The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (40 page)

After some time I looked up and saw I was surrounded by Arabs. I knew their language, which is generally known in Ceuta. I told them who I was and assured them that if they brought me back to my father they would receive from him a decent ransom. The word ‘ransom' has something about it which never fails to flatter Arab ears. The nomads all around me looked at their chief ingratiatingly and seemed to expect a reply from him which would turn out to their financial benefit. The sheikh stroked his beard pensively and gravely for a long while and then said, ‘Listen, young Nazarene, we know your father, who is a God-fearing man. We have also heard of you. It is said that you are as kind as your father but that Allah has deprived you of part of your reason. Let that not trouble you. God is great. He bestows intelligence and takes it away at his will. Imbeciles are a living proof of the power of God and the nullity of human wisdom. Imbeciles, not knowing good and evil, are also symbols of our original state of innocence. They possess, as it were, the first degree of holiness. We give imbeciles the name “marabout”, which we also give
to saints. This is fundamental to our religion, and so we would consider that we had sinned if we took the least ransom for you. We shall accompany you back to the nearest Spanish outpost and we will then withdraw.'

I confess to you that the Arab sheikh's words plunged me into the deepest consternation. ‘Well,' I thought to myself, ‘by following Locke and Newton I might be said to have reached the very frontiers of human intelligence. By applying to the principles of the former the calculus of the latter, I might be said to have taken several sure steps into the abyss of metaphysics. And where does all this lead me? To be classed as simple-minded! To be thought of as an imbecile who doesn't truly belong to the human race! A curse on differential calculus and all those integrations on which I depended for my reputation!'

With these words I took my tablets and smashed them into small pieces. I then continued my lamentations as follows: ‘Oh my father, how right you were to have me learn the saraband and every other sort of impertinence since invented!' Then, without consciously wishing to, I started practising several steps of the saraband, as my father used to when he remembered his misfortunes.

The Arabs, who had seen me writing with great application on my tablets then smash them, and start to dance, exclaimed with an air of compassion, ‘Praise be to Allah! Allah is kind! Al-Hamdu lillahi! Allah karim!' After that, they then took me gently by the arm and led me to the nearest Spanish outpost.

One of them ordered me to give him my sword. By way of reply, I leapt at him, hoping to run him through. But at that moment he put his musket down as if in surrender, and offered to make a deal with me if I gave myself up and agreed to make certain undertakings. I replied that I would not give myself up nor undertake anything.

At that moment the cries of my fellow travellers shouting for me were heard. The person who seemed to be the chief of the band said to me, ‘Señor caballero, people are searching for you. We have no time to lose. In five days you must leave the camp and set off in a westerly direction. You will then meet persons who have an important secret to communicate to you. The groaning you heard was only a trick to lead you to us. Don't forget to come to the rendezvous at the appointed time.'

With these words he nodded to me, gave a whistle and disappeared with his companions. I went back to the caravan but didn't think it necessary to speak of my meeting. We soon reached our resting-place. After the meal we asked Velásquez to continue his story, which he did as follows:

My father noticed my discouragement and urged me to tell him what had caused it. For a long time I refused, but eventually I told him what the Arab sheikh had said, and confessed how hurtful I had found it to be taken for someone who had lost his reason.

My father's head dropped on to his chest and his eyes filled with tears. After a long silence he looked at me with compassion and said:

‘Oh my son, you are taken for a madman and I really was mad for three years. But your absent-mindedness and my love for Blanca are not the first causes of our sorrows. Our troubles have deeper roots.

‘Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of
themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their own profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up.

‘In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him and relegate him to a rock in Africa.

‘Oh my son, we both belong to this proscribed race, but we also have our compensations, which I must tell you about. I have tried everything to make you a dandy and a fool. But heaven has not crowned my efforts, for you are a sensitive soul with an enlightened mind. So I must tell you that we too have our pleasures. They are private and solitary but are sweet and pure.

‘What inner satisfaction I felt when I learnt that Don Isaac Newton approved of one of my anonymous pamphlets and wanted to know who the author was! I didn't make myself known but was spurred on to renewed efforts, which enriched my mind with a host of new thoughts. It was so full of these that it could not keep them in. So I went out to disclose them to the rocks of Ceuta. I entrusted them to the whole realm of nature. I offered them up as a tribute to my Creator. With these exalted sentiments the memories of my sufferings mingled sighs and tears which also had their pleasures, and which reminded me that there were ills about me which I could palliate. In my mind I became one with the purposes of providence, the work of creation, the progress of the human spirit. My mind, my person, my fate did not take on for me individual form but became part of a great unity.

‘So passed the age of my youthful passion. Then I found myself again. The unflagging ministrations of your mother told me a hundred times a day that I myself was the sole object of her love. My soul, once turned in upon itself, now opened up to the feeling of gratitude and to the effusions of intimacy. Through the little events of your
childhood and that of your sister I have become accustomed to these emotions.

‘Now your mother lives on only in my heart, and my mind, weakened by age, can no longer add to the riches of the human spirit. But I see this treasure increasing daily and it gives me pleasure to plot its growth. The interest I take in it helps me forget my infirmity. Boredom has not yet touched my life.

‘So you see, my son, that we too have our pleasures, and if you had become a fop, as I had always wanted, you would not have escaped life's woes. When Alvarez was here he spoke about my brother in a way which aroused more pity in me than envy.

‘The duke, he said, knows the court well and has no difficulty in uncovering its intrigues, but when he tries himself to fulfil his ambition to rise in it he soon repents of having aspired to such heights. He has been ambassador and it is said that he represented the king with all possible dignity, but the first time a delicate situation arose he had to be recalled. You know that he had been given a ministry. He filled the vacant posts as did any other, but whatever care his secretaries took to spare him work, his own lack of application was still greater and he was forced to resign his portfolio. Now he has no power, but he has the knack of creating small opportunities which bring him close to the monarch and make him seem to be in favour. For the rest, boredom is destroying him. He has done everything to escape it, but he always falls back into the grim clutches of the monster which is crushing him. He escapes it by being ceaselessly preoccupied with himself and his person, but this excessive egoism has made him so sensitive to the least set-back that life has become a torment for him. And now frequent illnesses have warned him that this self, this unique object of all his attentions, may too slip away from him one day, and this thought poisons all of his pleasures.

‘This is more or less what Alvarez said. From it I reached the conclusion that I have perhaps been happier in my obscurity than my brother has been in the midst of his fortunes and the splendour of which he deprived me. As you know, my dear son, the inhabitants of Ceuta have thought you a bit mad. That is because of their own simple-mindedness. One day, if you join polite society, you will certainly experience injustice, against which you must be forearmed.
The best defence would no doubt be to match insult with insult, calumny with calumny, to fight injustice with injustice, but this way of dealing with iniquity is not within the scope of people like us. So when you are afflicted by it, withdraw and turn in upon yourself. Feed off the substance of your own soul and you will know happiness.'

My father's words made a profound impression on me. My courage returned and I set to work again on my system. At that time, too, I began to become really absent-minded. It was seldom that I heard what was said to me except for the last few words, which imprinted themselves on my memory. I replied an hour or two after being spoken to. Sometimes I went for a walk not knowing where I was going. It was then said that I needed a guide like the blind. This distracted state of mind lasted, however, only as long as it took me to bring order to my system. As I devoted less attention to it I became less absent-minded. Today I am more or less cured.