Copyright, 1891.

BY

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

THE
SWAN OF VILAMORTA.

I.

Behind the pine grove the setting sun had left a zone of fire against which the trunks of the pine trees stood out like bronze columns. The path was rugged and uneven, giving evidence of the ravages wrought by the winter rains; at intervals loose stones, looking like teeth detached from the gum, rendered it still more impracticable. The melancholy shades of twilight were beginning to envelop the landscape; little by little the sunset glow faded away and the moon, round and silvery, mounted in the heavens, where the evening star was already shining. The dismal croaking of the frogs fell sharply on the ear; a fresh breeze stirred the dry plants and the dusty brambles that grew by the roadside; and the trunks of the pine trees grew momentarily blacker, standing out like inky bars against the pale green of the horizon.

A man was descending the path slowly, bent, apparently, on enjoying the poetry and the peace of the scene and the hour. He carried a stout walking-stick, and as far as one could judge in the fading light, he was young and not ill-looking.

He paused frequently, casting glances to the right and to the left as if in search of some familiar landmark. Finally he stood still and looked around him. At his back was a hill crowned with chestnut trees; on his left was the pine grove; on his right a small church with a mean belfry; before him the outlying houses of the town. He turned, walked back some ten steps, stopped, fronting the portico of the church, examined its walls, and, satisfied at last that he had found the right place, raised his hands to his mouth and forming with them a sort of speaking trumpet, cried, in a clear youthful voice:

"Echo, let us talk together!"

From the angle formed by the walls, there came back instantly another voice, deeper and less distinct, strangely grave and sonorous, which repeated with emphasis, linking the answer to the question and dwelling upon the final syllable:

"Let us talk togethe-e-e-e-r!"

"Are you happy?"

"Happy-y-y-y!" responded the echo.

"Who am I?"

"I-I-I-I!"

To these interrogations, framed so that the answer should make sense with them, succeeded phrases uttered without any other object than that of hearing them reverberated with strange intensity by the wall. "It is a lovely night."—"The moon is shining."—"The sun has set."—"Do you hear me, echo?"—"Have you dreams, echo, of glory, ambition, love?" The traveler, enchanted with his occupation, continued the conversation, varying the words, combining them into sentences, and, in the short intervals of silence, he listened to the faint murmur of the pines stirred by the evening breeze, and to the melancholy concert of the frogs. The crimson and rose-colored clouds had become ashen and had begun to invade the broad region of the firmament over which the unclouded moon shed her silvery light. The honeysuckles and elder-flowers on the outskirts of the pine grove embalmed the air with subtle and intoxicating fragrance. And the interlocutor of the echo, yielding to the poetic influences of the scene, ceased his questions and exclamations and began to recite, in a slow, chanting voice, verses of Becquer, paying no heed now to the voice from the wall, which, in its haste to repeat his words, returned them to him broken and confused.

Absorbed in his occupation, pleased with the harmonious sounds of the verse, he did not notice the approach of three men of odd and grotesque appearance, wearing enormous broad-brimmed felt hats. One of the men was leading a mule laden with a leathern sack filled, doubtless, with the juice of the grape; and as they walked slowly, and the soft clayey soil deadened the noise of their footsteps, they passed close by the young man, unperceived by him. They exchanged some whispered words with one another. "Who is he, man?"—"Segundo."—"The lawyer's son?"—"The same."—"What is he doing? Is he talking to himself?"—"No, he is talking to the wall of Santa Margarita."—"Well, we have as good a right to do that as he has."—"Begin you ——"—"One—two—here goes——"

And from those profane lips fell a shower of vile words and coarse and vulgar phrases, interrupting the Oscuras Golondrinas which the young man was reciting with a great deal of expression, and producing, in the peaceful and harmonious nocturnal silence, the effect of the clatter of brass pans and kettles in a piece of German music. The most refined expressions were in the following style: "D—— (here an oath). Hurrah for the wine of the Border! Hurrah for the red wine that gives courage to man! D——" (the reader's imagination may supply what followed, it being premised that the disturbers of the Becquerian dreamer were three lawless muleteers who were carrying with them an abundant provision of the blood of the grape).

The nymph who dwelt in the wall opposed no resistance to the profanation and repeated the round oaths as faithfully as she had repeated the poet's verses. Hearing the vociferations and bursts of laughter which the wall sent back to him mockingly, Segundo, the lawyer's son, aware that the barbarians were turning his sentimental amusement into ridicule, became enraged. Mortified and ashamed, he tightened his grasp on his stick, strongly tempted to break it on the ribs of some one of them; and, muttering between his teeth, "Kaffirs! brutes! beasts!" and other offensive epithets, he turned to the left, plunged into the pine grove and walked toward the town, avoiding the path in order to escape meeting the profane trio.

The town was but a step away. The walls of its nearest houses shone white in the moonlight, and the stones of some buildings in course of erection, garden walls, orchards, and vegetable beds, filled up the space between the town and the pine grove. The path grew gradually broader, until it reached the highroad, on either side of which leafy chestnut trees cast broad patches of shade. The town was already asleep, seemingly, for not a light was to be seen, nor were any of those noises to be heard which reveal the proximity of those human beehives called cities. Vilamorta is in reality a very small beehive, a modest town, the capital of a district. Bathed in the splendor of the romantic satellite, however, it was not without a certain air of importance imparted to it by the new buildings, of a style of architecture peculiar to prison cells, which an Americanized Galician, recently returned to his native land with a plentiful supply of cash, was erecting with all possible expedition.

Segundo turned into an out-of-the-way street—if there be any such in towns like Vilamorta. Only the sidewalks were paved; the gutter was a gutter in reality; it was full of muddy pools and heaps of kitchen garbage, thrown there without scruple by the inhabitants. Segundo avoided two things—stepping into the gutter and walking in the moonlight. A man passed so close by him as almost to touch him, enveloped, notwithstanding the heat, in an ample cloak, and holding open above his head an enormous umbrella, although there was no sign of rain; doubtless he was some convalescent, some visitor to the springs, who was breathing the pleasant night air with hygienic precautions. Segundo, when he saw him, walked closer to the houses, turning his face aside as if afraid of being recognized. With no less caution he crossed the Plaza del Consistorio, the pride of Vilamorta, and then, instead of joining one of the groups who were enjoying the fresh air, seated on the stone benches round the public fountain, he slipped into a narrow side street, and crossing a retired little square shaded by a gigantic poplar turned his steps in the direction of a small house half hidden in the shadow of the tree. Between the house and Segundo there stood a lumbering bulk—the body of a stage-coach, a large box on wheels, its shafts raised in air, waiting, lance in rest, as it were, to renew the attack. Segundo skirted the obstacle, and as he turned the corner of the square, absorbed in his meditations, two immense hogs, monstrously fat, rushed out of the half-open gate of a neighboring yard, and at a short trot that made their enormous sides shake like jelly, made straight for the admirer of Becquer, entangling themselves stupidly and blindly between his legs. By a special interposition of Providence the young man did not measure his length upon the ground, but, his patience now exhausted, he gave each of the swine a couple of angry kicks, which drew from them sharp and ferocious grunts, as he ejaculated almost audibly: "What a town is this, good Heavens! Even the hogs must run against one in the streets. Ah, what a miserable place! Hell itself could not be worse!"

By the time he had reached the door of the house, he had, to some extent, regained his composure. The house was small and pretty and had a cheerful air. There was no railing outside the windows, only the stone ledges, which were covered with plants in pots and boxes; through the windows shaded by muslin curtains a light could be seen burning, and in the silent façade there was something peaceful and attractive that invited one to enter. Segundo pushed open the door and almost at the same instant there was heard in the dark hall the rustling of skirts, a woman's arms were opened and the admirer of Becquer, throwing himself into them, allowed himself to be led, dragged, carried bodily, almost, up the stairs, and into the little parlor where, on a table covered with a white crochet cover, burned a carefully trimmed lamp. There, on the sofa, the lover and the lady seated themselves.

Truth before all things. The lady was not far from thirty-six or thirty-seven, and what is worse, could never have been pretty, or even passably good-looking. The smallpox had pitted and hardened her coarse skin, giving it the appearance of the leather bottom of a sieve. Her small black eyes, hard and bright like two fleas, matched well her nose, which was thick and ill-shaped, like the noses of the figures of lay monks stamped on chocolate. True, the mouth was fresh-colored, the teeth white and sound like those of a dog; but everything else pertaining to her—dress, manner, accent, the want of grace of the whole—was calculated rather to put tender thoughts to flight than to awaken them. With the lamp shining as brightly as it does, it is preferable to contemplate the lover. The latter is of medium height, has a graceful, well-proportioned figure, and in the turn of his head and in his youthful features there is something that irresistibly attracts and holds the gaze. His forehead, which is high and straight, is shaded and set off by luxuriant hair, worn somewhat longer than is allowed by our present severe fashion. His face, thin and delicately outlined, casts a shadow on the walls which is made up of acute angles. A mustache, curling with the grace which is peculiar to a first mustache, and to the wavy locks of a young girl, shades but does not cover his upper lip. The beard has not yet attained its full growth; the muscles of the throat have not yet become prominent; the Adam's apple does not yet force itself on the attention. The complexion is dark, pale, and of a slightly bilious hue.

Seeing this handsome youth leaning his head on the shoulder of this woman of mature age and undisguised ugliness, it would have been natural to take them for mother and son, but anyone coming to this conclusion, after a single moment's observation, would have shown scant penetration, for in the manifestations of maternal affection, however passionate and tender they may be, there is always a something of dignity and repose which is wanting in those of every other affection.

