Aura

When Felipe wakes up again, he is all alone. He goes back upstairs and takes a bath. Aura comes to call him for breakfast, but her face is covered with a veil. Felipe tries to have a frank conversation with the young woman about her situation and his intentions. He says he wants to take her away and that she is wasting her life in the dark house. Aura informs him that the widow will be gone the entire day and suggests they use the opportunity to go away for good. However, Felipe backtracks, saying he is under contract. Aura asks him to meet her in Consuelo’s bedroom that evening.

After the old woman, wearing her wedding dress, leaves for the day, Felipe enters her room to gather the last batch of papers and some old photographs. The General writes of his time in France, mentioning important people and events. However, Felipe is only interested in more information about Consuelo. The General mentions that they cannot have children and describes how his wife becomes obsessed with herbs and how she eventually starts taking narcotics and hallucinating about recreating her youth. The memoirs end with the sentence: “even the devil was an angel once” (135).

The photographs that came with the papers show Aura and the General, but the writing on the back identifies the woman as Consuelo. After a while, Felipe begins to recognize himself in the deceased man’s features. He falls into another stupor, and when he wakes up it is already dark. Felipe goes downstairs to the widow’s bedroom. He calls out to Aura, and she tells him to lie down at her side without touching her. However, Felipe cannot resist caressing and kissing her. A beam of moonlight reveals that he is embracing not the young Aura but the cadaverous Consuelo. At that moment, Felipe realizes that he loves her and has the thought that he has come back too. The old woman tells him that she cannot retain Aura for more than three days at a time, but that the two of them will bring her back.