“What ideas you have!”

The voice of Doña Perfecta was heard crying in an altered accent:

“Rosario! Rosario!”

The latter ran toward the house.

CHAPTER X

THE EVIDENCE OF DISCORD IS EVIDENT

Pepe Rey was disturbed and perplexed, enraged with himself and every one
else; he tried in vain to imagine what could be the conflict that had
arisen, in spite of himself, between his ideas and the ideas of his
aunt’s friends. Thoughtful and sad, foreseeing future discord, he
remained for a short time sitting on the bench in the summer-house, his
chin resting on his breast, his forehead gathered in a frown, his hands
clasped. He thought himself alone.

Suddenly he heard a gay voice humming the refrain of a song from a
zarzuela. He looked up and saw Don Jacinto sitting in the opposite
corner of the summer-house.

“Ah, Señor de Rey!” said the youth abruptly, “one does not offend with
impunity the religious sentiments of the great majority of a nation. If
you doubt it, consider what happened in the first French revolution.”

When Pepe heard the buzzing of this insect his irritation increased.
Nevertheless there was no anger in his soul toward the youthful doctor
of laws. The latter annoyed him, as a fly might annoy him, but nothing
more. Rey felt the irritation which every importunate being inspires,
and with the air of one who brushes away a buzzing drone, he answered:

“What has the French revolution to do with the robe of the Virgin?”

He got up and walked toward the house, but he had not taken half a dozen
steps before he heard again beside him the buzzing of the mosquito,
saying:

“Señor Don José, I wish to speak to you about an affair in which you are
greatly interested and which may cause you some trouble.”

“An affair?” said the young man, drawing back. “Let us hear what affair
is that.”

“You suspect what it is, perhaps,” said Jacinto, approaching Pepe,
and smiling with the air of a man of business who has some unusually
important matter on hand; “I want to speak to you about the lawsuit.”

“The lawsuit! My friend, I have no lawsuits. You, as a good lawyer,
dream of lawsuits and see stamped paper everywhere.”

“What! You have not heard of your lawsuit?” exclaimed the youth, with
amazement.

“Of my lawsuit! But I have no lawsuits, nor have I ever had any.”

“Well, if you have not heard of it, I am all the better pleased to have
spoken to you about it, so that you may be on your guard. Yes, señor,
you are going to have a suit at law.”

“And with whom?”

“With Uncle Licurgo and other land-owners whose property borders on the
estate called The Poplars.”

Pepe Rey was astounded.

“Yes, señor,” continued the little lawyer. “To-day Uncle Licurgo and I
had a long conference. As I am such a friend of the family, I wanted to
let you know about it, so that, if you think well of it, you may hasten
to arrange the matter.”

“But what have I to arrange? What do those rascals claim from me?”

“It seems that a stream of water which rises in your property has
changed its course and flows over some tile-works of the aforesaid Uncle
Licurgo and the mill of another person, occasioning considerable
damage. My client--for he is determined that I shall get him out of this
difficulty--my client, as I said, demands that you shall restore the
water to its former channel, so as to avoid fresh injuries, and that
you shall indemnify him for the damage which his works have already
sustained through the neglect of the superior proprietor.”

“And I am the superior proprietor! If I engage in a lawsuit, that will
be the first fruit that those famous Poplars, which were mine and which
now, as I understand, belong to everybody, will have ever produced me,
for Licurgo, as well as some of the other farmers of the district, have
been filching from me, little by little, year after year, pieces of
land, and it will be very difficult to re-establish the boundaries of my
property.”

“That is a different question.”

“That is not a different question. The real suit,” exclaimed the
engineer, unable to control his anger, “will be the one that I will
bring against that rabble who no doubt propose to themselves to tire me
out and drive me to desperation--so that I may abandon every thing and
let them continue in possession of what they have stolen. We shall see
if there are lawyers and judges who will uphold the infamous conduct of
those village legists, who are forever at law, and who waste and consume
the property of others. I am obliged to you, young gentleman, for having
informed me of the villanous intentions of those boors, who are more
perverse than Satan himself. When I tell you that that very tile-yard
and that very mill on which Licurgo bases his claim are mine--”

“The title-deeds of the property ought to be examined, to see if
possession may not constitute a title in this case.”

“Possession! Those scoundrels are not going to have the pleasure of
laughing at me in that way. I suppose that justice is honestly and
faithfully administered in the city of Orbajosa.”

“Oh, as to that!” exclaimed the little lawyer, with an approving look,
“the judge is an excellent person! He comes here every evening. But it
is strange that you should have received no notice of Señor Licurgo’s
claims. Have you not yet been summoned to appear before the tribunal of
arbitration?”

“No.”

“It will be to-morrow, then. Well, I am very sorry that Señor Licurgo’s
precipitation has deprived me of the pleasure and honor of defending
you, but what is to be done? Licurgo was determined that I should take
him out of his troubles. I will study the matter with the greatest care.
This vile slavery is the great drawback of jurisprudence.”

Pepe entered the dining-room in a deplorable state of mind. Doña
Perfecta was talking with the Penitentiary, as he entered, and Rosarito
was sitting alone, with her eyes fixed on the door. She was no doubt
waiting for her cousin.

“Come here, you rascal,” said his aunt, smiling with very little
spontaneity. “You have insulted us, you great atheist! but we forgive
you. I am well aware that my daughter and myself are two rustics who are
incapable of soaring to the regions of mathematics where you dwell, but
for all that it is possible that you may one day get down on your knees
to us and beg us to teach you the Christian doctrine.”

Pepe answered with vague phrases and formulas of politeness and
repentance.

“For my part,” said Don Inocencio, with an affected air of meekness and
amiability, “if in the course of these idle disputes I have said any
thing that could offend Señor Don José, I beg his pardon for it. We are
all friends here.”

“Thanks. It is of no consequence.”

“In spite of every thing,” said Doña Perfecta, smiling with more
naturalness than before, “I shall always be the same for my dear nephew;
in spite of his extravagant and anti-religious ideas. In what way do you
suppose I am going to spend this evening? Well, in trying to make Uncle
Licurgo give up those obstinate notions which would otherwise cause you
annoyance. I sent for him, and he is waiting for me now in the hall.
Make yourself easy, I will arrange the matter; for although I know that
he is not altogether without right on his side--”

“Thanks, dear aunt,” responded the young man, his whole being invaded by
a wave of the generous emotion which was so easily aroused in his soul.

Pepe Rey looked in the direction of his cousin, intending to join her,
but some wily questions of the canon retained him at Doña Perfecta’s
side. Rosario looked dejected, and was listening with an air of
melancholy indifference to the words of the little lawyer, who, having
installed himself at her side, kept up a continuous stream of fulsome
flatteries, seasoned with ill-timed jests and fatuous remarks in the
worst possible taste.

“The worst of it is,” said Doña Perfecta to her nephew--surprising the
glance which he cast in the direction of the ill-assorted pair--“the
worst of it is, that you have offended poor Rosario. You must do all in
your power to make your peace with her. The poor child is so good!”

“Oh, yes! so good,” added the canon, “that I have no doubt that she will
forgive her cousin.”

“I think that Rosario has already forgiven me,” affirmed Rey.

“And if not, angelic breasts do not harbor resentment long,” said Don
Inocencio mellifluously. “I have a great deal of influence with the
child, and I will endeavor to dissipate in her generous soul whatever
prejudice may exist there against you. As soon as I say a word or two to
her----”

Pepe Rey felt a cloud darken his soul and he said with meaning:

“Perhaps it may not be necessary.”

“I will not speak to her now,” added the capitular, “because she is
listening entranced to Jacinto’s nonsense. Ah, those children! When they
once begin there is no stopping them.”

The judge of the lower court, the alcalde’s lady, and the dean of the
cathedral now made their appearance. They all saluted the engineer,
manifesting in their words and manner, on seeing him, the satisfaction
of gratified curiosity. The judge was one of those clever and
intelligent young men who every day spring into notice in official
circles; aspiring, almost before they are out of the shell, to the
highest political and administrative positions. He gave himself airs of
great importance, and in speaking of himself and of his juvenile toga,
he seemed indirectly to manifest great offence because he had not been
all at once made president of the supreme court. In such inexpert hands,
in a brain thus swollen with vanity, in this incarnation of conceit, had
the state placed the most delicate and the most difficult functions
of human justice. His manners were those of a perfect courtier, and
revealed a scrupulous and minute attention to all that concerned his own
person. He had the insufferable habit of taking off and putting on every
moment his gold eye-glasses, and in his conversation he manifested with
frequency the strong desire which he had to be transferred to Madrid,
in order that he might give his invaluable services to the Department of
Grace and Justice.

The alcalde’s lady was a good-natured woman, whose only weakness was to
fancy that she had a great many acquaintances at the court. She asked
Pepe Rey various questions about the fashions, mentioning establishments
in which she had had a mantle or a skirt made on her last journey to
the capital, contemporaneous with the visit of Muley-Abbas, and she also
mentioned the names of a dozen duchesses and marchionesses; speaking
of them with as much familiarity as if they had been friends of her
school-days. She said also that the Countess of M. (famous for her
parties) was a friend of hers and that in ‘60 she had paid her a visit,
when the countess had invited her to her box at the Teatro Real, where
she saw Muley-Abbas in Moorish dress and accompanied by his retinue
of Moors. The alcalde’s wife talked incessantly and was not wanting in
humor.

The dean was a very old man, corpulent and red-faced, plethoric and
apoplectic looking, a man so obese that he seemed bursting out of his
skin. He had belonged to one of the suppressed religious orders; he
talked only of religious matters; and from the very first manifested the
most profound contempt for Pepe Rey. The latter appeared every moment
more unable to accommodate himself to a society so little to his
taste. His disposition--not at all malleable, hard, and very little
flexible--rejected the duplicities and the compromises of language to
simulate concord when it did not exist. He remained, then, very grave
during the whole of the tiresome evening, obliged as he was to endure
the oratorical vehemence of the alcalde’s wife, who, without being Fame,
had the privilege of fatiguing with a hundred tongues the ears of men.
If, in some brief respite which this lady gave her hearers, Pepe Rey
made an attempt to approach his cousin, the Penitentiary attached
himself to him instantly, like the mollusk to the rock; taking him apart
with a mysterious air to propose to him an excursion with Señor Don
Cayetano to Mundogrande, or a fishing party on the clear waters of the
Nahara.

At last the evening came to an end, as every thing does in this world.
The dean retired, leaving the house, as it seemed, empty, and very soon
there remained of the alcalde’s wife only an echo, like the buzz
which remains in the air after a storm has passed away. The judge also
deprived the company of his presence, and at last Don Inocencio gave his
nephew the signal for departure.

“Come, boy, come; for it is late,” he said, smiling. “How you have
tormented poor Rosarito, has he not, child? Home, you rogue, home,
without delay.”

“It is time to go to bed,” said Doña Perfecta.

“Time to go to work,” responded the little lawyer.

“I am always telling him that he ought to get through with his business
in the day-time, but he will not mind me.”

“There is so much, so very much business to be got through.”

“No, say rather, that confounded work which you have undertaken. He does
not wish to say it, Señor Don José, but the truth is that he is writing
a book on ‘The Influence of Woman in Christian Society,’ and, in
addition to that, ‘A Glance at the Catholic Movement in’--somewhere or
other. What do you know about glances or influences? But these youths of
the present day have audacity enough for any thing. Oh, what boys! Well,
let us go home. Good-night, Señora Doña Perfecta--good-night, Señor Don
José--Rosarito.”

“I will wait for Señor Don Cayetano,” said Jacinto, “to ask him to give
me the Augusto Nicolas.”

“Always carrying books. Why, sometimes you come into the house laden
like a donkey. Very well, then, let us wait.”

“Señor Don Jacinto does not write hastily,” said Pepe Rey; “he prepares
himself well for his work, so that his books may be treasures of
learning.”

“But that boy will injure his brain,” objected Doña Perfecta. “For
Heaven’s sake be careful! I would set a limit to his reading.”

“Since we are going to wait,” said the little doctor, in a tone of
insufferable conceit, “I will take with me also the third volume of
Concilios. What do you think, uncle?”

“Take that, of course. It would never do to leave that behind you.”

Fortunately Señor Don Cayetano (who generally spent his evenings at the
house of Don Lorenzo Ruiz) soon arrived, and the books being received,
uncle and nephew left the house.

Rey read in his cousin’s sad countenance a keen desire to speak to him.
He approached her while Doña Perfecta and Don Cayetano were discussing
some domestic matter apart.

“You have offended mamma,” said Rosarito.

Her features expressed something like terror.

“It is true,” responded the young man; “I have offended your mamma--I
have offended you.”

“No, not me. I already imagined that the Infant Jesus ought not to wear
trousers.”

“But I hope that you will both forgive me. Your mamma was so kind to me
a little while ago.”

Doña Perfecta’s voice suddenly vibrated through the dining-room, with
so discordant a tone that her nephew started as if he had heard a cry of
alarm. The voice said imperiously:

“Rosario, go to bed!”

Startled, her mind filled with anxious fears, the girl lingered in the
room, going here and there as if she was looking for something. As she
passed her cousin she whispered softly and cautiously these words:

“Mamma is angry.”

“But--”

“She is angry--be on your guard, be on your guard.”

