I either left without touching or ate little without hunger, just to give me something to do. I went to bed early, and in the darkness, I counted the seconds as they passed. And so my days were spent. Sometimes I saw visions: the monstrous owls and billy goats of Francisco’s pictures pecked at me and tore me open with their horns. The nights left me exhausted and I didn’t get up until after midday. On other days I had the horse saddled up so as to find forgetfulness in the speed of the ride. I found it, certainly, for half an hour, an hour at most, but as soon as I stopped the owls of the nightmare came in flocks, herds of chimerical asses and goats besieged me, bleating and howling.
One day, as usual, I was sitting in bed with my arms by my side and looking at nothing in particular. I thought of a few words that Madame de Sévigné had written over a hundred years ago: “Je dois à votre absence le plaisir de sentir la durée de ma vie en toute sa longueur.” How absurd! I thought. The French are comical, they even glean plaisir from melancholy and sadness. Nonetheless I would like to be French so as to know how to turn pain into beauty. To your absence, Francisco, I owe the pleasure of feeling the length of my life to its full extent. Magnificent!
I asked the maid to bring me the book and, once I had found the sentence, I let my eyes wander a few lines down: “Pour moi je vois le temps courir avec horreur et m’apporter en passant l’affreuse vieillesse, les incomodités et enfin la mort.”
I couldn’t go on reading. The pages fell to the floor, the draught chased after them. It does not matter, I thought. Nothing matters. I had to take off my stockings before going to bed, and I couldn’t. I managed to take off the left one, but had no energy left to remove the right one: a sad, unbeautiful Pierrot.
“María! Come here and sit next to me. No, I don’t want to scold you, I just want to get to the bottom of something. Come on, sit down. And now tell me how things really went that time when . . . But first you have to give me your word of honor that you will tell me the truth and nothing but the truth. Do you remember my long illness, when I didn’t even leave the house? Good. Did you say something to Don Francisco or was it he who . . .”
“Your Highness, I would never have dared to speak of it, but as you wish me to . . . Your Highness surely does not realize that . . .”
“Leave the highnesses out of it and get to the point. You are a walking headache.”
“Milady, your condition was very serious. Spiritually, I mean. I went to see the royal painter and told him about the state you were in. Goya did not hesitate for a moment. Immediately he sat down and wrote you a letter. He told me that it was an invitation for you to come and see his latest work. He told me that he was very proud of it and that it was the best thing he had created up until that moment. He was concerned about your health. I was pleased about that. I knew that a man like him wouldn’t let me down because he carried the Saint Pilar of Saragossa with him wherever he went.”
“María, when talking about himself, Francisco would never, but never, have used the verb ‘create.’ You know that I have an aversion to that type of grandiloquence. What else? And the majas?”
“Your Highness, pardon milady, I have told you all that I know. If, at the time in question, I hid from you that fact that I had gone to see the royal painter on my own initiative, it was because I sensed that my visit would have irritated. If I did it, it was only and exclusively for the good of milady.”
“‘Only and exclusively for the good of . . .’ Come off it, you clown. I asked you what you knew of the majas?”
“I did not know anything about them. The royal painter told me only that I was not to deliver the letter to you until the day afterward. An order that I obeyed.”
“Ooh! Oh! Getting something out of you