Doubtless Segundo felt a longing to see the moon again, for he rose almost immediately from his seat on the sofa and crossed over to the window, his companion following him. He threw open the sash, and they sat down side by side in two low chairs whose seats were on a level with the flower-pots. A fine carnation regaled the sense with its intoxicating perfume; the moon lighted up with her silvery rays the foliage of the poplar that cast broad shadow over the little square. Segundo opened the conversation this wise:

"Have you made any cigars for me?"

"Here are some," she answered, putting her hand into her pocket and drawing from it a bundle of cigars. "I was able to make only a dozen and a half for you. I will complete the two dozen to-night before I go to bed."

There was a moment's silence, broken by the sharp sound made by the striking of the match and then, in a voice muffled by the first puff of smoke, Segundo went on:

"Why, has anything new happened?"

"New? No. The children—putting the house in order—and then—Minguitos. He made my head ache with his complaining—he complained the whole blessed evening. He said his bones ached. And you? Very busy, killing yourself reading, studying, writing, eh? Of course!"

"No, I have been taking a delightful walk. I went to Peñas-albas and returned by way of Santa Margarita. I have seldom spent a pleasanter evening."

"I warrant you were making verses."

"No, my dear. The verses I made I made last night after leaving you."

"Ah! And you weren't going to repeat them to me. Come, for the love of the saints, come, recite them for me, you must know them by heart. Come, darling."

To this vehement entreaty succeeded a passionate kiss, pressed on the hair and forehead of the poet. The latter raised his eyes, drew back a little and, holding his cigar between his fingers after knocking off the ashes with his nail, proceeded to recite.

The offspring of his muse was a poem in imitation of Becquer. His auditor, who listened to it with religious attention, thought it superior to anything inspired by the muse of the great Gustave. And she asked for another and then another, and then a bit of Espronceda and then a fragment or two of Zorrilla. By this time the cigar had gone out; the poet threw away the stump and lighted a fresh one. Then they resumed their conversation.

"Shall we have supper soon?"

"Directly. What do you think I have for you?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"Think of what you like best. What you like best, better than anything else."

"Bah! You know that so far as I am concerned, provided you don't give me anything smoked or greasy——"

"A French omelet! You couldn't guess, eh? Let me tell you—I found the receipt in a book. As I had heard that it was something good I wanted to try it. I had always made omelets as they make them here, so stiff, that you might throw one against the wall without breaking it. But this—I think it will be to your taste. As for me, I don't like it much, I prefer the old style. I showed Flores how to make it. What was in the one you ate at the inn at Orense? Chopped parsley, eh?"

"No, ham. But what difference does it make what was in it?"

"I'll run and take it out of the pantry! I thought—the book says parsley! Wait, wait."

She overturned her chair in her haste. An instant later the jingling of her keys and the opening and closing of a couple of doors were heard in the distance. A husky voice muttered some unintelligible words in the kitchen. In two minutes she was back again.

"Tell me, and those verses, are you not going to publish them? Am I not going to see them in print?"

"Yes," responded the poet, slowly turning his head to one side and sending a puff of smoke through his lips. "I am going to send them to Vigo, to Roberto Blanquez, to insert them in the Amanecer."

"I am delighted! You will become famous, sweetheart! How many periodicals have spoken of you?"

Segundo laughed ironically and shrugged his shoulders.

"Not many." And with a somewhat preoccupied air he let his gaze wander over the plants and far away over the top of the poplar whose leaves rustled gently in the breeze. The poet pressed his companion's hand mechanically, and the latter returned the pressure with passionate ardor.

"Of course. How do you expect them to speak of you when you don't put your name to your verses?" she said. "They don't know whose they are. They are wondering, likely——"

"What difference does the name make? They could say the same things of the pseudonym I have adopted as of Segundo García. The few people who will trouble themselves to read my verses will call me the Swan of Vilamorta."

II.

Segundo García, the lawyer's son, and Leocadia Otero, the schoolmistress of Vilamorta, had met each other for the first time in the spring at a pilgrimage. Leocadia had gone with some girls to whom she had taught their letters and plain sewing. Before the chorus of nymphs Segundo had recited verses for more than two hours in an oak grove far from the noise of the drum and the bagpipes, where the strains of the music and the voices of the crowd came softened by distance. The audience was as silent as if they were hearing mass, although certain passages of a tender or passionate nature were the occasion, among the children, of nudges, pinches, laughter instantaneously suppressed; but from the black eyes of the schoolmistress, down her cheeks, pitted by the smallpox and pale with emotion, flowed two large, warm tears, followed so quickly and in such abundance by others that she was obliged to take out her handkerchief to wipe them away. And returning by starlight, descending the mountain on whose summit stood the sanctuary, by sylvan footpaths carpeted with grass and bordered with heather and briars, the order of march was as follows: first the children, running, jumping, pushing one another among the heather and greeting every fall with shouts of laughter; Leocadia and Segundo behind, arm-in-arm, pausing from time to time to talk in subdued tones, almost in whispers.

A sad and ugly story was told about Leocadia Otero. Although, without actually saying so, she had given it to be understood that she was a widow, it was whispered that she had never been married; that the puny Dominguito, the little cripple who was always sick, was born while she lived in the house of her uncle and guardian at Orense, after the death of her parents. What was certain was that her uncle had died shortly after the birth of the child, bequeathing to his niece a couple of fields and a house in Vilamorta, and Leocadia, after passing the necessary examinations, had obtained the village school and gone to settle in that town. She had lived in it now for more than thirteen years, observing the most exemplary conduct, watching day and night over Minguitos, and living with the utmost frugality in order to rebuild the dilapidated house, which she had finally succeeded in doing shortly before her meeting with Segundo. Leocadia was a woman of notably industrious habits; in her wardrobe she had always a good supply of linen, in her parlor bamboo furniture with a rug before the sofa, grapes, rice, and ham in her pantry, and carnations and sweet basil in her windows. Minguitos was always as neat as a new pin; she herself, when she raised the skirt of her habit of Dolores, of good merino, displayed underneath voluminous embroidered petticoats, stiff with starch. For all which reasons, notwithstanding her ugliness and her former history, the schoolmistress was not without suitors—a wealthy retired muleteer, and Cansin, the clothier. She rejected the suitors and continued living alone with Minguitos and Flores, her old servant, who now enjoyed in the house all the privileges of a grandmother.

The iniquitous wrong suffered by her in early youth had produced in Leocadia, absorbed as she was in her bitter recollections, a profound horror of marriage and an insatiable thirst for the romantic, the ideal, which is as a refreshing dew to the imagination and which satisfies the emotions. She had the superficial knowledge of a village schoolmistress—rudimentary, but sufficient to introduce exotic tastes into Vilamorta; that is to say, a taste for literature in its most accessible forms—novels and poetry. She devoted to reading the leisure hours of her monotonous and upright life. She read with faith, with enthusiasm, uncritically; she read believing and accepting everything, identifying herself with each one of the heroines, in turn, her heart echoing back the poet's sighs, the troubadour's songs, and the laments of the bard. Reading was her one vice, her secret happiness. When she requested her friends at Orense to renew her subscription to the library for her they laughed at her and nicknamed her the "Authoress." She an authoress! She only wished she were. If she could only give form to what she felt, to the world of fancy she carried in her mind! But this was impossible. Never would her brain succeed in producing, however hard she might squeeze it, even so much as a poor seguidilla. Poetry and sensibility were stored up in the folds and convolutions of her brain, as solar heat is stored up in the coal. What came to the surface was pure prose—housekeeping, economy, stews.

When she met Segundo, chance applied the lighted torch to the formidable train of feelings and dreams shut up in the soul of the schoolmistress. She had at last found a worthy employment for her amorous faculties, an outlet for her affections. Segundo was poetry incarnate. He represented for her all the graces, all the divine attributes of poetry—the flowers, the breeze, the nightingale, the dying light of day, the moon, the dark wood.

The fire burned with astounding rapidity. In its flames were consumed, first her honorable resolution to efface by the blamelessness of her conduct the stigma of the past, then her strong and deep maternal affection. Not for an instant did the thought present itself to Leocadia's mind that Segundo could ever be her husband; although both were free the difference in their ages and the intellectual superiority of the young poet placed an insurmountable barrier in the way of the aspirations of the schoolmistress. She fell in love as into an abyss, and looked neither before nor behind.

Segundo had had in Santiago, during his college days, youthful intrigues, adventures of a not very serious nature, such as few men escape between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, occasionally taking part, also, in what in that romantic epoch were called orgies. Notwithstanding all this, however, he was not vicious. The son of a hysterical mother, whose strength was exhausted by repeated lactations, and who at last succumbed to the debility induced by them, Segundo's spirit was much more exacting and insatiable than his body. He had inherited from his mother a melancholy temperament and innumerable prejudices, innumerable instinctive antipathies, innumerable superstitious practices. He had loved her, and he cherished her memory with veneration. And more tenacious even than his loving remembrance of his mother was the invincible antipathy he cherished for his father. It would not be true to say that the lawyer had been the murderer of his wife, and yet Segundo clearly divined the slow martyrdom endured by that fine nervous organization, and had always before his eyes, in his hours of gloom, the mean coffin in which the dead woman was interred, shrouded in the oldest sheet that was to be found.

