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Chapter 40
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Chapter 40 Doña Inés López de Roldán was a person of such a complicated and complex character that I often regret having brought her into play as one of the two heroines of this story, because I find it difficult to describe her well and convey to my readers a concept equal to the one that I have formed of her while inquiring into and elucidating the driving force behind her passions and her actions. She herself, since she was reflective and thoughtful, and had read and learned quite a bit in her leisure time, which was considerable, strove to gain self-knowledge but found that it was very obscure. The teachings of what is called theosophy, which were very new in Europe, although very old in India, had not yet shown up in Villalegre , and Doña Inés could not, basing herself on them, suppose that her intimate self consisted of seven diverse principles, but she knew that Plato more or less assigned three souls to every human being . So, adopting a Platonic view, she began to suspect that she had three souls. What confirmed her suspicion and nearly turned it into certainty was seeing that, far from such a thought containing anything heretical, it harmonized somehow with the most sound and Catholic philosophy. One of the books that Doña Inés read over and over with pleasure was the one written by that enlightened and ecstatic man of virtue Friar Miguel de la Fuente on The Three Lives of Man. Hence the fact that Doña Inés did not hesitate to imagine that she had three lives. I also imagine such a thing and almost dare to consider it a certainty. Only in this way do I manage to catch a glimpse of the 210 Juanita la Larga 211 dark mystery of her moral makeup and of her strange temperament and nature. There were three forces or distinct powers in Doña Inés, staggered and superimposed, sometimes in accord, and sometimes independent of one another and at cross-purposes, although they constituted , in this mortal life, the inseparable oneness of their singular possessor. For each of these powers Doña Inés had sought out a minister, or, to be more precise, a “ministeress.” For her sensuous soul, which understood and was used in physical and ordinary things and affairs , she had Crispina, who kept her abreast of all the happenings in the town of minor importance and significance. For her sentimental, concupiscible, irascible, and discursive soul; for her faculty and aptitude for detesting, loving, and calculating, especially in relation to things temporal and visible, she had Serafina, a discreet maid. And for the pure soul or apex of the soul, for the supreme portion of understanding and feeling, a portion that was entirely spiritual and divine , plain intelligence or disposition, Doña Inés had been without a ministeress for many years, until she finally found one or believed she had found one in Juanita la Larga, whom she had at first so unjustly scorned and hated, based on hearsay. The seamstress was like a pearl that is discovered in a dunghill and is esteemed more when the person who discovers it becomes persuaded that it is of fine quality. She was like a flower found in uncultivated ground outside of the fence of the garden that is tilled, and which for that reason brings greater surprise and delight, causing the person who possesses the flower to keep a watchful eye on it for fear that some filthy animal might step on it and trample it. Thus can one understand, in my opinion, the love and zealous solicitude with which Doña Inés looked upon Juanita, who for her now was the most ideal embodiment of all that she could conceive in the human sphere. Perhaps Doña Inés recognized with sorrow that her own supreme [52.90.131.200] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:49 GMT) 212 Juanita la Larga soul had been contaminated and sullied somewhat because of external circumstances that had caused the other two souls, the lower and the middle, to prevail and triumph in a number of matters. And so as to preclude a similar contamination of the pure, higher soul of the friend and ministeress whom she had found and who was her joy and consolation, Doña Inés wanted Juanita to become a nun, that is, wanted to...