For all her piety, Dona Maria Antònia shared a certain pagan nature with the Senyor; one could see that they were cousins. I point this out, however, admitting that she knew how to overcome her instincts. The Senyor claimed that the legend of her coat of arms, instead of alluding to blood and battles, could have been the following phrase, which he attributed to her: ‘I will listen to no voice that disturbs me.’
She was endowed with what is called sound common sense and was convinced, like the ancients, that man is the measure of the Universe.
Columnes sereníssimes t’aixequen una arcada
que retalla la glòria, però enmarca el fracàs.*
‘Would you like to be a queen?’ the Senyor once asked her.
She needed no time to consider her reply.
‘I wouldn’t have minded being the Queen of Mallorca. A small country would be fine, but not a nation; I wouldn’t dream of it.’
For years my benefactor had been asking people whether they would like to be kings or queens, and almost all the replies were negative.
‘It’s strange,’ he told me, ‘that so many people request positions of twenty duros a month and yet so few would like to be kings. Naturally, that only proves that people don’t know themselves well enough. I believe the Senyora’s reply may be the best. It would be amusing to see the court she would set up here at home. She’d name Madò Francina Director of National Security, because she’s energetic and knows everything that happens in the village. She herself would be in charge of the relations with the Church, like Charles I. And maybe if she were religious enough she’d end up at odds with the clergy. Not too much, though. She wouldn’t attack Rome nor associate with an ungrateful man like the Duke of Bourbon. She’d know how to use subtler methods.’
There was in fact something incorruptible in Dona Maria Antònia’s character. When Don Andreu, the village priest, died and Don Francesc arrived, young and ready to make all sorts of innovations, I was surprised to see how little heed she paid to his advice and how she did not seem to take his words into consideration. I have already said that certain dangerous modern trends had begun to reach us from overseas, particularly from the Americas. Priests who go to cafés or participate in races are not really committing criminal acts, provided they do not attribute undue importance to such vanities. But adapting to fashion in order to draw people to religion is something I find abominable, because it could easily happen that instead of the priest leading the sheep, the sheep could mislead him. Don Francesc was perfectly willing to make concessions, and had no objections whatsoever to founding a sort of clubhouse where people could gather and read magazines and newspapers from Madrid which were hardly proper for the simple life among these mountains. He always liked to do things his way and I remember how stupefied I was when one Sunday he stood by the altar and said to his parishioners: ‘Monsignor has sent a pastoral letter for me to read from the pulpit, but it’s very long, so I’ll explain what it says.’
And he made a brief summary—quite a good one, I must admit—instead of following orders and reading the text. Ever since he came to the village, he spoke of a ‘devout family’ instead of a ‘noble family’ at the celebration of the Patron Saint of Bearn.
‘I see, Don Francesc,’ said the Senyor, smiling, ‘that you have done away with our nobility.’
He apologized with arguments of a democratic nature.
‘These matters of ancestry,’ Don Toni told him, ‘are old and on their way out. In the twentieth century nobody will pay attention to them anymore. Socialism will take their place.’
Don Francesc, though wishing—up to a point—that he was right, was taken a back. Dona Maria Antònia smiled. She spoke to me softly: ‘Joan, the Senyor seems quite sure about what will happen in the twentieth century.’
‘Bear in mind, Don Toni,’ the priest continued, backing down slightly, ‘that if socialist doctrines took over, it would be utter chaos. I chose not to say “noble family” precisely in order to avoid…’
‘You did the right thing, Father. We will be the same, whether we are called noble or merely devout.’
The priest did not notice the ‘merely’ that seemed to me so very embarrassing. Dona Maria Antònia looked up.
‘You’re absolutely right, Tonet. Either way, we’ll be just the way we are.’ There was a tender look in her light eyes.
‘Let us pray to God that He may absolve us all,’ she added a little incoherently, unwittingly quoting the last verse of the Ballade des Pendus.
The village priest was convinced that her words had been dictated by humility, because despite his modern ideas he had not invented gunpowder. The Senyors were not proud, but neither were they humble. They valued themselves according to what they were and represented. They must have considered it foolish to have their nobility questioned. The estate of Bearn had always set standards for the village of Bearn. There has probably never been a single fifteen-year-old girl who has not dreamed of marrying a prince—a Bearn, in other words—nor any farmboy who was not delighted to be granted a smile by the lady of the house. It was through that house that the civilized world, the world of refinement and fantasy, blinding like a hall full of mirrors, could reach these far lands, serving as an incentive for progress and yet also fostering restlessness and a yearning to break loose from that small world. Sometimes the Senyor’s influence was frankly demoralizing. His somewhat whimsical teachings made people imagine all kinds of nonsense. He had made up his mind that Margalideta would learn to play the piano. He had an English teacher sent to a poor boy who was born to live and die among these mountains, merely because he was blond. All of this was absolutely unheard of, and in the end he was accused of sorcery.
We Catholics do not believe in sorcery, but the accusation could never have had the same effect without the magical prestige of the five letters in the name Bearn. Honest maidens who never would have given in to young men their age, gave in to him, who was neither young or handsome. When I think of those poor souls (and of one in particular, whom I have never met), I can still feel my blood boil; I have often felt the impulse to avenge them, remembering Seneca’s pagan statement according to which mercy is a weakness of the heart. One day when I judged it my duty to confess these thoughts to the Senyor—I was very young at the time, not even eighteen—he stared at me with a half ironic, half curious expression. His eyes were small and piercing. He took my hands in his, and as I held forth, proffering insolent remarks mixed with insults and becoming increasingly excited in the face of his silence, he squeezed them hard, as if he wished to test my physical endurance. Then he touched my arms and shoulders in admiration, seemingly proud of my constitution. When I finally stopped, terrified by what I had said, he recommended that I read a poem by Heredia, Le serrement de mains, which had just been published in a French magazine. He left me alone. When I reached the triplet in which the Cid challenges Don Diego (according to tradition, he even struck him) the magazine dropped out of my hands and I burst into tears.
It is however true that he was a father to many a humble family, that he knew their many needs and tried to help them. I have already mentioned that he sometimes incurred debts in order to help the people in the village who did not know where to place their savings, and how these debts damaged the soundness of his fortune. In the discussions between villagers, since the peasants mistrusted lawyers and preferred to turn to the counsel of the Senyor, he always ruled with a strict sense of justice, and more than once, if the culprit was very poor, he gave him money and made him promise to keep it a secret. However, word always got out, and although that enhanced his respectability, it also made him seem rather gullible and caused certain people lacking in scruples to conspire and fake a litigation only to get money out of him. Dona Maria Antònia was smarter in this respect and let them get only sweet words out of her. She was also a master at the art of not understanding what she did not wish to hear, and developed a most convenient deafness that allowed misinterpretations and saved her from many a conflict. I do not wish to imply that she was pretending, because at times she really was hard of hearing. Yet on other occasions, her hearing was excellent. A specialist from Barcelona had diagnosed a case of intermittent deafness.