Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page A

yearsnor troubled memories had changed. This was when she asked him whether it was true that love conquered all, as the songs said.
    ‘It is true,’ he replied, ‘but you would do well not to believe it.’
    Pleased by these good tidings, the Marquis began to consider a trip to Seville so that Sierva María could recover from her silent sorrows and finish learning about the world. The dates and itineraryhad already been arranged when Caridad del Cobre woke him from his siesta with brutal news: ‘Señor, my poor girl is turning into a dog.’
    Called in for the emergency, Abrenuncio refuted the popular superstition that the victims of rabies became identical to the animal that had bitten them. He confirmed that the girl had a slight fever, and although this was considered a disease in itself and nota symptom of other ailments, he did not disregard it. He warned the grief-stricken nobleman that the girl was not safe from any illness, for the bite of a dog, rabid or not, offered no protection against anything else. As always, the only recourse was to wait.
    The Marquis asked him, ‘Is that all you can tell me?’
    ‘Science has not given me the means to tell you anythingelse,’ the physician repliedwith the same acerbity. ‘But if you have no faith in me, you still have another recourse: put your trust in God.’
    The Marquis did not understand.
    ‘I would have sworn you were an unbeliever,’ he said.
    The doctor did not even turn to look at him. ‘I only wish I were, Señor.’
    The Marquis put his trust not in God but in anything that might offer some hope. The city had three other physicians,six pharmacists, eleven barber-surgeons and countless magical healers and masters of the arts of sorcery, although the Inquisition had condemned 1,300 of them to a variety of punishments over the past fifty years and burned seven at the stake. A young physician from Salamanca opened Sierva María’s closed wound and applied caustic poultices to draw out the rank humors. Another attempted to achievethe same end with leeches on her back. A barber-surgeon bathed the wound in her own urine, and another had her drink it. At the end of two weeks she had been subjected to two herbal baths and two emollient enemas a day and was brought to the brink of death with potions of natural antimony and other fatal concoctions.
    The fever subsided, but no one dared proclaim that rabies had been averted.Sierva María felt as if she were dying. At first she had resisted with her pride intact but after two fruitless weeks she had a fiery ulcer on her ankle, her body was scalded by mustard plasters and blistering poultices and the skin on her stomach was raw. She had suffered everything: vertigo, convulsions, spasms, deliriums, looseness of the bowels and bladder; and she rolled on the floor howlingin pain and fury. Even theboldest healers left her to her fate, convinced she was mad or possessed by demons. The Marquis had lost all hope when Sagunta appeared with the key of Saint Hubert.
    It was the end. Sagunta stripped off her sheets, smeared herself with Indian ointments and rubbed her body against the body of the naked girl. She fought back with her hands and feet despite her extremeweakness, and Sagunta subdued her by force. Bernarda heard their demented screams from her room. She ran to see what was going on and found Sierva María kicking in a rage on the floor, and Sagunta on top of her, wrapped in the copper flood of the girl’s hair and bellowing the prayer of Saint Hubert. She whipped them both with the clews of her hammock. First on the floor, where they huddled againstthe surprise attack, and then pursuing them from corner to corner until she was out of breath.
    The bishop of the diocese, Don Toribio de Cáceres y Virtudes, alarmed at the public scandal caused by Sierva María’s vicissitudes and ravings, sent for the Marquis but did not specify a reason, a date or a time, which was interpreted as an indication of utmost urgency. The