Then she left the room. Her mother, for whom Uncle Licurgo was waiting,
followed her, and for some time the voices of Doña Perfecta and the
countryman were heard mingled together in familiar conference. Pepe was
left with Don Cayetano, who, taking a light, said;

“Good-night, Pepe. But don’t suppose that I am going to sleep, I am
going to work. But why are you so thoughtful? What is the matter
with you?--Just as I say, to work. I am making notes for a ‘Memorial
Discourse on the Genealogies of Orbajosa.’ I have already found data and
information of the utmost value. There can be no dispute about it. In
every period of our history the Orbajosans have been distinguished
for their delicate sense of honor, their chivalry, their valor, their
intellectuality. The conquest of Mexico, the wars of the Emperor, the
wars of Philip against the heretics, testify to this. But are you ill?
What is the matter with you? As I say, eminent theologians, valiant
warriors, conquerors, saints, bishops, statesmen--all sorts of
illustrious men--have flourished in this humble land of the garlic.
No, there is not in Christendom a more illustrious city than ours. Its
virtues and its glories are in themselves enough and more than enough
to fill all the pages of our country’s history. Well, I see that it is
sleepy you are--good-night. As I say, I would not exchange the glory of
being a son of this noble city for all the gold in the world. Augusta,
the ancients called it; Augustissima, I call it now; for now, as then,
high-mindedness, generosity, valor, magnanimity, are the patrimony of
all. Well, good-night, dear Pepe. But I fancy you are not well. Has the
supper disagreed with you?--Alonzo Gonzalez de Bustamante was right when
he said in his ‘Floresta Amena’ that the people of Orbajosa suffice in
themselves to confer greatness and honor on a kingdom. Don’t you think
so?”

“Oh, yes, señor; undoubtedly,” responded Pepe Rey, going abruptly toward
his room.

CHAPTER XI

THE DISCORD GROWS

During the following days Pepe Rey made the acquaintance of several of
the people of the place; he visited the Casino, and formed friendships
with some of the individuals who spend their lives in the rooms of that
corporation.

But the youth of Orbajosa did not spend all their time in the Casino,
as evil-minded people might imagine. In the afternoons there were to be
seen at the corner of the cathedral, and in the little plaza formed
by the intersection of the Calle del Condestable and the Calle de la
Triperia, several gentlemen who, gracefully enveloped in their cloaks,
stood there like sentinels, watching the people as they passed by. If
the weather was fine, those shining lights of the Urbs Augustan culture
bent their steps, still enveloped in the indispensable cloak, toward
the promenade called the Paseo de las Descalzas, which was formed by
a double row of consumptive-looking elms and some withered bushes
of broom. There the brilliant Pleiad watched the daughters of this
fellow-townsman or that, who had also come there for a walk, and the
afternoon passed tolerably. In the evening, the Casino filled up again;
and while some of the members gave their lofty minds to the delights of
monte, others read the newspapers, while the majority discussed in the
coffee-room subjects of the various kinds, such as the politics, horses,
bulls, or the gossip of the place. The result of every discussion was
the renewed conviction of the supremacy of Orbajosa and its inhabitants
over all the other towns and peoples on the face of the earth.

These distinguished men were the cream of the illustrious city; some
rich landowners, others very poor, but all alike free from lofty
aspirations. They had the imperturbable tranquillity of the beggar who
desires nothing more so long as he has a crust of bread with which to
cheat hunger, and the sun to warm him. What chiefly distinguished the
Orbajosans of the Casino was a sentiment of bitter hostility toward
all strangers, and whenever any stranger of note appeared in its august
halls, they believed that he had come there to call in question the
superiority of the land of the garlic, or to dispute with it, through
envy, the incontestable advantages which nature had bestowed upon it.

When Pepe Rey presented himself in the Casino, they received him with
something of suspicion, and as facetious persons abounded in it, before
the new member had been there a quarter of an hour, all sorts of jokes
had been made about him. When in answer to the reiterated questions of
the members he said that he had come to Orbajosa with a commission to
explore the basin of the Nahara for coal, and to survey a road, they
all agreed that Señor Don José was a conceited fellow who wished to
give himself airs, discovering coalbeds and planning railroads. Some one
added:

“He has come to a bad place for that, then. Those gentlemen imagine that
here we are all fools, and that they can deceive us with fine words. He
has come to marry Doña Perfecta’s daughter, and all that he says about
coalbeds is only for the sake of appearances.”

“Well, this morning,” said another, a merchant who had failed, “they
told me at the Dominguez’ that the gentleman has not a peseta, and that
he has come here in order to be supported by his aunt and to see if he
can catch Rosarito.”

“It seems that he is no engineer at all,” added an olive-planter, whose
plantations were mortgaged for double their value. “But it is as you
say: those starvelings from Madrid think they are justified in deceiving
poor provincials, and as they believe that here we all wear tails--”

“It is plain to be seen that he is penniless--”

“Well, half-jest and the whole earnest, he told us last night that we
were lazy barbarians.”

“That we spent our time sunning ourselves, like the Bedouins.”

“That we lived with the imagination.”

“That’s it; that we lived with the imagination.”

“And that this city was precisely like a city in Morocco.”

“Well! one has no patience to listen to those things. Where else
could he see (unless it might be in Paris) a street like the Calle
del Condestable, that can show seven houses in a row, all of them
magnificent, from Doña Perfecta’s house to that of Nicolasita Hernandez?
Does that fellow suppose that one has never seen any thing, or has never
been in Paris?”

“He also said, with a great deal of delicacy, that Orbajosa was a city
of beggars; and he gave us to understand that in his opinion we live in
the meanest way here without being ourselves aware of it.”

“What insolence! If he ever says that to me, there will be a scene in
the Casino,” exclaimed the collector of taxes. “Why didn’t they tell him
how many arrobas of oil Orbajosa produced last year? Doesn’t the fool
know that in good years Orbajosa produces wheat enough to supply all
Spain, and even all Europe, with bread? It is true that the crops have
been bad for several years past, but that is not the rule. And the
crop of garlic! I wager the gentleman doesn’t know that the garlic of
Orbajosa made the gentleman of the jury in the Exposition of London
stare!”

These and other conversations of a similar kind were to be heard in the
rooms of the Casino in those days. Notwithstanding this boastful talk,
so common in small towns, which, for the very reason that they are
small, are generally arrogant, Rey was not without finding sincere
friends among the members of the learned corporation, for they were not
all gossips, nor were there wanting among them persons of good sense.
But our hero had the misfortune--if misfortune it can be called--to be
unusually frank in the manifestation of his feelings, and this awakened
some antipathy toward him.

Days passed. In addition to the natural disgust which the social customs
of the episcopal city produced in him, various causes, all of them
disagreeable, began to develop in his mind a profound sadness, chief
among these causes being the crowd of litigants that swarmed about him
like voracious ants. Many others of the neighboring landowners besides
Uncle Licurgo claimed damages from him, or asked him to render accounts
for lands managed by his grandfather. A claim was also brought against
him because of a certain contract of partnership entered into by his
mother and which, as it appeared, had not been fulfilled; and he was
required in the same way to acknowledge a mortgage on the estate of
The Poplars executed in an irregular form by his uncle. Claims swarmed
around him, multiplying with ant-like rapidity. He had come to the
determination to renounce the ownership of his lands, but meanwhile his
dignity required that he should not yield to the wily manoeuvres of the
artful rustics; and as the town-council brought a claim against him also
on account of a pretended confusion of the boundary lines of his
estate with those of an adjoining wood belonging to the town-lands, the
unfortunate young man found himself at every step obliged to prove his
rights, which were being continually called in question. His honor
was engaged, and he had no alternative but to defend his rights to the
death.

Doña Perfecta had promised in her magnanimity to help him to
free himself from these disgraceful plots by means of an amicable
arrangement; but the days passed, and the good offices of the exemplary
lady had produced no result whatever. The claims multiplied with the
dangerous swiftness of a violent disease. Pepe Rey passed hour after
hour at court, making declarations and answering the same questions
over and over again, and when he returned home tired and angry, there
appeared before him the sharp features and grotesque face of the notary,
who had brought him a thick bundle of stamped papers full of horrible
formulas--that he might be studying the question.

It will be easily understood that Pepe Rey was not a man to endure
such annoyances when he might escape from them by leaving the town. His
mother’s noble city appeared to his imagination like a horrible monster
which had fastened its ferocious claws in him and was drinking his
blood. To free himself from this monster nothing more was necessary, he
believed, than flight. But a weighty interest--an interest in which his
heart was concerned--kept him where he was; binding him to the rock of
his martyrdom with very strong bonds. Nevertheless, he had come to feel
so dissatisfied with his position; he had come to regard himself as
so utterly a stranger, so to say, in that gloomy city of lawsuits,
of old-fashioned customs and ideas, of envy and of slander, that he
resolved to leave it without further delay, without, however, abandoning
the project which had brought him to it. One morning, finding a
favorable occasion, he opened his mind to Doña Perfecta on this point.

“Nephew,” responded that lady, with her accustomed gentleness, “don’t be
rash. Why! you are like fire. Your father was just the same--what a man
he was! You are like a flash--I have already told you that I will be
very glad to call you my son. Even if you did not possess the good
qualities and the talents which distinguish you (in spite of some little
defects, for you have those, too); even if you were not as good as you
are; it is enough that this union has been proposed by your father, to
whom both my daughter and myself owe so much, for me to accept it. And
Rosarito will not oppose it since I wish it. What is wanting, then?
Nothing; there is nothing wanting but a little time. The marriage cannot
be concluded with the haste you desire and which might, perhaps,
give ground for interpretations discreditable to my dear daughter’s
reputation. But as you think of nothing but machines, you want every
thing done by steam. Wait, man, wait; what hurry are you in? This hatred
that you have taken to our poor Orbajosa is nothing but a caprice. But
of course you can only live among counts and marquises and orators and
diplomats--all you want is to get married and separate me forever from
my daughter,” she added, wiping away a tear. “Since that is the case,
inconsiderate boy, at least have the charity to delay for a little this
marriage, for which you are so eager. What impatience! What ardent
love! I did not suppose that a poor country girl like my daughter could
inspire so violent a passion.”

The arguments of his aunt did not convince Pepe Rey, but he did not
wish to contradict her. A fresh cause of anxiety was soon added to those
which already embittered his existence. He had now been in Orbajosa
for two weeks, and during that time he had received no letter from his
father. This could not be attributed to carelessness on the part of the
officials of the post-office of Orbajosa, for the functionary who had
charge of that service being the friend and _protégé_ of Doña Perfecta,
the latter every day recommended him to take the greatest care that the
letters addressed to her nephew did not go astray. The letter-carrier,
named Cristoval Ramos, and nicknamed Caballuco--a personage whose
acquaintance we have already made--also visited the house, and to him
Doña Perfecta was accustomed to address warnings and reprimands as
energetic as the following:

“A pretty mail service you have! How is it that my nephew has not
received a single letter since he has been in Orbajosa? When the
carrying of the mail is entrusted to such a giddy-pate, how can things
be expected to go well? I will speak to the governor of the province so
that he may be careful what kind of people he puts in the post-office.”

Caballuco, shrugging his shoulders, looked at Rey with the most complete
indifference.

One day he entered the house with a letter in his hand.

“Thank Heaven!” said Doña Perfecta to her nephew. “Here are letters
from your father. Rejoice, man! A pretty fright we have had through
my brother’s laziness about writing. What does he say? He is well, no
doubt,” she added, seeing that Pepe Rey opened the letter with feverish
impatience.

The engineer turned pale as he glanced over the first lines.

“Good Heavens! Pepe, what is the matter?” exclaimed Doña Perfecta,
rising in alarm. “Is your father ill?”

“This letter is not from my father,” responded Pepe, revealing in his
countenance the greatest consternation.

“What is it, then?”

“An order from the Minister of Public Works, relieving me from the
charge which was confided to me.”

“What! Can it be possible!”

“A dismissal pure and simple, expressed in terms very little flattering
to me.”

“Was there ever any thing so unjust!” exclaimed Doña Perfecta, when she
had recovered from her amazement.

“What a humiliation!” exclaimed the young man. “It is the first time in
my life that I have received an affront like this.”

“But the Government is unpardonable! To put such a slight upon you! Do
you wish me to write to Madrid? I have very good friends there, and
I may be able to obtain satisfaction for you from the Government and
reparation for this brutal affront.”

“Thanks, señora, I desire no recommendations,” said the young man, with
ill-humor.

“But what a piece of injustice! what a high-handed proceeding! To
discharge in this way a young man of your merit, an eminent scientist.
Why, I cannot contain my anger!”

“I will find out,” said Pepe, with energy, “who it is that occupies
himself in injuring me.”

“That minister--but what is to be expected from those infamous
politicasters?”

“In this there is the hand of some one who is determined to drive me to
desperation,” declared the young man, visibly disturbed. “This is
not the act of the minister; this and other contrarieties that I am
experiencing are the result of a revengeful plot, of a secret and
well-laid plan of some implacable enemy, and this enemy is here in
Orbajosa, this plot has been hatched in Orbajosa, doubt it not, dear
aunt.”

“You are out of your mind,” replied Doña Perfecta, with a look of
compassion. “You have enemies in Orbajosa, you say? Some one wishes to
revenge himself upon you? Come, Pepillo, you have lost your senses.
The reading of those books in which they say that we have for ancestors
monkeys or parrots has turned your brain.”

She smiled sweetly as she uttered the last words, and taking a tone of
familiar and affectionate admonition, she added:

“My dear boy, the people of Orbajosa may be rude and boorish rustics,
without learning, or polish, or fine manners; but in loyalty and good
faith we yield to no one--to no one, I say, no one.”

“Don’t suppose,” said the young man, “that I accuse any one in this
house. But that my implacable and cruel enemy is in this city, I am
persuaded.”

“I wish you would show me that stage villain,” responded Doña Perfecta,
smiling again. “I suppose you will not accuse Uncle Licurgo, nor any
of the others who have brought suits against you; for the poor people
believe they are only defending their rights. And between ourselves,
they are not altogether wanting in reason in this case. Besides, Uncle
Licurgo likes you greatly. He has told me so himself. From the moment he
saw you, you took his fancy, and the poor old man has conceived such an
affection for you--”

“Oh, yes--a profound affection!” murmured Pepe.

