Eduardo Zamacois

“ Fatality, incarnate in the body of Alicia Pardo, had just mapped out his road for him.
Every evening at sunset, at that hour of mystery when the street-lights begin to shine and women to seem more beautiful, the student left his lodgings and, passing through the Calle Romanos and the Calle Carmen, took his way toward the Puerta del Sol, always full of an idle, loitering crowd which seems to have nowhere to go. He always stopped in Calle Mayor, to cast an eager, timorous look into the jeweler's shop, whose show-window glowed like a bed of living coals. ”

“ Alicia Pardo examined the necklace. Her egotistic soul, enamored of luxury, her little soul, that worshiped loot and gain, was now thinking of nothing but the beauty of the jewels. Standing in front of the looking-glass, she clasped the necklace round her throat and began to turn her head from side to side. The contrast made by the blackness of the pearls on the ermine whiteness of her throat gave her pleasure. And for a moment her eyes burned with the insolent strength of happiness. ”

“ Why should he not prove himself brave, capable of everything? At the basis of every great sacrifice lies something superhuman, that confuses and that rends the soul. If he were a thief and could pay with his bravery something that his small, poor money could not buy; if he should ruin his whole career just to please her, should bring down upon his head the rigors of the law and his father's curses, Alicia—so he fondly believed—would love him blindly, with the same sort of frenzy that Balzac's hero, Vautrin, inspired in women. ”

“ Scourged by the agonizing tyranny of his will, the student's memory recalled moments, evoked phrases, and once more endowed with new reality all the details of that enchanted night in which it had seemed to him all Madrid had been perfumed with violets. And as the human heart always yearns to forgive the object of our love, Enrique succeeded at last, after much reflection, in convincing himself that Alicia was innocent. ”

“ A long, long time ago, before he had gone to jail, Don Tomás in the course of an unforgettable conversation had told him that Manolo Berlanga maltreated Rafaela. And all these years afterward, when he was once more a free man, Don Adolfo had said the same thing about young Manolo. Remembering this strange agreement of opinions, Amadeo Zureda felt a bitter and inextinguishable hate against the whole race of the silversmith—a race accursed, it seemed, which had come into the world only to hurt and wound him in his dearest affections. ”

“ The old man often called up memories of the time when he had been an engineer. He remembered the prison, too, and his tired will seemed to tremble. Peacefully he looked about him. Here, sometime, would be his bed. What rest, what silence! And he breathed deep, enthralled by the rare and calming joy of willingness to die. Here inside the old wall of mud bricks, reddened by the setting sun—here in this garden of forgetfulness—how well one ought to sleep!
Only one trouble disturbed and embittered the peaceful decline of Amadeo Zureda. This trouble was his son, Manolo. ”

“ The voice which until now had been thundering accusations in the student's storm-tossed conscience, now with soft flatterings began to wheedle and cajole him, saying:
"Alicia, your beloved Alicia would be happy with the emeralds of that necklace. If you have no way to buy it for her, go steal it! You're a cowardly wretch if you don't! What does the opinion of the crowd matter to you, egoist that you are? A man incapable of becoming a thief for a woman may love her greatly, but he does not love her to distraction. What your Alicia desires, you should give her. ”

“ Destiny meant for him no more than this: to follow a costly, hard and tedious career merely that he might make a pittance, get a wife and find some hole or corner to live in—some poor, mean little house in a world of palaces, some commonplace love in a world throbbing with so many passions, some paltry dole in a world crowded with so many fortunes!
Whipped by the music, the foolish grief of Enrique Darlés broke into sobs.
Now the second act was done, and Don Manuel and Alicia came into the outer box. The young woman's eyes—green, eloquent eyes—filled with astonishment. ”

“ But they disturb young lovers. According to the temperaments of such youthful blades, public recognition of this kind excites jealousy or shame. Enrique Darlés felt suppressed and ill at ease. A wave of hot blood burned in his cheeks. Not for one instant did it occur to him that these grave, rich gentlemen—old men who never win the favors of the demi-monde along the flowery path of real affection—might be envying his beauty and his youth.
Alicia felt, in the student's silence, something of the embarrassment that possessed him. ”

“ And there he stopped, just a bit ashamed of himself. For the first time he was beginning to realize that his out-of-date slouch hat, his skimpy black suit that made him look like a high-school boy, and his old boots that needed a shine were greatly out of place. He felt that his flowing necktie, which he had tried to knot up with student-like carelessness, was just as ugly as all the rest of him. Correctly dressed men were passing all about him, with elegant frock-coats that bore flowers in their buttonholes and with impeccable Tuxedos. ”