Segundo's family consisted of his father, an aunt, advanced in years, two brothers, and three sisters. The lawyer García enjoyed the reputation of being wealthy—in reality this fortune was insignificant—a village fortune accumulated penny by penny, by usurious loans and innumerable sordid privations. His practice brought him in something, but ten mouths to feed and the professional education of three sons swallowed up not a little. The eldest of the boys, an officer in an infantry regiment, was stationed in the Philippine Islands, and, far from expecting any money from him, they were thankful if he did not ask for any. Segundo, the second in age as well as in name, had just been graduated—one lawyer more in Spain, where this fruit grows so abundantly. The youngest was studying at the Institute at Orense, with the intention of becoming an apothecary. The girls spent the days running about in the gardens and cornfields, half the time barefooted, not even attending Leocadia's school to save the slight expense that would be incurred in procuring the decent clothing which this would necessitate. As for the aunt—Misía Gáspara—she was the soul of the house, a narrow and sapless soul, a withered old woman, silent and ghost-like in appearance, still active, in spite of her sixty years, who, without ceasing to knit her stockings with fingers as yellow as the keys of an old harpsichord, sold barley in the granary, wine in the cellar, lent a dollar at fifty per cent. interest to the fruit-women and hucksters of the market, receiving their wares in payment, measured out the food, the light, and their clothing to her nieces, fattened a pig with affectionate solicitude, and was respected in Vilamorta for her ant-like abilities.

It was the lawyer's aspiration to transmit his practice and his office to Segundo. Only the boy gave no indication of an aptitude for stirring up law-suits and prosecutions. How had he achieved the miracle of passing with honor in the examinations without ever having opened a law-book during the whole term, and failing in attendance at the college whenever it rained or whenever the sun shone? Well, by means of an excellent memory and a good natural intelligence; learning by heart, when it was necessary, whole pages from the text-books, and remembering and reciting them with the same ease, if not with as much taste, as he recited the "Doloras" of Campoamor.

On Segundo's table lay, side by side, the works of Zorrilla and Espronceda, bad translations of Heine, books of verse of local poets, the "Lamas-Varela," or, Antidote to Idleness, and other volumes of a no less heterogeneous kind. Segundo was not an insatiable reader; he chose his reading according to the whim of the moment, and he read only what was in conformity with his tastes, thus acquiring a superficial culture of an imperfect and varied nature. Quick of apprehension, rather than thoughtful or studious, he had learned French without a teacher and almost by intuition, in order to read in the original the works of Musset, Lamartine, Proudhon, and Victor Hugo. His mind was like an uncultivated field in which grew here and there some rare and beautiful flower, some exotic plant; of the abstruse and positive sciences, of solid and serious learning, which is the nurse of mental vigor—the classics, the best literature, the severe teachings of history—he knew nothing; and in exchange, by a singular phenomenon of intellectual relationship, he identified himself with the romantic movement of the second third of the century, and in a remote corner of Galicia lived again the psychological life of dead and gone generations. So does some venerable academician, over-leaping the nineteen centuries of our era, delight himself now with what delighted Horace and live platonically enamored of Lydia.

Segundo composed his first verses, cynical and pessimistic in intention, ingenuous in reality, before he had reached the age of seventeen. His classmates applauded him to the echo. He acquired in their eyes a certain prestige, and when the first fruits of his muse appeared in a periodical he had, without going beyond the narrow circle of the college, admirers and detractors. Thenceforth he acquired the right to indulge in solitary walks, to laugh rarely, to surround his adventures with mystery, and not to play or take a drink for good-fellowship's sake except when he felt in the humor.

And he seldom felt in the humor. Excitation of the senses, of a purely physical nature, possessed no attraction for him; if he drank at times through bravado, the spectacle of drunkenness, the winding-up of student orgies—the soiled tablecloth, the maudlin disputes, his companions lying under the table or stretched on the sofa, the shamelessness and heartlessness of venal women—repelled him and he came away from such scenes filled with disgust and contempt, and at times a reaction proper to his complex character sent him, a sincere admirer of Proudhon, Quinet, and Renan, to the precincts of some solitary church, where he drew in with delight long breaths of the incense-laden air.

The lawyer García made no protest against his son's literary inclinations because he regarded them as a passing amusement proper to his age, a youthful folly, like dancing at a village feast. He began to grow uneasy when he saw that Segundo, after graduation, showed no inclination to help him in the conduct of his tortuous law-suits. Was the boy, then, going to turn out good for nothing but to string rhymes together? It was no crime to do this, but—when there was not a pile of law-papers to go through and stratagems to think of to circumvent the opposing party. Since the lawyer had observed this inclination of his son he had treated him with more persistent harshness and coldness than before. Every day at table or whenever the occasion offered, he made cutting speeches to him about the necessity of earning one's own bread by assiduous labor, instead of depending upon others for it. These continual sermons, in which he displayed the same captious and harassing obstinacy as in the conduct of his law-suits, frightened Segundo from the house. In Leocadia's house he found a place of refuge, and he submitted passively to be adored; flattered in the first place by the triumph his verses had obtained, awakening admiration so evidently sincere and ardent, and in the second place attracted by the moral well-being engendered by unquestioning approval and unmeasured complacency. His idle, dreamy brain reposed on the soft cushions which affection smoothes for the beloved head; Leocadia sympathized with all his plans for the future, developing and enlarging them; she encouraged him to write and to publish his verses; she praised him without reserve and without hypocrisy, for, for her, whose critical faculty was situated in her cardiac cavities, Segundo was the most melodious singer in the universe.

Gradually the loving prevision of the schoolmistress extended to other departments of Segundo's existence. Neither the lawyer García nor Aunt Gáspara supposed that a young man, once his education was finished, needed a penny for any extraordinary expense. Aunt Gáspara, in particular, protested loudly at every fresh outlay—after filling her nephew's trunk one year she thought he was provided with shirts for at least ten years to come: clothes had no right to tear or to wear out, without any consideration, in that way. Leocadia took note of the wants of her idol; one day she observed that he was not well supplied with handkerchiefs and she hemmed and marked a dozen for him; the next day she noticed that he was expected to keep himself in cigars for a year on half a dollar, and she took upon herself the task of making them for him, furnishing the material herself gratis. She heard the fruit-women criticising Aunt Gáspara's stinginess; she inferred from this that Segundo had a poor table, and she set herself to the task of devising appetizing and nutritious dishes for him; in addition to all which she ordered books from Orense, mended his clothes, and sewed on his buttons.

All this she did with inexpressible delight, going about the house with a light, almost youthful step, rejuvenated by the sweet maternity of love, and so happy that she forgot to scold the school-children, thinking only of shortening their tasks that she might be all the sooner with Segundo. There was in her affection much that was generous and spiritual, and her happiest moments were those in which, as they sat side by side at the window, his head resting on her shoulder, she listened, while her imagination transformed the pots of carnations and sweet basil into a virgin forest, to the verses which he recited in a well-modulated voice, verses that seemed to Leocadia celestial music.

The medal had its obverse side, however. The mornings were full of bitterness when Flores would come with an angry and frowning face, her woolen shawl twisted and wrinkled and falling over her eyes, to say in short, abrupt phrases:

"The eggs are all used; shall I get more? There is no sugar; which kind shall I buy—that dear loaf sugar that we bought last week? To-day I got coffee, two pounds of coffee, as if we had a gold mine. I won't buy any more cordial—you can go for it yourself—I won't."

"What are you talking about, Flores? What is the matter with you?"

"I say that if you like to give Ramon, the confectioner, twenty-four reals a bottle for anisette, when it is to be had for eight at the apothecary's, you can do so, but that I am not going to put the money in that thief's hand; he will be asking you five dollars a bottle for it next."

Leocadia would come out of her reverie with a sigh, and go to the bureau drawer for the money, not without thinking that Flores was only too right; her savings, her couple of thousand reals laid by for an emergency, must be almost gone; it was better not to examine into the condition of the purse; better put off annoyances as long as possible. God would provide. And she would scold the old woman with feigned anger.

"Go for the bottle; go—and don't make me angry. At eight the children will be here and I have my petticoat to iron yet. Make Minguitos his chocolate; you would be better employed in seeing that he has something to eat. And give him some cake."

"Yes. I'll give him some, I'll give him some. If I didn't give the poor child something——" grumbled the servant, who at Minguitos' name felt her anger increase. In the kitchen could be heard the furious knock given to the chocolate-pot to settle it on the fire and the angry sound of the mill, afterward, beating the chocolate into froth. Flores would enter the room of the deformed boy, who had not yet left his bed, and taking his hand in hers, say:

"Are you warm, child? I have brought you your chocolate; do you hear?"

"Will mamma give it to me?"

"I will give it to you."

"And mamma—what is she doing?"

"Ironing some petticoats."

The little humpback would fix his eyes on Flores, raising his head with difficulty from between the double arch of the breast and back. His eyes were deep set, with large pupils; on his mouth, with its prominent jaws, rested a melancholy and distorted smile. Throwing his arms around the neck of Flores, and putting his lips close to her ear:

"Did the other one come yesterday?" he asked.

"Yes, child, yes."

"Will he come again to-day?"

"He'll come. Of course he'll come! Stop talking, fillino, stop talking and take your chocolate. It's as you like it—thin and with froth."

"I don't think I have any appetite for it. Put it there beside me."

III.

In Vilamorta there was a Casino, a real Casino, small indeed, and shabby, besides, but with its billiard-table, bought at second-hand, and its boy, an old man of seventy, who once a year dusted and brushed the green cover. For the only reunions in the Casino of Vilamorta were those of the rats and the moths who assembled daily, to amuse themselves by eating away the woodwork. The chief centers of reunion were the two apothecaries' shops, that of Doña Eufrasia, fronting the Plaza and that of Agonde in the high street. Doña Eufrasia's shop, nestling in the shadowy corner of an archway, was dark; in the hours of meeting it was lighted by a smoky kerosene lamp; its furniture consisted of four grimy chairs and a bench.