“Don’t be foolish,” continued his aunt, putting her hand on his shoulder
and looking at him closely. “Don’t imagine absurdities; convince
yourself that your enemy, if you have one, is in Madrid, in that centre
of corruption, of envy and rivalry, not in this peaceful and tranquil
corner, where all is good-will and concord. Some one, no doubt, who is
envious of your merit----There is one thing I wish to say now--and that
is, that if you desire to go there to learn the cause of this affront
and ask an explanation of it from the Government, you must not neglect
doing so on our account.”

Pepe Rey fixed his eyes on his aunt’s countenance, as if he wished to
penetrate with his glance the inmost depths of her soul.

“I say that if you wish to go, do so,” repeated Doña Perfecta, with
admirable serenity, while her countenance expressed the most complete
and unaffected sincerity.

“No, señora: I do not wish to go.”

“So much the better; I think you are right. You are more tranquil here,
notwithstanding the suspicions with which you are tormenting yourself.
Poor Pepillo! We poor rustics of Orbajosa live happy in our ignorance. I
am very sorry that you are not contented here. But is it my fault if you
vex and worry yourself without a cause? Do I not treat you like a son?
Have I not received you as the hope of my house? Can I do more for
you? If in spite of all this you do not like us, if you show so much
indifference toward us, if you ridicule our piety, if you insult our
friends, is it by chance because we do not treat you well?”

Doña Perfecta’s eyes grew moist.

“My dear aunt,” said Pepe, feeling his anger vanish, “I too have
committed some faults since I have been a guest in this house.”

“Don’t be foolish. Don’t talk about committing faults. Among the persons
of the same family every thing is forgiven.”

“But Rosarito--where is she?” asked the young man, rising. “Am I not to
see her to-day, either?”

“She is better. Do you know that she did not wish to come down stairs?”

“I will go up to her then.”

“No, it would be of no use. That girl has some obstinate notions--to-day
she is determined not to leave her room. She has locked herself in.”

“What a strange idea!”

“She will get over it. Undoubtedly she will get over it. We will see
to-night if we cannot put these melancholy thoughts out of her head. We
will get up a party to amuse her. Why don’t you go to Don Inocencio’s
and ask him to come here to-night and bring Jacintillo with him?”

“Jacintillo!”

“Yes, when Rosarito has these fits of melancholy, the only one who can
divert her is that young man.”

“But I will go upstairs----”

“No, you must not.”

“What etiquette there is in this house!”

“You are ridiculing us. Do as I ask you.”

“But I wish to see her.”

“But you cannot see her. How little you know the girl!”

“I thought I knew her well. I will stay here, then. But this solitude is
horrible.”

“There comes the notary.”

“Maledictions upon him!”

“And I think the attorney-general has just come in too--he is an
excellent person.”

“He be hanged with his goodness!”

“But business affairs, when they are one’s own, serve as a distraction.
Some one is coming. I think it is the agricultural expert. You will have
something to occupy you now for an hour or two.”

“An hour or two of hell!”

“Ah, ha! if I am not mistaken Uncle Licurgo and Uncle Paso Largo have
just entered. Perhaps they have come to propose a compromise to you.”

“I would throw myself into the pond first!”

“How unnatural you are! For they are all very fond of you. Well, so that
nothing may be wanting, there comes the constable too. He is coming to
serve a summons on you.”

“To crucify me.”

All the individuals named were now entering the parlor one by one.

“Good-by, Pepe; amuse yourself,” said Doña Perfecta.

“Earth, open and swallow me!” exclaimed the young man desperately.

“Señor Don José.”

“My dear Don José.”

“Esteemed Don José.”

“My dearest Don José.”

“My respected friend, Don José.”

Hearing these honeyed and insinuating preliminaries, Pepe Rey exhaled a
deep sigh and gave himself up. He gave himself up, soul and body, to the
executioners, who brandished horrible leaves of stamped paper while the
victim, raising his eyes to heaven with a look of Christian meekness,
murmured:

“Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”

CHAPTER XII

HERE WAS TROY

Love, friendship, a wholesome moral atmosphere, spiritual light,
sympathy, an easy interchange of ideas and feelings, these were what
Pepe Rey’s nature imperatively demanded. Deprived of them, the darkness
that shrouded his soul grew deeper, and his inward gloom imparted a
tinge of bitterness and discontent to his manner. On the day following
the scenes described in the last chapter, what vexed him more than any
thing was the already prolonged and mysterious seclusion of his cousin,
accounted for at first by a trifling indisposition and then by caprices
and nervous feelings difficult of explanation.

Rey was surprised by conduct so contrary to the idea which he had formed
of Rosarito. Four days had passed during which he had not seen her; and
certainly it was not because he did not desire to be at her side; and
his situation threatened soon to become humiliating and ridiculous, if,
by boldly taking the initiative, he did not at once put an end to it.

“Shall I not see my cousin to-day, either?” he said to his aunt, with
manifest ill-humor, when they had finished dining.

“No, not to-day, either. Heaven knows how sorry I am for it. I gave her
a good talking to this morning. This afternoon we will see what can be
done.”

The suspicion that in this unreasonable seclusion his adorable cousin
was rather the helpless victim than the free and willing agent, induced
him to control himself and to wait. Had it not been for this suspicion
he would have left Orbajosa that very day. He had no doubt whatever that
Rosario loved him, but it was evident that some unknown influence was
at work to separate them, and it seemed to him to be the part of an
honorable man to discover whence that malign influence proceeded and to
oppose it, as far as it was in his power to do so.

“I hope that Rosarito’s obstinacy will not continue long,” he said to
Doña Perfecta, disguising his real sentiments.

On this day he received a letter from his father in which the latter
complained of having received none from Orbajosa, a circumstance which
increased the engineer’s disquietude, perplexing him still further.
Finally, after wandering about alone in the garden for a long time, he
left the house and went to the Casino. He entered it with the desperate
air of a man about to throw himself into the sea.

In the principal rooms he found various people talking and discussing
different subjects. In one group they were solving with subtle logic
difficult problems relating to bulls; in another, they were discussing
the relative merits of different breeds of donkeys of Orbajosa and
Villahorrenda. Bored to the last degree, Pepe Rey turned away from these
discussions and directed his steps toward the reading-room, where he
looked through various reviews without finding any distraction in the
reading, and a little later, passing from room to room, he stopped,
without knowing why, at the gaming-table. For nearly two hours he
remained in the clutches of the horrible yellow demon, whose shining
eyes of gold at once torture and charm. But not even the excitement of
play had power to lighten the gloom of his soul, and the same tedium
which had impelled him toward the green cloth sent him away from
it. Shunning the noise, he found himself in an apartment used as an
assembly-room, in which at the time there was not a living soul, and
here he seated himself wearily at a window overlooking the street.

This was very narrow, with more corners and salient angles than houses,
and was overshaded throughout its whole extent by the imposing mass of
the cathedral that lifted its dark and time-corroded walls at one end
of it. Pepe Rey looked up and down and in every direction; no sign
of life--not a footstep, not a voice, not a glance, disturbed the
stillness, peaceful as that of a tomb, that reigned everywhere. Suddenly
strange sounds, like the whispering of feminine voices, fell on his ear,
and then the rustling of curtains that were being drawn, a few words,
and finally the humming of a song, the bark of a lap-dog, and other
signs of social life, which seemed very strange in such a place.
Observing attentively, Pepe Rey perceived that these noises proceeded
from an enormous balcony with blinds which displayed its corpulent bulk
in front of the window at which he was sitting. Before he had concluded
his observations, a member of the Casino suddenly appeared beside him,
and accosted him laughingly in this manner:

“Ah, Señor Don Pepe! what a rogue you are! So you have shut yourself in
here to ogle the girls, eh?”

The speaker was Don Juan Tafetan, a very amiable man, and one of the few
members of the Casino who had manifested for Pepe Rey cordial friendship
and genuine admiration. With his red cheeks, his little dyed mustache,
his restless laughing eyes, his insignificant figure, his hair carefully
combed to hide his baldness, Don Juan Tafetan was far from being an
Antinous in appearance, but he was very witty and very agreeable and
he had a happy gift for telling a good story. He was much given to
laughter, and when he laughed his face, from his forehead to his chin,
became one mass of grotesque wrinkles. In spite of these qualities, and
of the applause which might have stimulated his taste for spicy jokes,
he was not a scandal-monger. Every one liked him, and Pepe Rey spent
with him many pleasant hours. Poor Tafetan, formerly an employe in the
civil department of the government of the capital of the province, now
lived modestly on his salary as a clerk in the bureau of charities;
eking out his income by gallantly playing the clarionet in the
processions, in the solemnities of the cathedral, and in the theatre,
whenever some desperate company of players made their appearance in
those parts with the perfidious design of giving representations in
Orbajosa.

But the most curious thing about Don Juan Tafetan was his liking for
pretty girls. He himself, in the days when he did not hide his baldness
with half a dozen hairs plastered down with pomade, when he did not
dye his mustache, when, in the freedom from care of youthful years, he
walked with shoulders unstooped and head erect, had been a formidable
_Tenorio_. To hear him recount his conquests was something to make one
die laughing; for there are _Tenorios_ and _Tenorios_, and he was one of
the most original.

“What girls? I don’t see any girls,” responded Pepe Rey.

“Yes, play the anchorite!”

One of the blinds of the balcony was opened, giving a glimpse of a
youthful face, lovely and smiling, that disappeared instantly, like a
light extinguished by the wind.

“Yes, I see now.”

“Don’t you know them?”

“On my life I do not.”

“They are the Troyas--the Troya girls. Then you don’t know something
good. Three lovely girls, the daughters of a colonel of staff, who died
in the streets of Madrid in ‘54.”

The blind opened again, and two faces appeared.

“They are laughing at me,” said Tafetan, making a friendly sign to the
girls.

“Do you know them?”

“Why, of course I know them. The poor things are in the greatest want.
I don’t know how they manage to live. When Don Francisco Troya died a
subscription was raised for them, but that did not last very long.”

“Poor girls! I imagine they are not models of virtue.”

“And why not? I do not believe what they say in the town about them.”

Once more the blinds opened.

“Good-afternoon, girls!” cried Don Juan Tafetan to the three girls, who
appeared, artistically grouped, at the window. “This gentleman says that
good things ought not to hide themselves, and that you should throw open
the blinds.”

But the blind was closed and a joyous concert of laughter diffused a
strange gayety through the gloomy street. One might have fancied that a
flock of birds was passing.

“Shall we go there?” said Tafetan suddenly.

His eyes sparkled and a roguish smile played on his discolored lips.

“But what sort of people are they, then?”

“Don’t be afraid, Señor de Rey. The poor things are honest. Bah! Why,
they live upon air, like the chameleons. Tell me, can any one who
doesn’t eat sin? The poor girls are virtuous enough. And even if they
did sin, they fast enough to make up for it.”

“Let us go, then.”

A moment later Don Juan Tafetan and Pepe Rey were entering the parlor of
the Troyas. The poverty he saw, that struggled desperately to disguise
itself, afflicted the young man. The three girls were very lovely,
especially the two younger ones, who were pale and dark, with large
black eyes and slender figures. Well-dressed and well shod they would
have seemed the daughters of a duchess, and worthy to ally themselves
with princes.

When the visitors entered, the three girls were for a moment abashed:
but very soon their naturally gay and frivolous dispositions became
apparent. They lived in poverty, as birds live in confinement, singing
behind iron bars as they would sing in the midst of the abundance of
the forest. They spent the day sewing, which showed at least honorable
principles; but no one in Orbajosa, of their own station in life, held
any intercourse with them. They were, to a certain extent, proscribed,
looked down upon, avoided, which also showed that there existed some
cause for scandal. But, to be just, it must be said that the bad
reputation of the Troyas consisted, more than in any thing else, in
the name they had of being gossips and mischief-makers, fond of
playing practical jokes, and bold and free in their manners. They wrote
anonymous letters to grave personages; they gave nicknames to every
living being in Orbajosa, from the bishop down to the lowest vagabond;
they threw pebbles at the passers-by; they hissed behind the window
bars, in order to amuse themselves with the perplexity and annoyance of
the startled passer-by; they found out every thing that occurred in the
neighborhood; to which end they made constant use of every window and
aperture in the upper part of the house; they sang at night in the
balcony; they masked themselves during the Carnival, in order to obtain
entrance into the houses of the highest families; and they played many
other mischievous pranks peculiar to small towns. But whatever its
cause, the fact was that on the Troya triumvirate rested one of those
stigmas that, once affixed on any one by a susceptible community,
accompanies that person implacably even beyond the tomb.

“This is the gentleman they say has come to discover the gold-mines?”
 said one of the girls.

“And to do away with the cultivation of garlic in Orbajosa to plant
cotton or cinnamon trees in its stead?”

Pepe could not help laughing at these absurdities.

“All he has come for is to make a collection of pretty girls to take
back with him to Madrid,” said Tafetan.

“Ah! I’ll be very glad to go!” cried one.

“I will take the three of you with me,” said Pepe. “But I want to know
one thing; why were you laughing at me when I was at the window of the
Casino?”

These words were the signal for fresh bursts of laughter.

“These girls are silly things,” said the eldest.

“It was because we said you deserved something better than Doña
Perfecta’s daughter.”

“It was because this one said that you are only losing your time, for
Rosarito cares only for people connected with the Church.”

“How absurd you are! I said nothing of the kind! It was you who said
that the gentleman was a Lutheran atheist, and that he enters the
cathedral smoking and with his hat on.”

“Well, I didn’t invent it; that is what Suspiritos told me yesterday.”

“And who is this Suspiritos who says such absurd things about me?”

