A time for new elections arrived, and CÆsar stood for Castro Duro. Don Calixto, who had married his two daughters and was bored at not being allowed to pull the strings in the town, decided to move to Madrid. First he had thought of spending only some time at the capital, but later he decided to stay there and he had his furniture sent down.

People said that Don Calixto had no great affection for the old palace of the Dukes of Castro, and CÆsar proposed that he should rent the house to him.

Don Calixto hesitated; in Castro he would certainly have refused, but being in Madrid he accepted. His wife advised him that if he had any scruples, he should ask more rent. They came to the agreement that CÆsar should pay three thousand pesetas a year for the part Don Calixto had formerly inhabited.

This time CÆsar had the election won, and there was not the slightest fight. He was the boss of Castro, a good boss, accepted by everybody, save the Clericals.

CÆsar had money, and he wrote to his sister to come and see him at Castro in his seigniorial mansion. Laura arrived at Madrid in the autumn, and the two went to Castro together.

Laura’s appearance in the town created a great sensation. At first people said she was CÆsar’s wife. Others said she was an actress; until finally everybody understood that she was his sister.

Laura really took undue advantage of her superiority. She was irresistibly amiable and bewitching with everybody. The majority of the men in Castro Duro talked of nothing but her, and the women hated her to the death.

Being a marchioness, a Cardinal’s niece, and a Deputy’s sister, gave her, besides, a terrible social prestige.

One person who clung to her, enchanted to have such a friend, was Amparito. She went to the palace in her motor at all hours, to see Laura and chat with her. In the afternoon the two of them used to walk in Amparito’s father’s property, where the labourers, who were threshing, received them like queens.

What enchanted Laura was the wild garden at Don Calixto’s house, with its pomegranates and laurels, its tower above the river, full of climbing plants and oleanders.

“You ought to buy this house,” she used to tell CÆsar.

“It would cost a good deal.”

“Pshaw! You could arrange that wonderfully. You would get married and live here like a prince.”

“Get married?”

“Yes. To Amparito. That young thing is enchanting.

“She will make a splendid little wife. Even for your respectability as a Deputy, it would be fitting to marry. A bachelor politician has a poor look.”

CÆsar paid no attention to these suggestions and continued to lead an unsocial life. He covered the environs on horseback, found out everything that was going on and settled it. In this he set himself an enormous task, which was not notable for results; but he hoped to succeed in conquering the district completely, and then to extend his sphere of action to others and yet others.

After being a fortnight in Castro Duro, Laura went to Biarritz, as was her custom every year.

AMPARITO AND CÆSAR

CÆsar was left alone. He had seen Amparito with his sister many times but had scarcely ever exchanged more than a few words with her. One afternoon CÆsar was in the gallery in an arm-chair, with his feet high. He felt melancholy and lazy, and was watching the clouds move across the sky. Soon he heard steps, and saw Amparito with an old servant who had been her nurse.

CÆsar jumped up.

“What’s the matter?” he exclaimed.

“I came to get something Laura forgot,” said Amparito.

“She forgot something?” asked CÆsar stupidly.

“Yes,” replied Amparito; and added, addressing the old woman:

“Go see if there is a little glass box in SeÑorita Laura’s room.”

The old woman went out, and Amparito, looking at CÆsar, who was on his feet watching her nervously, said:

“Do you still hate me?”

“I?” exclaimed CÆsar.

“Yes, you do hate me.”

“I! I have never hated you.... Quite the contrary.”

“Whenever you see me you get away, and just now you looked at me as if you were terrified. Have you such a grudge against me for a joke I played on you long ago?”

“I, a grudge! No. It is because I have the impression, Amparito, that you want to upset my plans, to make game of me. Why do you?”

“Do you think I try to amuse myself by worrying you?”

“Yes.”

“No, that isn’t true. You don’t think so.”

“Then why this constant inclination to distress me, to poke fun at me?”

“I never poked fun at you.”

“Then I have made a mistake.... I had come to think that you took some interest in me.”

“And so I did. I did take an interest in you, and I keep on taking an interest in you.”

“And why so?”

“Because I see that you are unhappy, and you are alone.”

“Ah! You are sorry for me!” “Now you are offended. Yes, I am sorry for you.”

“Sorry!”

“Yes, sorry. Because I see that you despise everybody and despise yourself, because you think people are bad, and that you are too, and to me this seems so sad that it makes me pity you deeply.”

CÆsar began to walk up and down the gallery, trembling a little.

“I don’t see why you say this to me,” he murmured. “I am a morbid man, with an ulcerated, wounded spirit.... I know that. But why say it to me? Do you take pleasure in humiliating me?”