From the street all that was to be seen were dark mass-cloaks, overcoats, broad-brimmed hats, two or three clerical tonsures that shone at a distance like metal clasps against the dark background of the shop. Agonde's shop, on the contrary, was brightly illuminated and gloried in the possession of six glass globes of brilliant coloring and fantastic effect, three rows of shelves laden with imposing and scientific-looking white porcelain jars bearing Latin inscriptions in black letters, a divan, and two leather-covered armchairs. The two contrasting shops were also antagonistic; they had declared war to the knife against each other.

Agonde's shop, liberal and enlightened in its opinions, said of the reactionary shop that it was a center of unending conspiracies, where El Cuartel Real and all the rebel proclamations had been read during the civil war, and where for the past five years ammunition-belts were being diligently prepared for a Carlist party that never took the field; and according to the reactionary shop, that of Agonde was the headquarters of the Freemasons; where lampoons were printed on a little handpress and where gambling was shamelessly carried on. The meetings in the reactionary shop broke up with religious punctuality at ten, in winter, and eleven in summer, while the liberal shop continued to cast on the sidewalk until midnight the light of its two bright lamps and the blue, red, and emerald-green reflections of its glass globes; for which reasons the members of the liberal reunion called those of the other party owls, while those of the reactionary clique gave their opponents the name of members of the Casino of the Gaming Table.

Segundo never put his foot over the threshold of the reactionary shop and, since the beginning of his acquaintance with Leocadia Otero, he had shunned that of Agonde also, for his vanity was wounded by the jests and gibes of the apothecary, who was noted for his waggish humor. One evening as Saturnino Agonde was crossing the Plaza of the Alamo at an unusually late hour—on his way the devil only knew whither—he had caught sight of Leocadia and Segundo seated at the window, and had heard the psalmody of the verses which the poet was declaiming. From that time Segundo had seen depicted on the countenance of Agonde, a practical man of a sanguine temperament, such contempt for sentimental trifling and for poetry that he instinctively avoided him as far as it was possible to do so. Occasionally, however, whenever he desired to read El Imparcial, to know what was going on, he would stop in at the shop for a few moments. He did so on the day after his conversation with the echo.

The meeting was very animated. Segundo's father was leaning back on the sofa with a newspaper resting on his knees; his brother-in-law, the notary Genday, Ramon, the confectioner, and Agonde were hotly disputing with him. At the further end of the shop Carmelo, the tobacconist, Don Fermin, alias Tropiezo, [1] the physician, the secretary of the Municipality and the Alcalde sat playing tresillo at a small table. When Segundo entered, he remarked something unusual in the air of his father and of the group that surrounded him, but certain that he would presently be told the cause, he silently dropped into an armchair, lighted a cigar, and took up the copy of El Imparcial that was lying on the counter.

[ [1] Trip.

"Well, the papers here say nothing, absolutely nothing, about it," exclaimed the confectioner.

From the tresillo table came the voice of the doctor confirming Ramon's doubts; the doctor, too, was of the opinion that the event in question could not happen without due notice of it being given in the papers.

"You would die rather than believe anything," replied Agonde. "I am certain of it, I tell you, and it seems to me that when I am certain of it——"

"And I too," affirmed Genday. "If it is necessary to call witnesses to prove it, they are there. I know it from my own brother, who heard it from Mendez de las Vides; you can judge whether I have the news on good authority or not. Do you want further proof? Well, two armchairs, a handsome gilt bedstead, a great deal of china and a piano have been ordered from Orense for Las Vides. Are you convinced?"

"In any case they will not come as soon as you say," objected Tropiezo.

"They will come at the time I have said. Don Victoriano wants to spend the holidays and the vintage season here; they say he longs to see his native place again, and that he has spoken of nothing all the winter but the journey."

"He is coming to die here," said Tropiezo; "I heard that he was in a very bad state of health. You are going to be left without a leader."

"Go to——What a devil of a man, what an owl, always predicting misfortunes! Either hold your tongue, or talk sense. Attend to the game, as you ought to."

Segundo was gazing abstractedly at the glass globes of the shop, his attention seemingly occupied with the blue, green, and red points of light that sparkled in their center. He understood now the subject of their conversation—the expected arrival of Don Victoriano Andres de la Comba, the minister, the great political leader of the country, the radical representative of the district. What mattered to Segundo the arrival of this pretentious coxcomb! And giving himself up to the enjoyment of his cigar, he allowed the noisy dispute to go on unheeded. Afterward he became absorbed in the reading of an article in El Imparcial, in which a new poet was warmly eulogized.

Meanwhile at the tresillo table matters were becoming complicated. The apothecary, who sat behind the Alcalde, was giving him advice—a delicate and difficult task.

The tobacconist and Don Fermin held all the good cards; they had the man between them—a ticklish position. The Alcalde was a thin shriveled-up old man, of a very timid disposition, who, before he ventured to play a card, would think a hundred years about it, calculating all the contingencies and all the possible combinations of which cards are capable. He did not want now to play that solo. It would be a great mistake! But the impetuous Agonde encouraged him, saying: "Come! I buy it." Thus urged, the Alcalde came to a decision, but not without having first entered a protest:

"Very well, I'll play it, but it is a piece of folly, gentlemen—so that you may not say I am afraid."

And all that he had foreseen happened; he found himself between two fires: on the one side his king of hearts is trumped, on the other his opponent takes his knave of trumps with his queen. Don Fermin wins the trick without knowing how, while the tobacconist, who is smiling maliciously, keeps all his good cards. The Alcalde lifts his eyes appealingly to Agonde.

"Didn't I tell you so? A nice fix we have got ourselves into! We shall lose the hand; it is lost already."

"No, man, no. What a coward you are—always afraid of everything. There you are hesitating as long about throwing a card as if your life depended on it. Play a trump! play a trump! That is the way cowards always lose—they are afraid to play their trumps."

The opponents winked at each other maliciously.

"De posita non tibi," exclaimed the tobacconist.

"Si codillum non resultabit," assented Don Fermin.

The Alcalde, quaking with fear, proceeded, by Agonde's advice, to look through the tricks his partners had taken, in order to see how many trumps had been already played. Tropiezo and the tobacconist protested:

What a mania he had for examining the cards!

The Alcalde, somewhat tranquillized, resolved at last to put an end to his uncertainty, and with a few bold and decisive plays the hand ended, each player winning three tricks.

"A tie!" exclaimed the tobacconist and the apothecary almost simultaneously.

"You see! Playing as badly as you could you haven't lost the hand," said Agonde. "They needed all their cards to win what they did."

They were all absorbed in the game—whose interest was now at its height—with the exception of Segundo, who had abandoned himself to one of those idle reveries in which the activity of the imagination is stimulated by bodily ease. The voices of the players reached his ears like a distant murmur; he was a hundred leagues away; he was thinking of the article he had just been reading, of which certain expressions particularly encomiastic—mellifluous phrases in which the critic artfully glossed over the faults of the poet—had remained stamped on his memory. When would his turn come to be judged by the Madrid press? God alone knew. He lent his attention once more to the conversation.

"We must at least give him a serenade," declared Genday.

"A serenade, indeed!" responded Agonde. "A great thing that! Something more than a serenade—we must have some sort of a procession—a demonstration which will show that the people here are with him. We must appoint a committee to receive him with rockets and bands of music. Let those plotters at Doña Eufrasia's have something to rage about."

The name of the other shop produced a storm of exclamations, jests, and stamping of feet.

"Have you heard the news?" asked the waggish Tropiezo. "It seems that Nocedal has written a very flattering letter to Doña Eufrasia, saying that as he represents Don Carlos in Madrid so she, by reason of her merits, ought to represent him in Vilamorta."

Homeric bursts of laughter and a general huzza greeted this remark.

"Well, that may be an invention; but it is true, true as gospel, that Doña Eufrasia sent Don Carlos her likeness with a complimentary inscription."

"And the regiment? Have they fixed on the day on which it is to take the field?"

"Of course. They say that the Abbot of Lubrego is to command it."

The hilarity of the assembly was redoubled, for the Abbot of Lubrego was nearing his seventieth year, and was so feeble that he could scarcely hold himself on his mule. A boy at this moment entered the shop, swinging in his hand a glass bottle.

"Don Saturnino!" he cried, in a shrill voice.

"What is it you want?" answered the druggist, mimicking his tones.

"Give me some of what this smells like."

"All right," said Agonde, putting the bottle to his nose. "What does this smell like, Don Fermin?"

"Let me see—it smells something like—laudanum, eh?—or arnica?"

"Arnica let it be, it is less dangerous. I hope it will have a good effect."

"It is time to retire, gentlemen," said the Lawyer García, consulting his silver timepiece.

Genday stood up and Segundo followed his example.

The tresillo party proceeded to settle accounts; calculating winnings and losses, centavo by centavo, by means of white counters and yellow counters. After the close atmosphere of the shop the cool air of the street was grateful; the night was mild and clear; the stars shone with a friendly light and Segundo, who was quick to perceive the poetic aspect of things, felt tempted to leave his father and his uncle without ceremony and walk along the road, alone, according to his custom, to enjoy the beauty of the night. But his Uncle Genday linked his arm through his, saying:

"You are to be congratulated, my boy."

"Congratulated, uncle?"

"Weren't you crazy to get away from here? Didn't you want to take your flight to some other place? Haven't you a hatred for office work?"

"Good man," interposed the lawyer; "he is crazy enough as it is, and you want to unsettle his mind still more——"

"Hold your tongue, you fool! Don Victoriano is coming here, we will present the boy to him and ask him to give him a place. And he will give him one, and a good one too; for whether he thinks so or not, if he does not do what we ask him, the pancake will cost him a loaf. The district is not what he imagines it to be, and if his adherents do not keep their eyes open the clergy will play a trick upon them."

