Benito Pérez Galdós

“ And meanwhile the vehicle, an imitation of life, keeps going, always receiving and letting go, uniform, indefatigable, majestic, oblivious to what is happening inside it, without being moved very much by the barely stifled passions of dumb show. The tram is running, always running over the two interminable iron tracks, wide and slippery as centuries. I was thinking about this while the tram was going up the calle de Alcalá until the noise of my bundle of books falling on the floor pulled me back from the gulf of so many mixed up ruminations. ”

“ While I was engrossed in the interesting reading of the feuilleton, the tram had stopped several times to take on or let off passengers. On one of these occasions this man had got on whose sudden presence now produced such a strong impression on me. It was him, Mudarra, the butler in person, sitting opposite me, with his knees touching my knees. I took a second to examine him from head to toe and saw in him the features I had already read about. He could be no-one else: even the most trifling details of his clothing clearly indicated it was him. ”

“ Consider, reader, the nature of human thought: when Cascajares started to relate those events to me, I was annoyed at his importunity and heaviness, but my mind wasted little time in taking hold of that same subject, turning it upside down and right side up, a psychological process which did not cease to be stimulated by the regular motion of the tram and the dull and monotonous noise of its wheels polishing the iron of the rails. ”

“ It may be silly I said to myself, but the fact is I'm interested in this countess who has fallen victim to the nastiness of an insufferable butler who only exists in the disturbed mind of some novelist born to terrify simple souls. And what will he do to take his revenge? He'd be capable of framing some atrocity to bring to an end in sensational style such a chapter. And what will the count do? And that young man Cascajares mentioned on the tram and Mudarra in the serial, what will he do? Who is he? What is there between the countess and that unknown gentleman? ”

“ Passengers get off leaving us alone and finally we too alight. It's a mirror of human life itself in which birth and death are like the entrances and exits I've just mentioned for new generations of passengers come to populate the little world that lives inside the tram. They get on, they get off; they are born and they die. ”

“ The countess is an excellent woman, angelic, as discreet as she is beautiful and deserving of something far better. But she is married to a man who does not understand the value of the treasure he possesses and he spends his life given over to gambling and to all sorts of illicit pastimes. She in the meantime gets bored and cries. Is it surprising that she tries to dull her pain honestly, here and there, wherever a piano is being played? ”

“ Some were happy, some were sad, this one was yawning, that one was laughing, and in spite of the journey's shortness, there was not a single one who did not want it to be over quickly, for among the thousand and one annoyances of our existence, none exceeds the one that consists in being a dozen people gazing at one another's faces without saying a word and mutually musing over their wrinkles, their moles or some anomaly noticed in a face or in clothing. ”

“ The lady would faint, the lover would panic and the husband would commit an atrocity and, lurking behind a curtain, the face of the butler would light up diabolically.
As an avid reader of numerous bad novels, I gave that twist to what was unconsciously developing in my imagination on the basis of the words of a friend, the reading of a piece of torn-off paper and the sight of someone I had never laid eyes on before. ”

“ It's him, Mudarra, the principal author of so many crimes."
I ordered the tram to stop and alighted or rather jumped through the door, colliding with the feet and legs of the passengers. I descended to the street and ran after that man, shouting:
"Stop him! Stop him! Murderer!"
You can imagine what the effect of these words would have been in such a tranquil neighbourhood. The man in question, the same one I had seen in the tram that afternoon, was arrested. I, for my part, did not stop shouting:
"He's the one who prepared the poison for the Countess, the one who murdered the Countess." ”

“ Judge then if such a fine exemplar of human flippancy would be in demand with the curious and the garrulous. This man, my friend as he is everyone's, was sitting next to me when the tram, slipping smoothly along its iron road, was going down the calle de Serrano, stopping from time to time in order to fill the few seats that still remained empty. We were so hemmed in that the bundle of books I was carrying with me became a source of great concern to me, and I was putting it first on one knee, then on the other. ”