“No, CÆsar,” said Amparito, drawing near him. “You don’t believe that I take pleasure in humiliating you. No, you know well that I do not.”

On saying this, Amparito burst into tears, and she had to lean against the gallery window, to hide her face and dissemble her emotion.

CÆsar took her hand, and as she did not turn her head, he seized her other, too. She looked at him with her eyes shining and full of tears; and in that look there was so much attachment, so much distress, that CÆsar felt a weakness in his whole frame. Then, taking Amparito’s head between his hands, he kissed it several times.

She leaned her head on CÆsar’s shoulder and stood pressed against him, sobbing. CÆsar felt a sensation of anguish and pain, as if within the depths of his soul, the strongest part of his personality had broken and melted.

They heard the footsteps of the old woman, coming back to say that she had found nothing in the room Laura had occupied during her stay.

Amparito dried her tears, and smiled, and her face was redder than usual. Presently she said to the nurse:

“Probably you didn’t look well. I am going to go myself.”

Amparito went out.

CÆsar was pale and absorbed; he felt that something extraordinary had happened to him. His hands trembled and things swam around him.

In a short while Amparito returned. She had a round glass box in her hand, which she said she had found in Laura’s room.

“This afternoon I am going to Our Lady of the Rock,” said Amparito. “Will you come, CÆsar?”

“Yes.”

“Then, good-bye till then.”

Amparito gave him her hand, and CÆsar kissed it. The old servant was dumfounded. Amparito burst out laughing.

“He is my beau. Hadn’t you noticed it before?”

“No,” said the old woman with a gesture of violent negation.

Amparito laughed again and disappeared.

The first days of his engagement CÆsar was constantly in-tranquil and uneasy. He kept thinking that it was impossible to live like that, giving his whole attention to nothing except the desires of a girl. He imagined that the awakening would come from one moment to the next; but the awakening didn’t arrive.

By degrees CÆsar abandoned all the affairs of the district, which had taken all his attention, and took to occupying himself solely with his sweetheart. The whole town knew their relations and talked of the coming wedding.

That dazzling idyll intrigued all the girls in Castro. The truth was that none of them had considered CÆsar a marrying man; some had imagined him already old; others an experienced and vicious bachelor, incapable of yielding to the matrimonial yoke; and now they saw him a youth, of distinguished type, with distinguished manners and looks.

CÆsar went almost daily to Amparito’s father’s country-place. It was a magnificent estate, another ancient property of the Dukes of Castro Duro, with a house adorned with escutcheons, and an extensive stone pool, deep and mysterious. The garden did not resemble that at Don Calixto’s house, for that one was of a frantic gaiety, and the one on Amparito’s father’s estate was very melancholy. Above all, the square of water in the pool, whose edges were decorated with great granite vases, had a mysterious, sad aspect.

“Doesn’t it make you very sad to look at this deep water in the pool?” CÆsar asked his fiancÉe.

“No, it doesn’t me.”

“It does me.”

“Because you are a poet,” she said, “and I am not; I am very prosaic.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The more CÆsar talked with Amparito, the less he understood her and the more he needed to be with her.

“We really do not think the same about anything,” CÆsar used to tell himself, “and yet we understand each other.”

Many times he endeavoured to make a psychological rÉsumÉ of Amparito’s character, but he didn’t succeed. He didn’t know how to classify her; her type always escaped him.

“All her notions are different from mine,” he used to think; “she speaks in another way, feels in another way, she even has a different moral code. How strange!”

Also, what Amparito knew was completely heterogeneous; she spoke French well and wrote it fairly correctly; in Spanish, on the other hand, she had no idea of spelling. CÆsar was always stupefied on seeing the transpositions of h’s, s’s, and z’s that she made in her letters.

There remained by Amparito, from her passage through the French school, a recollection of the history of France made up of a few anecdotes and a few phrases. Thus, it was not unusual to hear her speak of Turenne, of Francis I, or of Colbert. For the rest, she played the piano badly enough and with extremely little enthusiasm.

This was the part belonging to her education as a rich young lady; that which belonged to the country girl, who lived among peasants, was more curious and personal.

She knew many plants by their vulgar names, and understood their industrial and medicinal use. Besides, she spoke in such pure, natural phrases that CÆsar was filled with admiration.

CÆsar had reached such a degree of exaltation that he thought of nothing any more, except his sweetheart. At night, before going to sleep, he thought of her deliriously. He often dreamed that Amparito had changed into the red-flowered oleander of the wild palace garden, and in every flower of the oleander he used to see Amparito’s red lips and white teeth.