"And Primo? And Mendez de las Vides?"

"They are no match for the priest. The day least expected they will be made a show of; they will hang their heads for shame. But you, my boy—think well about it. You are not in love with the law?"

Segundo shrugged his shoulders with a smile.

"Well, turn the matter over in your mind; think what would suit you best. For you must be something; you must stick your head in somewhere. Would you like a justiceship? a place in the post-office? in one of the departments?"

They had turned the corner of the Plaza on their way to García's house and were passing under Leocadia's window when the fragrance of the carnations penetrated to Segundo's brain. He felt a poetic revulsion of feeling and, dilating his nostrils to inhale the perfume, he exclaimed:

"Neither justice nor post-office employee. Say no more on that point, uncle."

"Don't insist, Clodio," said the lawyer bitterly. "He wants to be nothing, nothing but a downright idler, to spend his life scribbling rhymes. Neither more nor less. The money must be handed out for the Institute, the University, the shirt-front, the frock coat, the polished boots, and then, when one thinks they are ready to do for themselves, back they come, to be a burden to one, to smoke and to eat at one's expense. I have three sons to spend my money, to squeeze me dry, and not one to give me any help. That is all these young gentlemen are good for."

Segundo stopped, twisting the end of his mustache, with a frown on his face. They all stood still at the corner of the little plaza, as people are wont to do when a conversation changes to a dispute.

"I don't know what puts that into your head, father," declared the poet. "Do you suppose that I propose to myself never to be anything more than Segundo García, the lawyer's son? If you do, you are greatly mistaken. You may be very anxious to be rid of the burden of supporting me, but you are not half as anxious as I am to relieve you of it."

"Well, then, what are you waiting for? Your uncle is proposing a variety of things to you and none of them suits you. Do you want to begin by being Minister?"

The poet began to twist his mustache anew.

"There is no use in being impatient, father. I would make a very bad post-office clerk and a still worse justice. I don't want to tie myself down to any fixed career, in which everything is arranged beforehand and moves by routine. In that case I should be a lawyer like you or a notary like Uncle Genday. If we really find Don Victoriano disposed to do anything for me, ask some position—no matter what—without fixed duties, that will enable me to reside in Madrid. I will take care of the rest."

"You will take care of the rest. Yes, yes, you say well. You will draw upon me for little sums, eh? like your brother in the Philippine Islands. Let me tell you for your guidance, then, that you needn't do so. I didn't steal what I have, and I don't coin money."

"I am not asking anything from you!" cried Segundo, in a burst of savage anger. "Am I in your way? I will get out of it, then; I will go to America. That ends it."

"No," said the lawyer, calming down. "Provided you exact no more sacrifices from me."

"Not one! not if I were starving!"

The lawyer's door opened; old Aunt Gáspara in her petticoat, looking like a fright, had come to let them in. Tied around her head was a cotton handkerchief which came so far over her face as almost to conceal her sour features. Segundo drew back at this picture of domestic life.

"Aren't you coming in?" asked his father.

"I am going with Uncle Genday."

"Are you coming back soon?"

"Directly."

Walking down the square he communicated his plans to Genday. The latter, a short man, with a fiery temper, signified his approbation by movements quick and restless as those of a lizard. His nephew's ideas were not displeasing to him. His active, scheming mind, the mind of an electoral agent and a clever notary, accepted vast projects more readily than the methodical mind of the lawyer García. Uncle and nephew were much of the same way of thinking as to the best manner of profiting by Don Victoriano's influence; conversing in this way they reached Genday's house, and the servant of the latter—a fresh-looking girl—opened the door for her master with all the flattering obsequiousness of a confirmed old bachelor's maid-servant. Instead of returning home Segundo, preoccupied and excited, walked down the plaza to the highroad, stopped at the first clump of chestnut trees he came to, and seating himself on the step of a wooden cross which the Jesuits had erected there during the last mission, gave himself up to the harmless diversion of contemplating the evening star, the constellations, and all the splendors of the heavenly bodies.

IV.

During the tiresome siestas of Vilamorta, while the visitors to the springs digested their glasses of mineral water and compensated themselves for the loss of their morning sleep by a restorative nap, the amateur musicians of the popular band practiced by themselves the pieces they were shortly to execute together. From the shoemaker's shop came the melancholy notes of a flute; in the baker's resounded the lively and martial strains of the horn; in the tobacconist's moaned a clarionet; in the cloth-shop, the suppressed sighs of an ophicleide filled the air. Those who thus devoted themselves to the worship of Euterpe were clerks in shops, younger sons, the youthful element of Vilamorta. These snatches of melody rose with piercing sonorousness on the drowsy warm atmosphere. When the news spread that Don Victoriano Andres de la Comba and his family were expected to arrive within twenty-four hours in the town, to leave it again immediately for Las Vides, the brass band was tuned to the highest pitch and ready to deafen, with any number of waltzes, dances, and quicksteps, the ears of the illustrious statesman.

In the town an unusual animation was noticeable. Agonde's house was opened, ventilated, and swept, clouds of dust issuing through the windows, at one of which, later on, appeared Agonde's sister, with a fringe of hair over her forehead and wearing a pearl-shell necklace. The housekeeper of the parish priest of Cebre, a famous cook, went busily about the kitchen, and the pounding of the mortar and the sizzling of oil could be heard. Two hours before the time of the arrival of the stage-coach from Orense, that is to say at three o'clock in the afternoon, the committee of the notabilities of the Combista-radical party were already crossing the plaza, and Agonde stood waiting on the threshold of his shop, having sacrificed to the solemnity of the occasion his classic cap and velvet slippers, and wearing patent-leather boots and a frock coat which made him look more bull-necked and pot-bellied than ever. The coach from Orense was entering the town from the side next the wood, and, at the tinkling of the bells, the clatter of the hoofs of its eight mules and ponies, the creaking of its unwieldy bulk, the inhabitants of Vilamorta looked out of their windows and came to their doors; the reactionary shop only remained closed and hostile. When the cumbrous vehicle turned into the square the excitement increased; barefooted children climbed on the coach steps, begging an ochavo in whining accents; the fruit-women sitting in the arches straightened themselves up to obtain a better view, and only Cansin, the clothier, his hands in his trousers' pockets, his feet thrust into slippers, continued walking up and down his shop with an Olympic air of indifference. The overseer reined in the team, saying in soothing accents to a rebellious mule:

"E-e-e-e-e-e-h! There, there, Canóniga."

The brass band, drawn up before the town-hall, burst into a deafening prelude, and the first rocket whizzed into the air sending forth a shower of sparks. The crowd rushed en masse toward the door of the coach, to offer their hands, their arms, anything, and a stout lady and a priest, with a cotton checked handkerchief tied around his temples, alighted from it. Agonde, more amused than angry, made signs to the musicians and the rocket-throwers to desist from their task.

"He is not coming yet! he is not coming yet!" he shouted. In effect, there were no other passengers in the omnibus. The overseer hastened to explain:

"They are just behind, not two steps off, as one might say. In Count de Vilar's carriage, in the barouche. On the Señora's account. The luggage is here. And they paid for the seats as if they had occupied them."

It was not long before the measured trot of Count de Vilar's pair of horses was heard and the open carriage, of an old-fashioned style, rolled majestically into the plaza. Reclining on the back seat was a man enveloped, notwithstanding the heat, in a cloth cloak; at his side sat a lady in a gray linen duster, the fanciful brim of her traveling-hat standing out sharply against the pure blue of the sky. In the front seat sat a little girl of some ten years and a mademoiselle, a sort of transpyrenean nursery governess. Segundo, who had kept in the background at the arrival of the diligence, this time was less stubborn and the hand which, covered with a long Suède glove, was stretched out in quest of a support, met with the energetic and nervous pressure of another hand. The Minister's lady looked with surprise at the gallant, gave him a reserved salutation and, taking the arm Agonde offered her, walked quickly into the apothecary's.

The statesman was slower in alighting. His adherents looked at him with surprise. He had changed greatly since his last visit to Vilamorta—then in the midst of the revolution—some eight or ten years before. His iron-gray hair, whiter on the temples, heightened the yellow hue of his complexion; the whites of his eyes, too, were yellow and streaked with little red veins; and his furrowed and withered countenance bore unmistakable traces of the anxieties of the struggle for social position, the vicissitudes of the political bench, and the sedentary labors of the forum. His frame hung loosely together, being wanting in the erectness which is the sign of physical vigor. When the handshakings began, however, and the "Delighted to see you——" "At last——" "After an age——" resounded around him, the dying gladiator revived, straightened himself up, and an amiable smile parted his thin lips, lending a pleasing expression to the now stern mouth. He even opened his arms to Genday, who squirmed in them like an eel, and he clapped the Alcalde on the back. García, the lawyer, tried to attract attention to himself, to distinguish himself among the others, saying in the serious tone of one who expresses an opinion in a very delicate matter:

"There, upstairs, upstairs now, to rest and to take some refreshment."

At last the commotion calmed down, the great man entering the apothecary's, followed by García, Genday, the Alcalde, and Segundo.

