But Master Pedrillo could not rest until he had pulled one of the children away from his bosom by the legs and, swinging it through the air in a circle, had shattered it against the corner of a church pillar.
Then all became quiet and everyone withdrew. Don Fernando, seeing little Juan lying before him with his brains oozing out, raised his eyes to heaven in inexpressible sorrow. The naval officer rejoined him, attempted to console him and assured him that he regretted his lack of participation in those unhappy events, although it was excusable because of the circumstances; but Don Fernando said that he was not at all to blame and merely asked him to help carry away the bodies now.
In the darkness of the night that was falling they were all brought to Don Alonzo’s residence; Don Fernando followed them there, shedding many tears on little Felipe’s face. He spent the night at Don Alonzo’s, too, and, misrepresenting the true situation to his wife, hesitated a long time before informing her of the whole extent of the tragedy—for one thing, because she was ill, and another, because he did not know how she would judge his conduct during those events. But shortly afterward, happening to be apprised by a visitor of all that had occurred, that excellent lady quietly wept her fill over her maternal sorrow and, one morning, with the last tears still glistening in her eyes, fell about his neck and kissed him. Then Don Fernando and Doña Elvira adopted the little stranger as their own son; and when Don Fernando compared Felipe to Juan and thought of how he had acquired both, he felt almost as if he should rejoice.
1 Chile was never a kingdom; in 1647, when an earthquake did occur, it was a Spanish colony, part of the viceroyalty of Peru; the viceroy resided in Lima. [Translator’s note]