“This condition was easily complied with, for Guzman felt no decided
inclination for seeing his sister, whose presence might have reminded
him of feelings alienated, and duties forgot. Besides, he was a man of
fixed habits; and the presence of the most interesting being on earth,
that threatened the slightest interruption or suspension of those
habits, would have been to him insupportable.
“Thus we are all indurated by age and habit,--and feel ultimately, that
the dearest connexions of nature or passion may be sacrificed to those
petty indulgences which the presence or influence of a stranger may
disturb. So Guzman compromised between his conscience and his feelings.
He determined, in spite of all the priests in Seville, to invite his
sister and her family to Spain, and to leave the mass of his immense
fortune to them; (and to that effect he wrote, and wrote repeatedly and
explicitly). But, on the other hand, he promised and swore to his
spiritual counsellors, that he never would see one individual of the
family; and that, though his sister might inherit his fortune, she
never--never should see his face. The priests were satisfied, or
appeared to be so, with this declaration; and Guzman, having propitiated
them with ample offerings to the shrines of various saints, to each of
whom his recovery was exclusively attributed, sat down to calculate the
probable expence of his sister’s return to Spain, and the necessity of
providing for her family, whom he had, as it were, rooted from their
native bed; and therefore felt bound, in all honesty, to make them
flourish in the soil into which he had transplanted them.
“Within the year, his sister, her husband, and four children, returned
to Spain. Her name was Ines, her husband’s was Walberg. He was an
industrious man, and an excellent musician. His talents had obtained for
him the place of _Maestro di Capella_ to the Duke of Saxony; and his
children were educated (according to his means) to supply his place when
vacated by death or accident, or to employ themselves as musical
teachers in the courts of German princes. He and his wife had lived with
the utmost frugality, and looked to their children for the means of
increasing, by the exercise of their talents, that subsistence which it
was their daily labour to provide.
“The eldest son, who was called Everhard, inherited his father’s musical
talents. The daughters, Julia and Ines, were musical also, and very
skilful in embroidery. The youngest child, Maurice, was by turns the
delight and the torment of the family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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