“Suspiritos is--Suspiritos.”

“Girls,” said Tafetan, with smiling countenance, “there goes the
orange-vender. Call him; I want to invite you to eat oranges.”

One of the girls called the orange-vender.

The conversation started by the Troyas displeased Pepe Rey not a little,
dispelling the slight feeling of contentment which he had experienced
at finding himself in such gay and communicative company. He could not,
however, refrain from smiling when he saw Don Juan Tafetan take down
a guitar and begin to play upon it with all the grace and skill of his
youthful years.

“I have been told that you sing beautifully,” said Rey to the girls.

“Let Don Juan Tafetan sing.”

“I don’t sing.”

“Nor I,” said the second of the girls, offering the engineer some pieces
of the skin of the orange she had just peeled.

“Maria Juana, don’t leave your sewing,” said the eldest of the Troyas.
“It is late, and the cassock must be finished to-night.”

“There is to be no work to-day. To the devil with the needles!”
 exclaimed Tafetan.

And he began to sing a song.

“The people are stopping in the street,” said the second of the girls,
going out on the balcony. “Don Juan Tafetan’s shouts can be heard in the
Plaza--Juana, Juana!”

“Well?”

“Suspiritos is walking down the street.”

“Throw a piece of orange-peel at her.”

Pepe Rey looked out also; he saw a lady walking down the street at whom
the youngest of the Troyas, taking a skilful aim, threw a large piece
of orange-peel, which struck her straight on the back of the head. Then
they hastily closed the blinds, and the three girls tried to stifle
their laughter so that it might not be heard in the street.

“There is no work to-day,” cried one, overturning the sewing-basket with
the tip of her shoe.

“That is the same as saying, to-morrow there is to be no eating,” said
the eldest, gathering up the sewing implements.

Pepe Rey instinctively put his hand into his pocket. He would gladly
have given them an alms. The spectacle of these poor orphans, condemned
by the world because of their frivolity, saddened him beyond measure.
If the only sin of the Troyas, if the only pleasure which they had
to compensate them for solitude, poverty, and neglect, was to throw
orange-peels at the passers-by, they might well be excused for doing
it. The austere customs of the town in which they lived had perhaps
preserved them from vice, but the unfortunate girls lacked decorum and
good-breeding, the common and most visible signs of modesty, and
it might easily be supposed that they had thrown out of the window
something more than orange-peels. Pepe Rey felt profound pity for
them. He noted their shabby dresses, made over, mended, trimmed, and
retrimmed, to make them look like new; he noted their broken shoes--and
once more he put his hand in his pocket.

“Vice may reign here,” he said to himself, “but the faces, the
furniture, all show that this is the wreck of a respectable family. If
these poor girls were as bad as it is said they are, they would not
live in such poverty and they would not work. In Orbajosa there are rich
men.”

The three girls went back and forward between him and the window,
keeping up a gay and sprightly conversation, which indicated, it must
be said, a species of innocence in the midst of all their frivolity and
unconventionality.

“Señor Don José, what an excellent lady Doña Perfecta is!”

“She is the only person in Orbajosa who has no nickname, the only person
in Orbajosa who is not spoken ill of.”

“Every one respects her.”

“Every one adores her.”

To these utterances the young man responded by praises of his aunt, but
he had no longer any inclination to take money from his pocket and say,
“Maria Juana, take this for a pair of boots.” “Pepa, take this to buy a
dress for yourself.” “Florentina, take this to provide yourself with a
week’s provisions,” as he had been on the point of doing. At a moment
when the three girls had run out to the balcony to see who was passing,
Don Juan Tafetan approached Rey and whispered to him:

“How pretty they are! Are they not? Poor things! It seems impossible
that they should be so gay when it may be positively affirmed that they
have not dined to-day.”

“Don Juan, Don Juan!” cried Pepilla. “Here comes a friend of yours,
Nicolasito Hernandez, in other words, Cirio Pascual, with this
three-story hat. He is praying to himself, no doubt, for the souls of
those whom he has sent to the grave with his extortion.”

“I wager that neither of you will dare to call him by his nickname.”

“It is a bet.”

“Juana, shut the blinds, wait until he passes, and when he is turning
the corner, I will call out, ‘Cirio, Cirio Pascual!’”

Don Juan Tafetan ran out to the balcony.

“Come here, Don José, so that you may know this type,” he called.

Pepe Rey, availing himself of the moment in which the three girls and
Don Juan were making merry in the balcony, calling Nicolasito Hernandez
the nickname which so greatly enraged him, stepped cautiously to one of
the sewing baskets in the room and placed in it a half ounce which he
had left after his losses at play.

Then he hurried out to the balcony just as the two youngest cried in the
midst of wild bursts of laughter, “Cirio, Cirio Pascual!”

CHAPTER XIII

A CASUS BELLI

After this prank the Troyas commenced a conversation with their visitors
about the people and the affairs of the town. The engineer, fearing
that his exploit might be discovered while he was present, wished to go,
which displeased the Troyas greatly. One of them who had left the room
now returned, saying:

“Suspiritos is now in the yard; she is hanging out the clothes.”

“Don José will wish to see her,” said another of the girls.

“She is a fine-looking woman. And now she arranges her hair in the
Madrid fashion. Come, all of you.”

They took their visitors to the dining-room--an apartment very little
used--which opened on a terrace, where there were a few flowers in
pots and many broken and disused articles of furniture. The terrace
overlooked the yard of an adjoining house, with a piazza full of green
vines and plants in pots carefully cultivated. Every thing about it
showed it to be the abode of neat and industrious people of modest
means.

The Troyas, approaching the edge of the roof, looked attentively at
the neighboring house, and then, imposing silence by a gesture on their
cavaliers, retreated to a part of the terrace from which they could not
see into the yard, and where there was no danger of their being seen
from it.

“She is coming out of the kitchen now with a pan of peas,” said Maria
Juana, stretching out her neck to look.

“There goes!” cried another, throwing a pebble into the yard.

The noise of the projectile striking against the glass of the piazza was
heard, and then an angry voice crying:

“Now they have broken another pane of glass!”

The girls, hidden, close beside the two men, in a corner of the terrace,
were suffocating with laughter.

“Señora Suspiritos is very angry,” said Rey. “Why do they call her by
that name?”

“Because, when she is talking, she sighs after every word, and although
she has every thing she wants, she is always complaining.”

There was a moment’s silence in the house below. Pepita Troya looked
cautiously down.

“There she comes again,” she whispered, once more imposing silence by a
gesture. “Maria, give me a pebble. Give it here--bang! there it goes!”

“You didn’t hit her. It struck the ground.”

“Let me see if I can. Let us wait until she comes out of the pantry
again.”

“Now, now she is coming out. Take care, Florentina.”

“One, two, three! There it goes!”

A cry of pain was heard from below, a malediction, a masculine
exclamation, for it was a man who uttered it. Pepe Rey could distinguish
clearly these words:

“The devil! They have put a hole in my head, the----Jacinto, Jacinto!
But what an abominable neighborhood this is!”

“Good Heavens! what have I done!” exclaimed Florentina, filled with
consternation. “I have struck Señor Don Inocencio on the head.”

“The Penitentiary?” said Pepe Rey.

“Yes.”

“Does he live in that house?”

“Why, where else should he live?”

“And the lady of the sighs----”

“Is his niece, his housekeeper, or whatever else she may be. We
amuse ourselves with her because she is very tiresome, but we are not
accustomed to play tricks on his reverence, the Penitentiary.”

While this dialogue was being rapidly carried on, Pepe Rey saw, in front
of the terrace and very near him, a window belonging to the bombarded
house open; he saw a smiling face appear at it--a familiar face--a face
the sight of which stunned him, terrified him, made him turn pale and
tremble. It was that of Jacinto, who, interrupted in his grave studies,
appeared at it with his pen behind his ear. His modest, fresh, and
smiling countenance, appearing in this way, had an auroral aspect.

“Good-afternoon, Señor Don José,” he said gayly.

“Jacinto, Jacinto, I say!”

“I am coming. I was saluting a friend.”

“Come away, come away!” cried Florentina, in alarm. “The Penitentiary is
going up to Don Nominative’s room and he will give us a blessing.”

“Yes, come away; let us close the door of the dining-room.”

They rushed pell-mell from the terrace.

“You might have guessed that Jacinto would see you from his temple of
learning,” said Tafetan to the Troyas.

“Don Nominative is our friend,” responded one of the girls. “From his
temple of science he says a great many sweet things to us on the sly,
and he blows us kisses besides.”

“Jacinto?” asked the engineer. “What the deuce is that name you gave
him?”

“Don Nominative.”

The three girls burst out laughing.

“We call him that because he is very learned.”

“No, because when we were little he was little too. But, yes, now I
remember. We used to play on the terrace, and we could hear him studying
his lessons aloud.”

“Yes, and the whole blessed day he used to spend singling.”

“Declining, girl! That is what it was. He would go like this:
‘Nominative, rosa, Genitive, Dative, Accusative.’”

“I suppose that I have my nickname too,” said Pepe Rey.

“Let Maria Juana tell you what it is,” said Florentina, hiding herself.

“I? Tell it to him you, Pepa.”

“You haven’t any name yet, Don José.”

“But I shall have one. I promise you that I will come to hear what it is
and to receive confirmation,” said the young man, making a movement to
go.

“What, are you going?”

“Yes. You have lost time enough already. To work, girls! Throwing stones
at the neighbors and the passers-by is not the most suitable occupation
for girls as pretty and as clever as you are. Well, good-by.”

And without waiting for further remonstrances, or answering the
civilities of the girls, he left the house hastily, leaving Don Juan
Tafetan behind him.

The scene which he had just witnessed, the indignity suffered by the
canon, the unexpected appearance of the little doctor of laws, added
still further to the perplexities, the anxieties, and the disagreeable
presentiments that already disturbed the soul of the unlucky engineer.
He regretted with his whole soul having entered the house of the Troyas,
and, resolving to employ his time better while his hypochondriasm
lasted, he made a tour of inspection through the town.

He visited the market, the Calle de la Triperia, where the principal
stores were; he observed the various aspects presented by the industry
and commerce of the great city of Orbajosa, and, finding only new
motives of weariness, he bent his steps in the direction of the Paseo de
las Descalzas; but he saw there only a few stray dogs, for, owing to the
disagreeable wind which prevailed, the usual promenaders had remained
at home. He went to the apothecary’s, where various species of ruminant
friends of progress, who chewed again and again the cud of the same
endless theme, were accustomed to meet, but there he was still more
bored. Finally, as he was passing the cathedral, he heard the strains
of the organ and the beautiful chanting of the choir. He entered, knelt
before the high altar, remembering the warnings which his aunt had given
him about behaving with decorum in church; then visited a chapel, and
was about to enter another when an acolyte, warden, or beadle approached
him, and with the rudest manner and in the most discourteous tone said
to him:

“His lordship says that you are to get out of the church.”

The engineer felt the blood rush to his face. He obeyed without a
word. Turned out everywhere, either by superior authority or by his own
tedium, he had no resource but to return to his aunt’s house, where he
found waiting for him:

First, Uncle Licurgo, to announce a second lawsuit to him; second, Señor
Don Cayetano, to read him another passage from his discourse on the
“Genealogies of Orbajosa”; third, Caballuco, on some business which he
had not disclosed; fourth, Doña Perfecta and her affectionate smile, for
what will appear in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DISCORD CONTINUES TO INCREASE

A fresh attempt to see his cousin that evening failed, and Pepe Rey shut
himself up in his room to write several letters, his mind preoccupied
with one thought.

“To-night or to-morrow,” he said to himself, “this will end one way or
another.”

When he was called to supper Doña Perfecta, who was already in the
dining-room, went up to him and said, without preface:

“Dear Pepe, don’t distress yourself, I will pacify Señor Don Inocencio.
I know every thing already. Maria Remedios, who has just left the house,
has told me all about it.”

Doña Perfecta’s countenance radiated such satisfaction as an artist,
proud of his work, might feel.

“About what?”

“Set your mind at rest. I will make an excuse for you. You took a few
glasses too much in the Casino, that was it, was it not? There you
have the result of bad company. Don Juan Tafetan, the Troyas! This is
horrible, frightful. Did you consider well?”

“I considered every thing,” responded Pepe, resolved not to enter into
discussions with his aunt.

“I shall take good care not to write to your father what you have done.”

“You may write whatever you please to him.”

“You will exculpate yourself by denying the truth of this story, then?”

“I deny nothing.”

“You confess then that you were in the house of those----”

“I was.”

“And that you gave them a half ounce; for, according to what Maria
Remedios has told me, Florentina went down to the shop of the
Extramaduran this afternoon to get a half ounce changed. They could
not have earned it with their sewing. You were in their house to-day;
consequently--”

“Consequently I gave it to her. You are perfectly right.”

“You do not deny it?”

“Why should I deny it? I suppose I can do whatever I please with my
money?”

“But you will surely deny that you threw stones at the Penitentiary.”

“I do not throw stones.”

“I mean that those girls, in your presence--”

“That is another matter.”

“And they insulted poor Maria Remedios, too.”

“I do not deny that, either.”

“And how do you excuse your conduct! Pepe in Heaven’s name, have you
nothing to say? That you are sorry, that you deny--”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, señora!”

“You don’t even give me any satisfaction.”

“I have done nothing to offend you.”

“Come, the only thing there is left for you to do now is--there, take
that stick and beat me!”

“I don’t beat people.”

“What a want of respect! What, don’t you intend to eat any supper?”

“I intend to take supper.”

For more than a quarter of an hour no one spoke. Don Cayetano, Doña
Perfecta, and Pepe Rey ate in silence. This was interrupted when Don
Inocencio entered the dining-room.