“ The contrast was too sharp between the hot, sickening air of that long-closed room and the life-giving breeze of the street.
"Shall I open the window?" asked she.
"No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."
Alicia, seated on the bed—that poor bed one night perfumed with violets by her body—silently looked at him. A broad-brimmed crimson hat, decked with a splendid white plume, shaded her pale face. Her green eyes shone wickedly in the livid, bluish circles under them. ”

“ The student heaved a sigh, and his eyes filled with tears. He was a fool, a shrinking coward, a poltroon. A man who has ruined himself for a woman, or who, to keep her as his own, has committed murder and been sent to prison, may justly complain of her. But he, quite on the contrary——
Suddenly Darlés shuddered so violently that the electric shock of his nerves made him utter a cry. Deathly pale, he sat up in bed. Since he could not give Alicia either a fortune or the glory of a great artist, he must drink a toast to her with his whole honor—he must steal. ”

“ But artistic and literary matters are free and universal. Beauty cannot be appreciated, alone. It must be shared, to be enjoyed. My ambition—or one of my ambitions—is to bring the old world to the new, and to take back the new to the old." He spoke with enthusiasm, for he is an enthusiast by temperament, filled with nervous energy that looks out compellingly from his gray eyes—not at all a Spanish type, as we conceive the typical Spaniard. "I am sorry you Americans know so little of Spanish letters. You have always gone to France, rather than to Spain, for your literary loves. ”

“ Rafaela straightened up, quick, pliant, transfigured.
"You aren't any more willing to ask me, than I am to go!" said she.
"Well, why not, then?" demanded the silversmith. "Let's go, right now! Let's take a run out to Bombilla, and not leave as long as we've got a cent!"
The young woman fairly jumped for joy, skipped out of the dining-room, tied a silk handkerchief over her head and most fetchingly threw an embroidered shawl over her shoulders. She came back, immediately. Her little high-heeled, pointed, patent-leather boots and her fresh-starched, rustling petticoats echoed her impatience. ”

“ Since the human mind cannot long remain unoccupied by real emotions, she had come to adore luxury. She was neither miserly nor greedy for money; but she did indeed love purple and fine linen, noisy hats and precious stones glimmering with sunlight. Her idea of life was to buy good furnishings, appear in new gowns, show herself off, waste everything without restraint. With her pretty hands, now craving money and now throwing it to the four winds, she made ducks and drakes of men's fortunes. ”

“ These slid into chromatics, rising, beating up to lose themselves in one vast chord of agony supreme. And, in that huge lamentation, there mingled depths of disillusion, whispers of hope, desires and wearinesses, laughter and grimaces—the whole of life, indeed, seemed blent there, swift-passing, tragic, knotted in the bitterness of everything that ever has been and that still must be.
Enrique sat down again. Nameless suffering clutched his throat, so that he felt a profound desire for tears. ”

“ The notion kept growing in Zureda; it became an obsession which made him see the dreaded vision constantly, just as through another obsession, Berlanga's desire for Rafaela had been born.
At last Amadeo became convinced that his skill as a spy was very poor. He lacked that astuteness, those powers of detection and that divining instinct which, in a kind of second sight, makes some men get swiftly and directly at the bottom of things. ”

“ Stubborn, menacing, rebellious against all his demands, the fight she gave him—a fight always potentially dangerous—acted as a sedative to his nerves and seemed to pacify him. At such times Pedro, the Andalusian with the risqué stories and the spicy songs, felt the numbing, evil humor of his engineer, and grew still.
All along the line, chiming into the uproarious quiverings of the engine and the whistling gusts of wind, a long colloquy of hate seemed to develop between the man and the machine. Zureda would grit his teeth and grunt:
"Go on, you dog! Some hill—but you've got to make it! ”

“ No one who has never been really bored can grasp the complete horror, the abysmal blackness, the silence like that of a bottomless pit or an endless tunnel, which lies in absolute boredom. Still, just as death is the beginning of life, so at times tedium can become a spring of vigorous action. Many men have sown wild oats in their youth till they have tired of them, and have in riper years become model husbands, applied themselves to business and died leaving millions. Boredom sometimes turns out works of art. ”