“ Then the Count burst out laughing again with the outrageous and noisy demonstrativeness that was peculiar to him that night, and said:
"How bored we all are! You, Rafael, haven't said a word. Antonia, play something. We haven't heard you play for such a long time. This piece by Gorschack, for instance, entitled Death. You used to play it wonderfully. Come on. Sit down at the piano."
The Countess tried to speak, but could not say a word. The Count looked at her in such a way that the unhappy woman quailed before the terrible expression in his eyes like a dove hypnotized by a boa constrictor. ”

“ In all the countenances that succeeded one another inside the tram, I thought I might see something that would contribute to an explanation of the enigma. I felt a frightful overheating of my brain and no doubt this inner disturbance was reflected in my face as everyone looked at me as at something that you don't see every day.
VII There was yet another incident which would turn my head during that fateful journey. On passing through the Calle de Alcalá a man got on with his wife. ”

“ The most vivid recollection that I have of such a strange event was to have awoken from the deep sleep I fell into, a veritable drunken stupor morally produced, I know not how, by one of the passing phenomena of alienation that science now studies with great care as one of the heralds of madness. ”

“ They calmed down at this and spoke not a single word more for the whole of their journey, which finished for them at the Puerta del Sol. No doubt they had been afraid of me.
I was so fixated on the idea that a crime had been committed that it was in vain that I tried to calm down as I reasoned out the threads of such a complicated question. But each time I did so my confusion grew and the image of the poor lady refused to leave me. ”

“ One day you will understand me and know how selfless is the great love that you have been able to inspire in me."
As he said this Mudarra moved a few steps nearer to the countess who distanced herself with horror and repugnance from that monster. Mudarra was a man of around fifty, dark-skinned, thickset and knock-kneed, with rough, untidy hair and a big mouth full of teeth. ”

“ Cascajares added, striking the floor with his stick, "for now the count, in the prime of life, has started to be jealous, yes, of a certain young man who has taken to heart the enterprise of helping the countess to enjoy herself."
"The husband will be to blame if he succeeds." ”

“ Don Dionisio Cascajares is a famous doctor, although not for the depth of his knowledge of pathology, and a good man, since it could never be said of him that he was inclined to take what did not belong to him, nor to kill his fellow men by means other than those of his dangerous and scientific vocation. ”

“ A former butler, well-liked by the count, who has set himself to make a martyr of the countess as unhappy as she is sensitive. It seems that he is now in possession of a certain secret which could compromise her, and with this weapon he presumes to do God knows what. ”

“ He's like all those low-born men who follow their base instincts. If they raise their station in life, they become insufferable. His face is a clear indication that nothing good can come out of all this. ”

“ Nobody knows like he does interesting events which are not common knowledge, and no-one possesses to a higher degree the mania of asking questions, though this vice of being overly inquisitive is compensated for in him by the promptness with which he tells you everything he knows without others needing to take the trouble to sound him out. ”

“ The only living being to keep her sphinx-like calm at such a comic scene was the English woman who, indignant at my outlandish behaviour, turned to the other passengers saying: "Oh! A lunatic fellow!" ”

“ Many go there that we feel instinctively to be excellent people and their appearance pleases us and we are even upset to see them go. Others, on the contrary, annoy us as soon as we look at them. We examine with a certain rancour their phrenological characteristics and feel a real pleasure when we see them go. ”

“ We can be quite sure that the leniency of his treatment and his complacency in not giving his patients any other treatment than the one they want are the root cause of the confidence he inspires in a great many families, irrespective of class, especially when, in his limitless kindness, he also has a reputation for meting out services over and above the call of duty though always of a rigorously honest nature. ”

“ But she is innocent, she is an angel. But enough said! We've reached Cibeles. Yes, on the right I can see Buenavista Park. Have them stop, boy. I'm not one of those who jump off while the tram is still moving to split open their heads on the cobbles. ”

“ I replied mechanically, doing compassionate homage also to the aforementioned countess. "Just imagine," he continued, "that they've let themselves be dominated by that man! And that man will end up being master of the house. Poor woman! She thinks that with tears and lamentations all can be remedied, but it isn't so. She must make a decision, for that man is a monster ”