“How sorry I was for it, my dear Don José! Believe me, I was truly sorry
for it,” he said, pressing the young man’s hand and regarding him with a
look of compassion.

The engineer was so perplexed for a moment that he did not know what to
answer.

“I refer to the occurrence of this afternoon.”

“Ah, yes!”

“To your expulsion from the sacred precincts of the cathedral.”

“The bishop should consider well,” said Pepe Rey, “before he turns a
Christian out of the church.”

“That is very true. I don’t know who can have put it into his lordship’s
head that you are a man of very bad habits; I don’t know who has told
him that you make a boast of your atheism everywhere; that you ridicule
sacred things and persons, and even that you are planning to pull down
the cathedral to build a large tar factory with the stones. I tried my
best to dissuade him, but his lordship is a little obstinate.”

“Thanks for so much kindness.”

“And it is not because the Penitentiary has any reason to show you these
considerations. A little more, and they would have left him stretched on
the ground this afternoon.”

“Bah!” said the ecclesiastic, laughing. “But have you heard of that
little prank already? I wager Maria Remedios came with the story. And I
forbade her to do it--I forbade her positively. The thing in itself is
of no consequence, am I not right, Señor de Rey?”

“Since you think so----”

“That is what I think. Young people’s pranks! Youth, let the moderns
say what they will, is inclined to vice and to vicious actions. Señor
de Rey, who is a person of great endowments, could not be altogether
perfect--why should it be wondered at that those pretty girls should
have captivated him, and, after getting his money out of him, should
have made him the accomplice of their shameless and criminal insults to
their neighbors? My dear friend, for the painful part that I had in this
afternoon’s sport,” he added, raising his hand to the wounded spot,
“I am not offended, nor will I distress you by even referring to so
disagreeable an incident. I am truly sorry to hear that Maria Remedios
came here to tell all about it. My niece is so fond of gossiping! I
wager she told too about the half ounce, and your romping with the girls
on the terrace, and your chasing one another about, and the pinches and
the capers of Don Juan Tafetan. Bah! those things ought not to be told.”

Pepe Rey did not know which annoyed him most--his aunt’s severity or the
hypocritical condescension of the canon.

“Why should they not be told?” said Doña Perfecta. “He does not seem
ashamed of his conduct himself. I assure you all that I keep this from
my dear daughter only because, in her nervous condition, a fit of anger
might be dangerous to her.”

“Come, it is not so serious as all that, señora,” said the Penitentiary.
“I think the matter should not be again referred to, and when the one
who was stoned says that, the rest may surely be satisfied. And the blow
was no joke, Señor Don José. I thought they had split my head open and
that my brains were oozing out.”

“I am truly sorry for the occurrence!” stammered Pepe Rey. “It gives me
real pain, although I had no part in it--”

“Your visit to those Señoras Troyas will be talked about all over
the town,” said the canon. “We are not in Madrid, in that centre of
corruption, of scandal--”

“There you can visit the vilest places without any one knowing it,” said
Doña Perfecta.

“Here we are very observant of one another,” continued Don Inocencio.
“We take notice of everything our neighbors do, and with such a system
of vigilance public morals are maintained at a proper height. Believe
me, my friend, believe me,--and I do not say this to mortify you,--you
are the first gentleman of your position who, in the light of day--the
first, yes, señor--_Trojoe qui primus ab oris_.”

And bursting into a laugh, he clapped the engineer on the back in token
of amity and good-will.

“How grateful I ought to be,” said the young man, concealing his anger
under the sarcastic words which he thought the most suitable to answer
the covert irony of his interlocutors, “to meet with so much generosity
and tolerance, when my criminal conduct would deserve--”

“What! Is a person of one’s own blood, one who bears one’s name,” said
Doña Perfecta, “to be treated like a stranger? You are my nephew, you
are the son of the best and the most virtuous of men, of my dear brother
Juan, and that is sufficient. Yesterday afternoon the secretary of the
bishop came here to tell me that his lordship is greatly displeased
because I have you in my house.”

“And that too?” murmured the canon.

“And that too. I said that in spite of the respect which I owe the
bishop, and the affection and reverence which I bear him, my nephew is
my nephew, and I cannot turn him out of my house.”

“This is another singularity which I find in this place,” said Pepe Rey,
pale with anger. “Here, apparently, the bishop governs other people’s
houses.”

“He is a saint. He is so fond of me that he imagines--he imagines that
you are going to contaminate us with your atheism, your disregard for
public opinion, your strange ideas. I have told him repeatedly that, at
bottom, you are an excellent young man.”

“Some concession must always be made to superior talent,” observed Don
Inocencio.

“And this morning, when I was at the Cirujedas’--oh, you cannot imagine
in what a state they had my head! Was it true that you had come to
pull down the cathedral; that you were commissioned by the English
Protestants to go preaching heresy throughout Spain; that you spent the
whole night gambling in the Casino; that you were drunk in the streets?
‘But, señoras,’ I said to them, ‘would you have me send my nephew to
the hotel?’ Besides, they are wrong about the drunkenness, and as for
gambling--I have never yet heard that you gambled.”

Pepe Rey found himself in that state of mind in which the calmest man is
seized by a sudden rage, by a blind and brutal impulse to strangle some
one, to strike some one in the face, to break some one’s head, to crush
some one’s bones. But Doña Perfecta was a woman and was, besides, his
aunt; and Don Inocencio was an old man and an ecclesiastic. In addition
to this, physical violence is in bad taste and unbecoming a person of
education and a Christian. There remained the resource of giving vent
to his suppressed wrath in dignified and polite language; but this last
resource seemed to him premature, and only to be employed at the moment
of his final departure from the house and from Orbajosa. Controlling his
fury, then, he waited.

Jacinto entered as they were finishing supper.

“Good-evening, Señor Don José,” he said, pressing the young man’s hand.
“You and your friends kept me from working this afternoon. I was not
able to write a line. And I had so much to do!”

“I am very sorry for it, Jacinto. But according to what they tell me,
you accompany them sometimes in their frolics.”

“I!” exclaimed the boy, turning scarlet. “Why, you know very well that
Tafetan never speaks a word of truth. But is it true, Señor de Rey, that
you are going away?”

“Is that the report in the town?”

“Yes. I heard it in the Casino and at Don Lorenzo Ruiz’s.”

Rey contemplated in silence for a few moments the fresh face of Don
Nominative. Then he said:

“Well, it is not true; my aunt is very well satisfied with me; she
despises the calumnies with which the Orbajosans are favoring me--and
she will not turn me out of her house, even though the bishop himself
should try to make her do so.”

“As for turning you out of the house--never. What would your father
say?”

“Notwithstanding all your kindness, dearest aunt, notwithstanding the
cordial friendship of the reverend canon, it is possible that I may
myself decide to go away.”

“To go away!”

“To go away--you!”

A strange light shone in Doña Perfecta’s eyes. The canon, experienced
though he was in dissimulation, could not conceal his joy.

“Yes, and perhaps this very night.”

“Why, man, how impetuous you are; Why don’t you at least wait until
morning? Here--Juan, let some one go for Uncle Licurgo to get the nag
ready. I suppose you will take some luncheon with you. Nicolasa, that
piece of veal that is on the sideboard! Librada, the señorito’s linen.”

“No, I cannot believe that you would take so rash a resolution,”
 said Don Cayetano, thinking himself obliged to take some part in the
question.

“But you will come back, will you not?” asked the canon.

“At what time does the morning train pass?” asked Doña Perfecta, in
whose eyes was clearly discernible the feverish impatience of her
exaltation.

“I am going away to-night.”

“But there is no moon.”

In the soul of Doña Perfecta, in the soul of the Penitentiary, in the
little doctor’s youthful soul echoed like a celestial harmony the word,
“To-night!”

“Of course, dear Pepe, you will come back. I wrote to-day to your
father, your excellent father,” exclaimed Doña Perfecta, with all the
physiognomic signs that make their appearance when a tear is about to be
shed.

“I will trouble you with a few commissions,” said the savant.

“A good opportunity to order the volume that is wanting in my copy of
the Abbe Gaume’s work,” said the youthful lawyer.

“You take such sudden notions, Pepe; you are so full of caprices,”
 murmured Doña Perfecta, smiling, with her eyes fixed on the door of
the dining-room. “But I forgot to tell you that Caballuco is waiting to
speak to you.”

CHAPTER XV

DISCORD CONTINUES TO GROW UNTIL WAR IS DECLARED

Every one looked toward the door, at which appeared the imposing figure
of the Centaur, serious-looking and frowning; embarrassed by his anxiety
to salute the company politely; savagely handsome, but disfigured by the
violence which he did himself in smiling civilly and treading softly and
holding his herculean arms in a correct posture.

“Come in, Señor Ramos,” said Pepe Rey.

“No, no!” objected Doña Perfecta. “What he has to say to you is an
absurdity.”

“Let him say it.”

“I ought not to allow such ridiculous questions to be discussed in my
house.”

“What is Señor Ramos’ business with me?”

Caballuco uttered a few words.

“Enough, enough!” exclaimed Doña Perfecta. “Don’t trouble my nephew any
more. Pepe, don’t mind this simpleton. Do you wish me to tell you the
cause of the great Caballuco’s anger?” she said, turning to the others.

“Anger? I think I can imagine,” said the Penitentiary, leaning back in
his chair and laughing with boisterous hilarity.

“I wanted to say to Señor Don José--” growled the formidable horseman.

“Hold your tongue, man, for Heaven’s sake! And don’t tire us any more
with that nonsense.”

“Señor Caballuco,” said the canon, “it is not to be wondered at that
gentlemen from the capital should cut out the rough riders of this
savage country.”

“In two words, Pepe, the question is this: Caballuco is--”

She could not go on for laughing.

“Is--I don’t know just what,” said Don Inocencio, “of one of the Troya
girls, of Mariquita Juana, if I am not mistaken.”

“And he is jealous! After his horse, the first thing in creation for him
is Mariquilla Troya.”

“A pretty insinuation that!” exclaimed Doña Perfecta. “Poor Cristobal!
Did you suppose that a person like my nephew--let us hear, what were you
going to say to him? Speak.”

“Señor Don José and I will talk together presently,” responded the bravo
of the town brusquely.

And without another word he left the room.

Shortly afterward Pepe Rey left the dining-room to retire to his
own room. In the hall he found himself face to face with his Trojan
antagonist, and he could not repress a smile at the sight of the fierce
and gloomy countenance of the offended lover.

“A word with you,” said the latter, planting himself insolently in front
of the engineer. “Do you know who I am?”

As he spoke he laid his heavy hand on the young man’s shoulder with
such insolent familiarity that the latter, incensed, flung him off with
violence, saying:

“It is not necessary to crush one to say that.”

The bravo, somewhat disconcerted, recovered himself in a moment, and
looking at Rey with provoking boldness, repeated his refrain:

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes; I know now that you are a brute.”

He pushed the bully roughly aside and went into his room. As traced on
the excited brain of our unfortunate friend at this moment, his plan of
action might be summed up briefly and definitely as follows: To break
Caballuco’s head without loss of time; then to take leave of his aunt in
severe but polite words which should reach her soul; to bid a cold adieu
to the canon and give an embrace to the inoffensive Don Cayetano;
to administer a thrashing to Uncle Licurgo, by way of winding up the
entertainment, and leave Orbajosa that very night, shaking the dust from
his shoes at the city gates.

But in the midst of all these mortifications and persecutions the
unfortunate young man had not ceased to think of another unhappy being,
whom he believed to be in a situation even more painful and distressing
than his own. One of the maid-servants followed the engineer into his
room.

“Did you give her my message?” he asked.

“Yes, señor, and she gave me this.”

Rey took from the girl’s hand a fragment of a newspaper, on the margin
of which he read these words:

“They say you are going away. I shall die if you do.”

When he returned to the dining-room Uncle Licurgo looked in at the door
and asked:

“At what hour do you want the horse?”

“At no hour,” answered Rey quickly.

“Then you are not going to-night?” said Doña Perfecta. “Well, it is
better to wait until to-morrow.”

“I am not going to-morrow, either.”

“When are you going, then?”

“We will see presently,” said the young man coldly, looking at his aunt
with imperturbable calmness. “For the present I do not intend to go
away.”

His eyes flashed forth a fierce challenge.

Doña Perfecta turned first red, then pale. She looked at the canon, who
had taken off his gold spectacles to wipe them, and then fixed her
eyes successively on each of the other persons in the room, including
Caballuco, who, entering shortly before, had seated himself on the
edge of a chair. Doña Perfecta looked at them as a general looks at
his trusty body-guard. Then she studied the thoughtful and serene
countenance of her nephew--of that enemy, who, by a strategic movement,
suddenly reappeared before her when she believed him to be in shameful
flight.

Alas! Bloodshed, ruin, and desolation! A great battle was about to be
fought.

CHAPTER XVI

NIGHT

Orbajosa slept. The melancholy street-lamps were shedding their last
gleams at street-corners and in by-ways, like tired eyes struggling in
vain against sleep. By their dim light, wrapped in their cloaks, glided
past like shadows, vagabonds, watchmen, and gamblers. Only the hoarse
shout of the drunkard or the song of the serenader broke the peaceful
silence of the historic city. Suddenly the “Ave Maria Purisima” of some
drunken watchman would be heard, like a moan uttered in its sleep by the
town.

In Doña Perfecta’s house also silence reigned, unbroken but for a
conversation which was taking place between Don Cayetano and Pepe Rey,
in the library of the former. The savant was seated comfortably in
the arm-chair beside his study table, which was covered with papers
of various kinds containing notes, annotations, and references, all
arranged in the most perfect order. Rey’s eyes were fixed on the heap of
papers, but his thoughts were doubtless far away from this accumulated
learning.