They seated themselves in Agonde's little parlor, respectfully leaving to Don Victoriano the red rep sofa, around which they drew their chairs in a semi-circle. Shortly afterward the ladies made their appearance, and, now without her hat, it could be seen that Señora de Comba was young and beautiful, seeming rather the elder sister than the mother of the little girl. The latter, with her luxuriant hair falling down her back and her precocious womanly seriousness, had the aspect of a sickly plant, while her mother, a smiling blonde, seemed overflowing with health. They spoke of the journey, of the fertile borders of the Avieiro, of the weather, of the road; the conversation was beginning to languish, when Agonde's sister entered opportunely, preceded by the housekeeper of the priest, carrying two enormous trays filled with smoking cups of chocolate, for supper was a meal unknown to the hosts. When the trays were set on the table and the chocolate handed around, the company grew more animated. The Vilamortans, finding a congenial subject on which to exercise their oratorical powers, began to press the strangers, to eulogize the excellence of the viands, and calling Señora de la Comba by her baptismal name, and adding an affectionate diminutive to that of the little girl, they launched forth into exclamations and questions.

"Is the chocolate to your taste, Nieves?"

"Do you like it thin or thick?"

"Nieves, take that morsel of cake for my sake; you will find it excellent; only we have the secret of making it."

"Come, Victoriniña, don't be bashful; that fresh butter goes very well with the hot bread."

"A morsel of toasted sponge-cake. Ah-ha! You don't have cake like that in Madrid, eh?"

"No," answered the girl, in a clear and affected voice. "In Madrid we eat crullers and doughnuts with our chocolate."

"It is the fashion here to take sponge-cake with it, not crullers. Take that one on the top, that brown one. That's nothing, a bird could eat it."

Don Victoriano joined in the conversation, praising the bread, saying he could not eat it, as it had been absolutely prohibited to him, for his malady required that he should abstain from starch and gluten in every form—indeed, he had bread sent him from France, bread prepared ad hoc without those elements—and as he spoke, he turned toward Agonde, who nodded with an air of intelligence, showing that he understood the Latin phrase. And Don Victoriano regretted doubly the prohibition now, for there was no bread to be compared to the Vilamorta bread—which was better of its kind than cake, yes indeed. The Vilamortans smiled, highly flattered, but García, with an eloquent shake of the head, said that the bread was deteriorating, that it was not now what it had formerly been, and that only Pellejo, the baker of the plaza, made it conscientiously, having the patience to select the wheat, grain by grain, not letting a single wormeaten one pass. It was for this reason that his loaves turned out so sweet and substantial. Then a discussion arose as to whether bread should be porous or the contrary, and as to whether hot bread was wholesome.

Don Victoriano, reanimated by these homely details, talked of his childhood, of the slices of bread spread with butter or molasses which he used to eat between meals, and when he added that his uncle, the priest, occasionally administered a sound drubbing to him, a smile once more softened the deep lines of his face. This expansion of feeling gave a sweeter expression to his countenance, effacing from it the traces left by years of strife, the scars of the wounds received in the battle of life, illuminating it with a reflection from his vanished youth. How he longed to see again a grapevine in Las Vides from which he had robbed grapes a hundred times when he was a child.

"And you will rob them again now," exclaimed Clodio Genday gayly. "We must tell the master of Las Vides to put a guard over the vine of Jaen."

The jest was received with demonstrations of hilarity, and the girl laughed with her shrill laugh at the idea of her papa robbing a grapevine. Segundo only smiled. His eyes were fixed on Don Victoriano, and he was thinking of what his life had been. He went over in his mind the history of the great man: At Segundo's age Don Victoriano, too, was an obscure lawyer, buried in Vilamorta, eager to break from the shell. He had gone to Madrid, where a celebrated jurisconsult had taken him as his assistant. The jurisconsult was a politician, and Victoriano followed in his footsteps. How did he begin to prosper? This period was shrouded in obscurity. Some said one thing, some another. Vilamorta found him, when it least expected, its candidate and representative. Once in Congress Don Victoriano's importance grew steadily, and when the Revolution of September came it found him in a sufficiently exalted position to be improvised a minister. The brief ministry gave him neither time to wear out his popularity nor to give proof of special gifts, and, with his prestige almost intact, the Restoration admitted him as a member of a fusionist cabinet. He had just laid down the portfolio and come to re-establish his shattered health in his native place, where his influence was strong and incontestible, thanks to his alliance with the illustrious house of Mendez de las Vides. Segundo asked himself if a lot like Don Victoriano's would satisfy his aspirations. Don Victoriano had wealth—stocks in banks and shares in railways among whose directors the name of the able jurisconsult figured. Our versifier raised his eyebrows disdainfully and glanced at the Minister's wife; that graceful beauty certainly did not love her lord. She was the daughter of a younger son of the house of Las Vides—a magistrate; she had probably married her husband, allured by his position. No; most assuredly the poet did not envy the politician. Why had this man risen to the eminent position he occupied? What extraordinary gifts did he possess? A diffuse parliamentary orator, a passive minister, with some forensic ability—sum total, a mediocrity.

While these reflections were passing through Segundo's mind, Señora de Comba amused herself by examining minutely the dress and the appearance of everyone present. She took in every detail, under her half-closed lids, of the toilet of Carmen Agonde, who was arrayed in a tight-fitting deep blue bodice that sent the blood to her plethoric cheeks. She next lowered her mocking glance to the patent-leather boots of the pharmacist, and then raised them again to Clodio Genday's fingers, stained by the cigar, and the purple and white checked velvet waistcoat of the lawyer García. Finally, her glance fell on Segundo, in critical examination of his attire. But another glance, steady and ardent, cast it back like a shield.

V.

Agonde rose early on the following morning, and descended shortly afterward to his shop, leaving his guests wrapped in their slumbers, and Carmen charged, the moment they should stir, to pour the chocolate into their mouths. The apothecary desired to enjoy the effect produced in the town by Don Victoriano's sojourn in his house. He was reclining in his leather-covered easy-chair when he saw Tropiezo riding past on his gray mule, and called out to him:

"Hello! Hello! Where are you bound for so early?"

"For Doas, man. I have not a minute to spare." And saying this the doctor alighted from his mule, which he tied to an iron ring fastened in the wall.

"Is the case so urgent?"

"Urgent? That it is. The old woman, the grandmother of Ramon, the confectioner. It appears she has already received the last sacrament."

"And it is only now they have sent for you?"

"No; I went to see her yesterday, and I applied two dozen leeches, that drew their fill of blood from her. She looked like a dying kid; she was very weak, and as thin as a wafer. Perhaps if I had given her something that I thought of, instead of applying leeches——"

"Ah! a trip," interrupted Agonde maliciously.

"Life is a series of trips," responded the doctor, shrugging his shoulders. "And upstairs?" he added, raising his eyes interrogatively to the ceiling.

"Snoring like princes."

"And he—how does he look?" asked Don Fermin, lowering his voice and dwelling on every word.

"He?" repeated Agonde, following his example. "So-so. Oldish. And very gray."

"But what is the matter with him? Let us hear. For as to being sick, he is that."

"He has—a new disease—a very strange one, one of the latest fashion." And Agonde smiled maliciously.

"New?"

Agonde half-closed his eyes, bent toward Tropiezo, and whispered something in his ear.

Tropiezo burst into a laugh; suddenly he looked very serious, and tapping his nose repeatedly with his forefinger:

"I know, I know," he said emphatically. "And the waters here, and some others in France, are the only cure for that disease. If he drinks a few glasses from the spring, he will be himself again."

Tropiezo emitted his dictamen leaning on the counter, forgetful of the mule that was stamping impatiently at the door.

"And the Señora—what does she say of her husband's state of health?" he suddenly asked, with a wink.

"What should she say of it, man? Probably she does not know that it is serious."

A look of derision lighted up the inexpressive features of the physician; he glanced at Agonde and smothering another burst of laughter, began:

"The Señora—"

"Chut!" interrupted the apothecary furiously. The whole Comba family were making an irruption into the shop through the small door of the porch. Mother and daughter formed a charming group, both wearing wide-brimmed hats of coarse straw adorned with enormous bows of flame-colored bunting. Their écru cotton gowns embroidered with red braid completed the rustic character of their costumes, reminding one of a bunch of poppies and straw. The girl's luxuriant dark hair hung loose over her shoulders, and the fair locks of the mother curled in a tangled mass under the shade of her broad-brimmed hat. Nieves did not wear gloves nor was there visible on her face a trace of powder, or of any other of the cosmetics whose use is imputed unjustly by the women of the provinces to the Madridlenians; on the contrary, her rosy ears and neck showed signs of energetic friction with the towel and cold water. As for Don Victoriano, the ravages made in his countenance by care and sickness were still more apparent in the morning light; it was not, as Agonde had said, age that was visible there; it was virility, but tortured, exhausted, wounded to death.

"Why! Have you had chocolate already?" asked Agonde, in confusion.

"No, friend Saturnino, nor shall we take it, with your permission, until we return. Don't trouble yourself on our account. Victoriniña has ransacked your pantry—your closets——"

The child half opened a handkerchief which she held by the four corners, disclosing a provision of bread, cake, and the cheese of the country.

"At least let me bring you a whole cheese. I will go see if there is not some fresh bread, just out of the oven——"

Don Victoriano objected—let him not be deprived of the pleasure of going to breakfast in the poplar-grove near the spring, just as he had done when a boy. Agonde remarked that those articles of food were not wholesome for him, to which Tropiezo, scratching the tip of his ear, responded sceptically:

"Bah! bah! bah! Those are new-fangled notions. What is wholesome for the body—can't they understand that—is what the body craves. If the gentleman likes bread—and for your malady, Señor Don Victoriano, there is nothing like the waters here. I don't know why people go to give their money to those French when we have better things at home than any they can give us."

The Minister looked at Tropiezo with keen interest depicted on his countenance. He called to mind his last visit to Sanchez del Abrojo and the contraction of the lips with which the learned practitioner had said to him:

"I would send you to Carlsbad or to Vichy, but those waters are not always beneficial. At times they hasten the natural course of a disease. Rest for a time, and diet yourself—we will see how you are when you return in the autumn." And what a look Sanchez del Abrojo put on when he said this! An impenetrable, sphinx-like expression. The positive assertion of Tropiezo awoke tumultuous hopes in Don Victoriano's breast. This village practitioner must know a great deal from experience, more perhaps than the pompous doctors of the capital.

