Category: Historical Novels

La Gaviota: A Spanish novel

In November, in the year 1836, the steamer “Royal Sovereign” took her departure from the foggy coast of Falmouth, lashing the waves with her paddle-wheels, and spreading her sails, gray and wet, in the mist still grayer and more wet than they.

Chapters

1. CHAPTER I.

In November, in the year 1836, the steamer “Royal Sovereign” took her departure from the foggy coast of Falmouth, lashing the waves with her paddle-wheels, and spreading her sai...

2. CHAPTER II.

One morning in October, in the year 1838, a man on foot descended a little hill in the county of Niebla, and advanced towards the coast. His impatience to arrive at a little por...

3. CHAPTER III.

Brother Gabriel, without ever having heard the name of Broussais pronounced, pleaded for refreshments and emollients, because, in his opinion, Stein had a brain fever, the blood...

4. CHAPTER IV.

Stein took a walk one day in front of the convent. A magnificent panorama presented itself to his sight: at the right, the limitless sea; at the left, solitude without end. Betw...

5. CHAPTER V.

Before we continue our recital, it is well, we believe, to make the acquaintance of this new personage. Don Modesto Guerrero was the son of an honorable farmer, who, like many o...

6. CHAPTER VI.

When Stein returned to the convent, all the family were assembled in the court. Momo and Manuel arrived at the same time, each from his direction. The last had been going his ro...

7. CHAPTER VII.

The following day Maria set off for the house of the invalid, in company with Stein and Momo, foot-equerry to his grandmother, who travelled mounted on the philosophic Golondrin...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

A month after the scenes we have described, Marisalada was more sensible, and did not show the least desire to return to her father’s. Stein was completely re-established; his g...

9. CHAPTER IX.

Marisalada was already convalescent, as if nature had desired to recompense the excellent treatment of Stein, and the charitable care of the good Maria. She was decently dressed...

10. CHAPTER X.

Stein had inhabited his peaceful retreat during three years. He had adopted the customs of the country in which he had found himself; he lived, day after day, or, in other terms...

11. CHAPTER XI.

Convinced that she could neither be aided nor supported by the influential man who would not join her in these matrimonial projects, Maria determined to act by herself, with the...

12. CHAPTER XII.

The gratitude which the fisherman felt for him who had saved Marisalada, was complete when he saw him so attached to his daughter: an impassioned friendship which could only be...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

The marriage of Stein and the Gaviota was celebrated in the church of Villamar. The fisherman, instead of a red flannel shirt, wore a white shirt, irreproachably starched, and a...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Three years had passed. Stein, who could sojourn among these few men who required so little, believed himself happy. He loved his wife with tenderness, and was attached more eve...

15. CHAPTER XV.

“That is what her father has always said,” continued Maria; “and with this response he would have let her die, if it had not been for us. Ah! Don Frederico, you are so well here...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

July was an extremely hot month in Seville. People assembled in the delicious courts, or near the magnificent marble fountains, and the _jets-d’eau_ fell behind the innumerable...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

Rita was niece to the marchioness and the general. An orphan since her birth, she had been brought up by her brother, who loved her with tenderness; and by her nurse, who adored...

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

The duke had procured for Stein and his wife a boarding-house kept by a poor but honest family. The good German had found in the drawer of a bureau, which they had given him the...

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Marisalada devoted all her time to perfecting herself in the art which promised her a brilliant future, a career of celebrity, and a position which, in flattering her vanity, wo...

20. CHAPTER XX.

After the complete re-establishment of the health of the countess’s son, came the evening fixed upon to receive Maria. Some of the persons invited had already assembled, when Ra...

21. CHAPTER XXI.

Marisalada, instructed in her toilet by her hostess, presented herself accoutred in a manner the most ridiculous. She wore a dress of silk, handkerchief pattern, too short, and...

22. CHAPTER XXII.

It was at the close of summer, in the month of September. The weather was still warm, but the evenings were already long and cool. Nine o’clock had struck, and there remained at...

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

The arrival in Madrid of the celebrated singer Tenorini raised the glory of Maria to its height, not only because of the admiration this colossal lyric displayed, but because of...

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

The news spread quickly through the village that the daughter of the fisherman had been assassinated. Thus this egotist, this rustic, this stupid Momo, thanks to his evil spirit...

25. CHAPTER XXV.

It was thus that, when the poor fisherman presented to his humble and pious friends the sublime spectacle of the death of a believer, his daughter rendered the public of Madrid...

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

“No, my dear, I cannot; I would stifle if I did not laugh. I am no longer jealous, my Mariquita, no more than the sultan in his seraglio. Poor woman! if you had not me to love y...

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

“Since you have ceased to love me so much,” replied the lovely creature, seating himself on his father’s knees. “Do you know, papa, I am very wise. I study well with Don Frederi...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

The state of the Gaviota, already ill before she went to take supper with Pepe Vera, was made sensibly worse, and on the morrow she was seized with a violent fever.

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

Six months after, the Countess de Algar was in her saloon with the marchioness, her mother, occupied in putting a ribbon on her son’s straw hat, when General Santa-Maria entered.

30. ill. The attack was so violent that I found him almost at his last

extremity; always calm, always filled with serene goodness, he thanked me for my visit, and said to me that he was happy in seeing, before he died, a loved face. He asked me for...

31. CHAPTER XXX.

If the reader, before quitting us perhaps forever, will follow us, we will revisit Villamar, after the lapse of four years, that is to say in the summer of 1848, this pretty and...