“Perfecta,” said the antiquary, “although she is an excellent woman, has
the defect of allowing herself to be shocked by any little act of folly.
In these provincial towns, my dear friend, the slightest slip is dearly
paid for. I see nothing particular in your having gone to the Troyas’
house. I fancy that Don Inocencio, under his cloak of piety, is
something of a mischief-maker. What has he to do with the matter?”

“We have reached a point, Señor Don Cayetano, in which it is necessary
to take a decisive resolution. I must see Rosario and speak with her.”

“See her, then!”

“But they will not let me,” answered the engineer, striking the table
with his clenched hand. “Rosario is kept a prisoner.”

“A prisoner!” repeated the savant incredulously. “The truth is that I do
not like her looks or her hair, and still less the vacant expression
in her beautiful eyes. She is melancholy, she talks little, she
weeps--friend Don José, I greatly fear that the girl may be attacked by
the terrible malady to which so many of the members of my family have
fallen victims.”

“A terrible malady! What is it?”

“Madness--or rather mania. Not a single member of my family has been
free from it. I alone have escaped it.”

“You! But leaving aside the question of madness,” said Rey, with
impatience, “I wish to see Rosario.”

“Nothing more natural. But the isolation in which her mother keeps
her is a hygienic measure, dear Pepe, and the only one that has been
successfully employed with the various members of my family. Consider
that the person whose presence and voice would make the strongest
impression on Rosarillo’s delicate nervous system is the chosen of her
heart.”

“In spite of all that,” insisted Pepe, “I wish to see her.”

“Perhaps Perfecta will not oppose your doing so,” said the savant,
giving his attention to his notes and papers. “I don’t want to take any
responsibility in the matter.”

The engineer, seeing that he could obtain nothing from the good
Polentinos, rose to retire.

“You are going to work,” he said, “and I will not trouble you any
longer.”

“No, there is time enough. See the amount of precious information that
I collected to-day. Listen: ‘In 1537 a native of Orbajosa, called
Bartolome del Hoyo, went to Civita-Vecchia in one of the galleys of
the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo.’ Another: ‘In the same year two brothers
named Juan and Rodrigo Gonzalez del Arco embarked in one of the six
ships which sailed from Maestricht on the 20th of February, and which
encountered in the latitude of Calais an English vessel and the Flemish
fleet commanded by Van Owen.’ That was truly an important exploit of
our navy. I have discovered that it was an Orbajosan, one Mateo Diaz
Coronel, an ensign in the guards, who, in 1709, wrote and published
in Valencia the ‘Metrical Encomium, Funeral Chant, Lyrical Eulogy,
Numerical Description, Glorious Sufferings, and Sorrowful Glories of the
Queen of the Angels.’ I possess a most precious copy of this work, which
is worth the mines of Peru. Another Orbajosan was the author of that
famous ‘Treatise on the Various Styles of Horsemanship’ which I
showed you yesterday; and, in short, there is not a step I take in the
labyrinth of unpublished history that I do not stumble against some
illustrious compatriot. It is my purpose to draw all these names out of
the unjust obscurity and oblivion in which they have so long lain. How
pure a joy, dear Pepe, to restore all their lustre to the glories, epic
and literary, of one’s native place! And how could a man better employ
the scant intellect with which Heaven has endowed him, the fortune which
he has inherited, and the brief period of time on earth allowed to even
the longest life. Thanks to me it will be seen that Orbajosa is the
illustrious cradle of Spanish genius. But what do I say? Is not its
illustrious ancestry evident in the nobleness and high-mindedness of
the present Urbs Augustan generation? We know few places where all the
virtues, unchoked by the malefic weeds of vice, grow more luxuriantly.
Here all is peace, mutual respect, Christian humility. Charity is
practised here as it was in Biblical times; here envy is unknown; here
the criminal passions are unknown, and if you hear thieves and murderers
spoken of, you may be sure that they are not the children of this
noble soil; or, that if they are, they belong to the number of unhappy
creatures perverted by the teachings of demagogues. Here you will see
the national character in all its purity--upright, noble, incorruptible,
pure, simple, patriarchal, hospitable, generous. Therefore it is that
I live so happy in this solitude far from the turmoil of cities where,
alas! falsehood and vice reign. Therefore it is that the many friends
whom I have in Madrid have not been able to tempt me from this place;
therefore it is that I spend my life in the sweet companionship of my
faithful townspeople and my books, breathing the wholesome atmosphere of
integrity, which is gradually becoming circumscribed in our Spain to the
humble and Christian towns that have preserved it with the emanations of
their virtues. And believe me, my dear Pepe, this peaceful isolation has
greatly contributed to preserve me from the terrible malady connatural
in my family. In my youth I suffered, like my brothers and my father,
from a lamentable propensity to the most absurd manias; but here you
have me so miraculously cured that all I know of the malady is what I
see of it in others. And it is for that reason that I am so uneasy about
my little niece.”

“I am rejoiced that the air of Orbajosa has proved so beneficial to
you,” said Rey, unable to resist the jesting mood that, by a strange
contradiction, came over him in the midst of his sadness. “With me it
has agreed so badly that I think I shall soon become mad if I remain in
it. Well, good-night, and success to your labors.”

“Good-night.”

Pepe went to his room, but feeling neither a desire for sleep or the
need of physical repose,--on the contrary, a violent excitation of mind
which impelled him to move, to act,--he walked up and down the room,
torturing himself with useless cavilling. After a time he opened the
window which overlooked the garden and, leaning his elbows on the
parapet, he gazed out on the limitless darkness of the night. Nothing
could be seen, but he who is absorbed in his own thoughts sees with the
mental vision, and Pepe Rey, his eyes fixed on the darkness, saw the
varied panorama of his misfortunes unroll itself upon it before him. The
obscurity did not permit him to see the flowers of the earth, nor those
of the heavens, which are the stars. The very absence of light produced
the effect of an illusory movement in the masses of foliage, which
seemed to stretch away, to recede slowly, and come curling back like the
waves of a shadowy sea. A vast flux and reflux, a strife between forces
vaguely comprehended, agitated the silent sky. The mathematician,
contemplating this strange projection of his soul upon the night, said
to himself:

“The battle will be terrible. Let us see who will come out of it
victorious.”

The nocturnal insects whispered in his ear mysterious words. Here
a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue;
further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of
the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange
sound, a rapid note, that could be produced only by the human tongue and
lips. This sibilant breathing passed through the young man’s brain like
a flash of lightning. He felt that swift “s-s-s” dart snake-like through
him, repeated again and then again, with augmented intensity. He looked
all around, then he looked toward the upper part of the house, and he
fancied that in one of the windows he could distinguish an object like
a white bird flapping its wings. Through Pepe Rey’s excited mind flashed
instantly the idea of the phoenix, of the dove, of the regal heron, and
yet the bird he saw was noting more than a handkerchief.

The engineer sprang from the balcony into the garden. Observing
attentively, he saw the hand and the face of his cousin. He thought
he could perceive the gesture commonly employed of imposing silence by
laying the finger on the lips. Then the dear shade pointed downward and
disappeared. Pepe Rey returned quickly to this room, entered the hall
noiselessly, and walked slowly forward. He felt his heart beat with
violence. He waited for a few moments, and at last he heard distinctly
light taps on the steps of the stairs. One, two, three--the sounds were
produced by a pair of little shoes.

He walked in the direction whence they proceeded, and stretched out
his hands in the obscurity to assist the person who was descending the
stairs. In his soul there reigned an exalted and profound tenderness,
but--why seek to deny it--mingling with this tender feeling, there
suddenly arose within him, like an infernal inspiration, another
sentiment, a fierce desire for revenge. The steps continued to descend,
coming nearer and nearer. Pepe Rey went forward, and a pair of hands,
groping in the darkness, came in contact with his own. The two pairs of
hands were united in a close clasp.

CHAPTER XVII

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

The hall was long and broad. At one end of it was the door of the room
occupied by the engineer, in the centre that of the dining-room, and at
the other end were the staircase and a large closed door reached by a
step. This door opened into a chapel in which the Polentinos performed
their domestic devotions. Occasionally the holy sacrifice of the mass
was celebrated in it.

Rosario led her cousin to the door of the chapel and then sank down on
the doorstep.

“Here?” murmured Pepe Rey.

From the movements of Rosarito’s right hand he comprehended that she was
blessing herself.

“Rosario, dear cousin, thanks for allowing me to see you!” he exclaimed,
embracing her ardently.

He felt the girl’s cold fingers on his lips, imposing silence. He kissed
them rapturously.

“You are frozen. Rosario, why do you tremble so?”

Her teeth were chattering, and her whole frame trembled convulsively.
Rey felt the burning heat of his cousin’s face against his own, and he
cried in alarm:

“Your forehead is burning! You are feverish.”

“Very.”

“Are you really ill?”

“Yes.”

“And you have left your room----”

“To see you.”

The engineer wrapped his arms around her to protect her from the cold,
but it was not enough.

“Wait,” he said quickly, rising. “I am going to my room to bring my
travelling rug.”

“Put out the light, Pepe.”

Rey had left the lamp burning in his room, through the door of which
issued a faint streak of light, illuminating the hall. He returned in an
instant. The darkness was now profound. Groping his way along the wall
he reached the spot where his cousin was sitting, and wrapped the rug
carefully around her.

“You are comfortable now, my child.”

“Yes, so comfortable! With you!”

“With me--and forever!” exclaimed the young man, with exaltation.

But he observed that she was releasing herself from his arms and was
rising.

“What are you doing?”

A metallic sound was heard. Rosario had put the key into the invisible
lock and was cautiously opening the door on the threshold of which they
had been sitting. The faint odor of dampness, peculiar to rooms that
have been long shut up, issued from the place, which was as dark as a
tomb. Pepe Rey felt himself being guided by the hand, and his cousin’s
voice said faintly:

“Enter!”

They took a few steps forward. He imagined himself being led to an
unknown Elysium by the angel of night. Rosario groped her way. At last
her sweet voice sounded again, murmuring:

“Sit down.”

They were beside a wooden bench. Both sat down. Pepe Rey embraced
Rosario again. As he did so, his head struck against a hard body.

“What is this?” he asked.

“The feet.”

“Rosario--what are you saying?”

“The feet of the Divine Jesus, of the image of Christ crucified, that we
adore in my house.”

Pepe Rey felt a cold chill strike through him.

“Kiss them,” said the young girl imperiously.

The mathematician kissed the cold feet of the holy image.

“Pepe,” then cried the young girl, pressing her cousin’s hand ardently
between her own, “do you believe in God?”

“Rosario! What are you saying? What absurdities are you imagining?”
 responded her cousin, perplexed.

“Answer me.”

Pepe Rey felt drops of moisture on his hands.

“Why are you crying?” he said, greatly disturbed. “Rosario, you are
killing me with your absurd doubts. Do I believe in God? Do you doubt
it?”

“I do not doubt it; but they all say that you are an atheist.”

“You would suffer in my estimation, you would lose your aureole of
purity--your charm--if you gave credit to such nonsense.”

“When I heard them accuse you of being an atheist, although I could
bring no proof to the contrary, I protested from the depths of my soul
against such a calumny. You cannot be an atheist. I have within me as
strong and deep a conviction of your faith as of my own.”

“How wisely you speak! Why, then, do you ask me if I believe in God?”

“Because I wanted to hear it from your own lips, and rejoice in hearing
you say it. It is so long since I have heard the sound of your voice!
What greater happiness than to hear it again, saying: ‘I believe in
God?’”

“Rosario, even the wicked believe in him. If there be atheists, which I
doubt, they are the calumniators, the intriguers with whom the world is
infested. For my part, intrigues and calumnies matter little to me; and
if you rise superior to them and close your heart against the discord
which a perfidious hand would sow in it, nothing shall interfere with
our happiness.”

“But what is going on around us? Pepe, dear Pepe, do you believe in the
devil?”

The engineer was silent. The darkness of the chapel prevented Rosario
from seeing the smile with which her cousin received this strange
question.

“We must believe in him,” he said at last.

“What is going on? Mamma forbids me to see you; but, except in regard
to the atheism, she does not say any thing against you. She tells me to
wait, that you will decide; that you are going away, that you are coming
back----Speak to me with frankness--have you formed a bad opinion of my
mother?”

“Not at all,” replied Rey, urged by a feeling of delicacy.

“Do you not believe, as I do, that she loves us both, that she desires
only our good, and that we shall in the end obtain her consent to our
wishes?”

“If you believe it, I do too. Your mama adores us both. But, dear
Rosario, it must be confessed that the devil has entered this house.”

“Don’t jest!” she said affectionately. “Ah! Mamma is very good. She has
not once said to me that you were unworthy to be my husband. All she
insists upon is the atheism. They say, besides, that I have manias, and
that I have the mania now of loving you with all my soul. In our family
it is a rule not to oppose directly the manias that are hereditary in
it, because to oppose them aggravates them.”

“Well, I believe that there are skilful physicians at your side who
have determined to cure you, and who will, in the end, my adored girl,
succeed in doing so.”

“No, no; a thousand times no!” exclaimed Rosario, leaning her forehead
on her lover’s breast. “I am willing to be mad if I am with you. For
you I am suffering, for you I am ill; for you I despise life and I risk
death. I know it now--to-morrow I shall be worse, I shall be dangerously
ill, I shall die. What does it matter to me?”