"Come, papa," said the child impatiently, pulling him by the sleeve.

They took the path toward the grove. Vilamorta, naturally given to early rising, was more full of activity at this hour than in the afternoon. The shops were open, the baskets of the fruit-venders were already filled with fruit. Cansin walked up and down his establishment with his hands in his pockets, affecting to have noticed nothing, so as not to be obliged to bid good-morning to Agonde and acknowledge his triumph. Pellejo, covered with flour, was haggling with three shopkeepers from Cebre, who wanted to buy some of his best wheat. Ramon, the confectioner, was dividing chocolate into squares on a large board placed on the counter and rapidly stamping them with a hot iron before they should have time to cool.

The morning was cloudless and the sun was already unusually hot. The party, augmented by García and Genday, walked through orchards and cornfields until they reached the entrance to the walk. Don Victoriano uttered an exclamation of joy. It was the same double row of elms bordering the river, the foaming and joyous Avieiro, that ran on sparkling in gentle cascades, washing with a pleasant murmur the rocks, worn smooth by the action of the current. He recognized the thick osier plantations; he remembered all his longings of the day before and leaned, full of emotion, on the parapet of the walk. The scene was almost deserted; half a dozen melancholy and bilious-looking individuals, visitors to the springs, were walking slowly up and down, discussing their ailments in low tones, and eructating the bicarbonate of the waters. Nieves, leaning back on a stone bench, gazed at the river. The child touched her on the shoulder, saying:

"Mamma, the young man we saw yesterday."

On the opposite bank Segundo García was standing on a rock, absorbed in meditation, his straw hat pushed far back on his head, his hand resting on his hip, doubtless with the purpose of preserving his equilibrium in so dangerous a position. Nieves reproved the little girl, saying:

"Don't be silly, child. You startled me. Salute the gentleman."

"He is not looking this way. Ah! now he is looking. Salute him, you, mamma. He is taking off his hat, he is going to fall! There! now he is safe."

Don Victoriano descended the stone steps leading to the spring. The abode of the naiad was a humble grotto—a shed supported on rough posts, a small basin overflowing with the water from the spring, some wretched hovels for the bathers, and a strong and sickening odor of rotten eggs, caused by the stagnation of the sulphur water, were all that the fastidious tourist found there. Notwithstanding this, Don Victoriano's soul was filled with the purest joy. In this naiad he beheld his youth, his lost youth—the age of illusions, of hopes blooming as the banks of the Avieiro. How many mornings had he come to drink from the fountain, for a jest, to wash his face with the water, which enjoyed throughout the country the reputation of possessing extraordinary curative virtue for the eyes. Don Victoriano stretched out his hands, plunged them into the warm current, feeling it slip through his fingers with delight, and playing with it and caressing it as one caresses a loved being. But the undulating form of the naiad escaped from him as youth escapes from us—without the possibility of detaining it. Then the ex-Minister felt a thirst awaken in him to drink the waters. Beside him on the edge of the basin was a glass; and the keeper, a poor old man in his dotage, presented it to him with an idiotic smile. Don Victoriano drank, closing his eyes, with indescribable pleasure, enjoying the mysterious water, charmed by the magic arts of memory. When he had drained the glass he drew himself up and ascended the stairs with a firm and elastic step. Victoriniña, who was breakfasting on bread and cheese in the avenue, was astonished when her father took a piece of bread from her lap, saying gayly:

"We are all God's creatures."

VI.

Almost as much as by Don Victoriano's arrival was Vilamorta excited by the arrival of Señor de las Vides, accompanied by his steward, Primo Genday. This event happened on the afternoon of the memorable day on which Don Victoriano had infringed the commands of science by eating half a pound of fresh bread. At three o'clock, under a blazing sun, Genday the elder and Mendez entered the plaza, the latter mounted on a powerful mule, the former on an ordinary nag.

Señor de las Vides was a little old man as dry as a vine branch. His carefully shaven cheeks, his thin lips and aristocratically pointed nose and chin, his shrewd, kind eyes, surrounded by innumerable crows' feet, his intellectual profile, his beardless face, called loudly for the curled wig, the embroidered coat and the gold snuff-box of the Campomanes and Arandas. With his delicate and expressive countenance the countenance of Primo Genday contrasted strongly. The steward's complexion was white and red, he had the fine and transparent skin, showing the full veins underneath, of those who are predisposed to hemiplegy. His eyes were of a greenish color, one of them being attached, as it were, to the lax and drooping lid, while the other rolled around with mischievous vivacity. His silvery curls gave him a distant resemblance to Louis Philippe, as he is represented on the coins which bear his effigy.

By a combination not unusual in small towns Primo Genday and his brother Clodio served under opposite political banners, both being in reality of one mind and both pursuing the same end; Clodio ranged himself on the side of the radicals, Primo was the support of the Carlist party, and in cases of emergency, in the electoral contests, they clasped hands over the fence. When the hoofs of Primo Genday's nag resounded on the paving-stones, the windows of the reactionary shop were opened and two or three hands were waved in friendly welcome. Primo paused, and Mendez continued on his way to Agonde's door, where he dismounted.

He was received in Don Victoriano's arms, and then disappeared among the shadows of the staircase. The mule remained fastened to the ring, stamping impatiently, while the onlookers on the plaza contemplated with respect the nobleman's old-fashioned harness of embossed leather, ornamented with silver, bright with use. One after another other mules and horses were brought to join the first comer. And the crowd assigned them their riders with considerable judgment. The chestnut nag of the alguazil, a fine animal, with a saddle and a silk headstall, was no doubt for the Minister. The black donkey with the side-saddle—who could doubt that it was for the Señora? The other gentle white donkey they would give to the little girl. The Alcalde's ass was for the maid. Agonde would ride the mare he always rode, the Morena, that had more malanders on her head than hairs in her tail. During this time the radicals, García, Clodio, Genday, and Ramon, were discussing the respective merits of the animals and the condition of their trappings and calculating the probabilities of their being able to reach Las Vides before nightfall. The lawyer shook his head, saying emphatically and sententiously:

"They are taking their time about it if they expect to do that."

"And they are bringing the alguazil's horse for Don Victoriano!" exclaimed the tobacconist. "Tricky as the very devil! There will be a scene. When you rode him, Segundo, did he play you no trick?"

"Me, no. But he is lively."

"You shall see, you shall see."

The travelers were now coming out of the house, and the cavalcade began to form. The ladies seated themselves in their side-saddles and the men settled their feet in their stirrups. Then the scene predicted by the tobacconist took place, to the great scandal and the further delay of the party. As soon as the alguazil's nag became aware of the presence of a female of his race he began to snuff the air excitedly, neighing fiercely. Don Victoriano gathered up the reins, but, before the animal had felt the iron in his mouth, he became so unmanageable, first rearing, then kicking violently, and finally turning his head around to try to bite his rider's legs, that Don Victoriano, somewhat pale, thought it prudent to dismount. Agonde, furious, dismounted also.

"What an infernal animal!" he cried. "Here, brutes—who told you to bring the alguazil's horse? One would suppose you didn't know it was a wild beast. You—Alcalde, or you, García—quick, go for Requinto's mule; it is only two steps from here. Señor Don Victoriano, take my mule. And that tiger, to the stable with him!"

"No," interrupted Segundo, "I will ride him as he is already saddled. I will go with you as far as the cross."

And Segundo, providing himself with a strong switch, caught the nag by the mane and at a bound was in the saddle. Instead of leaning his weight on the stirrup he pressed the animal's sides between his legs, raining a shower of blows at the same time on his head. The animal, which was already beginning to curvet and prance again, gave a snort of pain, and now, quivering and subdued, obeyed his rider's touch. The cavalcade put itself in motion as soon as Requinto's mule was brought, after handshakings, waving of hats, and even a timid viva, from what quarter no one knew. The cortége proceeded along the highway, the mare and the mules heading the procession, the donkeys following behind, and at their side the nag, kept in order by dint of switching. The sun was sinking in the west, turning the dust of the road into gold; the chestnut trees cast lengthened shadows on the ground, and from the osier-brake came a pleasant breeze laden with moisture from the river.

Segundo rode along in silence; Victoriniña, delighted to be riding on a donkey, smiled, making fruitless efforts to hide with her frock her sharp knee-bones, which the shape of the saddle compelled her to raise and uncover. Nieves, leaning back in her saddle, opened her rose-lined écru lace parasol, and, as they started, drew from her bosom a diminutive watch, which she consulted for the hour. A few moments of embarrassed silence followed. At last Segundo felt that it was necessary to say something:

"How are you doing, Victoriniña?" he said to the child. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes, quite comfortable."

"I warrant you would rather ride on my horse. If you are not afraid I will take you before me."

The girl, whose embarrassment had now reached its height, lowered her eyes without answering; her mother, smiling graciously, however, now joined in the conversation.

"And tell me, García, why don't you address the child as thou? You treat her with so much ceremony! You will make her fancy she is a young lady already."

"I should not dare to do so without her permission."

"Come, Victoriniña, tell this gentleman he has your permission."

The child took refuge in that invincible muteness of growing girls whom an exquisite and precocious sensibility renders painfully shy. A smile parted her lips, and at the same time her eyes filled with tears. Mademoiselle said something gently to her in French; meanwhile Nieves and Segundo, laughing confidentially at the incident, found the way smoothed for them to begin a conversation.

