With what interest did Segundo read the letters of Roberto Blanquez giving him news of his book. Roberto was a few years older than the Swan; the difference in their ages was not so great as to prevent their having been very good friends when they were at college together, though it was great enough to have given Blanquez so much more experience than the poet as to enable him to serve as his guide and mentor. Blanquez, too, had had his poetic epoch, when he had written Galician verses; he now devoted himself to the prose of a modest clerkship, and wrote official articles. Madrid was enlightening him, and, with the natural penetration of one in whose veins flowed Galician blood, he was gradually acquiring a knowledge of practical life. He entertained for Segundo a fanatic admiration and a sincere attachment, one of those college attachments which last a lifetime. Segundo wrote to him with entire confidence—some cousins of Blanquez were acquainted with the mother of Nieves Mendez, and through this channel Segundo occasionally received tidings of his lady-love. Blanquez was not ignorant of the episodes of the summer. And in the beginning his news was very satisfactory: "Nieves lives in the greatest retirement—my cousins have given me news of her. She scarcely ever leaves the house except to go to mass. The child is not well. The physicians say it is the age. They are going to send her to a convent of the Sacred Heart to be educated. They say the mother looks superb, my boy. It seems they have been left very well off. The book will soon appear now. Yesterday I chose the paper for the edition and the linen paper for the hundred copies de luxe. The type will be Elzevir, which is at present the most fashionable. The title-page—they make them beautiful now, in six colors—would you like it to represent something fanciful, something allegorical?" In this style were Roberto's letters, source of illusions for Segundo, sole food for his imagination through all that long and gloomy winter, in that out-of-the-way corner of the world, in the midst of his prosaic domestic surroundings, his mind filled with the recollections of his unhappy passion.

March had arrived, that uncertain month of sunshine and showers which heralds in the spring with affluence of violets and primroses, when the cold begins to lessen, and in the pale blue sky white clouds float like streamers, when Segundo received that most precious of all objects, that object the sight of which makes the heart palpitate with joy and longing, mingled with an undefinable fear resembling, somewhat, the feeling with which the new-made father regards his first-born—his first printed book. It seemed to him a dream that the book should be there, before his eyes, in his hands, with the satin-smooth white cover on which the artist had gracefully twined around a group of pine trees a few sprays of forget-me-nots; with its pea-green paper, that gave it an antique air, the compositions headed by three mysterious asterisks. Looking at his verses thus, free from blots, finished and correct, the thought standing out clearly in distinct black characters on the delicately tinted page, he almost felt as if they had issued from his brain just as they were, smoothly flowing and with perfect rhymes, without corrections or unmeaning syllables put in to fill out the meter.

Leocadia was even more moved by the sight of the book than its author had been. She shed tears of joy. The fame of the poet was, in a sense, her work! For two or three days she was happy, forgetting the bad news which Flores brought her every Sunday from Orense; from Orense, where Leocadia did not dare to go herself, fearing to yield to the entreaties and melt before the prayers of the child, but where palpitated those fibers of her heart which still bled, and which Flores wrung with torture by her account of the sufferings of Minguitos, who declined visibly in health, and who always complained that they made sport of him in the shop and cast up his deformity to him.

Unsolvable mysteries of the human heart! Segundo, who despised his native place, who believed—nor was he mistaken—that there was not in Vilamorta a single person capable of judging of the merits of a poem, could not refrain from going one evening to Saturnino Agonde's and drawing carelessly the volume from his pocket, throwing it on the counter and saying with affected indifference:

"What do you think of that book, my boy?"

On the instant he repented of his weakness, so many were the nonsensical remarks and absurd jokes with which the beautiful volume inspired the irreverent assemblage. He wished he had never shown it. He had drawn all this upon himself. If the public did not treat him better than his fellow-townsmen! Man can never isolate himself completely from his surroundings—the circle in which he moves must always have an interest for him. However little importance Segundo might attach to the opinions of the Vilamortans, and although their approbation would assuredly not have raised him in his own estimation, their stupid mockery wounded and embittered his soul. He went home hurt and pained. He spent a feverish night—one of those nights in which great projects are conceived and decisive resolutions adopted.

His resolutions and his plans he summed up in the letter he wrote to Blanquez. The latter did not answer by return of mail; days passed, and Segundo went every morning to the post-office, always meeting with the same laconic answer. At last one day he received a voluminous registered letter.