“You are not ill,” he responded, with energy; “there is nothing the
matter with you but an agitation of mind which naturally brings with it
some slight nervous disturbances; there is nothing the matter with you
but the suffering occasioned by the horrible coercion which they are
using with you. Your simple and generous soul does not comprehend it.
You yield; you forgive those who injure you; you torment yourself,
attributing your suffering to baleful, supernatural influences; you
suffer in silence; you give your innocent neck to the executioner, you
allow yourself to be slain, and the very knife which is plunged into
your breast seems to you the thorn of a flower that has pierced you in
passing. Rosario, cast those ideas from your mind; consider our real
situation, which is serious; seek its cause where it really is, and
do not give way to your fears; do not yield to the tortures which are
inflicted upon you, making yourself mentally and physically ill. The
courage which you lack would restore you to health, because you are not
really ill, my dear girl, you are--do you wish me to say it?--you are
frightened, terrified. You are under what the ancients, not knowing how
to express it, called an evil spell. Courage, Rosario, trust in me! Rise
and follow me. That is all I will say.”

“Ah, Pepe--cousin! I believe that you are right,” exclaimed Rosario,
drowned in tears. “Your words resound within my heart, arousing in it
new energy, new life. Here in this darkness, where we cannot see each
other’s faces, an ineffable light emanates from you and inundates my
soul. What power have you to transform me in this way? The moment I
saw you I became another being. In the days when I did not see you I
returned to my former insignificance, my natural cowardice. Without you,
my Pepe, I live in Limbo. I will do as you tell me, I will arise and
follow you. We will go together wherever you wish. Do you know that I
feel well? Do you know that I have no fever: that I have recovered my
strength; that I want to run about and cry out; that my whole being is
renewed and enlarged, and multiplied a hundred-fold in order to adore
you? Pepe, you are right. I am not sick, I am only afraid; or rather,
bewitched.”

“That is it, bewitched.”

“Bewitched! Terrible eyes look at me, and I remain mute and trembling.
I am afraid, but of what? You alone have the strange power of calling me
back to life. Hearing you, I live again. I believe if I were to die and
you were to pass by my grave, that deep under the ground I should feel
your footsteps. Oh, if I could see you now! But you are here beside me,
and I cannot doubt that it is you. So many days without seeing you! I
was mad. Each day of solitude appeared to me a century. They said to
me, to-morrow and to-morrow, and always to-morrow. I looked out of
the window at night, and the light of the lamp in your room served
to console me. At times your shadow on the window was for me a divine
apparition. I stretched out my arms to you, I shed tears and cried out
inwardly, without daring to do so with my voice. When I received the
message you sent me with the maid, when I received your letter telling
me that you were going away, I grew very sad, I thought my soul was
leaving my body and that I was dying slowly. I fell, like the bird
wounded as it flies, that falls and, falling, dies. To-night, when I
saw that you were awake so late, I could not resist the longing I had to
speak to you; and I came down stairs. I believe that all the courage of
my life has been used up in this single act, and that now I can never
be any thing again but a coward. But you will give me courage; you will
give me strength; you will help me, will you not? Pepe, my dear cousin,
tell me that you will; tell me that I am strong, and I will be strong;
tell me that I am not ill, and I will not be ill. I am not ill now. I
feel so well that I could laugh at my ridiculous maladies.”

As she said this she felt herself clasped rapturously in her cousin’s
arms. An “Oh!” was heard, but it came, not from her lips, but from his,
for in bending his head, he had struck it violently against the feet of
the crucifix. In the darkness it is that the stars are seen.

In the exalted state of his mind, by a species of hallucination natural
in the darkness, it seemed to Pepe Rey not that his head had struck
against the sacred foot, but that this had moved, warning him in the
briefest and most eloquent manner. Raising his head he said, half
seriously, half gayly:

“Lord, do not strike me; I will do nothing wrong.”

At the same moment Rosario took the young man’s hand and pressed it
against her heart. A voice was heard, a pure, grave, angelic voice, full
of feeling, saying:

“Lord whom I adore, Lord God of the world, and guardian of my house and
of my family; Lord whom Pepe also adores; holy and blessed Christ who
died on the cross for our sins; before thee, before thy wounded body,
before thy forehead crowned with thorns, I say that this man is my
husband, and that, after thee, he is the being whom my heart loves most;
I say that I declare him to be my husband, and that I will die before
I belong to another. My heart and my soul are his. Let not the world
oppose our happiness, and grant me the favor of this union, which I
swear to be true and good before the world, as it is in my conscience.”

“Rosario, you are mine!” exclaimed Pepe Rey, with exaltation. “Neither
your mother nor any one else shall prevent it.”

Rosario sank powerless into her cousin’s arms. She trembled in his manly
embrace, as the dove trembles in the talons of the eagle.

Through the engineer’s mind the thought flashed that the devil existed;
but the devil then was he. Rosario made a slight movement of fear; she
felt the thrill of surprise, so to say, that gives warning that danger
is near.

“Swear to me that you will not yield to them,” said Pepe Rey, with
confusion, observing the movement.

“I swear it to you by my father’s ashes that are--”

“Where?”

“Under our feet.”

The mathematician felt the stone rise under his feet--but no, it was not
rising; he only fancied, mathematician though he was, that he felt it
rise.

“I swear it to you,” repeated Rosario, “by my father’s ashes, and by the
God who is looking at us----May our bodies, united as they are, repose
under those stones when God wills to take us out of this world.”

“Yes,” repeated the Pepe Rey, with profound emotion, feeling his soul
filled with an inexplicable trouble.

Both remained silent for a short time. Rosario had risen.

“Already?” he said.

She sat down again.

“You are trembling again,” said Pepe. “Rosario, you are ill; your
forehead is burning.”

“I think I am dying,” murmured the young girl faintly. “I don’t know
what is the matter with me.”

She fell senseless into her cousin’s arms. Caressing her, he noticed
that her face was covered with a cold perspiration.

“She is really ill,” he said to himself. “It was a piece of great
imprudence to have come down stairs.”

He lifted her up in his arms, endeavoring to restore her to
consciousness, but neither the trembling that had seized her nor her
insensibility passed away; and he resolved to carry her out of the
chapel, in the hope that the fresh air would revive her. And so it was.
When she recovered consciousness Rosario manifested great disquietude
at finding herself at such an hour out of her own room. The clock of the
cathedral struck four.

“How late it is!” exclaimed the young girl. “Release me, cousin. I think
I can walk. I am really very ill.”

“I will go upstairs with you.”

“Oh, no; on no account! I would rather drag myself to my room on my
hands and feet. Don’t you hear a noise?”

Both were silent. The anxiety with which they listened made the silence
intense.

“Don’t you hear any thing, Pepe?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Pay attention. There, there it is again. It is a noise that sounds as
if it might be either very, very distant, or very near. It might either
be my mother’s breathing or the creaking of the vane on the tower of the
cathedral. Ah! I have a very fine ear.”

“Too fine! Well, dear cousin, I will carry you upstairs in my arms.”

“Very well; carry me to the head of the stairs. Afterward I can go
alone. As soon as I rest a little I shall be as well as ever. But don’t
you hear?”

They stopped on the first step.

“It is a metallic sound.”

“Your mother’s breathing?”

“No, it is not that. The noise comes from a great distance. Perhaps it
is the crowing of a cock?”

“Perhaps so.”

“It sounds like the words, ‘I am going there, I am going there!’”

“Now, now I hear,” murmured Pepe Rey.

“It is a cry.”

“It is a cornet.”

“A cornet!”

“Yes. Let us hurry. Orbajosa is going to wake up. Now I hear it clearly.
It is not a trumpet but a clarionet. The soldiers are coming.”

“Soldiers!”

“I don’t know why I imagine that this military invasion is going to be
advantageous to me. I feel glad. Up, quickly, Rosario!”

“I feel glad, too. Up, up!”

In an instant he had carried her upstairs, and the lovers took a
whispered leave of each other.

“I will stand at the window overlooking the garden, so that you may know
I have reached my room safely. Good-by.”

“Good-by, Rosario. Take care not to stumble against the furniture.”

“I can find my way here perfectly, cousin. We shall soon see each
other again. Stand at your window if you wish to receive my telegraphic
despatch.”

Pepe Rey did as he was bade; but he waited a long time, and Rosario did
not appear at the window. The engineer fancied he heard agitated voices
on the floor above him.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SOLDIERS

The inhabitants of Orbajosa heard in the twilight vagueness of their
morning slumbers the same sonorous clarionet, and they opened their
eyes, saying:

“The soldiers!”

Some murmured to themselves between sleeping and waking:

“At last they have sent us that rabble.”

Others got out of bed hastily, growling:

“Let us go take a look at those confounded soldiers.”

Some soliloquized in this way:

“It will be necessary to hurry up matters. They say drafts and
contributions; we will say blows and more blows.”

In another house were heard these words uttered joyfully:

“Perhaps my son is coming! Perhaps my brother is coming!”

Everywhere people were springing out of bed, dressing hastily, opening
the windows to see the regiment that caused all this excitement entering
the city in the early dawn. The city was gloom, silence, age; the army
gayety, boisterousness, youth. As the army entered the city it seemed as
if the mummy received by some magic art the gift of life and sprang
with noisy gayety from its damp sarcophagus to dance around it. What
movement, what shouting, what laughter, what merriment! There is nothing
so interesting as a regiment. It is our country in its youthful and
vigorous aspect. All the ineptitude, the turbulence, the superstition
at times, and at times the impiety of the country as represented in the
individual, disappears under the iron rule of discipline, which of so
many insignificant figures makes an imposing whole. The soldier, or so
to say, the corpuscle, separating at the command “Break ranks!” from
the mass in which he has led a regular and at times a sublime life,
occasionally preserves some of the qualities peculiar to the army. But
this is not the general rule. The separation is most often accompanied
by a sudden deterioration, with the result that if an army is the glory
and honor of a nation, an assemblage of soldiers may be an insupportable
calamity; and the towns that shed tears of joy and enthusiasm when they
see a victorious battalion enter their precincts, groan with terror and
tremble with apprehension when they see the same soldiers separate and
off duty.

This last was what happened in Orbajosa, for in those days there were
no glorious deeds to celebrate, nor was there any motive for weaving
wreaths or tracing triumphal inscriptions, or even for making mention
of the exploits of our brave soldiers, for which reason all was fear
and suspicion in the episcopal city, which, although poor, did not lack
treasures in chickens, fruits, money, and maidenhood, all of which
ran great risk from the moment when the before-mentioned sons of Mars
entered it. In addition to this, the native town of Polentinos, as a
city remote from the movement and stir brought with them by traffic, the
newspapers, railroads, and other agents which it is unnecessary now to
specify, did not wish to be disturbed in its tranquil existence.

Besides which, it manifested on every favorable occasion a strong
aversion to submitting to the central authority which, badly or well,
governs us; and calling to mind its former privileges and ruminating
upon them anew, as the camel chews the cud of the grass which it
ate yesterday, it would occasionally display a certain rebellious
independence, and vicious tendencies much to be deplored, which at times
gave no little anxiety to the governor of the province.

It must also be taken into account that Orbajosa had rebellious
antecedents, or rather ancestry. Doubtless it still retained some
of those energetic fibres which, in remote ages, according to the
enthusiastic opinion of Don Cayetano, impelled it to unexampled epic
deeds; and, even in its decadence, occasionally felt an eager desire to
do great things, although they might be only barbarities and follies.
As it had given to the world so many illustrious sons, it desired,
no doubt, that its actual scions, the Caballucos, Merengues, and
Pelosmalos, should renew the glorious _Gesta_ of their predecessors.

Whenever there was disaffection in Spain, Orbajosa gave proof that it
was not in vain that it existed on the face of the earth, although it
is true that it was never the theatre of a real war. The spirit of the
town, its situation, its history, all reduced it to the secondary part
of raising guerillas. It bestowed upon the country this national product
in 1827, at the time of the Apostolics, during the Seven Years’ War, in
1848, and at other epochs of less resonance in the national history. The
guerillas and their chiefs were always popular, a fatal circumstance due
to the War of Independence, one of those good things which have been
the origin of an infinite number of detestable things. _Corruptio optimi
pessima_. And with the popularity of the guerillas and their chiefs
coincided, in ever-increasing proportion, the unpopularity of every one
who entered Orbajosa in the character of a delegate or instrument of
the central power. The soldiers were held in such disrepute there that,
whenever the old people told of any crime, any robbery, assassination,
or the like atrocity, they added: “This happened when the soldiers were
here.”

And now that these important observations have been made, it will be
well to add that the battalions sent there during the days in which the
events of our story took place did not go to parade through the streets,
but for another purpose which will be clearly and minutely set forth
later on. As a detail of no little interest, it may be noted that the
events here related took place at a period neither very remote nor very
recent. It may also be said that Orbajosa (called by the Romans Urbs
Augusta, although some learned moderns, enquiring into the etymology of
the termination _ajosa_[*] are of the opinion that it comes by it from
being the richest garlic-growing country in the world) is neither very
near Madrid nor very far from it; nor can we say whether its glorious
foundations are laid toward the north or toward the south, toward the
east or toward the west; but that it may be supposed to be in any part
of Spain where the pungent odor of its garlic is to be perceived.

     [*] Rich in garlic.

The billets of residence being distributed by the authorities, each
soldier went to seek his borrowed home. They were received by
their hosts with a very ill grace and assigned the most atrociously
uninhabitable parts of the houses. The girls of the city were not indeed
among those who were most dissatisfied, but a strict watch was kept over
them, and it was considered not decent to show pleasure at the visit of
such rabble. The few soldiers who were natives of the district only were
treated like kings. The others were regarded as invaders.

At eight in the morning a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry entered the
house of Doña Perfecta Polentinos with his billet. He was received by
the servants, by order of its mistress, who, being at the time in a
deplorable state of mind, did not wish to go down stairs to meet the
soldier, and by them he was shown to the only room in the house which,
it seemed, was disposable, the room occupied by Pepe Rey.

“Let them settle themselves as best they can,” said Doña Perfecta, with
an expression of gall and vinegar. “And if they have not room enough,
let them go into the street.”

