Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 548 pages of information about Mare Nostrum (Our Sea).

Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 548 pages of information about Mare Nostrum (Our Sea).

“Where shall I go if you abandon me?...  If I remain in Spain, I continue under the doctor’s domination.  I cannot return to the empires where my life has been passed; all the roads are closed and in those lands my slavery would be reborn....  Neither can I go to France or to England; I am afraid of my past.  Any one of my former achievements would be enough to make them shoot me:  I deserve nothing less.  Besides, the vengeance of my own people fills me with terror.  I know the methods of the ‘service,’ when they find it necessary to rid themselves of an inconvenient agent who is in the enemy’s territory.  The ‘service’ itself denounces him, voluntarily making a stupid move in order that some documents may go astray, sending a compromising card with a false address in order that it may fall into the hands of the authorities of the country.  What shall I do if you do not aid me?...  Where can I flee?...”

Ulysses decided to reply, moved to pity by her desperation.  The world was large.  She could go and live in the republics of America.

She did not accept the advice.  She had had the same thought, but the uncertain future made her afraid.

“I am poor:  I have scarcely enough to pay my traveling expenses....  The ‘service’ recompenses well at the start.  Afterwards when it has us surely in its clutches because of our past, it gives us only what is necessary in order to live with a certain freedom.  What can I ever do in those lands?...  Must I pass the rest of my existence selling myself for bread?...  I will not do it.  I would rather die first!”

This desperate affirmation of her poverty made Ferragut smile sarcastically.  He looked at the necklace of pearls everlastingly reposing on the admirable cushion of her bosom, the great emeralds in her ears, the diamonds that were sparkling coldly on her hands.  She guessed his thoughts and the idea of selling these jewels gave her even greater apprehension than the terrors that the future involved.

“You do not know what all this represents to me,” she added.  “It is my uniform, my coat-of-arms, the safe-conduct that enables me to sustain myself in the world of my youth.  The women who pass alone through this world need jewels in order to free their pathway of obstructions.  The managers of a hotel become human and smile before their brilliancy.  She who possesses them does not arouse suspicion however late she may be in paying the weekly account....  The employees at the frontier become exceedingly gallant:  there is no passport more powerful.  The haughty ladies become more cordial before their sparkle, at the tea hour in the halls where one knows nobody....  What I have suffered in order to acquire them!...  I would be reduced to hunger before I would sell them.  With them, I am somebody.  A person may not have a coin in her pocket and yet, with these glittering vouchers, may enter where the richest assemble, living as one of them.”

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Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.