Fermina Marquez (1911) Read Online Free PDF Page A

again, when on the evening of a battle they were brought in herds to the proconsul's camp, had he ever experienced the slightest thrill of pity, a moment of desire for the prettiest and most unfortunate of them? Nevertheless, they were absolutely his to command; and they sensed their master perfectly in this diminutive, bald, well-shaven man! How often Joanny had imagined scenes of this sort . . .
Well then, he himself just like Caesar was destined to be admired by men and loved by women. It was unworthy of him to admire and love in return. Or rather, perhaps he could love but only a captive woman, that is to say one humbled and imploring who grovelled at your feet and fearfully kissed your hands. Yes, but could such a woman be found anywhere other than in novels whose actions took place in the colonies?
Not having a sister, seeing little of girls, Leniot instinctively recoiled from those pert creatures who, with their mockery, so severely test the timid and solemn pride of very young men. It is pretty hard for a boy who compares himself exclusively with the likes of Franklin and Julius Caesar to hear himself ridiculed for a blunder committed while serving tea, or for the over-vivid green of a new tie. Bursting with resentment, he did not forget the memory of occasions when he had been a laughingstock and when inane, older girls had made fun of him, "silly little geese, provincial peasants with their rustic tones". But the evocation of their accent was not enough to avenge  Leniot   for  the  wounds  they  had   inflicted  on  his self-esteem. No — and as he drew closer to his sixteenth year, he became more convinced of this — what would truly give him his revenge, what would conclusively fix his position and his attitude towards women was a seduction. By this expedient, from the child he was at the outset, he would become a man; then unquestionably he would at last be able to approach those as yet uninitiated little fools without blushing. By this expedient as well, he would experience a new kind of triumph: he would know what a man feels to see a girl sacrifice her scruples, sense of decency and all her years of innocence for him. "And a woman who gives herself, isn't she failing her entire sex?" Yes, just seduce one of them! How your conqueror's heart beats feverishly at this thought!
So Leniot mused as he smoked his after-lunch cigarette in the grounds. At this precise moment, Mama Dolore and the young Colombian girls appeared round an avenue. Leniot hastened to join them and, while greeting them, looked Fermina implacably in the face as one would an enemy. The thought had just occurred to him: "Why shouldn't it be you?"
Suddenly the temerity of this idea struck him; it seemed to him as though all his blood were sweeping back in flight towards his heart. This girl was so beautiful, so arrestingly graceful and majestic in her youthfulness that he would never dare even allow her to see the confusion into which her presence threw him. And then, just as abruptly, his will reasserted itself and drove the overheated, altogether electrified blood back into his veins. Oh yes! He dared; he would show them! He began to walk at her side. He could envisage everything he proposed to accomplish. With care, he measured the distance separating him from the first kiss. And here once again his courage failed him. Yet where was the urgency? But now he came up against an obstacle which his timidity — quivering and recalcitrant — refused to clear. It was not that he was afraid of setting himself up as Santos Iturria's rival. On the contrary; even were it to end with a fight in which he, Leniot, would certainly be beaten, he would keep the very considerable prestige of having defied the school hero  
all on his own . . . "and over a woman as well". Nor was it that he thought he might be treated as a child and disregarded because of his age; besides, Fermina Marquez was barely a year older than him. So whence did this