Was it her intention to annoy in this way her detested nephew, or was
there really no other unoccupied room in the house? This we do not know,
nor do the chronicles from which this true history is taken say a word
on this important point. What we know positively is that, far from
displeasing the two guests to be thus boxed up together, it gave them
great pleasure, as they happened to be old friends. They were greatly
surprised and delighted when they met, and they were never tired of
asking each other questions and uttering exclamations, dwelling on the
strange chance that had brought them together in such a place and on
such an occasion.

“Pinzon--you here! Why, what is this? I had no suspicion that you were
in this neighborhood.”

“I heard that you were in this part of the country, Pepe; but I had no
idea, either, that I should meet you in this horrible, this barbarous
Orbajosa.”

“But what a fortunate chance! For this chance is most
fortunate--providential. Pinzon, between us both we are going to do a
great thing in this wretched town.”

“And we shall have time enough to consult about it,” answered the other,
seating himself on the bed in which the engineer was lying, “for it
appears that we are both to occupy this room. What the devil sort of a
house is this?”

“Why, man, it is my aunt’s. Speak with more respect about it. Have you
not met my aunt? But I am going to get up.”

“I am very glad of it, for then I can lie down and rest; and badly I
need it. What a road, friend Pepe, what a road, and what a town!”

“Tell me, have you come to set fire to Orbajosa?”

“Fire!”

“I ask you because, in that case, I might help you.”

“What a town! But what a town!” exclaimed the soldier, removing his
shako, and laying aside sword and shoulder-belt, travelling case and
cloak. “This is the second time they have sent us here. I swear to you
that the third time I will ask my discharge.”

“Don’t talk ill of these good people! But you have come in the nick of
time. It seems as if Providence has sent you to my aid, Pinzon. I have a
terrible project on hand, an adventure,--a plot, if you wish to call
it so, my friend,--and it would have been difficult for me to carry
it through without you. A moment ago I was in despair, wondering how I
should manage, and saying to myself anxiously, ‘If I only had a friend
here, a good friend!’”

“A project, a plot, an adventure! One of two things, Señor
Mathematician: it is either the discovery of aerial navigation, or else
some love affair.”

“It is serious, very serious. Go to bed, sleep a while, and afterward we
will talk about it.”

“I will go to bed, but I will not sleep. You may say all you wish to
me. All that I ask is that you will say as little as possible about
Orbajosa.”

“It is precisely about Orbajosa that I wish to speak to you. But have
you also an antipathy to this cradle of illustrious men?”

“These garlic-venders--we call them the garlic-venders--may be as
illustrious as you choose, but to me they are as irritating as the
product of the country. This is a town ruled by people who teach
distrust, superstition, and hatred of the whole human race. When we have
leisure I will relate to you an occurrence--an adventure, half-comic,
half-tragic--that happened to me here last year. When I tell it to you,
you will laugh and I shall be fuming. But, in fine, what is past is
past.”

“In what is happening to me there is nothing comic.”

“But I have various reasons for hating this wretched place. You must
know that my father was assassinated here in ‘48 by a party of barbarous
guerillas. He was a brigadier, and he had left the service. The
Government sent for him, and he was passing through Villahorrenda on his
way to Madrid, when he was captured by half a dozen ruffians. Here there
are several dynasties of guerilla chiefs--the Aceros, the Caballucos,
the Pelosmalos--a periodical eruption, as some one has said who knew
very well what he was talking about.”

“I suppose that two infantry regiments and some cavalry have not come
here solely for the pleasure of visiting these delightful regions.”

“Certainly not! We have come to survey the country. There are many
deposits of arms here. The Government does not venture, as it desires,
to remove from office the greater number of the municipal councils
without first distributing a few companies of soldiers through these
towns. As there is so much disturbance in this part of the country,
as two of the neighboring provinces are already infested, and as this
municipal district of Orbajosa has, besides, so brilliant a record in
all the civil wars, there are fears that the bravos of the place may
take to the roads and rob all they can lay hands on.”

“A good precaution! But I am firmly convinced that not until these
people die and are born over again, not until the very stones have
changed their form, will there be peace in Orbajosa.”

“That is my opinion too,” said the officer, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t
you see that the guerilla chiefs are the pets of this place? Those who
desolated the district in 1848 and at other epochs, or, if not they,
their sons, are employed in the market inspector’s office, at the town
gates, in the town-hall, in the post-office; among them are constables,
sacristans, bailiffs. Some have become powerful party leaders and they
are the ones who manage the elections, have influence in Madrid, bestow
places--in short, this is terrible.”

“And tell me, is there no hope of the guerilla chiefs performing some
exploit in these days? If that should happen, you could destroy the
town, and I would help you.”

“If it depended upon me----They will play their usual pranks no doubt,”
 said Pinzon, “for the insurrection in the two neighboring provinces is
spreading like wildfire. And between ourselves, friend Rey, I think
this is going to last for a long time. Some people smile and say that it
would be impossible that there should be another insurrection like the
last one. They don’t know the country; they don’t know Orbajosa and
its inhabitants. I believe that the war that is now beginning will have
serious consequences, and that we shall have another cruel and bloody
struggle, that will last Heaven knows how long. What is your opinion?”

“Well, in Madrid I laughed at any one who spoke of the possibility of a
civil war as long and as terrible as the Seven Years’ War; but since I
have been here----”

“One must come to the heart of this enchanting country, see the people
at home, and hear them talk, to know what the real state of affairs is.”

“Just so. Without knowing precisely on what I base my opinion, the fact
is that here I see things in a different light, and I now believe that
it is possible that there may be a long and bloody war.”

“Exactly so.”

“But at present my thoughts are occupied less by the public war than by
a private war in which I am engaged and which I declared a short time
ago.”

“You said this was your aunt’s house. What is her name?”

“Doña Perfecta Rey de Polentinos.”

“Ah! I know her by reputation. She is an excellent person, and the only
one of whom I have not heard the garlic-venders speak ill. When I was
here before I heard her goodness, her charity, her innumerable virtues,
everywhere extolled.”

“Yes, my aunt is very kind, very amiable,” said Rey.

Then he fell into a thoughtful silence.

“But now I remember!” exclaimed Pinzon suddenly. “How one thing fits in
with another! Yes, I heard in Madrid that you were going to be married
to a cousin of yours. All is clear now. Is it that beautiful and
heavenly Rosario?”

“Pinzon, we must have a long talk together.”

“I imagine that there are difficulties.”

“There is something more; there is violent opposition. I have need of a
determined friend--a friend who is prompt to act, fruitful in resource,
of great experience in emergencies, astute and courageous.”

“Why, this is even more serious than a challenge.”

“A great deal more serious. It would be easy to fight with another man.
With women, with unseen enemies who work in the dark, it is impossible.”

“Come, I am all ears.”

Lieutenant-colonel Pinzon lay stretched at full length upon the bed.
Pepe Rey drew a chair up to the bedside and, leaning his elbow on
the bed and his head on his hand, began his conference, consultation,
exposition of plan, or whatever else it might be called, and continued
talking for a long time. Pinzon listened to him with profound attention
and without interrupting him, except to ask an occasional question for
the purpose of obtaining further details or additional light upon some
obscure point. When Pepe Rey ended, Pinzon looked grave. He stretched
himself, yawning with the satisfaction of one who has not slept for
three nights, and then said:

“You plan is dangerous and difficult.”

“But not impossible.”

“Oh, no! for nothing is impossible. Reflect well about it.”

“I have reflected.”

“And you are resolved to carry it through? Consider that these things
are not now in fashion. They generally turn out badly and throw
discredit on those who undertake them.”

“I am resolved.”

“For my part, then, although the business is dangerous and serious--very
serious--I am ready to aid you in all things and for all things.”

“Can I rely upon you?”

“To the death.”

CHAPTER XIX

A TERRIBLE BATTLE-STRATEGY

The opening of hostilities could not long be delayed. When the hour of
dinner arrived, after coming to an agreement with Pinzon regarding the
plan to be pursued, the first condition of which was that the friends
should pretend not to know each other, Pepe Rey went to the dining-room.
There he found his aunt, who had just returned from the cathedral where
she had spent the morning as was her habit. She was alone, and appeared
to be greatly preoccupied. The engineer observed that on that pale and
marble-like countenance, not without a certain beauty, there rested
a mysterious shadow. When she looked up it recovered its sinister
calmness, but she looked up seldom, and after a rapid examination of her
nephew’s countenance, that of the amiable lady would again take on its
studied gloom.

They awaited dinner in silence. They did not wait for Don Cayetano, for
he had gone to Mundogrande. When they sat down to table Doña Perfecta
said:

“And that fine soldier whom the Government has sent us, is he not coming
to dinner?”

“He seems to be more sleepy than hungry,” answered the engineer, without
looking at his aunt.

“Do you know him?”

“I have never seen him in all my life before.”

“We are nicely off with the guests whom the Government sends us. We have
beds and provisions in order to keep them ready for those vagabonds of
Madrid, whenever they may choose to dispose of them.”

“There are fears of an insurrection,” said Pepe Rey, with sudden heat,
“and the Government is determined to crush the Orbajosans--to crush
them, to grind them to powder.”

“Stop, man, stop, for Heaven’s sake; don’t crush us!” cried Doña
Perfecta sarcastically. “Poor we! Be merciful, man, and allow us unhappy
creatures to live. And would you, then, be one of those who would aid
the army in the grand work of crushing us?”

“I am not a soldier. I will do nothing but applaud when I see the germs
of civil war; of insubordination, of discord, of disorder, of robbery,
and of barbarism that exist here, to the shame of our times and of our
country, forever extirpated.”

“All will be as God wills.”

“Orbajosa, my dear aunt, has little else than garlic and bandits; for
those who in the name of some political or religious idea set out in
search of adventures every four or five years are nothing but bandits.”

“Thanks, thanks, my dear nephew!” said Doña Perfecta, turning pale. “So
Orbajosa has nothing more than that? Yet there must be something else
here--something that you do not possess, since you have come to look for
it among us.”

Rey felt the cut. His soul was on fire. He found it very difficult to
show his aunt the consideration to which her sex, her rank, and her
relation to himself entitled her. He was on the verge of a violent
outbreak, and a force that he could not resist was impelling him against
his interlocutor.

“I came to Orbajosa,” he said, “because you sent for me; you arranged
with my father--”

“Yes, yes; it is true,” she answered, interrupting him quickly and
making an effort to recover her habitual serenity. “I do not deny it. I
am the one who is really to blame. I am to blame for your ill-humor, for
the slights you put upon us, for every thing disagreeable that has been
happening in my house since you entered it.”

“I am glad that you are conscious of it.”

“In exchange, you are a saint. Must I also go down on my knees to your
grace and ask your pardon?”

“Señora,” said Pepe Rey gravely, laying down his knife and fork, “I
entreat you not to mock me in so pitiless a manner. I cannot meet you
on equal ground. All I have said is that I came to Orbajosa at your
invitation.”

“And it is true. Your father and I arranged that you should marry
Rosario. You came in order to become acquainted with her. I accepted you
at once as a son. You pretended to love Rosario--”

“Pardon me,” objected Pepe; “I loved and I love Rosario; you pretended
to accept me as a son; receiving me with deceitful cordiality, you
employed from the very beginning all the arts of cunning to thwart me
and to prevent the fulfilment of the proposals made to my father; you
determined from the first day to drive me to desperation, to tire me
out; and with smiles and affectionate words on your lips you have been
killing me, roasting me at the slow fire; you have let loose upon me
in the dark and from behind an ambush a swarm of lawsuits; you have
deprived me of the official commission which I brought to Orbajosa; you
have brought me into disrepute in the town; you have had me turned out
of the cathedral; you have kept me constantly separated from the chosen
of my heart; you have tortured your daughter with an inquisitorial
imprisonment which will cause her death, unless God interposes to
prevent it.”

Doña Perfecta turned scarlet. But the flush of offended pride passed
away quickly, leaving her face of a greenish pallor. Her lips trembled.
Throwing down the knife and fork with which she had been eating, she
rose swiftly to her feet. Her nephew rose also.

“My God! Holy Virgin of Succor!” she cried, raising both her hands to
her head and pressing it between them with the gesture indicative of
desperation, “is it possible that I deserve such atrocious insults?
Pepe, my son, is it you who speak to me in this way? If I have done what
you say, I am indeed very wicked.”

She sank on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. Pepe,
approaching her slowly, saw that his aunt was sobbing bitterly and
shedding abundant tears. In spite of his conviction he could not
altogether conquer the feeling of compassion which took possession of
him; and while he condemned himself for his cowardice he felt something
of remorse for the severity and the frankness with which he had spoken.

“My dear aunt,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, “if you
answer me with tears and sighs, you will not convince me. Proofs, not
emotions, are what I require. Speak to me, tell me that I am mistaken
in thinking what I think; then prove it to me, and I will acknowledge my
error.”

“Leave me, you are not my brother’s son! If you were, you would not
insult me as you have insulted me. So, then, I am an intriguer, an
actress, a hypocritical harpy, a domestic plotter?”

As she spoke, Doña Perfecta uncovered her face and looked at her nephew
with a martyr-like expression. Pepe was perplexed. The tears as well
as the gentle voice of his father’s sister could not be insignificant
phenomena for the mathematician’s soul. Words crowded to his lips to
ask her pardon. A man of great firmness generally, any appeal to his
emotions, any thing which touched his heart, converted him at once into
a child. Weaknesses of a mathematician! It is said that Newton was the
same.

“I will give you the proofs you ask,” said Doña Perfecta, motioning
him to a seat beside her. “I will give you satisfaction. You shall see
whether I am kind, whether I am indulgent, whether I am humble. Do you
think that I am going to contradict you; to deny absolutely the acts of