"When do you think we shall arrive at Las Vides? Is it a pretty place? Shall we be comfortable there? How will it agree with Victoriano? What sort of a life shall we lead? Shall we have many visitors? Is there a garden?"

"Las Vides is a beautiful place," said Segundo. "It has an air of antiquity—a lordly air, as it were. I like the escutcheon, and a magnificent grapevine that covers the courtyard, and the camellias and lemon trees in the orchards, that look like good-sized chestnut trees, and the view of the river, and, above all, a pine grove that talks and even sings—don't laugh—that sings; yes, Señora, and better than most professional singers. Don't you believe it? Well, you shall see for yourself presently."

Nieves looked with lively curiosity at the young man and then hastily turned her glance aside, remembering the quick and nervous hand-pressure of the day before, when she was alighting from the carriage. For the second time in the space of a few hours this young man had surprised her. Nieves led an extremely regular life in Madrid—the life of the middle classes, in which all the incidents are commonplace. She went to mass and shopped in the morning; in the afternoon she went to the Retiro, or made visits; in the evening she went to her parents' house or to the theater with her husband; on rare occasions to some ball or banquet at the house of the Duke of Puenteanchas, a client of Don Victoriano's. When the latter received the portfolio it made little change in Nieves' way of life. She received a few more salutations than before in the Retiro; the clerks in the shops were more attentive to her; the Duchess of Puenteanchas said some flattering things to her, calling her "pet," and here ended for Nieves the pleasure of the ministry. The trip to Vilamorta, the picturesque country of which she had so often heard her father speak, was a novel incident in her monotonous life. Segundo seemed to her a curious detail of the journey. He looked at her and spoke to her in so odd a way. Bah, fancies! Between this young man and herself there was nothing in common. A passing acquaintance, like so many others to be met here at every step. So the pines sang, did they? A misfortune for Gayarre! And Nieves smiled graciously, dissembling her strange thoughts and went on asking questions, to which Segundo responded in expressive phrases. Night was beginning to fall. Suddenly, the cavalcade, leaving the highroad, turned into a path that led among pine groves and woods. At a turn of the path could be seen the picturesque dark stone cross, whose steps invited to prayer or to sentimental reverie. Agonde stopped here and took his leave of the party, and Segundo followed his example.

As the tinkling of the donkeys' bells grew fainter in the distance Segundo felt an inexplicable sensation of loneliness and abandonment steal over him, as if he had just parted forever from persons who were dear to him or who played an important part in his life. "A pretty fool I am!" said the poet to himself. "What have I to do with these people or they with me? Nieves has invited me to spend a few days at Las Vides, en famille. When Nieves returns to Madrid this winter she will speak of me as 'That lawyer's son, that we met at Vilamorta.' Who am I? What position should I occupy in her house? An altogether secondary one. That of a boy who is treated with consideration because his father disposes of votes."

While Segundo was thus caviling, the apothecary overtook him, and horse and mule pursued their way side by side. In the twilight the poet could distinguish the placid smile of Agonde, his red cheeks, looking redder in contrast to the lustrous black mustache, his expression of sensual amiability and epicurean beatitude. An enviable lot was the apothecary's. This man was happy in his comfortable and well-ordered shop, with his circle of friends, his cap and his embroidered slippers, taking life as one takes a glass of cordial, sipping it with enjoyment, in peace and harmony, along with the other guests at the banquet of life. Why should not Segundo be satisfied with what satisfied Agonde perfectly? Whence came this longing for something that was not precisely money, nor pleasure, nor fame, nor love—which partook of all these, which embraced them all and which perhaps nothing would satisfy?

"Segundo."

"Eh?" he answered, turning his head toward Agonde.

"How silent you are, my boy! What do you think of the Minister?"

"What would you have me think of him?"

"And the Señora? Come, you have noticed her, I warrant. She wears black silk stockings, like the priests. When she was mounting the donkey——"

"I am going to take a gallop as far as Vilamorta. Do you care to join me, Saturnino?"

"Gallop with this mule? I should arrive there with my stomach in my mouth. Gallop you, if you have a fancy for doing so."

The nag galloped for half a league or so, urged by his rider's whip. As they drew near the canebrake by the river, Segundo slackened his horse's gallop to a very slow walk. It was now almost dark and the cool mists rose, moist and clinging, from the bosom of the Avieiro. Segundo remembered that it was two or three days since he had put his foot in Leocadia's house. No doubt the schoolmistress was now fretting herself to death, weeping and watching for him. This thought brought sudden balm to Segundo's wounded spirit. How tenderly Leocadia loved him! With what joy did she welcome him! How deeply his poetry, his words, moved her! And he—why was it that he did not share her ardor? Of this exclusive, this absolute, boundless love, Segundo had never deigned to accept even the half; and of all the tender terms of endearment invented by the muse he chose for Leocadia the least poetical, the least romantic; as we separate the gold and silver in our purse from the baser coin, setting aside for the beggar the meanest copper, so did Segundo dispense with niggard hand the treasures of his love. A hundred times had it happened to him, in his walks through the country, to fill his hat with violets, with hyacinths and branches of blackberry blossoms, only to throw them all into the river on reaching the village, in order not to carry them to Leocadia.

VII.

While she distributed their tasks among the children, saying to one, "Take care to make this hem straight," to another, "Make this seam even, the stitch smaller," to a third, "Use your handkerchief instead of your dress," and to still another, "Sit still, child, don't move your feet," Leocadia cast a glance from time to time toward the plaza in the hope of seeing Segundo pass by. But no Segundo was to be seen. The flies settled themselves to sleep, buzzing, on the ceiling; the heat abated; the afternoon came, and the children went away. Leocadia felt a profound sadness take possession of her and, without waiting to put the house in order, she went to her room and threw herself on the bed.

The glass door was pushed gently open, and some one entered softly.

"Mamma," said the intruder, in a low voice.

The schoolmistress did not answer.

"Mamma, mamma," repeated the hunchback, in a louder voice. "Mamma!" he shouted at last.

"Is that you? What do you want?"

"Are you ill?"

"No, child."

"As you went to bed——'

"I have a slight headache. There, leave me in peace."

Minguitos turned round and walked in silence toward the door. As her eyes fell on the protuberance of his back, a sharp pang pierced the heart of the schoolmistress. How many tears that hump had cost her in other days. She raised herself on her elbow.

"Minguitos!" she called.

"What is it, mamma?"

"Don't go away. How do you feel to-day? Have you any pain?"

"I feel pretty well, mamma. Only my chest hurts me."

"Let me see; come here."

Leocadia sat up in the bed and, taking the child's head between her hands, looked at him with a mother's hungry look. Minguitos' face was long and of a melancholy cast; the prominent lower jaw was in keeping with the twisted and misshapen body that reminded one of a building shaken out of shape by an earthquake or a tree twisted by a hurricane. Minguitos' deformity was not congenital. He had always been sickly, indeed, and it had always been remarked that his head seemed too heavy for his body, and that his legs seemed too frail to support him. Leocadia recalled one by one the incidents of his childhood. At five years old the boy had met with an accident—a fall down the stairs; from that day he lost all his liveliness; he walked little and never ran. He contracted a habit of sitting Turkish fashion, playing marbles for hours at a time. If he rose his legs soon warned him to sit down again. When he stood, his movements were vacillating and awkward. When he was quiet he felt no pain, but when he turned any part of his body, he experienced slight pains in the spinal column. The trouble increased with time; the boy complained of a feeling as if an iron band were compressing his chest. Then his mother, now thoroughly alarmed, consulted a famous physician, the best in Orense. He prescribed frictions with iodine, large doses of phosphates of lime, and sea-bathing. Leocadia hastened with the boy to a little sea-port. After taking two or three baths, the trouble increased; he could not bend his body; his spinal column was rigid and it was only when he was in a horizontal position that he felt any relief from his now severe pains. Sores appeared on his skin, and one morning when Leocadia begged him with tears to straighten himself, and tried to lift him up by the arms, he uttered a horrible cry.

"I am broken in two, mamma—I am broken in two," he repeated with anguish, while his mother, with trembling fingers sought to find what had caused his cry.

It was true! The backbone had bent outward, forming an angle on a level with his shoulderblades, the softened vertebræ had sunk and cifosis, the hump, the indelible mark of irremediable calamity, was to deform henceforth this child who was dearer to her than her life. The schoolmistress had had a moment of animal and sublime anguish, the anguish of the wild beast that sees its young mutilated. She had uttered shriek after shriek, cursing the doctor, cursing herself, tearing her hair and digging her nails into her flesh. Afterward tears had come and she had showered kisses, delirious, but soothing and sweet, on the boy, and her grief took a resigned form. During nine years Leocadia had had no other thought than to watch over her little cripple by night and by day, sheltering him in her love, amusing with ingenious inventions the idle hours of his sedentary childhood. A thousand incidents of this time recurred to Leocadia's memory. The boy suffered from obstinate dyspnœa, due to the pressure of the sunken vertebræ on the respiratory organs, and his mother would get up in the middle of the night and go in her bare feet to listen to his breathing and to raise his pillows. As these recollections came to her mind Leocadia felt her heart melt and something stir within her like the remains of a great love, the warm ashes of an immense fire, and she experienced the unconscious reaction of maternity, the irresistible impulse which makes a mother see in her grown-up son only the infant she has nursed and protected, to whom she would have given her blood, if it had been necessary, instead of milk. And uttering a cry of love, pressing her feverish lips passionately to the pallid temples of the hunchback, she said, falling back naturally into the caressing expressions of the dialect:

"Malpocadiño. Who loves you? say, who loves you dearly? Who?"